One day after experiencing a massive outage across its ad network, Facebook, one of the most important online advertising platforms, is still seeing “intermittent” issues for its ad products at one of the most critical times of the year for advertisers. According to a spokesperson for the company, while most systems are restored there are…
Amazon’s renowned secrecy encompasses its response to a new security issue, withholding info that could help victims protect themselves. Amazon emailed users Tuesday, warning them that it exposed an unknown number of customer email addresses after a “technical error” on its website. When reached for comment, an Amazon spokesperson told TechCrunch that the issue exposed…
TechCrunch will soon be returning to Africa to hold its Startup Battlefield competition dedicated to the African continent, in Lagos, Nigeria, on December 11th. The event will showcase the launch of 15 of the hottest startups in Africa on stage for the first time. We’ll also be joined by some of the leading investment firms…
In a short but amply-hyped interview with CNN, Facebook’s founder and chief executive again responded to criticism over the company’s most recent crisis. The interview, excerpted from a longer Q&A for a CNN series called “Human Code,” hit most of the main questions that critics have raised about Facebook’s failings and Zuckerberg’s unilateral control over…
The Morgan Stanley Multicultural Innovation Lab, Morgan Stanley’s in-house accelerator focused on companies founded by multicultural and female entrepreneurs, hosted its second Annual Showcase and Demo Day. The event also featured companies from accelerators HearstLab, Newark Venture Partner Labs and PS27 Ventures. (Note: I was formerly employed by Morgan Stanley and have no financial ties.) The showcase represented…
Valve has quietly updated the Steam page for the Steam Link. The message says that Valve is discontinuing the Steam Link. The device will become unavailable once all units have been sold. When Valve introduced the Steam Link in 2015, your TV setup was completely different. Google, Amazon and Apple just released Android TV, the…
Feedr, a food tech startup that delivers healthy and personalised meals to office workers as an alternative to companies setting up their own canteens, has picked up just over £1.5 million in pre-Series A funding. The round is led by London early-stage venture capital firm Episode 1. Also participating is Brent Hoberman’s Founders Factory, and…
Xiaomi is diversifying into a new range of phones as the Chinese smartphone maker announced impressive growth with its latest financials. The company announced it will take over selfie app maker Meitu’s smartphone business to go after new demographics, particularly women, while it lodged impressive 49 percent revenue growth in Q3. Xiaomi posted a net profit of 2.481…
In a blockbuster deal for Fanatics and Ticketmaster, the two companies have agreed to sell verified tickets and merchandise on each others’ sites. According to a statement from the two companies, the partnership will give leagues, teams and universities an integrated e-commerce experience from the two companies’ customer databases to create fan rewards programs, as…
Last year Amazon announced Comprehend, a natural language processing tool to help companies extract common words and phrases from a corpus of information. Today, a week ahead of its Re:invent customer conference, Amazon announced an enhancement to Comprehend that allows developers to build lists of specialized words and phrases without machine learning domain knowledge. “Today…
