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Alphabet is tumbling after a fourth quarter whiff and names John Hennessy as new board chair
Google parent company Alphabet’s big run over the past few months came to a screeching halt today after it came out with its fourth-quarter results, which fell beneath expectations set by Wall Street for the advertising giant — sending the stock down around 5 percent and shaving off billions in market cap. While Google owns…
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Snapchat’s new Snap Store teases in-app commerce potential
Snap Inc. just launched a merchandise store. The goal isn’t to make money yet, but it proves the potential for an in-app commerce platform for other brands. Today the company opened the Snap Store, which lives in the Snapchat app’s Discover section and lets you buy Snapchat merchandise, like a $20 Dancing Hot Dog Plushie…
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CanvasPop dips into first VC, taking $3.3M for growth and product dev
Print service CanvasPop has been making money inking photos onto all sorts of substrates, from canvas to cushions, for years. But the largely boostrapped, Canada-based, 2009-founded company has just announced its first VC round — taking in $3.3M. The funding (call it a seed I guess?) is led by Celtic House Venture Partners and BDC’s…
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Google’s data-friendly app YouTube Go expands to over 130 countries, now supports higher quality videos
YouTube Go, a mobile version of YouTube built for emerging markets with features like offline viewing and nearby sharing, is today expanding to over 130 countries worldwide. This wider rollout will make YouTube Go available to a large number of people who want the ability to watch YouTube videos, even if they don’t have a…
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YouTube TV’s app arrives on Roku & Apple TV
The YouTube TV app is at last available on Roku devices and Apple TV, starting today. Google had announced earlier that YouTube’s live TV service would be coming to Roku and Apple TV in the first quarter of 2018, following a delay that saw it pushing the launch date back from year-end 2017. Until now,…
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Nintendo is bringing Mario Kart to mobile
In news that will excite every Nintendo fan on the planet, the Japanese gaming giant just announced that it will bring its hugely popular Mario Kart series to mobile. Nintendo teased the upcoming development of ‘Mario Kart Tour’ which it said will be released sometime before March 2019. A long wait, indeed, and for now…
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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…
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Facebook’s U.S. user count declines as it prioritizes well-being
Facebook is putting its short-term money where its mouth is, reducing the presence of viral videos in an effort to boost well-being of users of its site. In Facebook’s Q4 2017 earnings report today CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that “Already last quarter, we made changes to show fewer viral videos to make sure people’s time is…
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Facebook survives Q4 despite slowest daily user growth ever
Despite worries about Russia and that passive News Feed scrolling hurts us, Facebook beat expectations again in its Q4 2017 earnings report. Facebook now has 1.4 billion daily users, up 2.18% compared to growing 3.8% to 1.37 billion users in Q3. That’s a sizeable slow down, and the lowest quarter-over-quarter percentage daily user growth ever…
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Oops! Don’t say ‘Google’ in your Alexa voice app, Amazon said
The competition between Alexa and Google Assistant is fierce. How fierce? Cover all of Las Vegas in Google Assistant ads for CES fierce? Put voice assistance in weird things like a light switch or a fridge fierce? How about “don’t dare utter our competitor’s name in your voice app” fierce? Yep, Amazon has banned Alexa app…
