Snapchat Challenges Twitter And Facebook For Sports Talk

 Possession wins trophies or, in this case, ad dollars. That’s why Snapchat stepped up its game late last year by quietly partnering with Stats.com. Now TechCrunch has learned that Snapchat has rolled new Live Score geofilters at every NBA arena and some other matches. They let anyone attending overlay real-time updated score graphics atop their photos and videos. Just last week, Live… Read More

Windows Phone Is An Ex-Platform

 Microsoft announced its Q2 2016 results yesterday, reporting strong performance for its cloud business and leading to a stock bump in the wake of the news. Its Surface tablet hardware business also performed well. However it’s an entirely different story for the unloved phone-making business — that albatross around Satya Nadella’s neck… Read More

The App Ecosystem’s New Status Quo

 Americans spent more time using smartphone and tablet applications in 2014 than they did mobile and desktop web combined. With nearly four billion smartphones projected to be in use by 2020, the platform shift to mobile is well underway. Read More

Apple Acquires Education Startup LearnSprout

 Apple has acquired education-technology startup LearnSprout, Bloomberg reported a bit ago and we have just confirmed. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. LearnSprout is a three-year-old, San Francisco-based software startup whose online data insights help K-12 educators track students’ performances. The company had raised $4.7 million from investors across two rounds, including… Read More

Lockscreen App Slidejoy Gets A Newsy New Feature

 Slidejoy, a startup that rewards users for putting news and advertising on their Android lockscreens, has unveiled a more comprehensive newsreading experience. Co-founder Sanghoon Kwak led the development of the new Trends feature, and he said that previously, if you were reading news on Slidejoy, you saw one article at a time, and they came from about a dozen publishers. Slidejoy Trends, on… Read More

Apple Pay Is Coming To ATMs From Bank Of America And Wells Fargo

 Both Bank Of America and Wells Fargo are working on integrating Apple Pay into their ATMs, according to a source familiar with the teams on the projects. Engineers at both companies have been placed on multi-month assignments to build the Apple Pay options. I’ve confirmed the identity of at least one engineer who publicly lists themselves as a Bank Of America employee. Wells… Read More

Facebook Takes On Periscope By Giving Live Streaming To All U.S. iPhoners

 Get ready for the big Live streaming showdown. Finally we’ll see who’s approach wins: Twitter and Periscope with a separate app and replays that can only be watched for 24 hours, or Facebook Live with its feature integrated into the popular social network and allowing replays to live on permanently. After 5 months of tweaks and slow rollouts, today Facebook is opening its Live… Read More

Snapchat Makes Adding People Way Easier With Profile URLs

 Snapchat is ready to colonize the web with profile URLs that deeplink into its app and let you instantly follow someone. That makes it simple to add friends and celebrities so you fill your feed with content that keeps you coming back. By swiping down from the Snapchat camera to the profile screen, hitting ‘Add Friends’, and then selecting ‘Share Username’, you can… Read More

Yahoo’s Email App Improves With Customizable Swipes, Attachments Search And More

 In October, Yahoo introduced a brand-new version of its email app designed for the way people access their inbox on mobile devices, which included things like swipe gestures, easier access to attachments, integration with social services like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, and more. Today, the company is rolling out its first major update to that app since its debut, with a handful of… Read More

Pandora Revamps Its App To Better Compete With Spotify, Apple Music

 Pandora today rolled out a series of new features that, again, are aimed at making the streaming music service more competitive with the likes of Spotify and other competitors. As you may recall, the company recently introduced “thumbprint radio” – a way for the service to create a mix of user favorites and recommendations, which seemed a shot against Spotify’s… Read More

Accel Leads $10M Series A For JobToday’s Service Industry Hiring App

 Can a smartphone messaging app replace the age-old CV in the service industry sector? That’s the premise driving European startup JobToday, which is targeting the fast flow of service and blue collar workers with a mobile app that aims to speed up and simplify the hiring process. It’s today announcing a $10 million Series A round, led by Accel, along with participation from… Read More

Facebook Hits 100M Hours Of Video Watched A Day, 1B Users On Groups, 80M On Fb Lite

 Everything at Facebook seems to be growing, according to Mark Zuckerberg’s Q4 earnings call comments. Facebook now sees 100 million hours of daily video watch time. There are 1 billion monthly users now users on Groups, up from 925 million at the close of Q3. 80 million people use Facebook’s stripped down app Facebook Lite for the developing world’s slow connections, up from… Read More

Facebook Climbs To 1.59 Billion Users And Crushes Q4 Estimates With $5.8B Revenue

 By courting users and ad dollars in the developing world, Facebook continued its growth streak. It hit 1.59 billion users today and crushed the street’s estimates in its Q4 2015 earnings with $5.841 billion in revenue and $0.79 earnings per share. That’s up from 1.55 billion users and $4.5 billion in revenue last quarter. Even with Q4 being the holidays, that 29.8% QoQ revenue… Read More