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Truecaller’s founders step down as the spam blocking app regains momentum

Manish Singh — Thu, 07 Nov 2024 05:20:07 +0000

The co-founders of Swedish caller identification app Truecaller are stepping back from day-to-day operations, marking the end of an era for one of Sweden’s most successful consumer technology companies. Alan Mamedi and Nami Zarringhalam (pictured above), who co-founded Truecaller in 2009, will hand over control in January to Rishit Jhunjhunwala, the company’s product chief and […]

The FTC comes after neobank Dave for misleading marketing, hidden fees

Sarah Perez — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 20:06:57 +0000

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced on Tuesday that it will be taking action against the online cash app and neobank Dave, which it says used “misleading marketing to deceive consumers.” At issue is how Dave marketed $500 cash advances to consumers that it rarely offered, and the “Express Fee” it charged if customers wanted […]

Pinstripe wants to redefine the way online sellers sell secondhand clothing

Lauren Forristal — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 17:58:57 +0000

Pinstripe aims to reimagine the secondhand market by offering sellers the opportunity to have both a digital storefront and a physical retail presence. Launched in June, the platform offers an alternative approach compared with other marketplaces like Archive, Depop, Facebook Marketplace, and Poshmark. With Pinstripe, sellers take their clothes to local consignment stores, vintage shops, […]

‘For You’ feeds fail on election night, offering outdated information, angering users

Sarah Perez — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 15:49:06 +0000

“For You” algorithms that promote the most interesting content across a social network, personalized to the individual user, offered a disjointed, outdated, and nearly unusable experience on election night in the U.S. as they highlighted hours-old posts that no longer reflected the current state of the race. Frustrations were particularly high on Threads, Meta’s X […]

Apple to be fined for breaching EU’s Digital Markets Act, Bloomberg reports

Natasha Lomas — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 12:17:54 +0000

The European Union’s flagship market contestability regulation has been in force on a handful of tech giants for months. Since March, the bloc has had open investigations on several gatekeepers. But it’s Apple that will face the first Digital Markets Act (DMA) fine, Bloomberg reports, citing people familiar with the case. Apple’s App Store rules […]

Apple may update Find My to let you share locations of lost items

Ivan Mehta — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 07:32:47 +0000

Apple could soon let users share the location of lost items via the Find My app with people who are not in their contacts using a link.

X reinstates SwapYourVote’s account after suspending it as spam

Maxwell Zeff — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 22:09:20 +0000

In the final days leading up to the U.S. presidential election, Elon Musk’s X suspended the official account of a progressive-donor-backed ballot initiative called SwapYourVote. The volunteer-run website tries to get third-party voters in swing states to cast their ballots for Kamala Harris, matching them with Democrats in solidly blue states who agree to vote […]

Google ‘fixes’ issues with voting search results that weren’t actually broken

Sarah Perez — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 22:00:26 +0000

Google says it has addressed an issue with its search engine that saw it displaying a “where to vote” panel, which includes a map of polling places, for some specific voting-related searches but not for others. The tech giant even used the word “fixed” to respond to the matter, despite the fact that Google Search […]

Substack is giving out free subscriptions to boost app installs

Sarah Perez — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 19:18:03 +0000

Publishing platform Substack is now pushing users to install its mobile app by offering gifted subscriptions. While Substack itself is available across platforms, including the web, those who want to take advantage of the free subscription offer can only do so after downloading the mobile app to their device. The free subscription offer is being […]

Apple’s new widget puts Election Day updates on your Lock Screen and Home Screen

Sarah Perez — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 17:49:59 +0000

It’s Election Day in the U.S., which means you’re likely glued to the latest news about which presidential candidate is currently in the lead. To help with this, Apple has released a Live Activities widget within its Apple News app that will offer real-time election updates directly on your iPhone or iPad’s Home Screen and […]

Elon Musk’s false and misleading election claims have been viewed 2 billion times on X

Rebecca Bellan — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 17:08:40 +0000

The world’s richest man buys out one of the most popular social media platforms and uses it as a propaganda and disinformation machine in support of a presidential candidate. What could go wrong? An analysis from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a nonprofit that tracks misinformation, found that Elon Musk posted at least […]

Flash, founded by ex-Flipkart exec, launches in the US to help shoppers juggle multiple online orders

Lauren Forristal — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 14:30:00 +0000

Flash, the payment management service that tracks all your online purchases, announced Tuesday its entry into the U.S. market, giving American customers the ability to manage all of their spending in one place while also earning rewards, such as gift cards and cash back. The U.S. is home to many big spenders, making it a […]

Anthropic hikes the price of its Haiku model

Kyle Wiggers — Mon, 04 Nov 2024 18:24:08 +0000

Anthropic’s newest AI model has arrived. But it’s pricier than the last generation, and unlike Anthropic’s other models, it can’t analyze images just yet. Claude 3.5 Haiku, which Anthropic announced last month, matches or bests the performance of Anthropic’s flagship model, Claude 3 Opus, on specific benchmarks. Available through Anthropic’s API and a number of […]

Threads now has 275M monthly active users

Ivan Mehta — Mon, 04 Nov 2024 07:34:38 +0000

Meta's social network, Threads, now has 275 million monthly active users, the company said on Sunday.

X updates block feature, letting blocked users see your public posts

Ivan Mehta — Mon, 04 Nov 2024 06:46:18 +0000

X is rolling out its controversial update to the block feature, allowing people to view your public posts even if you have blocked them.

Can you build a startup without sacrificing your mental health? Bonobos founder Andy Dunn thinks so

Amanda Silberling — Sat, 02 Nov 2024 15:00:00 +0000

Bonobos founder Andy Dunn is back in the builder’s seat, working on an in-person social media platform called Pie. But the biggest lessons he learned from his $310 million Bonobos exit don’t have as much to do with entrepreneurship as they do with staying sane. When Dunn was in college, he was diagnosed with bipolar […]

CoffeeSpace is a Hinge-like app that wants to help you find your co-founder

Aisha Malik — Sat, 02 Nov 2024 14:00:00 +0000

CoffeeSpace is on a mission to help people find partners for their startup ideas online. The startup, which exhibited as part of the Startup Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024, has launched a social networking app that matches people exploring startup ideas and looking for co-founders. The startup’s algorithm only matches candidates who meet each […]

Apple is buying photo-editing app Pixelmator

Brian Heater — Fri, 01 Nov 2024 17:05:48 +0000

Pixelmator announced on Friday that it is being acquired by Apple. The image-editing platform didn’t discuss what life might look like under the corporate umbrella but did note there would be “no material changes” to its Pixelmator Pro, Pixelmator for iOS, and Photomator apps — at least for now. If Apple’s acquisition history is any […]

A new app launches to help keep voters informed for elections

Dominic-Madori Davis — Fri, 01 Nov 2024 16:00:00 +0000

Around the corner is perhaps one of the most important elections this nation has ever seen, yet many people are still unaware of the details needed to cast informed ballots. It’s not necessarily their fault — some voting information can be quite hard to find, especially when it comes to learning about, say, the political […]

Cross-posting social app Openvibe now supports Threads, too

Sarah Perez — Fri, 01 Nov 2024 15:53:01 +0000

The decline of X (formerly Twitter) under Elon Musk has boosted engagement with alternative social networks like Bluesky, Threads, and Mastodon, but it has also challenged early adopters who now have too many places to post. Naturally, some entrepreneurs are working to solve this problem with apps that let you cross-post to multiple platforms at […]