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InsightFinder get $2M seed to automate outage prevention InsightFinder, a startup from North Carolina based on 15 years of academic research, wants to bring machine learning to system monitoring to automatically identify and fix common issues. Today, the company announced a $2 million seed round. ​IDEA Fund Partners, a VC out of Durham, North Carolina,​ led the round with participation from ​Eight Roads […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - InsightFinder get $2M seed to automate outage prevention January 1, 2020 at 12:01AM

Daily Crunch: VMware completes Pivotal acquisition The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here. 1. VMware completes $2.7 billion Pivotal acquisition VMware is closing the year with a significant new weapon in its arsenal. (I restrained […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - Daily Crunch: VMware completes Pivotal acquisition December 31, 2019 at 05:00AM

Seed investors favor enterprise over consumer for first time this decade Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. It’s the second to last day of 2019, meaning we’re very nearly out of time this year; our space for repretrospection is quickly coming to a close. Before we do run out of hours, however, […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - Seed investors favor enterprise over consumer for first time this decade December 31, 2019 at 02:00AM

VMware completes $2.7 billion Pivotal acquisition VMware is closing the year with a significant new component in its arsenal. Today it announced it has closed the $2.7 billion Pivotal acquisition it originally announced in August. The acquisition gives VMware another component in its march to transform from a pure virtual machine company into a cloud native vendor that can manage infrastructure […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - VMware completes $2.7 billion Pivotal acquisition December 31, 2019 at 01:00AM

Year in review: 2019 A brief look back on another year of Hacking with Swift Swift Developer News - Hacking with Swift - Year in review: 2019 December 30, 2019 at 03:00AM

Snapchat will launch Bitmoji TV, a personalized cartoon show Snapchat’s most popular yet under-exploited feature is finally getting the spotlight in 2020. Starting in February with a global release, your customizable Bitmoji avatar will become the star of a full-motion cartoon series called Bitmoji TV. It’s a massive evolution for Bitmoji beyond the chat stickers and comic strip-style Stories where they were being squandered […] Social – TechCrunch - Snapchat will launch Bitmoji TV, a personalized cartoon show December 29, 2019 at 12:00PM

Revenue train kept rolling all year long for Salesforce Salesforce turned 20 this year, and the most successful pure enterprise SaaS company ever showed no signs of slowing down. Consider that the company finished the year on an $18 billion run rate, rushing toward its 2022 revenue goal of $20 billion. Oh, and it also spent a tidy $15.7 billion to buy Tableau this […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - Revenue train kept rolling all year long for Salesforce December 28, 2019 at 09:00AM

Public investors loved SaaS stocks in 2019, and startups should be thankful Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. Today, something short. Continuing our loose collection of look backs of the past year, it’s worth remembering two related facts. First, that this time last year SaaS stocks were getting beat up. And, second, that […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - Public investors loved SaaS stocks in 2019, and startups should be thankful December 25, 2019 at 12:02AM

Fyre Festival meets Mr. Bone Saw Social media influencers have been known to promote events around the world for the right price — decisions that sometimes prove to be mistakes. Bella Hadid, who’d promoted the failed Fyre Festival with a gaggle of other models who’d vacationed in the Bahamas for a video designed to help sell tickets, later apologized for her […] Social – TechCrunch - Fyre Festival meets Mr. Bone Saw December 24, 2019 at 08:02AM

TikTok’s national security scrutiny tightens as U.S. Navy reportedly bans popular social app TikTok may be the fastest-growing social network in the history of the internet, but it is also quickly becoming the fastest-growing security threat and thorn in the side of U.S. China hawks. The latest, according to a notice published by the U.S. Navy this past week and reported on by Reuters and the South China […] Social – TechCrunch - TikTok’s national security scrutiny tightens as U.S. Navy reportedly bans popular social app December 22, 2019 at 01:00AM

F5 acquires Shape Security for $1B F5 got an expensive holiday present today, snagging startup Shape Security for approximately $1 billion. What the networking company gets with a shiny red ribbon is a security product that helps stop automated attacks like credential stuffing. In an article earlier this year, Shape CTO Shuman Ghosemajumder explained what the company does: “We’re an enterprise-focused […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - F5 acquires Shape Security for $1B December 21, 2019 at 05:00AM

Centaurs, centurions, centipedes: the $100M ARR CLUB Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week Kate was in SF, Alex was in Providence, and there was a mountain of news to shovel through. If you’re here because we mentioned linking to a certain story in the show notes, that’s here. For […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - Centaurs, centurions, centipedes: the $100M ARR CLUB December 21, 2019 at 12:01AM

Daily Crunch: Facebook acquires a cloud gaming startup The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here. 1. Facebook acquires Madrid-based cloud gaming startup PlayGiga Facebook is building out its gaming business — earlier this year, the company added […] Social – TechCrunch - Daily Crunch: Facebook acquires a cloud gaming startup December 20, 2019 at 06:00AM

Subscription-based social network MeWe launches premium features and a business product MeWe, the subscription-based social network that emphasizes privacy and bills itself as the anti-Facebook, is launching a premium tier of its service and spinning up a business-focused product to take on enterprise networking and communication tools like Slack. Founded by Mark Weinstein, a gregarious serial entrepreneur who credits himself with being an early developer of […] Social – TechCrunch - Subscription-based social network MeWe launches premium features and a business product December 20, 2019 at 05:00AM

Facebook is building an operating system so it can ditch Android Facebook doesn’t want its hardware like Oculus and Portal to be at the mercy of Google because they rely on its Android operating system. That’s why Facebook has tasked a co-author of Microsoft’s Windows NT named Mark Lucovsky with building the social network an operating system from scratch, according the The Information’s Alex Heath. “We […] Social – TechCrunch - Facebook is building an operating system so it can ditch Android December 20, 2019 at 02:01AM

Extra Crunch members get 25% off Otter.ai voice meeting notes Extra Crunch community perks have a new offer from voice meeting notes service, Otter.ai. Starting today, annual and two-year Extra Crunch members can receive 25% off an annual plan for Otter Premium or Otter for Teams. Otter.ai is an AI-powered assistant that generates rich notes from meetings, interviews, lectures and other voice conversations. You can […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - Extra Crunch members get 25% off Otter.ai voice meeting notes December 20, 2019 at 02:01AM

Snackpass snags $21M to let you earn friends free takeout “We were in the back washing blenders so they could keep taking Snackpass orders” recalls co-founder and CEO Kevin Tan. The team from order-ahead food startup Snackpass was willing to get their hands dirty to keep up with demand at one of their first restaurant partners, Tropical Smoothie Cafe on the Yale college campus. Why were […] Social – TechCrunch - Snackpass snags $21M to let you earn friends free takeout December 20, 2019 at 01:00AM

Three SaaS companies we think will make it to $1B in revenue It’s a good time to look back at the year and analyze a few firms that should reach the mythical $1 billion in revenue at some point. Enterprise – TechCrunch - Three SaaS companies we think will make it to $1B in revenue December 19, 2019 at 06:00AM

Spotify prototypes Tastebuds to revive social music discovery Spotify is prototyping a new way to see what friends have been listening to, called “Tastebuds”. Despite how discovering music is inherently social, Spotify has no features for directly interacting with friends within its mobile app after axing its own inbox in 2017 and keeping its Friend Activity ticker restricted to desktop. It seemed like […] Social – TechCrunch - Spotify prototypes Tastebuds to revive social music discovery December 19, 2019 at 04:00AM

Tech startups going public raise 3x more today than in 2015 Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the grey space in between. Today we’re exploring the 2019 IPO cohort from a capital-in perspective. How much did tech companies going public in 2019 raise before they went public, and what impact that did that have on their valuation […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - Tech startups going public raise 3x more today than in 2015 December 19, 2019 at 03:00AM

UK’s competition regulator asks for views on breaking up Google The UK’s competition regulator has raised concerns about the market power of digital ad platform giants Google and Facebook in an interim report published today, opening up a consultation on a range of potential inventions — from breaking up platform giants, to limiting their ability to set self-serving defaults, and enforcing data sharing and/or feature interoperability […] Social – TechCrunch - UK’s competition regulator asks for views on breaking up Google December 19, 2019 at 02:00AM

Huckleberry raises $18M to put small business insurance online The insurance industry, sleepy and ancient, is ripe for disruption. We’ve seen companies like Lemonade, Hippo and Rhino get in on that opportunity. Today, an insurtech company focused on small business insurance has raised $18 to keep growing. Meet Huckleberry, whose Series A was led by Tribe Capital, with participation from Amaranthine, Crosslink Capital and […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - Huckleberry raises $18M to put small business insurance online December 19, 2019 at 01:01AM

SAP spinout Sapphire Ventures raises $1.4B for new investments Sapphire Ventures invests in Series B to pre-IPO enterprise tech companies. Enterprise – TechCrunch - SAP spinout Sapphire Ventures raises $1.4B for new investments December 18, 2019 at 11:00PM

Google details its approach to cloud-native security Over the years, Google’s various whitepapers, detailing how the company solves specific problems at scale, have regularly spawned new startup ecosystems and changed how other enterprises think about scaling their own tools. Today, the company is publishing a new security whitepaper that details how it keeps it cloud-native architecture safe. The name, BeyondProd, already indicates […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - Google details its approach to cloud-native security December 18, 2019 at 03:00AM

Odoo grabs $90M to sell more SMEs on its business app suite Belgium-based all-in-one business software maker Odoo, which offers an open source version as well as subscription-based enterprise software and SaaS, has taken in $90 million led by a new investor: Global growth equity investor Summit Partners. The funds have been raised via a secondary share sale. Odoo’s executive management team and existing investor SRIW and […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - Odoo grabs $90M to sell more SMEs on its business app suite December 18, 2019 at 01:01AM

Satori Cyber raises $5.25M to help businesses protect their data flows The amount of data that most companies now store — and the places they store it — continues to increase rapidly. With that, the risk of the wrong people managing to get access to this data also increases, so it’s no surprise that we’re now seeing a number of startups that focus on protecting this […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - Satori Cyber raises $5.25M to help businesses protect their data flows December 18, 2019 at 12:01AM

Instagram hides false content behind warnings, except for politicians Instagram is giving politicians the same free rein to spread misinformation as its parent company Facebook. Instagram is expanding its limited fact checking test in the US from May and will now work with 45 third-party organizations to assess the truthfulness of photo and video content on its app. Material rated as false will be […] Social – TechCrunch - Instagram hides false content behind warnings, except for politicians December 17, 2019 at 08:00AM

Instagram to now flag potentially offensive captions, in addition to comments Earlier this year, Instagram launched a feature that would flag potentially offensive comments before they’re posted. Now, the social media platform is expanding this preemptive flagging system to Instagram’s captions, as well. The new feature will warn users after they’ve written a caption for a feed post that Instagram’s AI detects as being similar to […] Social – TechCrunch - Instagram to now flag potentially offensive captions, in addition to comments December 17, 2019 at 05:00AM

Solve, the startup creating an interactive ‘Law & Order’ for social media, raises $20 million When “Law & Order” ended its 20-year run in 2010, it had already cemented its place as one of the longest-running television dramas in history. Its success was a testament to the enduring popularity of a good mystery. Mining that same well of a demand for whodunnits, a roughly one-year-old Los Angeles-based startup called Solve […] Social – TechCrunch - Solve, the startup creating an interactive ‘Law & Order’ for social media, raises $20 million December 17, 2019 at 04:00AM

Cisco acquires ultra-low latency networking specialist Exablaze Cisco today announced that it has acquired Exablaze, an Australia-based company that designs and builds advanced networking gear based on field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). The company focuses on solutions for businesses that need ultra-low latency networking, with a special emphasis on high-frequency trading. Cisco plans to integrate Exablaze’s technology into its own product portfolio. […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - Cisco acquires ultra-low latency networking specialist Exablaze December 17, 2019 at 12:01AM

OneConnect’s drastic IPO value cut underscores the risk of high-growth, high-burn companies OneConnect’s US-listed IPO flew under our radar last week, which won’t do. The company’s public offering is both interesting and important, so let’s take a few minutes this morning to understand what we missed and why we care. The now-public company sells financial technology that banks in China and select foreign countries can use to […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - OneConnect’s drastic IPO value cut underscores the risk of high-growth, high-burn companies December 17, 2019 at 12:01AM

Grading the final tech IPOs of 2019 As the holiday slowdown looms, the final U.S.-listed technology IPOs have come in and begun to trade. Three tech, tech-ish or venture-backed companies went public this week: Bill.com, Sprout Social and EHang. Let’s quickly review how each has performed thus far. These are, bear in mind, the last IPOs of the year that we care […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - Grading the final tech IPOs of 2019 December 14, 2019 at 07:00AM

Adobe turns it up to 11, surpassing $11B in revenue Yesterday, Adobe submitted its quarterly earnings report and the results were quite good. The company generated a tad under $3 billion for the quarter at $2.99 billion, and reported that revenue exceeded $11 billion for FY 2019, its highest ever mark. “Fiscal 2019 was a phenomenal year for Adobe as we exceeded $11 billion in […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - Adobe turns it up to 11, surpassing $11B in revenue December 14, 2019 at 05:00AM

Chicago’s Sprout Social prices IPO mid-range at $17 per share, raising $150M On the heels of Bill.com’s debut, Chicago-based social media software company Sprout Social priced its IPO last night at $17 per share, in the middle of its proposed $16 to $18 per-share range. Selling 8.8 million shares, Sprout raised just under $150 million in its debut. Underwriters have the option to purchase an additional 1.3 […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - Chicago’s Sprout Social prices IPO mid-range at $17 per share, raising $150M December 14, 2019 at 12:01AM

Salesforce promotes Bret Taylor to president and COO Salesforce announced today that it has named Bret Taylor as president and chief operating officer of the company. Prior to today’s promotion, Taylor held the position of president and chief product officer. In his new position, Taylor will be responsible for a number of activities, including leading Salesforce’s global product vision, engineering, security, marketing and […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - Salesforce promotes Bret Taylor to president and COO December 13, 2019 at 10:00AM

Why Bill.com didn’t pursue a direct listing Bill.com went public today after pricing its shares higher than it initially expected. The B2B payments company sold nearly 10 million shares at $22 apiece, raising around $216 million in its IPO. Public investors felt that the company’s price was a deal, sending the value of its equity to $35.51 per share as of the […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - Why Bill.com didn’t pursue a direct listing December 13, 2019 at 08:00AM

DataRobot is acquiring Paxata to add data prep to machine learning platform DataRobot, a company best known for creating automated machine learning models known as AutoML, announced today that it intends to acquire Paxata, a data prep platform startup. The companies did not reveal the purchase price. Paxata raised a total of $90 million before today’s acquisition, according to the company. Up until now, DataRobot has concentrated […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - DataRobot is acquiring Paxata to add data prep to machine learning platform December 13, 2019 at 05:00AM

Twitter is bringing back Election Labels to identify 2020 U.S. election candidates With just under a year until U.S. Election Day, Twitter is bringing back its Election Labels, which provide information about political candidates — including what office they’re running for and their state and district number. The labels will also have a small ballot box icon to accompany this information. The feature was first launched during […] Social – TechCrunch - Twitter is bringing back Election Labels to identify 2020 U.S. election candidates December 13, 2019 at 03:01AM

Yubo raises $12.3 million for its social app for teens French startup Yubo has raised a $12.3 million funding round led by Iris Capital and Idinvest Partners. Existing investors Alven, Sweet Capital and Village Global are also participating. The startup has managed to attract 25 million users over the years — there are currently tens of thousands of people signing up to the platform every […] Social – TechCrunch - Yubo raises $12.3 million for its social app for teens December 13, 2019 at 02:00AM

Facebook Messenger adds Star Wars-themed features and AR effects Star Wars has come to Facebook’s Messenger app. Facebook today announced a new set of Star Wars-themed features for Messenger users, including a chat theme, reactions, stickers, and AR effects. The features were developed in partnership with Disney to help promote the upcoming film, “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,” which premieres nationwide on December […] Social – TechCrunch - Facebook Messenger adds Star Wars-themed features and AR effects December 13, 2019 at 01:00AM

Twitter will now preserve JPEG quality for photo uploads on the web Twitter is changing the way it processes uploaded images, and the new way of doing things will be much-appreciated by any photographers sharing their work on the platform. Twitter engineer Nolan O’Brien shared that the platform will now preserve JPEG encoding when they’re uploaded via Twitter on the web, instead of transcoding them, which results […] Social – TechCrunch - Twitter will now preserve JPEG quality for photo uploads on the web December 12, 2019 at 04:00AM

Wotch is building a creator-friendly video platform The team at Wotch has created a new social video platform — but wait, don’t roll your eyes quite yet. “Obviously, we’re very used to someone creating a new internet video-sharing platform,” said co-CEO Scott Willson. “It must be very irritating for everyone to hear that.” And yet Willson and his co-founder/co-CEO James Sadler have […] Social – TechCrunch - Wotch is building a creator-friendly video platform December 12, 2019 at 02:01AM

Acquia nabs CDP startup AgilOne, which raised $41M Acquia announced it has acquired customer data platform (CDP) startup AgilOne today. The companies did not disclose the purchase price. CDPs are all the rage among customer experience vendors, as they provide a way to pull data from a variety of channels to build a more complete picture of the customer. The goal here is […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - Acquia nabs CDP startup AgilOne, which raised $41M December 12, 2019 at 02:01AM

Hyperproof wants to make it easier to comply with GDPR and other regulations As companies try to figure out how to comply with regulations like GDPR, ISO or Sarbanes Oxley, they face a huge challenge just getting started. Hyperproof, a Bellevue, Washington startup, is launching a new product to help companies build a workflow to get them in compliance in a more organized way. Company co-founder and CEO […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - Hyperproof wants to make it easier to comply with GDPR and other regulations December 12, 2019 at 12:01AM

Refocusing on relocation, Jobbatical launches new offices in Spain and Germany I’ve been following Estonia-headquartered Jobbatical and its founder, Karoli Hindriks, for years. Part of the vanguard of startups working on infrastructure for digital nomads, the startup has been building the base platform to help global job seekers hire and fire their governments. Digital nomads are hiring and firing their governments As Jobbatical has worked with […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - Refocusing on relocation, Jobbatical launches new offices in Spain and Germany December 12, 2019 at 12:01AM

Accel and Index back Tines, as the cybersecurity startup adds another $11M to its Series A It was just a couple of months ago that Tines, the cybersecurity automation startup, raised $4.1 million in Series A funding led by Blossom Capital, and now the Dublin-based company is disclosing an $11 million extension to the round. This additional Series A funding is led by venture capital firm Accel, with participation from Index […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - Accel and Index back Tines, as the cybersecurity startup adds another $11M to its Series A December 11, 2019 at 07:00PM

D-Wave partners with NEC to build hybrid HPC and quantum apps D-Wave Systems announced a partnership with Japanese industrial giant NEC today to build what they call “hybrid apps and services” that work on a combination of NEC high-performance computers and D-Wave’s quantum systems. The two companies also announced that NEC will be investing $10 million in D-Wave, which has raised $204 million prior to this, […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - D-Wave partners with NEC to build hybrid HPC and quantum apps December 11, 2019 at 10:00AM

The iPhone’s new parental controls can limit who kids can call, text and FaceTime and when An update to Apple’s iOS operating system, out today, will give parents a new set of tools to fight back against kids’ iPhone addiction. With the release of iOS 13.3, parents will for the first time be able to set limits over who kids can talk to and text with during certain hours of the […] Social – TechCrunch - The iPhone’s new parental controls can limit who kids can call, text and FaceTime and when December 11, 2019 at 07:00AM

Microsoft announces public preview of Microsoft Teams for Linux Today, Microsoft announced a public preview of Microsoft Teams for Linux, the first Office 365 tool that’s available for the open source operating system. The hope is that by making it available for preview, the company can get feedback from the community and improve it before it becomes generally available. “Starting today, Microsoft Teams is […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - Microsoft announces public preview of Microsoft Teams for Linux December 11, 2019 at 04:01AM

Facebook’s video calling Portal devices add WhatsApp login, new features and content Facebook is making its line of Portal-branded smart video calling devices more relevant to consumers, including those who don’t even have a Facebook account. The company today says its Portal family of products will now work with just a WhatsApp account, allowing users to make video calls to friends and family, as well as access […] Social – TechCrunch - Facebook’s video calling Portal devices add WhatsApp login, new features and content December 11, 2019 at 03:01AM

Soci raises $12M to help big brands manage local marketing According to CEO Afif Khoury, we’re in the middle of “the third wave of social” — a shift back to local interactions. And Khoury’s startup Soci (pronounced soh-shee) has raised $12 million in Series C funding to help companies navigate that shift. Soci works with customers like Ace Hardware and Sport Clips to help them […] Social – TechCrunch - Soci raises $12M to help big brands manage local marketing December 10, 2019 at 10:01PM

Soci raises $12M to help big brands manage local marketing According to CEO Afif Khoury, we’re in the middle of “the third wave of social” — a shift back to local interactions. And Khoury’s startup Soci (pronounced soh-shee) has raised $12 million in Series C funding to help companies navigate that shift. Soci works with customers like Ace Hardware and Sport Clips to help them […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - Soci raises $12M to help big brands manage local marketing December 10, 2019 at 10:01PM

How the founder of Pocketwatch sees the future of children’s entertainment When Chris Williams founded entertainment platform Pocketwatch in 2017, he was certain that no one had yet found the right way to work with the generation of children’s talent finding its audience on platforms like YouTube. Convinced that packaging creators under one umbrella and leveraging the expanding reach of even more media platforms could reshape […] Social – TechCrunch - How the founder of Pocketwatch sees the future of children’s entertainment December 10, 2019 at 09:01AM

AWS is sick of waiting for your company to move to the cloud AWS held its annual re:Invent customer conference last week in Las Vegas. Being Vegas, there was pageantry aplenty, of course, but this year’s model felt a bit different than in years past, lacking the onslaught of major announcements we are used to getting at this event. Perhaps the pace of innovation could finally be slowing, […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - AWS is sick of waiting for your company to move to the cloud December 10, 2019 at 05:00AM

Snapchat Cameo edits your face into videos Snapchat is preparing to launch a big new feature that uses your selfies to replace the faces of people in videos you can then share. It’s essentially a simplified way to Deepfake you into GIFs. Cameos are an alternative to Bitmoji for quickly conveying an emotion, reaction, or silly situation in Snapchat messages. Some French […] Social – TechCrunch - Snapchat Cameo edits your face into videos December 9, 2019 at 03:00AM

Reddit links UK-US trade talk leak to Russian influence campaign Reddit has linked account activity involving the leak and amplification of sensitive UK-US trade talks on its platform during the ongoing UK election campaign to a suspected Russian political influence operation. Or, to put it more plainly, the social network suspects that Russian operatives are behind the leak of sensitive trade data — likely with […] Social – TechCrunch - Reddit links UK-US trade talk leak to Russian influence campaign December 7, 2019 at 09:00PM

Canva introduces video editing, has big plans for 2020 Canva, the design company with nearly $250 million in funding, has today announced a variety of new features, including a video editing tool. The company has also announced Canva Apps, which allows developers and customers alike to build on top of Canva. Thus far, Dropbox, Google Drive, PhotoMosh and Instagram are already in the Canva […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - Canva introduces video editing, has big plans for 2020 December 7, 2019 at 01:01AM

Scammers peddling Islamophobic clickbait is business as usual at Facebook A run-of-the-mill money-making operation used tawdry, hateful clickbait and evaded Facebook's apparently negligible protections. Social – TechCrunch - Scammers peddling Islamophobic clickbait is business as usual at Facebook December 6, 2019 at 09:00AM

New tweet generator mocks venture capitalists "The S-1 is going to be MOST disrupted FASTEST in the next 3 YEARS? Caps for effect." Social – TechCrunch - New tweet generator mocks venture capitalists December 6, 2019 at 07:00AM

Daily Crunch: Imgur launches an app for gaming memes The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here. 1. 300M-user Imgur launches Melee, a gaming meme app Melee, the company’s first app beyond its flagship product, lets users subscribe to […] Social – TechCrunch - Daily Crunch: Imgur launches an app for gaming memes December 6, 2019 at 06:00AM

Chirp debuts a faster, feature-filled Twitter app for Apple Watch Chirp, a Twitter client preferred by hundreds of thousands of Apple Watch users, is getting its biggest upgrade since its arrival last year. Now redesigned for watchOS 6, the new version of Chirp includes a rebuilt timeline feature that allows you to endlessly scroll through tweets much more quickly than before, along with other enhancements […] Social – TechCrunch - Chirp debuts a faster, feature-filled Twitter app for Apple Watch December 6, 2019 at 04:01AM

Figma launches Auto Layout Figma, the design tool maker that has raised nearly $83 million from investors such as Index Ventures, Sequoia, Greylock and Kleiner Perkins, has today announced a new feature called Auto Layout that takes some of the tedious reformatting out of the design process. Designers are all too familiar with the problem of manually sizing content […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - Figma launches Auto Layout December 6, 2019 at 03:01AM

Design may be the next entrepreneurial gold rush With the shift in the way designers fit into organizations and the way design fits into business overall, the design ecosystem is following the same path blazed by enterprise SaaS companies in recent years. Enterprise – TechCrunch - Design may be the next entrepreneurial gold rush December 6, 2019 at 02:01AM

300M-user Imgur launches Melee, a gaming meme app 10 years after debut, 300 million monthly user Imgur is one of the last massively popular yet unpersonalized home pages on the internet. Since everyone sees the same upvoted posts when they open Imgur, it creates a shared experience full of inside jokes and running gags. But while you can switch to a feed of […] Social – TechCrunch - 300M-user Imgur launches Melee, a gaming meme app December 6, 2019 at 12:02AM

Instagram finally launches 13+ age checkups Instagram is done playing dumb about users’ ages. After nine years, Instagram is finally embracing more responsibility to protect underage kids from the problems with social media. It will now ask new users to input their birth date and bar users younger than 13 from joining. However, it won’t be asking existing users their age, […] Social – TechCrunch - Instagram finally launches 13+ age checkups December 5, 2019 at 05:00AM

Reddit’s monthly active user base grew 30% to reach 430M in 2019 In a year-end retrospective released this morning, Reddit says its user base grew 30% this year to reach 430 million monthly active users, as of the end of October. Its users also contributed 199 million posts, 1.7 billion comments and 32 billion upvotes, the company says. Last year, Reddit reported 330 million monthly active users […] Social – TechCrunch - Reddit’s monthly active user base grew 30% to reach 430M in 2019 December 5, 2019 at 05:00AM

GitGuardian raises $12M to help developers write more secure code and ‘fix’GitHub leaks Data breaches that could cause millions of dollars in potential damages have been the bane of the life of many a company. What’s required is a great deal of real-time monitoring. The problem is that this world has become incredibly complex. A SANS Institute survey found half of company data breaches were the result of […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - GitGuardian raises $12M to help developers write more secure code and ‘fix’GitHub leaks December 5, 2019 at 03:00AM

AWS launches discounted spot capacity for its Fargate container platform AWS today quietly brought spot capacity to Fargate, its serverless compute engine for containers that supports both the company’s Elastic Container Service and, now, its Elastic Kubernetes service. Like spot instances for the EC2 compute platform, Fargate Spot pricing is significantly cheaper, both for storage and compute, than regular Fargate pricing. In return, though, you […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - AWS launches discounted spot capacity for its Fargate container platform December 4, 2019 at 11:00AM

Instagram still doesn’t age-check kids. That must change. Instagram dodges child safety laws. By not asking users their age upon signup, it can feign ignorance about how old they are. That way, it can’t be held liable for $40,000 per violation of the Child Online Privacy Protection Act. The law bans online services from collecting personally identifiable information about kids under 13 without […] Social – TechCrunch - Instagram still doesn’t age-check kids. That must change. December 4, 2019 at 10:00AM

OrbitsEdge partners with HPE on orbital datacenter computing and analytics What kinds of businesses might be able to operate in space? Well datacenter are one potential target you might not have thought of. Space provides an interesting environment for datacenter operations, including advanced analytics operations and even artificial intelligence, due in part to the excellent cooling conditions and reasonable access to renewable power supply (solar). […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - OrbitsEdge partners with HPE on orbital datacenter computing and analytics December 4, 2019 at 06:00AM

This browser extension unhides Instagram Likes Instagram is hiding Like counts to make people feel better. But what if you’re curious, competitive, or just petty? Now you can re-embrace the popularity contest by installing the Socialinsider Chrome extension that reveals Instagram Like and comment counts. “The Return Of The Likes” extension overlays the numbers of Likes and comments on the top […] Social – TechCrunch - This browser extension unhides Instagram Likes December 4, 2019 at 05:00AM

Verizon and AWS announce 5G Edge computing partnership Just as Qualcomm was starting to highlight its 5G plans for the coming years, Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg hit the stage at AWS re:Invent to discuss the carrier’s team up with the cloud computing giant. As part of Verizon’s (TechCrunch’s parent company, disclosure, disclosure, disclosure) upcoming focus on 5G edge computing, the carrier will be […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - Verizon and AWS announce 5G Edge computing partnership December 4, 2019 at 05:00AM

AWS announces new enterprise search tool powered by machine learning Today at AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas, the company announced a new search tool called Kendra, which provides natural language search across a variety of content repositories using machine learning. Matt Wood, AWS VP of artificial intelligence, said the new search tool uses machine learning, but doesn’t actually require machine learning expertise of any kind. […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - AWS announces new enterprise search tool powered by machine learning December 4, 2019 at 05:00AM

AWS’ CodeGuru uses machine learning to automate code reviews AWS today announced CodeGuru, a new machine learning-based service that automates code reviews based on the data the company has gathered from doing code reviews internally. Developers write the code and simply add CodeGuru to the pull requests. It supports GitHub and CodeCommit, for the time being. The CodeGuru uses its knowledge of reviews from […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - AWS’ CodeGuru uses machine learning to automate code reviews December 4, 2019 at 04:01AM

AWS AutoPilot gives you more visible AutoML in SageMaker Studio Today at AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas, the company announced AutoPilot, a tool that gives you greater visibility in automated machine learning model creation. This is available as part of the new SageMaker Studio also announced today. As AWS CEO Andy Jassy pointed out on stage today, one of the problems with AutoML is that […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - AWS AutoPilot gives you more visible AutoML in SageMaker Studio December 4, 2019 at 04:01AM

AWS speeds up Redshift queries 10x with AQUA At its re:Invent conference, AWS CEO Andy Jassy today announced the launch of AQUA (the Advanced Query Accelerator) for Amazon Redshift, the company’s data warehousing service. As Jassy noted in his keynote, it’s hard to scale data warehouses when you want to do analytics over that data. At some point, as your data warehouse or […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - AWS speeds up Redshift queries 10x with AQUA December 4, 2019 at 03:00AM

Facebook expands its efforts against ad discrimination Under the terms of a settlement with the ACLU and other civil rights groups earlier this year, Facebook has been taking steps to prevent discriminatory ad targeting. Specifically, the company says ads in the United States that involve housing, employment or credit can no longer be targeted based on age, gender, ZIP code or multicultural affinity. […] Social – TechCrunch - Facebook expands its efforts against ad discrimination December 4, 2019 at 01:00AM

Facebook updates crisis response tools, adds WhatsApp integration Facebook is expanding Crisis Response, its disaster-reporting and communications feature that’s been used in 300 crises in more than 80 countries. The company today is announcing several new features, including WhatsApp integration, support for first-hand information sharing and an expansion of its “Data for Good” tools for things like better disaster and displacement maps. Crisis […] Social – TechCrunch - Facebook updates crisis response tools, adds WhatsApp integration December 3, 2019 at 07:00AM

Daily Crunch: Facebook announces photo transfer tool The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here. 1. Facebook launches a photo portability tool, starting in Ireland Facebook says it will make it easier for users to get their […] Social – TechCrunch - Daily Crunch: Facebook announces photo transfer tool December 3, 2019 at 05:00AM

CircleCI launches improved AWS support For about a year now, continuous integration and delivery service CircleCI has offered Orbs, a way to easily reuse commands and integrations with third-party services. Unsurprisingly, some of the most popular Orbs focus on AWS, as that’s where most of the company’s developers are either testing their code or deploying it. Today, right in time […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - CircleCI launches improved AWS support December 3, 2019 at 05:00AM

Twitter launches a Privacy Center to centralize its data protection efforts Twitter today is launching a new resource that aims to serve as the central place for everything related to the company’s efforts around privacy and data protection, the Twitter Privacy Center. The new site will host information about Twitter’s initiatives, announcements, new privacy products, and other communication about security incidents. The company says it wanted […] Social – TechCrunch - Twitter launches a Privacy Center to centralize its data protection efforts December 3, 2019 at 04:00AM

New Amazon tool simplifies delivery of containerized machine learning models As part of the flurry of announcements coming this week out of AWS re:Invent, Amazon announced the release of Amazon SageMaker Operators for Kubernetes, a way for data scientists and developers to simplify training, tuning and deploying containerized machine learning models. Packaging machine learning models in containers can help put them to work inside organizations […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - New Amazon tool simplifies delivery of containerized machine learning models December 3, 2019 at 04:00AM

Facebook launches a photo portability tool, starting in Ireland It’s not friend portability, but Facebook has announced the launch today of a photo transfer tool to enable users of its social network to port their photos directly to Google’s photo storage service, via encrypted transfer. The photo portability feature is initially being offered to Facebook users in Ireland, where the company’s international HQ is […] Social – TechCrunch - Facebook launches a photo portability tool, starting in Ireland December 2, 2019 at 09:00PM

European parliament’s NationBuilder contract under investigation by data regulator Europe’s lead data regulator has issued its first ever sanction of an EU institution — taking enforcement action against the European parliament over its use of US-based digital campaign company, NationBuilder, to process citizens’ voter data ahead of the spring elections. NationBuilder is a veteran of the digital campaign space — indeed, we first covered […] Social – TechCrunch - European parliament’s NationBuilder contract under investigation by data regulator November 29, 2019 at 02:00AM

Twitter tests new conversation features from twttr prototype, rollout planned for 2020 Twttr, the prototype app Twitter launched earlier this year, has been testing new ways to display conversations, including through the use of threaded replies and other visual cues. Now, those features have been spotted on Twitter.com, giving the service a message board-like feel where replies are connected to original tweeter and others in a thread […] Social – TechCrunch - Twitter tests new conversation features from twttr prototype, rollout planned for 2020 November 28, 2019 at 07:00AM

Twitter to add a way to ‘memorialize’ accounts for deceased users before removing inactive ones Twitter has changed its tune regarding inactive accounts after receiving a lot of user feedback: It will now be developing a way to “memorialize” user accounts for those who have passed away, before proceeding with a plan it confirmed this week to deactivate accounts that are inactive in order to “present more accurate, credible information” […] Social – TechCrunch - Twitter to add a way to ‘memorialize’ accounts for deceased users before removing inactive ones November 28, 2019 at 06:00AM

Box looks to balance growth and profitability as it matures Prevailing wisdom states that as an enterprise SaaS company evolves, there’s a tendency to sacrifice profitability for growth — understandably so, especially in the early days of the company. At some point, however, a company needs to become profitable. Box has struggled to reach that goal since going public in 2015, but yesterday, it delivered […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - Box looks to balance growth and profitability as it matures November 28, 2019 at 05:00AM

Brexit ad blitz data firm paid by Vote Leave broke privacy laws, watchdogs find A joint investigation by watchdogs in Canada and British Columbia has found that Cambridge Analytica-linked data firm, Aggregate IQ, broke privacy laws in Facebook ad-targeting work it undertook for the official Vote Leave Brexit campaign in the UK’s 2016 EU referendum. A quick reminder: Vote Leave was the official leave campaign in the referendum on the […] Social – TechCrunch - Brexit ad blitz data firm paid by Vote Leave broke privacy laws, watchdogs find November 27, 2019 at 09:00PM

Xerox tells HP it will bring takeover bid directly to shareholders Xerox fired the latest volley in the Xerox -HP merger letter wars today. Xerox CEO John Visentin wrote to the HP Board that his company planned to take its $33.5 billion offer directly to HP shareholders. He began his letter with hostile tone befitting a hostile takeover attempt, stating that their refusal to negotiate defied […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - Xerox tells HP it will bring takeover bid directly to shareholders November 27, 2019 at 08:00AM

New Amazon capabilities put machine learning in reach of more developers Today, Amazon announced a new approach that it says will put machine learning technology in reach of more developers and line of business users. Amazon has been making a flurry of announcements ahead of its re:Invent customer conference next week in Las Vegas. While the company offers plenty of tools for data scientists to build […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - New Amazon capabilities put machine learning in reach of more developers November 27, 2019 at 04:01AM

Instagram founders join $30M raise for Loom work video messenger Why are we all trapped in enterprise chat apps if we talk 6X faster than we type, and our brain processes visual info 60,000X faster than text? Thanks to Instagram, we’re not as camera-shy anymore. And everyone’s trying to remain in flow instead of being distracted by multi-tasking. That’s why now is the time for […] Social – TechCrunch - Instagram founders join $30M raise for Loom work video messenger November 27, 2019 at 02:01AM

Instagram founders join $30M raise for Loom work video messenger Why are we all trapped in enterprise chat apps if we talk 6X faster than we type, and our brain processes visual info 60,000X faster than text? Thanks to Instagram, we’re not as camera-shy anymore. And everyone’s trying to remain in flow instead of being distracted by multi-tasking. That’s why now is the time for […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - Instagram founders join $30M raise for Loom work video messenger November 27, 2019 at 02:01AM

Coralogix announces $10M Series A to bring more intelligence to logging Coralogix, a startup that wants to bring automation and intelligence to logging, announced a $10 million Series A investment today. The round was led by Aleph with participation from StageOne Ventures, Janvest Capital Partners and 2B Angels. Today’s investment brings the total raised to $16.2 million, according to the company. CEO and co-founder Ariel Assaraf […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - Coralogix announces $10M Series A to bring more intelligence to logging November 27, 2019 at 12:03AM

Vivun snags $3M seed round to bring order to pre-sales Vivun, a startup that wants to help companies keep better track of pre-sales data announced a $3 million seed round today led by Unusual Ventures, the venture firm run by Harness CEO Jyoti Bansal. Vivun founder and CEO Matt Darrow says that pre-sales team works more closely with the customer than anyone else, delivering demos […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - Vivun snags $3M seed round to bring order to pre-sales November 26, 2019 at 11:00PM

Inside the Instagram AI that fills Explore with fresh, juicy content Instagram has posted an article describing the behind-the-scenes machinery that fills the Explore tab in Instagram with new, interesting stuff every time you open it. It's a bit technical, so here are five takeaways. Social – TechCrunch - Inside the Instagram AI that fills Explore with fresh, juicy content November 26, 2019 at 12:00PM

AWS expands its IoT services, brings Alexa to devices with only 1MB of RAM AWS today announced a number of IoT-related updates that, for the most part, aim to make getting started with its IoT services easier, especially for companies that are trying to deploy a large fleet of devices. The marquee announcement, however, is about the Alexa Voice Service, which makes Amazon’s Alex voice assistant available to hardware […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - AWS expands its IoT services, brings Alexa to devices with only 1MB of RAM November 26, 2019 at 05:00AM

Save 50% in the Hacking with Swift Black Friday sale All books and bundles are half price! Swift Developer News - Hacking with Swift - Save 50% in the Hacking with Swift Black Friday sale November 25, 2019 at 08:00PM

Hulu is down, and nobody’s sure why Hulu is currently down. We’re not sure why, and neither does Hulu. A stream of tweets complaining about the outage surfaced Sunday morning on the U.S. east coast, but it seems like a global outage. In response, Hulu’s Twitter support didn’t seem to know either, instead telling frustrated users that it’s looking into it. Fantastic. […] Social – TechCrunch - Hulu is down, and nobody’s sure why November 25, 2019 at 02:00AM

Facebook prototypes Favorites for close friends microsharing Facebook is building its own version of Instagram Close Friends, the company confirms to TechCrunch. There’s a lot people that don’t share on Facebook because it can feel risky or awkward since its definition of “friends” has swelled to include family, work colleagues, and distant acquaintances. No one wants their boss or grandma seeing their […] Social – TechCrunch - Facebook prototypes Favorites for close friends microsharing November 23, 2019 at 07:00AM

Making sense of a multi-cloud, hybrid world at KubeCon More than 12,000 attendees gathered this week in San Diego to discuss all things containers, Kubernetes and cloud-native at KubeCon. Kubernetes, the container orchestration tool, turned five this year, and the technology appears to be reaching a maturity phase where it accelerates beyond early adopters to reach a more mainstream group of larger business users. […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - Making sense of a multi-cloud, hybrid world at KubeCon November 23, 2019 at 07:00AM

Cloud Foundry’s Kubernetes bet with Project Eirini hits 1.0 Cloud Foundry, the open-source platform-as-a-service that, with the help of lots of commercial backers, is currently in use by the majority of Fortune 500 companies, launched well before containers, and especially the Kubernetes orchestrator, were a thing. Instead, the project built its own container service, but the rise of Kubernetes obviously created a lot of […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - Cloud Foundry’s Kubernetes bet with Project Eirini hits 1.0 November 23, 2019 at 01:00AM

Watch Sacha Baron Cohen skewer Zuckerberg’s “twisted logic” on hate speech and fakes Comedian Sacha Baron Cohen has waded into the debate about social media regulation. In an award-acceptance speech to the Anti Defamation League yesterday the creator of Ali G and Borat delivered a precision takedown of what he called Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s “bullshit” arguments against regulating his platform. The speech is well worth watching in […] Social – TechCrunch - Watch Sacha Baron Cohen skewer Zuckerberg’s “twisted logic” on hate speech and fakes November 22, 2019 at 10:00PM

Twitter will finally let you turn on two-factor authentication without giving it a phone number Two-factor authentication is good! SMS-based two-factor authentication? Not the best option. After countless tales of people having their phone numbers and inbound SMS hijacked by way of SIM swapping, it’s clear that SMS just isn’t the right solution for sending people secondary login codes. And yet, for many years, it’s been the mandatory go-to on […] Social – TechCrunch - Twitter will finally let you turn on two-factor authentication without giving it a phone number November 22, 2019 at 09:00AM

Linear takes $4.2M led by Sequoia to build a better bug tracker and more Software will eat the world, as the saying goes, but in doing so, some developers are likely to get a little indigestion. That is to say, building products requires working with disparate and distributed teams, and while developers may have an ever-growing array of algorithms, APIs and technology at their disposal to do this, ironically […] Enterprise – TechCrunch - Linear takes $4.2M led by Sequoia to build a better bug tracker and more November 22, 2019 at 07:00AM

Facebook Dating now integrates with Instagram and Facebook Stories Facebook Dating, an opt-in feature of the main Facebook app, will begin to tap into the content users are already creating across both Facebook and Instagram to enhance its service. Today, Facebook Dating users will be able to add their Facebook or Instagram Stories to Facebook Dating, in order to share their everyday moments with […] Social – TechCrunch - Facebook Dating now integrates with Instagram and Facebook Stories November 22, 2019 at 03:00AM