The prospect of contacting a satellite to send a text or contact emergency services may soon be an effortless reality as startups move from proof of concept to actual product. Canadians on the Rogers network, which just inked a deal with Lynk, will get direct satellite-phone connections across the country; and not to be outdone,…
It isn’t often that startup rivals battle in plain view of others, but such is the case with the mobile messaging services provider Postscript, which took to the Twitterverse earlier this month after receiving a cease-and-desist letter from competitor Attentive. Attentive’s letter was in response to a client case study that Postscript had authored and…
Reddit announced Thursday that it is testing Discord-like chat channels with select subreddits. With this move, the social network is trying to give more avenues for community members to interact with each other apart from the usual asynchronous commenting system. The company said it is starting this test with 25 volunteer subreddits — the company didn’t…
Founded in 2014, Blossom Finance was first intended for Muslim entrepreneurs in the United States. The microfinancing platform connects investors with small businesses using mudarabah, a shariah-compliant profit-sharing agreement. But founder Matthew Joseph Martin soon realized that the startup, backed by investors like Boost VC and Tim Draper, was serving a relatively niche market in…
Microsoft Designer, Microsoft’s AI-powered design tool, today launched in public preview with an expanded set of features. Announced in October, Designer is a Canva-like web app that can generate designs for presentations, posters, digital postcards, invitations, graphics and more to share on social media and other channels. It leverages user-created content and DALL-E 2, OpenAI’s…
Meta announced today that it will be phasing out onboarding of new Shops without checkout on Facebook and Instagram enabled. Beginning June 5, onboarding of new shops via Commerce Manager and Shopify will only be with checkout on Facebook and Instagram enabled. By August 10, onboarding of new shops via all other partners will only…
Kakao Pay, the online payment service of South Korean messaging and internet giant Kakao, announced that it has acquired a stake in Siebert Financial, a brokerage firm based in New York. Kakao spent $17 million on this transaction and the company now owns a 19.9% stake in Siebert. This is just the first step as…
Meta shared some updated engagement info around its platforms on its Q1 2023 quarterly earnings call on Wednesday, with Meta CFO Susan Li joining CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg to field questions from analysts about its results. Zuckerberg shared that time spent on Instagram has grown more than 24% since the company launched Reels on…
AI is very much a work in progress, and we should all be wary of its potential for confidently spouting misinformation. But it seems to be more likely to do so in some languages than others. Why is that? The question comes in the wake of a report by NewsGuard, a misinformation watchdog, that shows…
TikTok is experimenting with a new tool that allows users to create generative AI avatars, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. The new tool was first spotted by social media consultant Matt Navarra. The tool isn’t broadly available, and is currently being tested in a few select markets, the company said. With this test product, TikTok…
