For technical and cultural reasons, the metaverse is about to go massively mainstream Eric Peckham @epeckham / 9 hours If virtual worlds are so enticing, why haven’t we already shifted to them as our online social hubs? The thought of virtual worlds for socializing evokes Second Life (launched in 2003), where users created unique avatars
The “Sent via Superhuman iOS” email signature has become one of the strangest flexes in the tech industry, but its influence is enduring, as the $30 per month invite-only email app continues to shape how a wave of personal productivity startups are building their business and product strategies. I had a chance to chat with Superhuman
Facebook first showed off its 3D photos back in 2018, and shared the technical details behind it a month later. But unless you had one of a handful of phones with dual cameras back then (when they weren’t so common), you couldn’t make your own. Today an update brings 3D photos to those of us
‘It’s kind of funny; human bonding happens when there’s another direct task going on, right?’ Lucas Matney @lucasmtny / 8 hours There are plenty of accelerators aiming to sway young startups to join their ranks rather than apply to Y Combinator, but Pioneer‘s sell is a bit different. First off, they are fully remote; founders
Chat bots were central to Facebook Messenger’s strategy three years ago. Now they’re being hidden from view in the app along with games and businesses. Facebook Messenger is removing the Discover tab this week as it focuses on speed and simplicity instead of broad utility like China’s WeChat. The changes are part of a larger
A new startup called Notivize aims to give product teams direct access to one of their most important tools for increasing user engagement — notifications. The company has been testing the product with select customers since last year and says it has already sent hundreds of thousands of notifications. And this week, it announced that
As things stand in many countries, renting houses and whole apartments is relatively straightforward, if you can afford it. But trying to find rooms in those apartments and houses to rent has been chaotic for many years and relies on hugely informal networks. Some startups have launched in recent years to address this problem of
The FCC has officially and finally determined that the major wireless carriers in the U.S. broke the law by secretly selling subscribers’ location data for years with almost no constraints or disclosure. But its Commissioners decry the $200 million penalty proposed to be paid by these enormously rich corporations, calling it disproportionate to the harm
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. What a week. What an insane, heart-stopping, odd, and stuffed week. I’m utterly exhausted. But, in better news, all of that great fodder for podcast and chat, so today’s Equity is pretty ok if I may say so.
Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. All around, this has been a tough week. The coronavirus is spreading and worry is running high as infections mount. In economic terms, global markets were repeated declines last night (domestic results here), and the
It wasn’t a fad. Yolo became the country’s No. 1 app just a week after launch by letting teens ask for anonymous replies to questions they posted on Snapchat. But nine months later, Yolo is still in the top 100 iOS apps and has 10 million active users. Now it’s safeguarding the app from predators
With the next version of Windows 10, coming this spring, Microsoft’s Cortana digital assistant will lose a number of consumer skills around music and connected homes, as well as some third-party skills. That’s very much in line with Microsoft’s new focus for Cortana, but it may still come as a surprise to the dozens of
In emerging markets, up to 80% of the population may have to rely on informally-run public transport to get around. Literally, privately-run buses and cars. But journey-planning apps that work well for commuters in developed markets like New York or London do not work well in emerging markets, which is why you can’t just flip
Building a rocket is a big operation, even when you’re printing them from the ground up, like Relativity Space . The launch startup is graduating from its initial office, which is a bit cramped for assembling rockets, to a huge space in Long Beach where the company will go from prototype to first flight. We
End Game Interactive CEO Yang C. Liu has a refreshingly straightforward description of what he and his co-founder Luke Zbihlyj are up to: “We’re just building games. And to be honest, we don’t know what we’re doing.” Despite this self-proclaimed ignorance, End Game has just raised $3 million in seed funding from an impressive group
A 9-year-old is smashing the shuttle far and wide, and frantically pacing back and forth on the court in Bangalore, India, as her competition refuses to back down. Her rival is not a human. She is playing against a machine that is mimicking the game of badminton legend P.V. Sindhu, toned down a few notches
Earlier today, during an eye-popping market selloff, DoorDash announced that it has privately filed to go public. The decision to file privately will allow the high-valued startup to get its S-1 documents in good order with the SEC before showing the rest of us what it has up its sleeve. The move to announce its private
Google Cloud announced today that its new data center in Salt Lake City has opened, making it the 22nd such center the company has opened to date. This Salt Lake City data center marks the third in the western region, joining LA and The Dalles, Oregon with the goal of providing lower latency compute power
London-based insurtech AI startup Tractable, which is applying artificial intelligence to speed up accident and disaster recovery by using computer vision to perform visual damage appraisal instead of getting humans to do the job, has closed a $25 million Series C, led by Canadian investment fund Georgian Partners. Existing investors also participated, including Insight Partners
Like baseball, cricket relies on grass, dirt, wood, cork, spit, spin, drop and rise en route to either victory or loss. And like baseball — and just about any other sport, really — cricket coaching staffs and their players worldwide are looking for more ways to track every move. Tracking statistics is nothing new. With
A quick hit as we have a podcast to record, but a few public companies in the broader SaaS market reported earnings in the past week. Their results are worth unpacking as they paint a good picture of what the markets are hunting for in modern software companies. Of course, we’re covering the firms’ share-price
The Citroën Ami is a new take on urban mobility. It’s electric, cheap and doesn’t require a license. In short, it’s less of a car and more of an electric scooter with two seats, doors and a heater. Jokes aside, the Citroën Ami could be a glimpse at the future of mobility. The innovation isn’t
Contract management service DocuSign today announced that it is acquiring Seal Software for $188 million in cash. The acquisition is expected to close later this year. DocuSign, it’s worth noting, previously invested $15 million in Seal Software in 2019. Seal Software was founded in 2010, and, while it may not be a mainstream brand, its
It would be a foolish U.S. business that tried to sell chlorine-washed chicken in Europe — a region where very different food standards apply. But in the high-tech world of algorithmically assisted hiring, it’s a different story. A number of startups are selling data-driven tech tools designed to comply with U.S. equality laws into the
Following a successful debut for Tinder’s first foray into original content, the company is giving its interactive video series “Swipe Night” another run. The company confirmed today it’s renewing “Swipe Night” for a second season that will launch this summer, again as an in-app experience within Tinder’s dating app. Variety first reported the news of
DoorDash prepares to go public, Roblox raises $150 million and Reddit’s CEO takes aim at TikTok. Here’s your Daily Crunch for February 27, 2020. 1. DoorDash, the $13B on-demand food delivery startup, says it has confidentially filed for an IPO The company said that its Form S-1 (a draft registration statement) was filed with the
Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. Today we’re starting on a somber topic, so I’ll hold off on our usual jokes and attempts at puns. The impact of the coronavirus known as COVID-19 is starting to show up in U.S.-based technology
Coding and other computer science expertise remain some of the more important skills that a person can have in the working world today, but in the last few years, we have also seen a big rise in a new generation of tools providing an alternative way of reaping the fruits of technology: “no-code” software, which
Big tech’s lead privacy regulator in Europe has intervened to flag transparency concerns about a Facebook election reminder feature — asking the tech giant to provide it with information about what data it collects from users who interact with the notification and how their personal data is used, including whether it’s used for targeting them
The Raspberry Pi Foundation has updated its flagship model, the Raspberry Pi 4. It’s still the same awesome tiny single-board computer with a lot of connectors. But the entry level now comes with 2GB of RAM instead of 1GB of RAM for the same price of $35. The foundation says that RAM prices have been