FTC warns tech: ‘Keep your AI claims in check’

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The FTC, fresh off announcing a whole new division taking on “snake oil” in tech, has sent another shot across the bows of the over-eager industry with a sassy warning to “keep your AI claims in check.”

I wrote a little while ago (okay, five years) that “AI Powered” is the meaningless tech equivalent of “all natural,” but it has progressed beyond cheeky. It seems like just about every product out there claims to implement AI in some way or another, yet few go into detail — and fewer still can tell you exactly it works and why.

The FTC doesn’t like it. Whatever someone means when they say “powered by artificial intelligence” or some version thereof, “One thing is for sure: it’s a marketing term,” the agency writes. “And at the FTC, one thing we know about hot marketing terms is that some advertisers won’t be able to stop themselves from overusing and abusing them.”

Everyone is saying AI is reinventing everything, but it’s one thing to do that at a TED talk; it’s quite another to claim it as an official part of your product. And the FTC wants marketers to know that these claims may count as “false or unsubstantiated,” something the agency is very experienced with regulating.

So if your product uses AI or your marketing team claims it does, the FTC asks you to consider:

• Are you exaggerating what your AI product can do? If you’re making science fiction claims that the product can’t back up — like reading emotions, enhancing productivity, or predicting behavior — you may want to tone those down.
• Are you promising that your AI product does something better than a non-AI product? Sure, you can make those weird claims like “4 out of 5 dentists prefer” your AI-powered toothbrush, but you’d better have all 4 of them on the record. Claiming superiority because of your AI needs proof, “and if such proof is impossible to get, then don’t make the claim.”
• Are you aware of the risks? “Reasonably foreseeable risks and impact” sounds a bit hazy, but your lawyers can help you understand why you shouldn’t push the envelope here. If your product doesn’t work if certain people use it because you didn’t even try, or its results are biased because your dataset was poorly constructed… you’re gonna have a bad time. “And you can’t say you’re not responsible because that technology is a ‘black box’ you can’t understand or didn’t know how to test,” the FTC adds. If you don’t understand it and can’t test it, why are you offering it, let alone advertising it?
• Does the product actually use AI at all? As I pointed out long ago, claims that something is “AI-powered” because one engineer used an ML-based tool to optimize a curve or something doesn’t mean your product uses AI, yet plenty seem to think that a drop of AI means the whole bucket is full of it. The FTC thinks otherwise.

“You don’t need a machine to predict what the FTC might do when those claims are unsupported,” it concludes, ominously.

Since the agency already put out some common-sense guidelines for AI claims back in 2021 (there were a lot of “detect and predict COVID” ones then), it directs questions to that document, which includes citations and precedents.

FTC’s new Office of Technology will help mop up tech ‘oozing with snake oil’

FTC warns tech: ‘Keep your AI claims in check’ by Devin Coldewey originally published on TechCrunch

source https://techcrunch.com/?p=2492006

Tracksuit raises $5M to make brand tracking more accessible

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Tracksuit, a New Zealand-based brand tracking startup, wants to take on traditional market research players by offering a more affordable, accessible brand insights tool.

“Market research and brand tracking has been around for a long time, and it usually consists of a consultant coming in on a quarterly or biannual basis with a 100-page slide deck and a lot of complex data that looks behind not forward,” Matt Herbert, co-founder and co-CEO of Tracksuit, told TechCrunch, noting that most market research services have been reserved for enterprise-level companies, leaving smaller and mid-sized companies with less access to such insights.

“With Tracksuit, we wanted to make an affordable, always-on, easy-to-use way of accessing these insights.”

Tracksuit launched in 2021 with an intuitive dashboard that tracks metrics like brand awareness, consideration, preference and usage, and measures them against a company’s competitive set. It’s a software-as-a-service product with a flat fee that Herbert says is 10x cheaper than the current standard.

Tracksuit’s tool now tracks insights for more than 1,300 brands across New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom and, most recently, the United States. The company recently closed $5 million in its first external round, and will use the money to expand further into the U.S. market. Tracksuit made its first hire in New York City in November, and is building a 10-person team there to support expansion.

The round, led by Blackbird, also included participation from Shasta Ventures, Icehouse Ventures, Ascential and brand consultant Mark Ritson.

“Strong brands are the difference between good companies and great companies – whether they’re selling physical products or software,” said Phoebe Harrop, a partner at Blackbird, in a statement. “The magic of Tracksuit is giving companies across every industry a common language for measuring, talking about and investing in brand health.”

“A common language.” That’s what Herbert told TechCrunch Tracksuit is trying to achieve — a standard for evaluating, understanding and communicating the value of brands.

The startup is targeting mid-sized, growing consumer brands across food and beverage, FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods), retail, direct-to-consumer and financial services. Herbert said half of its customers come from the existing brand tracking market, but the other half is a new segment entirely that has previously not been served by the market research industry. Some key customers today include Made by Nacho, Charity: Water and Athletic Brewing Company.

Herbert says the strong demand for the company’s product suggests a shift in how consumer businesses approach marketing. They’re focused “less on immediate conversion and more on building long-term growth through highly effective, creative marketing,” he said.

Tracksuit gathers insights by surveying target customers around the globe. It uses those surveys to set up a brand’s fundamentals: What’s the total addressable market? How well is the brand known, how well is it considered, where is it most preferred? What do people really think and feel about the brand, and how does that shift over time?

From there, Tracksuit goes deeper.

“Each brand will have strategic pillars or value propositions that they want to own, so we help those brands track how well they are performing against those brand pillars and how well their comms and advertising and marketing is shifting the needle on those perceptions and attributes for the consumer,” said Herbert, as he showed me a demo of Tracksuit’s “unprompted imagery” feature, a word cloud that shows which words come to mind for a specific brand, positioned next to a similar word cloud for that brand’s biggest competitor.

All of these insights help brands ask the big question of What’s the job to be done? It’s hard to sell to someone who hasn’t heard of your brand, so maybe Tracksuit’s insights could help a brand learn that it has to increase awareness before anything else.

“What is the opportunity to grow and where should that be focused in your advertising, communications and marketing strategy?” said Herbert.

Tracksuit raises $5M to make brand tracking more accessible by Rebecca Bellan originally published on TechCrunch

source https://techcrunch.com/?p=2487421

Meta to sell blue badge on Instagram and Facebook as Zuckerberg borrows Musk’s playbook

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Facebook-parent Meta has launched a subscription service, called Meta Verified, that will allow users to add the coveted blue check mark to their Instagram and Facebook accounts for up to $15 a month by verifying their identity, its chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said on Sunday, tapping a new revenue channel that has returned mixed success for its smaller rival Twitter.

The subscription service, first rolling out in New Zealand and Australia starting this week, is priced at $11.99 per month on the web or $14.99 on Apple’s iOS. (The company didn’t say when it plans to make the service available for purchase through its Android apps.) Meta will allow users to verify their identify by using their government-issued ID cards. The company said the subscription service will also offer “increased visibility and reach,” improved protection against impersonation attacks and direct access to customer support.

Meta Verified “is about increasing authenticity and security across our services,” said Zuckerberg in a Facebook post. The subscription service will be extended to “more countries soon,” he said, without elaborating on the timeline. We’ve asked Meta some additional questions and will update the story when we hear back.

The revenues of Meta, which has opted not to charge its customers for most of its services in more than a decade and a half since its founding, have taken a hit in recent years following Apple’s decision to introduce stringent privacy changes on iOS that curtails the social firm’s ability to track users’ internet activities. The Zuckerberg-led firm, which makes nearly all of its money from advertising, said last year that Apple’s move would cost the company more than $10 billion in lost ads revenue in 2022.

“Long term, we want to build a subscription offering that’s valuable to everyone, including creators, businesses and our community at large. As part of this vision, we are evolving the meaning of the verified badge so we can expand access to verification and more people can trust the accounts they interact with are authentic,” Meta wrote in a blog post.

Subscription services are becoming popular among social media firms.

The Sunday’s announcement follows social platform Snap launching its own subscription service last year, through which it has converted over a million users into paid customers already, and also Elon Musk revamping Twitter’s subscription service, Twitter Blue, to offer a range of additional features including the blue check mark. Twitter has expanded Twitter Blue to over a dozen markets in recent months including India and Indonesia. As of mid-January, only about 180,000 accounts had signed up for Twitter Blue, according to The Information.

Musk, a vocal critical of Facebook services, is betting on turning Twitter Blue into a major revenue driver for Twitter, which he acquired last year for $44 billion.

The blue checkmark has long been one of the coveted features on social media platforms. Previously it was reserved for public figures such as lawmakers, actors, musicians, sports athletes and journalists.

Musk has lambasted the idea, arguing that the feature should be open to all. Those who attained the blue tick mark outside the Twitter Blue subscription will lose it eventually, he has previously stated.

“As we test and learn, there will be no changes to accounts on Instagram and Facebook that are already verified based on prior requirements, including authenticity and notability,” said Meta.

Meta, whose shares have rebounded in recent weeks, is also reeling from a harsh markets response to its grand metaverse vision. The company, which has laid off about 11,000 employees in the past two months, has pledged to cut down its spendings on the metaverse ambitions. It’s reportedly planning another layoff round, soon.

“The thing about religion is that it requires a leap of faith. Belief in something that you may not ever be able to conclusively prove. And there will be moments that will test that faith, moments that make you question everything you had previously accepted as fact. Dramatics aside, 2022 was a challenging year for believers in the House of Zuck with many pushed to the brink or throwing in the towel culminating in the capitulation we saw last quarter,” analysts at Bernstein wrote in a note this month.

“But it appears that Meta has found their own religion on efficiency/profitability and investors now find a leaner, sharper company before them.”

I will not be surprised to see this spread to other social media services.

Not only are you the product, but you're now also the customer they want to sell to.

Psychological value placed on being verified only exists because you can't buy it though… https://t.co/prtVItD0rB

— Zach Bussey (@zachbussey) February 19, 2023

Meta to sell blue badge on Instagram and Facebook as Zuckerberg borrows Musk’s playbook by Manish Singh originally published on TechCrunch

source https://techcrunch.com/?p=2487992

iOS gains new emoji, Showtime joins a pricier Paramount+, and Instagram launches Channels

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Hey, TechCrunch besties. After a week in Korea and the Philippines, it’s great to be back in the States — and slightly more tan (i.e., burnt) than before. Massive thanks to Henry, who was forced to step in over the past two weeks thanks to my failing to realize that Korean Air does not offer in-flight Wi-Fi. Talk about a good sport.

If you’re wondering about Greg’s status, not to worry — he’s due to return from a well-deserved parental leave in a month and change. In the meantime, I’m here to nag you about TechCrunch’s upcoming headliner events.

TechCrunch Early Stage is fast approaching — it’s on April 20 in Boston this year, and it’ll host experts across the venture and tech landscape who’ll speak to solutions in getting a startup off the ground. (Also in Boston: City Spotlight, which kicks off February 27.) On the far horizon, there’s TechCrunch Disrupt (September 19–21), which promises to be an absolute blowout this year. Having taken a peek at the preliminary guest list, let me just say this: It won’t disappoint.

With those administrative bits out of the way, let’s get on with Week in Review. (If you want it in your inbox every Saturday, sign up here). Here are the top stories from the past several days!

most read

Dashed ambitions: Tage exclusively reports that allegedly Dash CEO Prince Boakye Boampong was temporarily suspended pending an investigation into financial impropriety at the company. Boampong, one of Africa’s best-known serial entrepreneurs, is reportedly accused of engaging in financial misreporting; sources tell TechCrunch that executives repeatedly concealed financials within the firm while laying off employees at will. Prior to Boampong’s alleged suspension, Dash had raised tens of millions in venture capital at an over-$200 million valuation.

New iOS, new emoji: Apple released the iOS 16.4 developer beta, which brought with it the next set of emoji coming to iPhones. Originally unveiled during the draft phase last year, the emoji span categories like food and drink, activity, objects, animals and symbols. Sarah writes that among the highlights are variations on the heart emoji, pushing hand gestures and a “shaking face” emoji. Curious users can check out the new additions by enrolling in Apple’s Developer Program.

Pony up for Paramount: Ahead of the launch of “Paramount+ with Showtime,” a new TV streaming service bundle that’ll see Showtime integrated with Paramount+, Paramount announced that it would be increasing the price of its Paramount+ Premium tier from $9.99 per month to $11.99 per month. It’s not an unexpected move — Paramount CEO Bob Bakish telegraphed the plans in early December — but it could nonetheless put Paramount+ with Showtime at a disadvantage as it competes with Warner Bros. Discovery’s upcoming HBO Max/Discovery+ service.

Feishu is the new Slack: Feishu, ByteDance’s Slack-like workplace collaboration app, surpassed $100 million in annual recurring revenue last year, Rita writes. ByteDance’s heavy investment in Feishu is telling of the state of enterprise software in China. At a time when Silicon Valley investors are heralding product-led growth, software in China is still largely counting on sales, marketing and services to recruit users.

Channeling Instagram: Instagram launched a new broadcast chat feature this week called “Channels.” Aisha reports that it lets creators share public, one-to-many messages to directly engage with their followers. Channels support text, images, polls, reactions and more. Instagram is starting to test channels with select creators in the U.S. and plans to expand the feature in coming months.

Salesforce under pressure: Salesforce is looking for new ways to cut costs as activist investors put pressure on the company. This week, Salesforce implemented stricter performance measurements for engineering, with some salespeople being put under pressure to quit or succumb to harsh performance policies of their own. As Ron writes, it’s probably related to the fact that activist investors have been circling the company, undoubtedly pushing management to increase productivity and reduce expenditures.

Safety concerns dog Tesla: Tesla this week issued a recall of its Full Self-Driving (FSD) beta software, an advanced driver-assistance system that federal regulators say could allow vehicles to act unsafe around intersections. Affecting over 362,000 vehicles, the recall was motivated in part, Telsa disclosed, by concerns that FSD-driven vehicles might respond insufficiently to changes in posted speed limits, among other concerns. FSD beta software — from its name and Musk’s promises around its capabilities to its rollout and safety concerns — has been controversial, attracting scrutiny from regulatory agencies.

Snapping up users: Snapchat now has over 750 million monthly active users (MAUs). The company announced the milestone during its Investor Day on Thursday, Sarah reports. Snapchat said it sees a path to reaching over 1 billion people in the next two to three years, but whether it’ll actually achieve that remains to be seen. In any case, 750 MAUs puts Snapchat ahead of Pinterest (450 million) but behind Facebook (2.96 billion).

A Tetris movie: Apple TV+ this week released the first trailer for its movie “Tetris,” based on the origin story of the popular puzzle video game. Starring Taron Egerton, who plays American video game salesman Henk Rogers, “Tetris” tells the story of Rogers and his mission to secure the distribution rights of the game. The movie will premiere at South by Southwest film festival in March, after which Apple will release it worldwide on Apple TV+ (on March 31).

audio

TechCrunch has a wonderful lineup of audio programming, in case you weren’t aware. In other words, we’ve got podcasts for days. This week on Equity, Mary Ann and Becca got on the mic to talk about Descope’s $53 million seed round, Phenomenal Ventures’ new fund and a Mexican neobank’s latest raise. On Found, Darrell and Becca talked with Alex Rappaport, the CEO and co-founder of ZwitterCo, which makes it practical for industries to recycle water and enhance product recovery with new filtration technology. And over at TechCrunch Live, the crew went live (not to be repetitive) with CFO-turned-CEO Christina Ross and her Mayfield Fund partner, Rajeev Batra, to talk about the story behind Ross’ company, Cube, and how it meets its customers where they’re at.

TechCrunch+

TC+ subscribers get access to in-depth commentary, analysis and surveys — which you know if you’re already a subscriber. If you’re not, consider signing up. Here are a few highlights from this week:

An egg, but not: Price parity with traditional foods is one of the main challenges for alternative protein startups. However, the avian flu, a shortage of cage-free eggs and a subsequent rise in prices in late 2022 seems to provide an “in” for alternative egg companies to show they can compete. Christine takes a deep dive.

Down but not out: Natasha M writes how an emerging class of founders is reminding the tech ecosystem how collapse can be an activator. Laid-off talent is flocking to build startups within all sectors, from climate to crypto to the creator economy. And they’re hoping to course-correct where their alma maters — both Big Tech companies and small upstarts alike — went wrong.

Is the tech jobs market as bad as it seems?: Ron investigates the state of the tech jobs market, finding that — while some numbers are down — it’s not a clear-cut matter. His top-level observation? Tech workers, especially those with specialized skills like engineering, data science, AI and cybersecurity, continue to be in demand as supply lags behind the number of open jobs.

iOS gains new emoji, Showtime joins a pricier Paramount+, and Instagram launches Channels by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch

source https://techcrunch.com/?p=2487579

This Week in Apps: AI apps, Bing hits the Top Charts, Google and Mozilla test non-WebKit browsers

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Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy.

The app economy in 2023 hit a few snags, as consumer spending last year dropped for the first time by 2% to $167 billion, according to data.ai’s “State of Mobile” report. However, downloads are continuing to grow, up 11% year-over-year in 2022 to reach 255 billion. Consumers are also spending more time in mobile apps than ever before. On Android devices alone, hours spent in 2022 grew 9%, reaching 4.1 trillion.

This Week in Apps offers a way to keep up with this fast-moving industry in one place with the latest from the world of apps, including news, updates, startup fundings, mergers and acquisitions, and much more.

Do you want This Week in Apps in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here: techcrunch.com/newsletters

Top Stories

AI’s impact on apps

Image Credits: Bloomberg (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

More AI apps are on the way. It was a big week for AI news as both Microsoft and Google took the stage at competing events to intro their AI developments to the public. Microsoft fared a little better with its news that OpenAI’s ChatGPT-like tech was coming to Bing, pushing its companion mobile app up into the App Store’s top ranks. Meanwhile, Google flubbed a bit with its rival AI, Bard, which, in a published demonstration of the technology, shared an incorrect answer to a question about the James Webb Space Telescope (it was NOT the first to take a picture of an exoplanet, NASA says).

While both AI models will frequently and confidently get things wrong at times, Google’s failure to fact-check the answers it was showing off seemed to indicate the company was rushing out the tech in reaction to Microsoft’s move into its territory…which it was.

Google should have been far ahead in this AI race, having invested in and developed AI technology for years with help from some of the top experts in the field. But it’s been caught off guard — and not only by OpenAI.

Before this current AI race, Amazon’s Alexa became the household name for AI-powered voice assistants. Google, on the other hand, got burned when it showed off some of its more impressive consumer applications of AI. It faced backlash over its consideration of AI ethics when it showed off Duplex’s ability to call restaurants to book reservations while pretending to sound human. Google also often builds neat AI tools — like an AI that can generate music from text descriptions — but won’t release them.

The company has seemed to be slow to move on AI — likely hesitant to upset its search and advertising cash cow that relies on ads sold atop a list of links. Microsoft doesn’t care about that, though, noting that every 1% of search ad share gain it makes is a $2 billion revenue opp.

That’s why what we’ve gotten from Google around AI has been a sort of steady stream of smaller AI-powered feature drops over time, not some big and expensive overhaul of search that could have killed its margins.

Instead, we get things like multisearch, which expands web search to include text and images combined. Google this week announced it was going global and the nearby option, multisearch near me, was also rolling out more broadly.

Google’s AI-powered ‘multisearch,’ which combines text and images in a single query, goes global

The company also rolled out other AI-powered improvements to things like translation and Google Maps. For example, Google at this week’s event spoke about its new “immersive view” maps offering more true-to-life scenes, which are created by leveraging an AI technique called neural radiance fields (NeRF). But these maps are only available in a handful of cities. And as cool as they are, they feel more like an iteration on Street View rather than a major AI leap.

Meanwhile, Google used its event to show off a range of other features that weren’t AI search demos or ChatGPT rivals. It introduced Maps’ AR-powered Live View, which Google said is hitting a few more cities. (This requires users to hold up their phones and scan the area — not really a subtle gesture if you’re trying to hide the fact that you’re a tourist or even possibly lost!) And it talked about new EV Maps.

Microsoft, on the other hand, used its press event to fully focus on AI as the next evolution of search. It demoed its ChatGPT-like AI in Bing which is also integrated with its Edge web browser. And it talked in detail about the next-gen OpenAI large language model it’s using, calling it “more powerful than ChatGPT,” which certainly excited consumers.

The company also cleverly introduced a waitlist for the AI-powered Bing that required people to set Microsoft defaults on their PC and download the Bing app. As a result, the Bing app is now ranked in the top 10 on the U.S. App Store and is the No. 2 Productivity app behind Gmail. To put this in perspective, the Bing app ahead of the AI news had been ranked No. 160 on the U.S. App Store’s Productivity apps chart — in other words, practically invisible.

Google, meanwhile, lost $100 billion in market value as Alphabet’s stock fell after the ad with the AI’s mistake aired ahead of the company’s event.

While the big race in AI apps is still between Google and Microsoft (via OpenAI), AI will soon find its way into a number of mobile apps through integrations. Already, we’ve seen the fake ChatGPT apps arrive and belatedly get the boot from the app stores. Today, a search for the term “ChatGPT” still returns numerous apps that imply they’re associated with OpenAI or simply presume users won’t care, as long as they offer a ChatGPT-like experience. And we’ve seen the AI image generators go viral. Quora this week also introduced an AI playground called Poe, which features a handful of AI chatbots from OpenAI and Anthropic. (See “Downloads” section below.)

Consumers are clearly hungry to see AI put to use in apps. The developments also enliven what’s become a stale App Store over the years, as Apple blocked other new tech, like NFTs, blockchain transactions and Web3 technologies from being fully functional on its App Store, forcing startups to build their own.

Bing’s app sees a 10x jump in downloads after Microsoft’s AI news

An end to Apple’s ban on non-WebKit browsers?

Image Credits: Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Some browser makers believe they’ll be able to release their own, non-WebKit-powered browser apps in the future, thanks to expected regulations that would force Apple to open up its App Store to more competition.

This week, multiple stories emerged that top browser makers like Mozilla and Google have been working on the development of non-WebKit browser apps for iOS. Google Chromium developers, for instance, have begun building an iOS browser that uses Google’s Blink engine — an app that today would not be allowed on the App Store, as Apple’s guidelines specifically state that browser apps “must use the appropriate WebKit framework and WebKit Javascript.”

Google, however, downplayed the news, claiming it was only a prototype meant to help it learn about iOS performance.

In a statement, a spokesperson told us, “This is an experimental prototype that we are developing as part of an open-source project with the goal to understand certain aspects of performance on iOS. It will not be available to users and we’ll continue to abide by Apple’s policies.”

Google isn’t the only one dabbling in this area. When reached for comment, Mozilla was far more transparent about its plans when it was spotted working on a Gecko-based version of Firefox for iOS, clearly indicating that its work is in anticipation of a more competitive landscape.

“We abide by Apple’s iOS app store policies, and are simply doing some exploratory work to understand the technical challenges for Gecko-based browsers on iOS if those policies were to change,” a Mozilla spokesperson told us. “We hope the day will come when people can freely decide to use the browser of their choice, including the opportunity to select the engine that underpins it.”

Of course, even if Apple were to open up to non-WebKit browsers, it could theoretically impose other limits on competing apps to dictate how they’re allowed to use system resources. That would be another reason for the companies to experiment now so they’ll be ready to meet any such requirement if and when the App Store opens up.

Kids’ TikTok usage again tops YouTube

Image Credits: Jonathan Raa/NurPhoto / Getty Images

TikTok once again found itself as the social app kids and teens are spending the most time using throughout the day, even outpacing YouTube. According to an ongoing annual review of kids’ and teens’ app usage and behavior globally, the younger demographic — minors ranging in ages from 4 through 18 — began to watch more TikTok than YouTube on an average daily basis starting in June 2020, and TikTok’s numbers have continued to grow ever since.

In June 2020, TikTok overtook YouTube for the first time, with kids watching an average of 82 minutes per day on TikTok versus an average of 75 minutes per day on YouTube, according to new data from parental control software maker Qustodio.

This past year, the gulf between the two widened, it said, as kids in 2022 saw their average daily use of TikTok climb to a whopping 107 minutes, or 60% longer than the time they spent watching video content on YouTube (67 minutes).

Image Credits: Qustodio

TikTok was also used more, in terms of average daily minutes, than other social apps like Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter.

The study was published in advance of a TikTok-focused Congressional hearing. In March, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew will testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee about the app’s data security, ties to China, privacy concerns and impacts on children.

Social media concerns also got a shoutout during President Biden’s State of the Union address this week when he pressed Congress to pass legislation to protect consumers from Big Tech. “We must finally hold social media companies accountable…It’s time to pass bipartisan legislation to stop Big Tech from collecting personal data on kids and teenagers online, ban targeted advertising to children, and impose stricter limits on the personal data these companies collect on all of us.”

TikTok is crushing YouTube in annual study of kids’ and teens’ app usage

Platforms

Apple

• A redesigned Home app is due to arrive in the forthcoming iOS 16.4 update. The feature had originally appeared in iOS 16.2 but was pulled out before launch.
• Apple’s tvOS and HomePod software was updated to 16.3.1.
• Some users have been complaining about iCloud backup issues after updating to iOS 16.3.

Android

• Google released the first Developer Preview of Android 14, which supports a range of devices, including tablets and foldable form factors. Among the changes are a lot of background optimizations, support for larger fonts (users can scale them up to 200%), per-app language preferences, various privacy and security updates, customization features, the ability to block the installation of apps (with a targetSdkVersion lower than 23) to protect against malware, passkeys support and more.
• Android TV 13 was also finally released. Android 13 has been available for phones and tablets for nearly a year and a half.
• Google announced the alpha release of Credential Manager, a new Jetpack API that allows app developers to simplify users’ authentication journey while also adding support for passkeys.
• It also rolled out the latest version of the Google Mobile Ads SDK (10.0.0).

App Updates

Gaming

Image Credits: Cyan Worlds

• A remastered version of the classic puzzle game Myst arrived on iOS. The new game, Myst Mobile, is based on the remastered game that was already released on Oculus VR headsets and the PC, but has been rebuilt for Apple’s M1 and M2 chipsets on newer devices. The game is free to download and explore the first location but to continue, you’ll need to pay $14.99.
• Activision provided insight into its mobile gaming portfolio during Q4 earnings, noting that Call of Duty Mobile grew by double-digits YoY and set a new quarterly record and 10-year-old Candy Crush Saga saw 20% YoY net bookings growth. Overall, King’s revenue grew 6% YoY with net bookings up 9%.
• Rogue Games announced multiple new titles coming exclusively to Netflix, including a twin-stick Roguelite shooter Dust & Neon, which won the overall Best of Show award at PAX West; and Highwater, an atmospheric adventure/strategy hybrid. Both games will be available on mobile as well as PC and console, but the Netflix deal provides the games to iOS and Android subscribers for free with no in-app purchases.

Image Credits: Rogue Games

Social

• Zenly co-founder Antoine Martin says he’s returning to the social app market with the launch of a new company called Amo. The former Zenly CEO is working with ex-Zenly managing director Michael Goldenstein and others on the new startup, whose goal is to fix the problems with today’s social networks by focusing on connecting friends in the real world, not connecting the whole world. Details are still quiet for the time being, but the company is collecting sign-ups on a waitlist now.

Image Credits: Amo

• Twitter Blue arrived in India, Indonesia and Brazil following reports that the service only has 180,000 U.S. subscribers.
• Twitter also said it would stop forcing the algorithmic timeline on mobile users and would remember if they were viewing the For You or Following timeline last.
• TikTok added new ad targeting and boosting features for its ad tool Promote, allowing advertisers to target audiences by location, in addition to age, gender and interests. SMBs can now advertise to their local community with this change, and can promote their creator partner videos, among other changes.
• Instagram expanded access to Gifts, a monetization feature that lets fans tip Reels creators using Meta’s virtual currency Stars, to more U.S. creators. The feature had been in testing since last year and offers a revenue share with Meta on the virtual tips.

Image Credits: Instagram

• After announcing new API pricing starting with a $100 basic tier, Twitter blocked access to its developer community website. Developers used to access the site for announcements and to ask questions. Twitter did not explain if the block was intentional or a bug (like one related to its API issues earlier this week).
• Some Mastodon users have gone back to Twitter, it seems. Wired reported the decentralized social app and Twitter alternative has seen its MAUs drop from 2.5 million to now 1.4 million as of the end of January. But Techdirt took issue with the characterization of this as a “slump,” as Wired had called it, noting that Mastodon had grown significantly since Musk took over Twitter, even with the drop. Plus, the Fediverse as a whole, not just Mastodon, is up to around 2.6 million MAUs users, much higher than the 600,000 it has in the pre-Musk era. “I’m not sure how going from 600k to 2.6 million in just a couple of months can be deemed ‘a slump.’ It sure looks like pretty damn good retention overall,” scoffed Techdirt’s Mike Masnick.
• Facebook creators gained new moderation tools, including the ability to search comments by keywords, emojis, commenter names and, dates, and take bulk actions, such as liking or hiding.
• During Q4 earnings, Pinterest reported 450 million MAUs, up 4% YoY but its $877 million in revenue missed expectations. The company said it would focus on shoppable videos.

Messaging

Image Credits: WhatsApp

• WhatsApp added the ability to post a Status to a private audience along with 30-second Voice Status messages, Status reactions and more across iOS, Android and the web.
• Telegram added a new profile photo maker that turns stickers or animated emoji into your pfp, plus tools to translate entire chats, support for sorting emoji by categories, detailed pie charts for viewing network usage and other features in its latest update.

Dating

Image Credits: OkCupid

• ChatGPT for finding love? OkCupid began testing match questions that were generated by ChatGPT. The questions help daters find compatibility with others across a range of innocuous questions, like “are you a morning person or a night person?” (Yes, the bot came up with that one!)
• Tinder added an incognito mode that lets you browse that only shows your profile to those you’ve liked. It also added a “block profile” feature for hiding yourself from people you know when you encounter them in the app among other privacy changes.

Entertainment

Image Credits: Netflix

• Netflix’s password crackdown isn’t going well as a number of angry customers are now planning to boycott the changes by canceling their service. 
  • Users are particularly upset over the rules that impact extended families from sharing accounts — like parents who pay for their college students’ accounts or grown children who pay for their elderly parents’ access — plus, families where a member regularly travels for work (or is deployed overseas). The changes also impact people with multiple homes. Subscribers say they are already paying for extra screens and that should be enough.
  • Netflix claims that all anyone has to do is reauthenticate once per month with the app at the household’s main location, but consumers see that requirement as a burden — and an impossibility in some cases. If they don’t, though, the “traveling” account could lose access. Netflix will force people to pay extra for the freeloaders or they can choose to migrate to a new account with a profile transfer feature. It remains to be seen if Netflix will keep these same rules in the U.S., as the rollout has been external to its home market for now.

Netflix starts cracking down on password sharing in four new markets, including Canada

• Spotify now lets you block playlists from impacting your “taste profile.” This would allow people to block certain playlists, like those used for studying, sleeping, working out or those favored by the kids, from influencing their recommendations.

Image Credits: Spotify

Etc.

• Sensor Tower reported on the state of fitness apps, noting that Health and Fitness apps in Europe reached 232 million installs last year, up 16% from 2019. The firm said it now takes nearly $4 million in gross revenue in a given month to become the No. 1 ranked Health and Fitness app on the app stores, up 23% from the $3.5 million required in 2021.
• Robinhood said it’s going to buy up to 55 million shares, or 7%+ of its outstanding shares, that had been bought by Sam Bankman-Fried in 2022. The company reported $380 million in revenue in Q4, up 5% YoY and a net loss down 61% to $166 million. 2022 revenue was down 25% YoY to $1.36 billion.
• Brave’s iOS and Android apps added support for Solana’s DApp in its built-in web3 wallet.
• DoorDash integrated with gas savings app GasBuddy to allow its drivers to find the cheapest nearby gas.
• Flipboard’s iOS and Android apps were updated with support for its new Notes feature that lets Flipboard magazine curators dialog with their readers through short notes, intros and polls.
• PayPal is getting a new CEO as Dan Schulman prepares to leave at year’s end. The company also reported Q4 revenue up 7% YoY to $7.33 billion and TPV up 5% to $357.4 billion.
• Uber integrated its driver app with Apple CarPlay. Better late than never.
• Fantastical’s popular calendar app added support for Live Activities so you can now see upcoming events on the Lock Screen.

Government, Policy and Lawsuits

• Japan’s Fair Trade Commission issued a new report regarding its investigation of Apple and Google’s app stores. The report accuses both companies of “abuse of a superior bargaining position,” and makes several recommendations, including those around commissions and in-app payments and says the companies should not take advantage of features not made available to developers. It doesn’t explicitly say the platforms need to host third-party app stores, however.
• The Indian government offered further details about its ban on more than 90 lending apps, including its concerns over Chinese influence. China investors were on the cap tables of some of the banned apps, it said, and apps were storing user data outside the country. Money laundering and other loan practices were also a concern. Later in the week, it lifted the ban on PayU’s LazyPay, Kissht, KreditBee, Indiabulls’ Home Loans, mPokket, Buddy Loan and Faircent after reviewing their cap tables for Chinese investors.
• Google Play began requiring regulatory approval for loan apps in Nigeria and Kenya as of January 31, matching similar rules in India, Indonesia and the Philippines.
• U.S. policymakers are concerned about TikTok’s plan to allow oversight of its algorithm as an alternative to a ban, noting that it would be technically challenging and there could still be backdoors that allowed China’s government to manipulate content on the platform.
• Utah is pushing through new bills that would require social media companies to verify users’ ages and give parents access to their kids’ accounts.
• In a presentation to the EU, Meta showed data that indicated that pop-up content warnings reduced the sharing of flagged posts by 25% on Facebook and 38% on Instagram. TikTok, for comparison, reports a reduction of 29%.

Funding and M&A

• Lunar, a Danish neobank last valued at $2.2 billion, raised $38 million from undisclosed investors to continue to build its banking and financial services platform. The company last year raised a Series D extension that brought its total funding then to €280 million.
• Meta got the go-ahead to acquire VR software maker Within, despite FTC concerns. The company’s flagship app is the VR fitness app Supernatural.
• Fintech app Fierce, which offers free stock trading, checking and later crypto, launched on iOS after receiving $10 million in seed funding from investors including Pendrell, AP Capital, Wheelhouse Digital Studios, Space Whale Capital and other angels.

Downloads

Poe

Image Credits: Quora

Q&A platform Quora opened up public access to its new AI chatbot app, Poe, which lets users ask questions and get answers from a range of AI chatbots, including those from ChatGPT maker OpenAI, and other companies like Anthropic. Beyond allowing users to experiment with new AI technologies, Poe’s content will ultimately help to evolve Quora itself. If and when Poe’s content meets a high enough quality standard, it will be distributed on Quora’s site itself, where it has the ability to reach Quora’s 400 million monthly visitors, the company said.

At launch, there are three general knowledge chatbots: Sage, Claude and Dragonfly. Both Sage and Dragonfly are powered by OpenAI while Claude is powered by Anthropic technology. All have their own limitations at present. For instance, Sage and Claude don’t have knowledge of events after 2021, and Dragonfly may refuse to answer some questions. All three have also been known to make incorrect statements — which is another reason why Quora itself isn’t immediately integrating Poe into its service. Developers will also be able to add their own bots to Poe in the future.

Quora opens its new AI chatbot app Poe to the general public

Epic Games’ Postparty

Image Credits: Epic Games

Fortnite maker Epic Games launched a new clip-sharing app called Postparty on iOS and Android that gives gamers a way to easily share their clips on social media. The app allows for sharing from Xbox, Switch, PlayStation and PC for Fortnite users and just Xbox and PlayStation for Epic’s Rocket League. Fortnite users will see the app promoted after an in-game kill, prompting them to download the app so they can share clips. The app was created by Houseparty developer Life on Air, acquired by Epic in 2019. (Houseparty shut down in 2021.) After sharing their first clip from the app, Fortnite users will get special in-game skin, spray and wrap.

Spillt

Image Credits: Spillt

A former Instagram engineer launched a new recipe app called Spillt, covered by The Information, which helps users find, organize and cook recipes — the latter by helpfully keeping the phone’s screen on during the recipe’s prep. That’s a feature the popular Pestle app also has, along with its voice-powered guided cooking, however. But Spillt’s value proposition is that it offers a way for users to see which recipes their friends are saving in a News Feed of sorts. It remains to be seen if it can actually gain traction amid a sea of recipe apps, but it’s at least differentiated from the set of “TikTok for cooking” apps that are on the market today.

This Week in Apps: AI apps, Bing hits the Top Charts, Google and Mozilla test non-WebKit browsers by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch

source https://techcrunch.com/?p=2482999

Daily Crunch: Sources say Times Internet plans to sell Indian streaming platform MX Player to Amazon

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It’s Friday, and we’re slumping back in our office chairs with a hot cup of coffee after a week that’s been as slow as mid-winter molasses.

For Black History Month, we are in awe of the story of Sojourner Truth, who was an American abolitionist and women’s rights activist. Born into slavery, she escaped with her infant daughter and became the first Black woman to successfully sue for a family member’s freedom in 1828. To learn more about her, this Ted-Ed mini documentary is a great place to start, and if you want to go deeper, don’t miss the stirring biography by Patricia and Frederick McKissack.

— Christine and Haje

The TechCrunch Top 3

• Game on: Amazon is in talks to acquire Indian video streaming giant MX Player from Times Internet, Manish reports. He writes that the video app is “popular for supporting a wide range of video formats and reliability on low-cost Android smartphones, has expanded to original content in recent years and has amassed more than 300 million users globally.”
• Gone phishing: Reddit confirmed that hackers accessed its internal data in what it is calling “a sophisticated phishing attack” that targeted its employees, Carly writes. The company said the attack gave hackers access to documents and source code.
• And, just as quickly as it came, it left: Five days ago, India banned over 90 apps, some associated with China, related to lending. Today, Manish writes that this ban on apps, like PayU’s LazyPay, Kissht, KreditBee and Indiabulls’ Home Loans, was lifted.

Startups and VC

It’s been a pretty slow day on the news front today — I think everyone has a case of the Fridays today. Here’s a few of the stories worth taking a closer look at, though:

• Ka-ching: Catherine reports that Sequoia Capital Southeast Asia backs cross-border payments startup Tazapay.
• Oh, you fancy: Jendaya raises funding to scale its Africa-focused luxury e-commerce platform, Tage reports.
• Table stakes: Low-code database APITable is another Airtable challenger, reports Rita.
• Spend the money, get the customers: If you’re a startup, “we haven’t spent a penny on marketing” (TC+) isn’t the flex you think it is, Haje explains.
• Get customers, make money from customers: Also on TC+, Haje explains how to think about your business model as part of your pitch to investors.

How to manage third-party cybersecurity risks that are too costly to ignore

Image Credits: Aleksandr Zubkov (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Every early-stage startup relies on third-party vendors to handle some aspect of their operations: No one wants to build a shopping cart, credit card processing or ID verification app from scratch.

But now that third-party data breaches are a regular occurrence, teams need to make managing that risk a part of their day-to-day operations, writes Jon Siegler, co-founder and chief product officer of LogicGate.

“No matter how well you clean things up, the reputational hit to your organization will continue to cost you in lost business down the road,” he writes.

How to manage third-party cybersecurity risks that are too costly to ignore

Three more from the TC+ team:

• Batten the hatches: Can your startup survive the economic downturn? Becca and Ron wonder.
• Actual Intelligence: Women-founded AI startups see a boost in VC funding, Dominic-Madori reports.
• We’re just getting started: Tage dives into the African startup ecosystem and talks to eight investors, who argue it’s “still just Day 1” for African startups.

TechCrunch+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get ahead of the pack. You can sign up here. Use code “DC” for a 15% discount on an annual subscription!

Big Tech Inc.

Connected automotive company Otonomo is being acquired by Urgently in a reverse merger, Ingrid reports. Otonomo went public in a 2021 SPAC, at the time valued at $1.4 billion, but that has since dipped to $70 million. Ingrid writes, “It’s been a bumpy road for smart mobility technology — with macroeconomic pressures, the slower development and rollouts of next-generation technology like autonomous systems and the cooling tech investing market all making it harder for younger businesses to sustain and grow their businesses. Otonomo is perhaps the latest casualty in that pile-up, but it may not be the last.”

If you’re into classic games, one of our popular stories from late yesterday was Sarah’s about a remastered, free-to-try version of Myst arriving on iOS.

And we have five more for you:

• On the hunt: Digital rights defenders infiltrate alleged mercenary hacking group, Lorenzo writes.
• Shut up and drive: Tim Stevens gives an inside look at the electric 2023 Mercedes-Benz EQE.
• Pay attention: Is Google losing control? Devin thinks so, writing, “Google rushing its shot and tripping up so visibly speaks to a lack of readiness even at a limited, experimental level — let alone a global rollout like the one Microsoft has already begun.”
• Like a waterfall, only with information: Taiwan fined iRent, a car renting giant in the country, for customer data and identity documents being spilled onto the open web for months, Zack reports.
• Where you headed?: Uber is integrating Apple CarPlay with its own driver app, Rebecca writes.

Daily Crunch: Sources say Times Internet plans to sell Indian streaming platform MX Player to Amazon  by Christine Hall originally published on TechCrunch

source https://techcrunch.com/?p=2483896