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Arbtr wants to create an anti-feed where users can only share one thing at a time
At a time when the models of traditional social networks are being questioned, it’s more important than ever to experiment with alternatives. Arbtr is a proposed social network that limits users to sharing a single thing at any given time, encouraging “ruthless self-editing” and avoiding “nasty things” like endless feeds filled with trivial garbage. It’s…
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TV Time, the TV tracking app with over a million daily users, can now find your next binge
With TV programming now spread out across a variety of services beyond traditional network TV, it can be hard to know what to watch next and what’s popular, given how much great content there is to choose from. An app called TV Time is helping with that, by allowing TV fans to track shows they’re watching,…
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Volley’s voice games for smart speakers have amassed over half a million monthly users
The rapid consumer adoption of smart speakers like Amazon Echo and Google Home has opened opportunities for developers creating voice apps, too. At least that’s true in the case of Volley, a young company building voice-controlled entertainment experiences for Amazon Alexa and Google Home. In less than a year, Volley has amassed an audience north…
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Viber is launching Viber Communities, group chats for up to 1B users
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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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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People are trolling iPhone users with the ‘killer symbol’ that crashes their apps
Surprise! Assorted jerks on the internet have weaponized the Unicode-based bug we reported yesterday to insta-crash apps running on an iPhone or a Mac. The result is somewhere between the old Alt + F4 trick and a script kiddie stunt, and it ranges from being annoying to rendering a device unusable, depending on the tenacity of…
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Snapchat will not let users broadcast Live
Snapchat is finally getting Live video, but you won’t be able to broadcast. Today Snapchat announced it will pipe snippets of NBC’s Live Olympics coverage directly into its app. But when TechCrunch asked if users would be able to go Live, a Snap spokesperson told us on background that there’s no intention to open up…
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Telegram’s new widget lets businesses connect directly with users of its chat app
We know that messaging app Telegram has big plans — beyond a planned $1.2 billion ICO it is also developing its own platform for blockchain-based services — and today it took a notable step towards making its messaging platform more useful as it rolled out a web login widget. The new feature will allow website…
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Buglife wants to put the power to report mobile software bugs in users’ hands
Every day we encounter bugs in mobile apps. They may lock up or perform in a way we didn’t expect, but what if you could report the bug to developers as it happened with all of the contextual information they need to fix the problem? That’s what Buglife a member of the Winter 2018 Y…
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WhatsApp hits 1.5 billion monthly users. $19B? Not so bad.
Facebook’s $19 billion acquisition of WhatsApp sounds smarter and smarter. CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on the Q4 2017 earnings call today that WhatsApp now has 1.5 billion users and sees 60 billion messages sent per day. That’s compared to 1.3 billion monthly users and 1 billion daily active users in July. The massive growth makes…