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India-based music streaming service Gaana raises $115M led by Tencent
Chinese internet giant Tencent is continuing to put its money in India and in music streaming services after it agreed to lead a $115 million investment in India’s Gaana. Gaana is a music streaming service that was started by Times Media, the company behind the Times of India newspaper and tech incubator Times Internet among…
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Square’s bets beyond a register brought in $253M last year as it posts a largely positive fourth quarter
Square posted a largely successful fourth quarter that showed continuing growth with its Cash App — with users spending around $90 million on its Cash card in December, putting it on a potentially $1 billion run rate. That would offer another significant avenue for Square to snap up additional customers as it looks to chip…
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The FTC settles with Venmo over a series of privacy and security violations
The FTC announced today it has settled with PayPal over a complaint about the company’s handling of privacy disclosures in its peer-to-peer payments app Venmo, its lack of disclosure over the speed with which customers could access funds, as well as other issues related to the security and privacy of customer transactions. News that the…
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Despite backlash to the redesign, Snapchat downloads are up
“What’s all the fuss about?” Curiosity over why people are protesting the Snapchat redesign seems to have inspired a new wave of users to try the app. Snapchat downloads in the U.S. went up 41 percent to 76 percent in the week following the redesign’s February 6th rollout compared to the week before, according to…
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Rakuten will roll its $9B loyalty program into a new blockchain-based cryptocurrency, Rakuten Coin
Messaging apps have seen a surge of popularity in recent years as people seek ways to communicate more directly than on social networks. But they also have been adding large group chat options into the mix, to give a more social experience on those messaging platforms. Now messaging app Viber is introducing the biggest group…
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Peanut, the matchmaking app for moms, launches a community feature called Peanut Pages
Peanut, the app referred to as “Tinder for moms” because it connects mothers by letting them swipe each other’s profiles, is launching a new community discussion feature. Called Peanut Pages, it’s meant to give mothers a better alternative to Facebook Groups, Quora and other social platforms. Since its launch almost exactly one year ago, Peanut…
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YouTube Live gains automatic captions, chat replay and more
YouTube today announced several new features designed to improve the live streaming experience for both creators and viewers. The most notable additions include the ability to play back a live chat after the live stream ends, and the launch of live automatic captions on videos. YouTube began offering automatic captioning back in 2009, and has…
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Otter’s new app lets you record, transcribe, search and share your voice conversations
An app called Otter, launching today, wants to make it as easy to search your voice conversations as it is to search your email and texts. The idea to create a new voice assistant focused on transcribing everyday conversations – like meetings and interviews – comes from Sam Liang, the former Google architect who put the…
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Ford adds Waze to its Sync 3 AppLink for iOS users
While some carmakers and others worry about Google’s domination in mapping and how that will play out in the auto industry, we are continuing to see announcements that point, if not to Google’s influence growing, its place in the market and how some may be testing the waters for more. Today, Ford announced that it…
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SafeToNet demos anti-sexting child safety tool
With rising concern over social media’s ‘toxic‘ content problem, and mainstream consumer trust apparently on the slide, there’s growing pressure on parents to keep children from being overexposed to the Internet’s dark sides. Yet pulling the plug on social media isn’t exactly an option. UK startup SafeToNet reckons it can help, with a forthcoming system of AI-powered…