Apps

Elon buys Twitter, new App Store rules, gambling ads backlash • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 29, 2022Posted in app stores, Apple, Apps, developers, Google, Mobile, This Week In AppsNo Comments

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly ZebethMedia series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. Global app spending reached $65 billion in the first half of 2022, up only slightly from the $64.4 billion during the same period in 2021, as hypergrowth fueled by the pandemic has slowed down. But overall, the app economy is continuing to grow, having produced a record number of downloads and consumer spending across both the iOS and Google Play stores combined in 2021, according to the latest year-end reports. Global spending across iOS and Google Play last year was $133 billion, and consumers downloaded 143.6 billion apps. This Week in Apps offers a way to keep up with this fast-moving industry in one place with the latest from the world of apps, including news, updates, startup fundings, mergers and acquisitions, and much more. Do you want This Week in Apps in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here: techcrunch.com/newsletters. Musk buys Twitter It’s official, Elon Musk now owns Twitter. In typical Musk fashion, the transition has been nothing but chaotic, with the deal closing just ahead of the deadline set by the Delaware Chancery Court — the court where Musk was planning to try to exit the deal by claiming Twitter had misled him about the number of bots on the platform. (He was really looking to get the price down, of course!) In any event, the Telsa and SpaceX exec now has a new toy and everyone is waiting to see what comes next. Earlier, Musk had hinted at layoffs, then later retracted his statements, saying he wouldn’t fire 75% after all. However, he did immediately clear out the C-suite, including CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, General Counsel Sean Edgett and Head of Legal, Trust and Safety Vijaya Gadde — a sign that he’s planning to fill out Twitter’s top ranks with execs who will do his own bidding and not fight for the Twitter of days past. Still, Musk’s talk about a Twitter that’s more permissive of “free speech” doesn’t quite align with his message to advertisers posted shortly after the deal’s close: He promised marketers that Twitter can’t turn into a “free-for-all hellscape.” That’s clearly a tacit acknowledgment on Musk’s part that advertisers don’t want to post their content next to hate speech-filled tweets. And despite Musk’s plans to grow Twitter’s subscription business, around 90% of Twitter’s revenue today comes from advertising. Given what he had to pay to own Twitter, Musk probably doesn’t want to have to pay to keep it running, too. App Store Review Guidelines now give Apple a cut of NFTs, in-app advertising Image Credits: ZebethMedia Along with the launch of iOS 16.1, Apple also introduced new App Store Review Guidelines. Among the major changes were two new rules designed to give Apple a bigger slice of the NFT market and Meta’s core advertising business. The company said apps will be allowed to list, mint, transfer and let users view their own NFTs, but clarified that owning an NFT could not be a shortcut to unlocking any more features in an app. In other words, the ownership of an NFT shouldn’t be a way to route around Apple’s in-app purchases. In addition, Apple said NFT apps can’t display external links or other calls-to-action to purchase NFTs — that can only take place through Apple’s own in-app purchases system, as well. This change is not all that surprising. As the web3 market grows, Apple wanted to find a way to stake its claim on the revenue and transactions that are occuring inside these new apps. Plus, it’s a better consumer experience for NFT marketplace apps to not just function as a showcase for users’ purchases, but as a place where users can actually transact. The other big rule adjustment, however, is a bit more startling. In a bold move, Apple essentially said it deserves a cut of Meta’s ads business as well as any other social app. The new rule around social media apps now states that purchases of “boosts” have to flow through Apple’s in-app purchase system. This could impact any app that sells the ability to boost a post to a wider audience, like Meta (Facebook, Instagram), TikTok, Twitter, dating apps and others. Meta, of course, took significant issue with this change, saying that Apple’s policy undercuts others in the digital economy after Apple had previously said it wouldn’t take a share of developer ad revenue. While Meta isn’t exactly a sympathetic player here, it’s concerning that Apple has decided it can now tax advertising inside iOS apps at the same time it runs its own expanding ads business. That seems like a move regulators will need to look into asap. App Store gambling ads backlash Speaking of Apple’s ads business…The company’s App Store ads platform expanded this week to include new ad slots like the main Today tab and a “You Might Also Like” section at the bottom of individual app listings. The slots are available in all countries as of October 25, except China. The ads have a blue background and an “Ad” label to differentiate them from other listings. Developers, however, were immediately disturbed by the instant deluge of gambling ads that appeared marketed alongside their own, including against kids’ applications and, in at least one case, a gambling addiction recovery app. This was a poor look for Apple. After all, the gambling category itself is already controversial — many developers would rather not share an app marketplace with these often predatory apps in the first place, much less have them advertised alongside their own. Apple at least moved quickly to respond to the backlash by “pausing” gambling ads and a few other categories on App Store product pages, but the company didn’t say how long this pause would last or what it planned to do about the situation in the long term. Spotify accuses Apple of anti-competitive behavior, this

Twitter will be delisted from the New York Stock Exchange on November 8 • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 28, 2022Posted in Apps, nyse, Startups, stock, TwitterNo Comments

Twitter’s stock will be delisted from the New York Stock Exchange and become a private company on November 8, according to a new filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. This comes a day after Elon Musk completed the company’s takeover after a lengthy ordeal. “The New York Stock Exchange hereby notifies the SEC of its intention to remove the entire class of the stated securities from listing and registration on the Exchange at the opening of business on November 08, 2022, pursuant to the provisions of Rule 12d2-2 (a),” the filing reads. It also indicated that the merger between Twitter and Musk’s subsidiary X Holdings II, Inc was complete. “The merger between Twitter, Inc. and X Holdings II, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of X Holdings I, Inc., wholly owned by Elon R. Musk became effective on October 27, 2022. Each share of Twitter, Inc. Common Stock was exchanged for USD 54.20 in cash, without interest and less any applicable withholding taxes. The Exchange also notifies the Securities and Exchange Commission that as a result of the above-indicated conditions this security was suspended from trading before market open on October 28, 2022.” At the time of writing, Twitter’s stock was trading at $53.70 — slightly lower than Musk’s buying price of $54.20. The story is developing…

Elon Musk will reportedly take the CEO role after exec exodus • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 28, 2022Posted in Apps, ceo, Elon Musk, trump, TwitterNo Comments

After Elon Musk completed his Twitter takeover, multiple reports and tweets from company employees suggested that he fired CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, general counsel Sean Edgett, and head of legal policy, trust and safety Vijaya Gadde were leaving the company immediately. Now he might take over the top job — at least for now. A report from Bloomberg suggested that Musk will take up the CEO position, but will hand it over to someone else in the long term. As a CEO he will have to take care of different challenges like user growth, revenue growth and content moderation hurdles. Agrawal, who took over from Jack Dorsey last year after the Twitter co-founder left the company, has had a strenuous relationship with Musk. The Tesla CEO famously tweeted a poop emoji in reply to Agarwal’s lengthy thread about spam on the platform. The process leading up to the Twitter v. Musk trial revealed a trove of texts between different investors and executives. While Agarwal and Musk began their conversation cordially, their relationship soured over time. Bloomberg’s report also mentioned that Musk plans to lift lifelong bans on users. Twitter famously banned former President Donald Trump last year for breaking the platform’s rules and over the “risk of further incitement of violence” following the U.S. Capitol attack. This step of unbanning all users might draw mixed reactions across the political spectrum, and will test the billionaire’s efforts as to how far he wants to go to make Twitter the “digital town square” he wants it to be. We have heard a lot about Musk’s ideas as the top man of Twitter. That included suggestions of building “X, an everything app” to monetizing tweets in different ways. There has been a lot of uncertainty around how the Tesla CEO will handle layoffs and restructure teams at the social network during the course of the whole takeover deal starting from April. While Twitter’s CEO, CFO, and top lawyers were fired today, several top executives including former GM of consumer, Keyvon Beykpour and former revenue product lead Bruce Falck have left the company since Musk initiated the deal. Given so many empty seats at top management, Musk has to bring in some top talent to execute things he wants to achieve at Twitter.

Xiaomi winds down financial services business in India • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 28, 2022Posted in Apps, Fintech, mi pay, Xiaomi, Xiaomi IndiaNo Comments

Xiaomi has quietly discontinued its financial services in India, less than three years after launching payment and lending apps in the key global market, two sources familiar with the matter told ZebethMedia, retreating from what analysts say is a $1 trillion opportunity. The Chinese giant recently pulled the Mi Pay and Mi Credit apps in the country from the local Play Store and its own app store. Mi Pay, which allowed users to make transactions on the nation’s UPI payments network, is also no longer listed among the recognized UPI apps by NPCI, an industry body that oversees UPI. Xiaomi and NPCI did not respond to a request for comment. The abrupt wind down of the financial services business is a setback for Xiaomi India, which commands the smartphone market in the country and has aggressively expanded its offerings to increase profits as the company’s hardware business operates on razor-thin margins. Xiaomi launched Mi Pay in India in March 2019. The app had amassed over 20 million registered users in the country that year itself, company executives said at the time. Later in the year, the company launched Mi Credit, an app that lent customers between $70 to $1,400 at low interest rates. It accessed users’ texts and call logs to look for transactions information and some other details to determine their credit-worthiness and approved loans to them through partners in a matter of minutes. In August last year, Xiaomi India’s then head Manu Jain told media outlets that the company was aiming to become one of the largest players in India’s fintech space through Mi Credit and Mi Pay apps. The company considered India as the biggest market for Mi Credit after China, he said. Scores of giants including Facebook and Google have entered India’s digital loan market, offering small businesses loans via partners. Digital lending is expected to be worth $1 trillion by 2025, according to estimates from the Boston Consulting Group. Jain, who has transitioned to a different role within the firm since, said last year that the company was looking to bring several more financial services including gold loans, credit line cards and insurance to the South Asian market. It’s unclear why Xiaomi discontinued the financial services offerings in the country, but the move comes at a time when India’s central bank has proposed stringent rules surrounding lending in India, mandating what all data they can access on a customer’s phone and broader disclosures about the terms of their credit agreement. Xiaomi has also been at the center of intense scrutiny from the Indian government agencies. The Indian Enforcement Directorate earlier this year seized bank accounts of Xiaomi India after finding that the company had remitted $725 million to three foreign-based entities “in the guise of royalty” payments. Executives of Xiaomi, which has refuted the charges and has legally challenged the ruling, faced threats of “physical violence” during their investigation with the ED, Reuters reported earlier.

Hidden Door wants to turn fiction into immersive roleplaying experiences • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in Apps, Battlefield 200, Disrupt, Gaming, hidden door, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022No Comments

The first season of “House of Dragon” just ended, and I find myself wishing for more. I’ve seen each episode twice already, read through the lore, and even re-watched some “Game of Thrones” episodes. If I had the option to immerse myself in that world and role-play as a dragon-riding Targaryen queen, you bet your ass I would do it. That’s eventually the vision of Hidden Door, a game studio that specializes in narrative AI and competed at ZebethMedia Disrupt’s Startup Battlefield 200 last week. Hidden Door wants to be able to turn any work of fiction into an immersive collaborative roleplaying experience, where players can jump into their favorite story worlds turned into dynamic graphic novels, with text and images being generated based on their choices. Hidden Door is currently testing out an adaptation of “The Wizard of Oz” because the story addresses various age groups and the original text is “so banana pants, which is perfect because it’s supposed to be silly and fun,” Matt Brandwein, Hidden Door’s co-founder, told ZebethMedia. What the platform looks like is a combination of Dungeons & Dragons and Roblox, where you have the vibe of a tabletop roleplaying game that allows you and your friends to “conjure” a story together — only with Hidden Door it doesn’t take four hours to get into character. An in-game AI dungeon master serves as the narrator and builds out a world based on the choices you make as you play. (The above YouTube demo is an early development preview, not the final experience, says Hidden Door.) To set up the game, the players can decide what characters, items, locations, tropes and vibes they want to encounter and “it all comes together like the dynamic back of a book, which doesn’t tell you everything that will happen, but it gives you the sorts of things you will encounter,” said Brandwein. When players choose a character type, the AI dynamically arts that character into a simplistic but cute 2D cartoon avatar. So, for example, a character called “Mischief Maker” might look something like Dennis the Menace in the Land of Oz. Once the character is chosen, the story begins and you’re given a challenge to complete, which you can do in any myriad of different ways based on how you choose to move through the game. The AI creates a host of responsively generated non-player characters, items and locations, which can then be collected, traded and shared with friends to make into new worlds and stories, according to Brandwein. “It’s a trope machine,” said Brandwein about his company’s narrative AI. “It’s trained on 2 million stories in addition to being fine tuned on the author’s work. It knows what sorts of things could plausibly happen, but also what’s implausible. And a lot of the work we’re doing right now is to fine tune it to have the right level of surprise, the right level of subterfuge.” Game studio Latitude last month came out with a similar type of game, AI Dungeon, which writes dialogue and scene descriptions using text-generating AI models. But the company has faced headwinds in both content and image generation. Hidden Door says its AI has the content generation part solved at least, and not only because the model was trained on millions of stories. The more the game is played, the bigger the world gets. Artifacts are created out of that play, which you can share with other players who can mix them into their own stories. Hilary Mason, Hidden Door’s CEO, said the creativity of the players coupled with the machine’s ability to riff off those ideas is a breakthrough on the impossible problem of generative storytelling. The company’s next move is to work with a dozen “fairly well known” sci-fi and fantasy authors who are interested in world building and want to loosely define a world for their fans to inhabit in order to “make this more of a community collaborative entertainment experience,” said Brandwein. “Beyond that, the vision we have for this is that someday, you know, if you’re on Amazon, or something like it, you can read the book, you can listen to the book, and then you might just play the book or whatever it is,” Brandwein continued. “Or if you look at Netflix’s game strategy, it’s some very trivial free-to-play game. But why can’t you put yourself into ‘Bridgerton’ and seduce the dude?” Netflix attempted an immersive TV experience a few years back with “Black Mirror: Bandersnatch” which gave players an option to choose their own adventure. But that was pre-scripted, only giving you an A or a B at every moment, said Brandwein. Hidden Door recently raised a $7 million seed round led by Makers Fund with participation from Northzone and Betaworks. The startup is testing its current product with a cohort of nine to 12 year olds, and is actively looking for authors to collaborate with for future stories, as well as other potential tech partners with an interest in generative AI.

Skidattl’s augmented reality beacons are ‘like a Bat-Signal for fun’ • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in Apps, Battlefield 200, Commerce, Disrupt, skidattl, Startups, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022No Comments

Skidattl wants to use augmented reality to get people to engage with the real world. It’s a story we’ve heard before from AR companies, particularly as they pit themselves against the potentially isolating effects of virtual reality. But rather than chasing metaversal Pokémon creatures on the street, Skidattl aims to use AR “beacons” to show people what’s going on around them. Randy Marsden, Skidattl co-founder, said they will be like “a Bat-Signal for fun” once the app launches. Anyone can make a beacon and anyone can see them. Businesses might set up beacons, which have a one-hour life span, to advertise two-for-one coffee sales, movie times or open bowling lanes. People might shoot up a beacon at a music festival to help their friends find them in the crowd. All a user would have to do is scan the horizon with their phone, or eventually with AR glasses, to see an array of beacons at up to 100 yards of distance, said Marsden. When Skidattl exhibited as part of the Battlefield 200 at TC Disrupt last week, the company had an AR beacon over its booth to demonstrate what it might look like. “Of course, you can look at a map and say, ‘What’s near me?’ but this pulls you back into the real world,” Marsden told ZebethMedia, noting that he is an Apple alum and a two-time ZebethMedia Battlefield finalist for previous companies — Swype (technically TC50) and Dryft (Disrupt SF 2013). Skidattl’s AR beacons will be anchored by GPS coordinates in the real world. To locate where a user is in relation to that beacon, Skidattl uses Google’s ARCore Geospatial API, which relies on Street View data. “When you launch the app, it’ll tell you to scan the buildings across the street, and within a few seconds, it will know where you are,” said Marsden. “And then those beacons are anchored; they don’t move around.” When people want to set up beacons indoors, Skidattl will also use Wi-Fi signals to help position users against the location of those beacons. Skidattl is still in its angel funding stage and alpha tech stage, but the startup hopes to go to market with a freemium business model — meaning it will be free to use but Skidattl can monetize through premium subscriptions, in-app purchases and affiliate commissions. Like any new social media app, Skidattl will have to battle the chicken-and-egg problem — no one will want to use it if there’s not plenty of beacons already lit up, but there can’t be any lit-up beacons without people on the app. “I think we can kickstart the business side pretty easily by giving them a free beacon,” said Marsden. “On the customer side, getting YouTube and TikTok influencers to talk about it, place ads with ZebethMedia and that sort of thing. And then once we have someone in the app, we can give them incentives for sharing with their contacts.” (It goes without saying, but ZebethMedia ad sales are totally separate from editorial.) Skidattl is currently trying to raise $500,000 to finish the minimum viable product and get the money it needs to officially launch its app at South by Southwest in March, Marsden said.

YouTube redesign gives long-form videos, Shorts and Live videos their own tabs on channel pages • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in Apps, Creators, Media & Entertainment, shorts, Videos, YouTube, YouTube ShortsNo Comments

YouTube is rolling out a change impacting how videos appear on its platform. The company today announced a redesign that now splits video content into three different tabs on all channel pages — one for YouTube’s traditional long-form content, another for YouTube Shorts only, and a third for Live videos, including past, current and upcoming live streams. The changes will allow users to more easily access the types of YouTube videos they want to watch — a move YouTube says it made based on user feedback. In an announcement, the company said it heard from viewers they wanted to be able to navigate to the kinds of content they were most interested in when exploring a creator’s channel page, leading to this makeover. The update also means that Shorts content and Live streams will no longer be found in the main Videos tab on the channel page — something that could appeal to longtime YouTube viewers who haven’t appreciated the infiltration of YouTube’s short-form content into their favorite channel’s video feed in recent months. However, for those who do like watching Shorts, the redesign gives YouTube a way to direct them to more short-form videos. Now, when users are watching Shorts videos in the Shorts feed in the main YouTube app, then navigate to the creator’s channel, they’ll be sent directly into this new Shorts tab to watch even more Shorts content. This could help YouTube boost its views for Shorts as those users will no longer be immediately lost to the creator’s long-form content, as before. Initial feedback from users on Twitter responding to YouTube’s post about the changes has been positive, as users are expressing their appreciation for giving each type of content its own separate category. The redesign follows another major update to YouTube this month which introduced, at long last, YouTube handles in the @username format. These usernames will now allow creators to identify their channel and interact with their viewers across YouTube Shorts, channel pages, in video descriptions, in comments and more. YouTube says the tabbed redesign is rolling out starting today and will be available to all users across all devices in the weeks ahead.

Apple earnings see iPhone revenues up, still short of forecast • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in Apple, Apps, earnings, Hardware, iPad, iPhoneNo Comments

Sometimes earnings leave you wondering how good is good enough. Take, for example, Apple’s Q4, which finds the iPhone maker beating Wall Street expectations overall, but still seeing an extended trading stock dip after iPhone sales were improved, but still managed to miss the mark. Revenue hit $90.15 billion for the quarter, edging out the $88.9 billion estimates and rising roughly 8% over this time last year. iPhone revenue, too, saw a healthy uptick of 9.6% on the strength of the new iPhone lineup, though the $42.63 figure fell short of Wall Street’s $43.21 project enough to see a dip in late trading. Mac revenues saw double-digit revenue gains for the quarter, at $11.51 billion. The ever-important Services sector, meanwhile, saw a (relatively) modest y-o-y bump to $19.19 billion – making it another category that just failed to miss the mark of $20.10 billion. iPads, which only recently saw a refresh, were down 13% from last year. The numbers, of course, arrive in the face of significant economic headwinds. In a release, CFO Luca Maestri notes, “Our record September quarter results continue to demonstrate our ability to execute effectively in spite of a challenging and volatile macroeconomic backdrop.” Tim Cook, meanwhile, used the opportunity to discuss environment concerns. In a separate interview with CNBC, however, Apple’s CEO addressed inflationary and other issues that stalled a potentially larger overall revenue growth for the behemoth. Cook expained, “We would have grown in double digits without the foreign exchange headwinds.” Specifically, the company was hurt by the US dollar’s strength. He added that the company has joined a number of other tech giants in slowing its overall pace of hiring, saying that Apple is instead doing so “deliberately.”

Uber to freeze fake rider account names, pilot front-facing video recording • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in Apps, Transportation, UberNo Comments

Uber is releasing a suite of new safety features geared towards the driver, including freezing fake rider account names and piloting a front-facing video recording tool to replace a driver’s dashcam. The safety features follow a feedback period from drivers that Uber began this summer. It looks like drivers have been having a hard time with fake user names. Uber, in its attempt to prevent discrimination based on name, has allowed riders to update their names in the app. The result is some users changed their names to cartoon characters or “even offensive language” which Uber said “can lead to challenging pickups or uncomfortable situations for drivers.” Uber will conduct a large audit of rider account names and freeze any accounts with clearly fake names. Riders will have to update or validate their account names with Uber’s support agents to have their accounts unblocked, the company said. Drivers will also be able to flag any fake or inappropriate names in their app’s Help section. Uber is also expanding its audio recording feature and piloting front-facing video recording. The ride-hail giant says in-app audio recording during rides has helped it determine the best course of action after a safety incident, and it’s helped riders and drivers feel safer when using the app. Uber has been piloting audio recording in three U.S. cities over the past year, and will now expand to six new U.S. cities next month, including Cincinnati, Nashville, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, San Antonio and Tucson. The video recording trial, which will take place in Cincinnati, Louisville and New York City in the U.S. and Santos and João Pessoa in Brazil, will allow drivers to record video using the front-facing camera on their smartphone. The idea is to replace an interior-facing dashcam with a much cheaper and easier to set up alternative, and it will allow drivers to record both video and audio on every trip, the company said. As with the audio recording feature, no one, including the driver, can access the recording unless the driver wants to share it with Uber to find information in a safety-related incident, Uber said. Uber also revealed some new road safety features on Thursday. The company said its in-app navigation system will now suggest fewer left turns, which according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, result in 22% of crashes. The navigation will also alert drivers to “watch for cross traffic” when approaching an intersection without a four-way stop.

Snapchat reduces total payouts for Spotlight creators • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in Apps, Snapchat, SocialNo Comments

Snapchat has changed the way it pays creators through its Spotlight reward fund. Creators that use Snapchat’s TikTok clone, Spotlight, will now be paid millions per year, a source familiar with the matter told ZebethMedia. This marks the second time Snapchat has reduced the payout. In 2021, the company rewarded creators millions per week, down from $1 million a day in 2020. While Snapchat is lowering the amount, the source noted to ZebethMedia that it’s paying more creators in more markets. It’s also important to note that the minimum payout per Spotlight will remain at $250. Last year, Snapchat paid $250 million to over 12,000 creators. They also pointed to other ways Snapchat creators earn a profit, including the Creator Marketplace, Sound Creator Fund, its accelerator program for black creators, Spotlight Challenges and in-app gifting. In February, the app tested revenue sharing on ads in Snapchat stories for Snap Stars. Snapchat recently announced it’s awarding a total of $100,000 across 12 Spotlight Challenges for Halloween. The move to lower fund spending for Spotlight was likely made as another way to boost profit and spend less of its revenue. Earlier this year, CEO Evan Spiegel announced that Snapchat was testing ads on the Spotlight. In August, Snapchat downsized its workforce by 20%. Last week, Snapchat reported its Q3 results, missing analyst expectations on revenue. The company still did relatively well, earning $1.13 billion, an increase of 6% for the quarter. However, Snapchat’s net loss rose to $360 million. On a more positive note, the company said Spotlight performed well this quarter and helped increase the overall total time spent watching content.