-
What Should Reddit Do? We Asked Kevin Rose And Other Community Founders
Depending on your perspective, Reddit’s either in a pickle — or it’s a billowing garbage fire. Leave the most horrible content up and it will continue to facilitate hatred while seeing bad press, spooked advertisers, and disgusted users fleeing the site. Ban it and move away from the free speech many thought Reddit stood for, and it could see an exodus of hardcore users and… Read More
-
Twitter Loses Another Exec, This Time Shedding Its Head Of Comms Gabriel Stricker
After joining Twitter three years ago to run its communications team, former Googler Gabriel Stricker has stepped down from the position. There’s no word on whether he left on his own, was pushed out…or both, which tends to happen in high-profile changes like this. Read More
-
Her, The Queer Dating App For Women, Goes Live Across The United States
Her, the queer dating app for women, has today announced that it will be available nationwide. Her is a dating app that puts a strong focus on content, specifically curated for and dedicated to queer women, whether they’re bi-curious or as gay as a rainbow. Read More
-
Flipagram Raises $70M, Scores Record Label Deals Thanks To 30M+ Music Hungry Users
It’s a mix of Instagram and YouTube…maybe a bit of an old-school RockYou component. No matter how you look at it, Flipagram has seen enormous growth and is a mobile juggernaut. Today, the company has formally announced that it has raised a $70 million B round of funding led by Sequoia and including Kleiner Perkins and Index Ventures. Read More
-
Twitter Unveils New Dashboard To Help Users Monitor Their Data
Twitter just released a new dashboard to help users keep an eye out on how their data is being accessed by third-party apps and other services. The dashboard, available in settings, allows users to review their log-in history and see devices that they are currently connected on. Users are also able to see the activity of apps that they have allowed access to their account. Read More
-
Yik Yak Introduces Photos, But No Faces Allowed
Yik Yak wants to let you share what you’re seeing without anyone knowing who you are. The anonymous social app today announced that users will now be able to share photos on the service. The company had previously been testing photos in a few Yik Yak communities, but will now roll out the feature to all users. The company will be moderating photos before they appear in the Yik Yak… Read More
-
To Boost Video Views, Facebook Tests A New “Watch Later” Button
Video has been one of the fastest-growing content categories on Facebook of late, with 4 billion daily video views on the site as of last quarter. Now, the social network wants to expand that even more. Facebook has confirmed that it has quietly started to test a “Watch Later” button for videos on the desktop — a little tab that appears as an overlay in the upper… Read More
-
Stop Trying To Make Sense Out Of The Reddit Saga
Why does reddit exist? How does reddit exist? Who are all of these people who participate? Who knows? They’re anonymous. How does something like reddit attract $50 million in funding? I have no idea, and a lot of the people I’ve been speaking to in tech circles over the past week don’t know, either. Read More
-
Ev Williams: Twitter Should Be A Platform Company
Twitter and Medium co-founder Ev Williams was interviewed this morning by legendary journalist Walter Isaacson at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen. Isaacson didn’t hold any punches when it came to asking about Twitter’s future, either. Read More
-
Pew: Twitter And Facebook Users Being Exposed To More News
U.S. users of Twitter and Facebook are increasingly getting external news via the two services, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center. “The share of Americans for whom Twitter and Facebook serve as a source of news is continuing to rise. This rise comes primarily from more current users encountering news there rather than large increases in the user base overall,”… Read More
-
Facebook’s Chris Gomersall Departs For His Marketing Startup Atomized
Chris Gomersall has spent the past three years working with brands and agencies at Facebook, where he was the first creative strategy leader. Now he’s leaving to run his own startup, Atomized. Gomersall told me that he’s trying to solve a problem that he saw again and again in meetings with marketers — when they needed to bring out the creative assets for a campaign… Read More
-
Snapchat Redesign Moves “Discover” To Top Of Stories Tab
Snapchat just released a new update featuring a redesigned Story tab. The main change is that media brands featured in the Discover section (which previously required another tap or swipe to navigate to) are now displayed prominently at the top of the Stories list. Live stories (Snapchat curated stories from different live events) are also now at the top of the list. This change will… Read More
-
CircleUp Raises $22M To Invest In Consumer Brands On Its Crowdfunding Platform
As crowdfunding sites like Tilt and GoFundMe and lending site Funding Circle raise large rounds to take their businesses to the next level, a startup that sits in the same area of web-based fundraising is trying a new approach. CircleUp, a crowdfunding platform for consumer brands to raise money from accredited investors, has closed a $22 million fund of its own to back a range of brands… Read More
-
Invi’s SMS Replacement App For Android Exits Beta, Still Dreaming Big
U.S. startup Invi reckons there’s space for one more messaging app play. Not a little one either. Co-founder Iddo Tal sees a gaping hole in the market for a North America-focused messaging platform giant to flourish — and, he hopes, become a global marketplace for content distribution. Such stuff startup dreams are made on. Read More
-
Whistle While You Scroll, Or, How Facebook Could Conquer Music Videos
FbMTV? Facebook is talking with record labels about paying them handsomely to share music videos to the News Feed, according to reports from Billboard and The New York Times. Normally, people go to YouTube to watch these mini music movies. But Facebook’s on a quest to conquer the video world, and it’s mounting an assault on YouTube’s most lucrative province. FaceTube A few… Read More
-
Reddit Co-Founder Steve Huffman In For Reddit CEO Job, Pao Out
We’d been hearing that Steve Huffman, a co-founder of Reddit who also co-founded flight and hotel search startup Hipmunk, was being considered for the CEO job at Reddit. Now that move is confirmed. Huffman’s appointment follows turmoil at Reddit following the firing of Victoria Taylor, a community manager that the Reddit community relied on, last week. Y Combinator’s… Read More
-
Backed By Tim Draper, DataWallet Pays Users To Share Their Online Data With Businesses
Consciously or not, there’s a kind of deal we make when we use many online services — in exchange for free access, we accept ads and give up some of our personal data. Now a startup called DataWallet is planning to make that exchange a little more rewarding, with real cash. Brands often want access to this kind of personal data, and DataWallet founder and CEO Serafin Lion Engel… Read More
-
Vine Promotes Its Top Stars With New Suggested User List
When people find a social media creator they love, they’ll keep coming back to whatever app hosts their content. Vine, the six-second looping video app owned by Twitter, has today announced an update that will let users find more of its most popular creators to follow. Previously, users could hook in their Twitter and Address Book to find their friends on the app. But with the new… Read More
-
Likes Aren’t Enough. Now Facebook Pages Need You To Add Them To “See First”
Facebook told businesses to buy Page Likes for years, saying that’s how they could reach people through the News Feed. But over time, a natural increase in competition for space in the feed plus increased restrictions on promotional and marketing posts have eroded the reach of Pages, and subsequently some of the value of Page Likes. Now Facebook has created an echelon above Likes. A new… Read More
-
GoFundMe Learns The Taylor Swift Principle
Once in a while (a lot, actually), part-time Apple blogger and musician Taylor Swift likes to give to a charitable cause. She likes hanging out with kids who are in the hospital, too. She likes disrupting technology the most. Swift’s most recent disruptive move was a donation made to a little girl named Naomi, who is kicking the crap out of cancer. It was for $50k, to help with some… Read More
