MarketingMuses

TechCrunch reported last night that Facebook retracted Facebook messages sent by Mark Zuckerberg and other executives from their recipients’ inboxes. That’s an ability normal Facebook users don’t have. But now Facebook tells me it plans to make an “unsend” feature available to all users in several months, and has already been considering how to build […]

If you’re looking to travel abroad — and especially if you’re looking to work while doing so — it might be tough to convince yourself you can find a cool boutique hotel that caters to a lot of different price points, as well as surround yourself with people that will help you feel like you […]

Amazon is making it easier for parents to manage their child’s device usage from their own phone, tablet, or PC with an update to the Parent Dashboard in Amazon FreeTime. Since its launch in 2012, Amazon’s FreeTime Unlimited has been one of the better implementations of combining kid-friendly content with customizable profiles and parental controls. […]

Walmart announced this week it’s going to roll out more than 500 additional Pickup Towers to its U.S. stores over the course of the year. The towers, which are like high-tech vending machines distributing customers’ online purchases, were first introduced into nearly 200 stores in 2017. The towers are one of the ways Walmart is […]

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week Katie Roof and I were joined by David Welsh, part of KKR’s growth equity shop. (His formal title: Member and Head of TMT Growth Equity, where “member” actually means “partner,” it turns out.) And what a […]

We’re busy searching all of Europe for the very best and brightest developers, hackers, tech builders and marketers. Why? Because we want you to come and compete in the TechCrunch Hackathon at VivaTech, of course! The Hackathon takes place at the Expo Porte de Versailles in Paris on May 25-26 and, if you act quickly […]

Fans of Uber in Southeast Asia will have a little more time to continue using the app after Grab, the rival that is acquiring Uber’s business in the region, agreed to extend the life of the app until April 15 while Singapore’s competition commission reviews the merger deal. Grab had originally intended to close the […]

PlayingViral founders Steven Wongsoredjo and Michael Rendy Millennials have been accused of possessing shorter attention spans than goldfish. Though that claim is questionable, online marketers know display ads and even sponsored content are no longer enough to attract twentysomethings. PlayingViral gives brands a new way to lure young consumers with embeddable surveys and quizzes that […]

Samsung has released primarily guidance for its Q1 2018 financial period and the signs are that it will be another blockbuster. The Korean tech giant’s sales in 2017 were enough to see it unseat Intel as the world’s largest chipmaker based on revenue — ending Intel’s 25-year run at the top — and, while Samsung […]

Japanese crypto exchange Coincheck, made famously after hackers made off with more than $400 million in digital token NEM, has been acquired. The company announced today (in Japanese) that Tokyo-based online brokerage Monex Group will buy it in full. The transaction will see Coincheck become a wholly owned subsidiary of Monex. The deal is a reaction of the […]

Facebook says it was for security, but is it a breach of user trust? Josh Constine @ / 7 hours You can’t remove Facebook messages from the inboxes of people you sent them to, but Facebook did that for Mark Zuckerberg and other executives. Three sources confirm to TechCrunch that old Facebook messages they received […]

Coinbase has launched a new fund called Coinbase Ventures to invest in early-stage cryptocurrency and blockchain startups. In a blog post, Coinbase head of corporate and business development Emilie Choi said that the fund’s goal is to strengthen the sector. “At least in the beginning, our goal is simply helping the most compelling companies in […]

Redpoint Ventures has hired Annie Kadavy as its first female general partner. She’ll be on the early stage investment team. Kadavy has a background in venture capital, having spent several years at CRV. Most recently, she ran strategic operations at Uber’s freight division. She also has an M.B.A. from Stanford University Graduate School of Business. […]

Razer, known mainly for gaming laptops and peripherals, expanded its ecosystem today with the launch of Razer Game Store, an online game distribution platform. Razer Game Store will compete with Steam and Amazon, but wants to grab the attention of gamers with perks like the chance to earn more credits in Razer’s zSilver loyalty program, […]

In an interview with Bloomberg, Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg disclosed the fact that ongoing privacy revelations around Cambridge Analytica have some advertisers skittish. When asked about how many advertisers had paused their ad spending, Sandberg would only get as specific as saying that “a few” had done so, leaving plenty of room for interpretation. She told […]

YouTube TV is finding life inside a browser not built by Google. The live TV service is now running on Firefox after previously being locked down to Chrome. The new development first spotted by YourTechExplained isn’t a massive shock, Google had promised support for other browsers would be coming, but it’s nice to see them hold […]

Montreal-based fashion site Ssense is acquiring Polyvore from Verizon’s Oath, but the site will not live on. Ssense has already shut down the Polyvore site, taking its user data and redirecting traffic from the site’s main URL. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Polyvore was previously owned by Oath, a Verizon subsidiary which also owns […]

AI research is increasingly being used by militaries around the world for offensive and defensive applications. This past week, groups of AI researchers began to fight back against two separate programs located halfway around the world from each other, generating tough questions about just how much engineers can affect the future uses of these technologies. […]

Amazon just rolled out a long-promised for the Echo. Alexa Announcements turns the company’s smart speaker line into a one-way intercom system, letting owners communicate with the family across a household. At its base level, it’s kind of a relay system. Tell the device, “Alexa, announce that dinner is ready,” and Alexa will say, “Dinner […]

Instacart, the grocery delivery startup that has a partnership of sorts with Whole Foods, is raising $150 million in funding, Axios first reported. This is on top of Instacart’s $200 million raise at a $4.2 billion valuation in February. The additional funding comes shortly after Amazon, owner of Whole Foods, announced free two-hour delivery of […]

A class-action lawsuit alleging pay discrimination at Google based on gender is moving forward, California Superior Court Judge Mary E. Wiss recently ordered. The original suit was dismissed in December due to the fact that plaintiffs defined the class of affected workers too broadly. In January, the plaintiffs filed a revised lawsuit, which added Heidi […]

Mission Bit, a nonprofit organization that teaches high school students computer science, has received a $1 million five-year grant from the San Francisco Department of Children, Youth and Their Families. Each semester, Mission Bit offers after-school computer science classes to high school students. The fall and spring courses run for 13 weeks, requiring four hours […]

Careship, the German marketplace for in-home senior care, has raised €6 million in further funding. The round is led by Creandum, the European early-stage investor best known for being an early backer of Spotify, and will be used by the Berlin startup to further expand nationally. In addition to Creandum, European ‘impact’ investor Ananda Ventures […]

The deadline for Google’s Lunar Xprize passed just days ago without a winner, but the lengthy 10-year competition to send a robot to the Moon’s surface had known for months that none of the five teams were ready for launch by the extended deadline of March 31, 2018. As a result, back in January, Google […]

Virgin Galactic took to the skies today for the first test of its rocket-powered spacecraft in over three years. The SpaceShipTwo launch platform deployed the USS Unity at a set altitude where the space craft will fire its engines for as long as 30 seconds bringing the craft to 1 1/2 the speed of sound. […]

GitLab, one of the most popular self-hosted Git services, has been on a bit of a roll lately. Barely two weeks after launching its integration with GitHub, the company today announced that developers on its platform can now automatically spin up a cluster on Google’s Kubernetes Engine (GKE) and deploy their applications to it with […]

Google Cloud is launching a new feature today that will give its users a new way to monitor and optimize how their data flows between their servers in the Google Cloud and other Google Services, on-premises deployments and virtually any other internet endpoint. As the name implies, VPC Flow Logs are meant for businesses that […]

A year ago, I visited the Apple campus in Cupertino to figure out where the hell the new Mac Pro was. I joined a round table discussion with Apple SVPs and a handful of reporters to get the skinny on what was taking so long. The answer, it turns out, was that Apple had decided […]

Uber is suspending another international service while it assess whether there’s a business case to continue operations after regulatory changes. In a blog post announcing the impending suspension of its UberX service in Athens, the company writes: “New local regulations were voted on recently with provisions that impact ridesharing services. We have to assess if […]

Helios and Matheson Analytics, which already owns movie ticket subscription service MoviePass, has acquired Moviefone. Despite the old-school name, Moviefone is now a digital media business with trailers, movie information and ticketing via Fandango — it says it reaches 6 million unique visitors each month. Moviefone was previously owned by Oath, the Verizon subsidiary formed […]

While IMAX has become synonymous with enormous theatrical screens, Chief Marketing Officer JL Pomeroy told me the company has “been an innovator at the forefront of technology breakthroughs for the last 50 years” — for example, it recently started creating virtual reality centers. And today, IMAX is releasing its first augmented reality project, developed in partnership […]

Procurement isn’t the most exciting topic in the world, but for large businesses, it’s an area where inefficiencies can quickly affect the bottom line. Simply getting a complete view of all of the products and services that a company buys is a challenge in itself, though, which in turn makes it hard to find savings, […]

We keep hearing about the value of customer experience from some of the world’s biggest software companies. Last week Adobe trotted out the customer experience system of record at Adobe Summit. Meanwhile, Salesforce announced its Integration Cloud. Today Kahuna, a Redwood City, California startup, announced a platform to compete with the giants to help brands […]

Singapore-based smart lock maker Igloohome has closed a $4 million Series A round. The investment was led by Insignia Ventures, the new firm started by ex-Sequoia venture partner Yinglan Tan. Phillip Private Equity, X Capital Ventures, K3 Venture’s Kuok Meng Xiong, angel investor Koh Boon Hwee, and existing backer Wavemaker Partners also took part. The company is […]

Fresh from announcing a deal to buy out Uber in Southeast Asia, Grab looks set to gain further firepower with Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba preparing to invest in the ride-hailing firm. Alibaba is in the early stages of making an investment in Grab, two sources with knowledge of discussions told TechCrunch. Isn’t yet clear what […]

A co-founder of Smartsheet, the enterprise collaboration startup that just filed for an IPO, is taking a hard right turn into the world of agriculture robotics. Brent Frei tells Geekwire that he has been working on an automated system for clearing rocks from land. It’s a bit unexpected, but far from a bad idea. While […]

As part of its ongoing efforts to patch its systems against the Meltdown and Spectre chip flaws, Intel indicated last month that it would be issuing fixes as far back as 2005’s Yorkfield processors. But in a new guidance document the company announces that many of these older platforms will not receive fixes after all. […]

The App Store shrank for the first time in 2017, according to a new report from Appfigures. The report found the App Store lost 5 percent of its total apps over the course of the year, dropping from 2.2 million iOS apps in the beginning of the year, to 2.1 million by year-end. Google Play, […]

As the e-commerce industry continues to explode, one startup that’s benefitting is Boston-based 6 River Systems. The business, which builds robots that speed up production in warehouses, has raised $25 million Series B financing in a round led by Menlo Ventures, with participation from Norwest Venture Partners, Eclipse Ventures and iRobot. 6 River says it has […]

Digital media company Fullscreen announced this morning that it has acquired Reelio. The startup has described itself as “the Match.com of brands and creators on YouTube,” collecting data about video creators and connecting them with marketers who want to use their skills and reach their audience. In the announcement, Fullscreen suggests that Reelio’s technology will […]

At the Amazon Summit in San Francisco today, the company announced a new cloud service that enables organizations to create and manage private certificates in the cloud. While the Summit wasn’t chock full of announcements like the annual re:Invent conference, it did offer some new services like the beefing up the AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) […]

Hired has released its annual pay equity report. Unsurprisingly, white men earn the most at $136,000 per year on average, followed by Asian men making a yearly average of $135,000. Here are some other stats that highlight the pay discrepancies in tech: Companies offer women 4 percent less than men, on average, for the same […]

AWS’ S3 storage service today launched a cheaper option for keeping data in the cloud — as long as developers are willing to give up a few 9’s of availability in return for saving up to 20 percent compared to the standard S3 price for applications that need infrequent access. The name for this new […]

One of the joys of cloud computing is handing over your data to the cloud vendor and letting them handle the heavy lifting. Up until now that has meant they updated the software or scaled the hardware for you. Today, AWS took that to another level when it announced Amazon DynamoDB Continuous Backups and Point-In-Time Recovery […]

Former Twitter product lead April Underwood is getting another promotion this morning, now rising to the role of chief product officer of what aims to be the dead-simple employee communications platform Slack, according to Fortune. Underwood previously served as director of product at Twitter, where she worked for five years before joining Slack as its […]

Facebook is spelling out in plain english how it collects and uses your data in rewritten versions of its Terms Of Service and Data Use Policy, though it’s not asking for new rights to collect and use your data or changing any of your old privacy settings.The public has seven days to comment on the […]

Amazon is bringing “hands-free” access to Alexa – a feature currently found on its flagship Fire HD 10 tablet – to the rest of its Fire tablet line, the company announced this morning. Starting this week, owners of either the Fire 7 and the Fire HD 8 (2017) will be able to launch Alexa using […]

Amid plenty of speculation, China’s ride-hailing leader Didi Chuxing has officially entered the food delivery space. The company, which acquired Uber’s China-based business in 2016, confirmed today it is running a pilot food delivery service in Wuxi, a city in southern Jiangsu province, with a view to expanding further. The service began on April 1, and Didi […]

When you look at the number of datacenters the hyperscale companies are developing worldwide, it can be a little frightening from an energy usage standpoint, but Google announced today that it acquired enough renewable energy to match 100 percent of its power consumption in 2017. That’s good news, but it’s not as good as using […]

Tinder is getting into video. On Wednesday, the popular dating app will begin testing its first video-based feature, Tinder Loops, with iOS users in Canada and Sweden. The company says it will evaluate how users respond to Loops before making a decision to roll it out to other markets. As you may have guessed by […]

According to a new report from Bloomberg, Apple could be working on new gestures for its iPhones. In addition to normal touch gestures, iOS could detect when you hover your finger over the screen to trigger some actions. When Steve Jobs introduced the first iPhone, he spent quite a bit of time demonstrating the multitouch […]

Yellow, a Brazil-based mobility startup, just raised a $9 million seed round for its dockless bike-share service. Yellow was founded by Ariel Lambrecht and Renato Freitas, who sold their ride-share company 99 to Didi in a $1 billion deal earlier this year. Yellow’s third co-founder is Eduardo Musa, CEO of bike manufacturer Caloi. Yellow intends […]

When you’re a company as large as Google, you need to make build versus buy decisions every day, whether that’s buying a company or building the software or renting time on an undersea cable or building your own. Today, the company announced that it’s decided to build another undersea cable. This one will run from […]

Popular password manager 1Password has a new subscription product aimed at business users with larger teams. The new offering, 1Password Business, replaces the Teams Pro plan — with what’s billed as additional features and “flexibility”. (Although existing Teams Pro users can choose to say on it for now, or opt to switch to Teams or […]

Most brand-new venture funds don’t start life with $180 million in capital commitments, especially if they are launched by people who have not worked as venture capitalists before, and particularly not if those people want to focus narrowly on the global interactive entertainment industry. That Makers Fund is the culmination of all of these things […]

Meituan Dianping, the fast-growing Chinese firm valued at $30 billion, is buying Mobike, a Chinese startup that helped pioneer bike-sharing services worldwide, in a major piece of consolidation. The deal was heavy rumored yesterday and TechCrunch has today confirmed with a source that it has been concluded at a price of $2.7 billion. TechCrunch understands […]