Apps

Numerous social apps see gains in wake of Twitter chaos, new data shows • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 11, 2022Posted in Apps, Elon Musk, Social, social apps, TwitterNo Comments

The drama at Twitter following Elon Musk’s acquisition has seen some users looking for an exit. In recent days, alternative social apps and microblogging platforms have seen strong gains, including, most notably, the open-source decentralized Twitter alternative Mastodon. The service’s founder and CEO recently announced Mastodon had topped 1 million monthly active users, after more than half a million users joined the network since the October 27th deal’s closure. But Mastodon isn’t the only app profiting from Twitter’s upheaval. In a new report, app intelligence firm Sensor Tower analyzed social app growth after Musk took over. It noted Mastodon has seen approximately 322,000 new downloads from U.S. app stores in the 12 days following Twitter’s acquisition (Oct. 27 through Nov. 7), which is more than 100x the 3,000 it had seen in the prior 12-day period. Globally, the app grew 657% to 1 million installs during that same Oct. 27-Nov. 7 timeframe, up from 15,000 in the 12 days prior. Other third-party Mastodon clients saw a bump, too, with Metatext and Tootle both growing from less than 1,000 installs to 19,000 and 7,000, respectively, between the two time periods. But Mastodon isn’t the only network seeing an uptick in app installs, as it turns out. Tumblr also saw its U.S. app installs grow 96% from 47,000 to 92,000 between the two time periods. Plus, its global installs grew 77% from 170,000 to 301,000. Image Credits: Sensor Tower In addition, alternative social app CounterSocial grew 2,300% to 24,000 installs in U.S. app stores in the 12 days following the acquisition, and grew 3,200% globally, with 33,000 installs, the report said. Another app intelligence firm, data.ai, sliced the data in a slightly different way. It examined various social apps’ worldwide download growth during a 7-day period following the acquisition (Oct. 27 through Nov 2), then compared that with the prior 7-day period. Its data, shared exclusively with ZebethMedia, also confirmed the sizable gains made by Mastodon and CounterSocial in terms of the growth in global installs between the two time periods. Mastodon’s installs jumped 2,200% and CounterSocial’s grew 1,200% its analysis found. But Data.ai looked further up and down the apps stores’ charts and found that a number of other social apps were seeing bumps, beyond just direct Twitter alternatives. These included David’s Disposable (up 83% during the two time periods), nFollowers (up 50%), CocoFun (up 46%), Substack Reader (up 24%), Tribel (up 11%), Tumblr (up 7%), and Pinterest (up 2%). Substack, in particular, has been marketing itself as a social community following the Twitter acquisition, even launching a new discussions feature that allows writers and their audience to engage in threaded chats. Dispo had fun trolling Twitter’s chaos in a couple of tweets and memes, like one that celebrated how Musk doesn’t own the Dispo app. Image Credits: data.aiThis isn’t to say the drama has been all bad for Twitter. Surprisingly, some people have even newly installed the app since the acquisition, as it turns out. Data.ai shows Twitter’s app installs jumped 17% after the acquisition, while Sensor Tower’s look at the slightly longer timeframe saw a 21% increase. The latter said Twitter saw 7.6 million global installs and $502,000 in consumer spending in the 12 days after the acquisition, an increase from 6.3 million installs and $303,000 in spending in the prior 12-day period. These consumer spending numbers, however, should be taken with a grain of salt for now as Twitter Blue’s launch was put on pause after being live for only a couple of days. There’s no reason to believe that these figures indicate, as of yet, a significant increase in demand for the subscription with long-term staying power. That data will come in time. If anything, it shows Musk’s ability to market things to his fanbase and users’ general curiosity about what’s going on with Twitter’s products at present. Image Credits: sensor tower Though Twitter may have seen slight gains this week, not everyone is happy about the changes. Some angrier Twitter users took out their angst over the acquisition in the Twitter app’s reviews on the App Store. On Nov. 5, 2022, the app saw a spike in negative ratings as 119 1-star iOS reviews were added — the most it has seen in a single day during this latest surge in negative reviews, also according to data from Sensor Tower. However, this isn’t the biggest surge of negative reviews Twitter has ever seen, we understand. Other incidents have caused larger bumps. After Trump was banned, for instance, Twitter saw 801 1-star reviews on Jan. 9, 2021. It also saw a surge in March 2022 after the new timeline was rolled out and in April and when Elon Musk said he was buying Twitter. Its largest spike in negative reviews this year wasn’t even this week — it was on Oct. 28, when Musk’s deal was finalized. Overall, however, it was the Israel-Palestine crisis in May 2021 that resulted in the highest volume of new negative reviews, followed by the Trump ban.

YouTube’s new ‘Live Q&A’ feature makes it easier to manage questions during livestreams • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 11, 2022Posted in Apps, livestreams, Media & Entertainment, YouTubeNo Comments

YouTube is introducing a new “Live Q&A” feature that is designed to make it easier for creators to interact with viewers during livestreams. When creators start a Q&A, the prompt will appear as a pinned message in the chat. Viewers can then submit their questions and creators can select one and pin it, so viewers know what the creator is responding to. In the past, creators have had to parse through a flood of questions submitted in the live chat. The new feature will surface questions in an organized way that’s easier for creators to manage. When you’re done with the Q&A session, you can go back to the standard live chat. “Live Q&A lets you create and manage Q&A sessions in live chat during your streams and Premieres right from Live Control Room (LCR),” YouTube said in a blog post. “With Live Q&A you can more easily build community while replying to a series of on-topic questions written by your viewers. This option will appear alongside Live Polls, another great way for you to interact with those watching your stream.” YouTube says that questions are ordered chronologically, with the ones submitted first appearing at the top. Although there isn’t a maximum number of questions allowed, the oldest ones in the list will no longer appear after 200 have been submitted. Image Credits: YouTube Questions that are submitted through Live Q&A are managed by the same systems that allow creators to moderate live chat. It’s worth noting that moderators can’t manage questions in Live Q&As, but users with Manager or Editor channel permissions will be able to manage the Q&A list, which means they can view the questions list, select questions to answer and remove questions. The launch of the new feature comes as YouTube is looking to compete with Twitch and TikTok, the latter of which has its own dedicated Q&A feature for livestreams. As YouTube focuses on competing with other platforms, the company has beefed up its livestream offering with new features. YouTube has a Super Thanks feature that allows viewers who want to show extra appreciation for a video to pay creators with one of four pre-set amounts, ranging between $2 and $50. The company also has a Super Chat monetization feature, which is a way for creators to make money from their livestreams. There’s also a Super Stickers feature that is aimed at fans who want to show their support and connect with their favorite creators. Youtube announced last week that it’s gearing up to roll out a new feature that will allow select creators to invite a guest to go live with them. At launch, creators will only be able to co-stream via a phone, as the feature won’t be available on the desktop version of YouTube. The new feature will initially only be available to a select group of creators, but YouTube plans to expand co-streaming to more creators in the future.

DeviantArt provides a way for artists to opt out of AI art generators • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 11, 2022Posted in AI, Apps, deviantART, Media & Entertainment, Robotics & AI, text-to-imageNo Comments

DeviantArt, the Wix-owned artist community, today announced a new protection for creators to disallow art-generating AI systems from being developed using their artwork. An option on the site will allow artists to preclude third parties from scraping their content for AI development purposes, aiming to prevent work from being swept up without artists’ knowledge or permission. “AI technology for creation is a powerful force we can’t ignore. . . . It would be impossible for DeviantArt to try to block or censor this art technology,” CEO Moti Levy told ZebethMedia in an email interview. “We see so many instances where AI tools help artists’ creativity, allowing them to express themselves in ways they could not in the past. That said, we believe we have a responsibility to all creators. To support AI art, we must also implement fair tools and add protections in this domain.” As AI-generated artwork began to proliferate on the web earlier this year, fueled by the release of text-to-image tools like Stable Diffusion and DALL-E 2, art-housing platforms were forced to take a policy stance. Some, including Newgrounds, PurplePort and Getty Images, banned AI-generated art altogether, concerned both about the impact to artists and the legal ramifications of art created by tools that were developed on copyrighted works. Today’s bleeding-edge AI art tools “learn” to generate new images from text prompts by “training” on billions of existing images, which often come from data sets that were scraped together by trawling public image hosting websites like Flickr and ArtStation. Some legal experts suggest that training AI models by scraping public images — even copyrighted ones — will likely be covered by fair use doctrine in the U.S. But it’s a matter that’s unlikely to be settled anytime soon — particularly in light of contrasting laws being proposed overseas. OpenAI, the company behind DALL-E 2, took the proactive step of licensing a portion of the images in DALL-E 2’s training data set. But the license was limited in scope, and rivals so far haven’t followed suit. “Many creators are rightfully critical of AI-generation models and tools. For one, they do not give creators control over how their art may be used to train models, nor do they let creators decide if they authorize their style to be used as inspiration in generating images,” Levy continued. “As a result, many creators have seen AI models being trained with their art or worse: AI art being generated in their style without the ability to opt out or receive proper credit.” Art created with DeviantArt’s DreamUp tool. Image Credits: Digitonaut / DeviantArt DeviantArt’s new protection will rely on an HTML tag to prohibit the software robots that crawl pages for images from downloading those images for training sets. Artists who specify that their content can’t be used for AI system development will have “noai” and “noimageai” directives appended to the HTML page associated with their art. In order to remain in compliance with DeviantArt’s updated terms of service, third parties using DeviantArt-sourced content for AI training will have to ensure that their data sets exclude content that has the tags present, Levy says. “DeviantArt expects all users accessing our service or the DeviantArt site to respect creators’ choices about the acceptable use of their content, including for AI purposes,” Levy added. “When a DeviantArt user doesn’t consent to third party use of their content for AI purposes, other users of the service and third parties accessing the DeviantArt site are prohibited from using such content to train an AI system, as input into any previously trained AI system or to make available any derivative copy unless usage of that copy is subject to conditions at least as restrictive as those set out in the DeviantArt terms of service.” It’s an attempt to give power back to artists like Greg Rutkowski, whose classical painting styles and fantasy landscapes have become one of the most commonly used prompts in the AI art generator Stable Diffusion — much to his chagrin. Rutkowski and others have expressed concern that AI-generated art imitating their styles will crowd out their original works, harming their income as people start using AI-generated images for commercial purposes. The tools have set off firestorms of controversy in recent months. A system trained to imitate the style of acclaimed South Korean illustrator Kim Jung Gi, who passed away suddenly in early October, was condemned by many in the art community as a tasteless stunt. After winning a prize at the Colorado State Fair’s art competition, artwork made by AI set off a fierce backlash. Elsewhere, character designers like Hollie Mengert have decried what they see as poor AI imitations of their style that are nevertheless inexorably tied to their names. For DeviantArt’s part, it’s encouraging creator platforms to adopt artist protections and says it’s already in discussions about implementation with “several players.” But it’s unclear whether it’ll be able to rally the broader industry behind its approach; less scrupulous actors could theoretically ignore DeviantArt’s terms of service to scrape images regardless of HTML tag. Technologists Mat Dryhurst and Holly Herndon are spearheading a separate effort called Source+ to let people disallow their work or likeness to be used for AI training purposes. Meanwhile, Shutterstock is banning all AI art not created with DALL-E 2 to mitigate copyright issues (and likely to preserve its partnership with OpenAI). Image Credits: Digitonaut / DeviantArt Unlike Shutterstock, DeviantArt has allowed — and will continue to allow — art generated with third-party AI tools on its platform, Levy says, though it encourages users uploading AI-generated art to tag it as such. He claims that tens of thousands of images tagged as “AI-art” are being submitted to DeviantArt each month, growing over 1,000% in the last four months. “Since DeviantArt’s inception, we’ve never believed in blocking any art genres or categories. We have always made room for and supported all types of creators and their works,” Levy said. Beyond simply allowing AI art, DeviantArt is committing to

Have you tried turning it off and on again, Elon? • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 11, 2022Posted in Apps, Elon, elon buys twitter, Twitter, twitter blue, verificationNo Comments

A few days ago, new Twitter owner Elon Musk said that the company will try a lot of dumb things in the coming days. And that seems to be the product strategy of the company — even if it causes utter chaos all around. It’s a tough time for anyone keeping tabs on changes at the social network because anything can flip anytime without warning. Blinked a few times? Something has changed. Went to make coffee? A lot has changed. Went to sleep? Welcome to a new world. Earlier this week, Twitter launched its grey-colored official checkmark for notable accounts like companies and politicians. This was meant to be a second layer of identification after Musk declared that everyone paying $8 a month will get the original blue check mark. But within hours of the launch, he “killed it.” On the other hand, the company’s product manager Esther Crawford clarified that the grey “Official” labels are “still going out” as a part of the new Twitter Blue product. As of this morning on Friday, The official check mark is back (kinda) — but to a limited number of accounts. There is no clarity on how this is being rolled out. Beat this plot, Christopher Nolan. Then there is the new $8 Twitter Blue plan, which Musk thinks is the savior of Twitter (and possibly humanity). It began rolling out to iOS users in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the U.K. The only feature it currently has is the blue checkmark, and yes, new users can’t sign up for it. After this was rolled out, a bunch of accounts started to troll brands, athletes, and officials making it look like they are tweeting from official accounts. Despite several bans and blocks, many accounts are still spreading misinformation. A lot of these tweets are getting thousands of likes and retweets. Until now, we don’t know of any grave consequences but this can cause a lot of damage. Only if Twitter had strong leaders in security, legal, comms, and trust and safety teams. Twitter has changed its policy about parody accounts saying that they should specify this in both their names and bio to avoid impersonation. Notably, the language used in these policy changes is crude and vague. At the time of writing, Twitter seems to have turned off Twitter Blue subscriptions across the globe. As app researcher Jane Manchun Wong noted, the company is not letting users subscribe to this new plan. This could be a result of a premature rollout in countries like India, and it could also be another “killed it.” Maybe by the time you’re reading this, it might be available again who knows? There is a lot happening on Twitter at breakneck speed. New policy pages are popping up without corresponding features being available on the app. The company is probably rolling out changes to production directly from the development environment. Timelines are breaking. There are tons of bugs on the platform. Spam has increased. Musk has called off remote work and said the company could go bankrupt. Hoards of executives have left. But everything is fine, and Twitter is the most interesting place on earth.

Google Play to pilot third-party billing in new markets, including U.S.; Bumble joins Spotify as early tester • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 10, 2022Posted in AppsNo Comments

Google today announced it’s expanding its user choice billing pilot, which allows Android app developers to use other payment systems besides Google’s own. The program will now become available to new markets, including the U.S., Brazil and South Africa, and Bumble will now join Spotify as one of the pilot testers. The company additionally announced Spotify will now begin rolling out its implementation of the program this week. The company had first announced its intention to launch a third-party billing option back in March of this year, with Spotify as the initial tester. Since then, the program has steadily expanded. Last month, for example, Google invited other non-game developers to apply for the user choice billing program in select markets, including India, Australia, Indonesia, Japan and the European Economic Area (EEA). The company had also introduced a similar policy for developers in the EEA region in July, but the new guidelines raised the commission discount from 3% to 4% for developers who opted in. Today, Google says it’s been working with Spotify to help develop the experience and now the streaming music service will begin to put the new features into action in supported markets. The experience could still change over time, the company warned, as this is still the early days of the pilot test. In addition, Bumble has now joined Google to test user choice billing in its own app, with plans to roll out the options to users in select countries in the coming months. Developers interested in adopting user choice billing have to follow certain UX guidelines set by Google that detail how to implement the feature in their apps. These guidelines currently require developers to display an information screen and a separate billing choice screen. The information screen only has to be shown to each user the first time they initiate a purchase, but the billing choice screen must be shown before every purchase, the rules state. There are other requirements around when and how to display the screens and how the user interface should appear. With the launch, Spotify users on Android will see a new user interface that allows them to choose how they want to pay for their Spotify subscription (see image below.). For the first time, the two options — Google Play billing and Spotify billing — will appear side-by-side. If the user selects Google Play billing, they’ll be transitioned to the usual experience and will be able to track their subscription in the Google Play Store’s Subscription Center. If the user selects Spotify billing, they’ll then continue within Spotify’s own checkout process and user experience. This test will become available in a few markets at first, then expand to others over the coming weeks, Spotify says. Image Credits: Spotify “Spotify has been publicly advocating for platform fairness and expanded payment options for years. We believe that fair and open platforms enable better, frictionless consumer experiences that also empower developers to imagine, innovate, and thrive,” a Spotify blog post stated. While the general terms offer a 4% reduction in commissions paid to Google when user choice billing is used, Spotify wouldn’t comment on its confidential deal with Google. It’s unclear if the company has been offered more favorable terms as an early adopter. The changes follow a period when the major app stores from Apple and Google have been under pressure from lawmakers and regulators in global markets to open up their ecosystems. This includes pressure to give developers the ability to use third-party payment systems and allow developers to inform customers of other ways to pay, among other things. In addition, some developers have taken to suing the app giants directly. In the U.S., for instance, Fortnite maker Epic Games sued both Apple and Google for their alleged monopolistic practices due to their restrictions around in-app payments and for the right to distribute apps and games directly to end users outside the app stores themselves. Dating app giant Match is suing Google as well. (Which makes Google’s choice to invite Bumble into the program that much more interesting!) Other companies have been lobbying lawmakers for more app store openness, as well, through organizations like the Coalition for App Fairness, which includes big-name developers like Epic Games, Spotify, Tile and others, including indie developers. Google and Apple are also under investigation in various markets, with the Justice Department in the early stages of filing an antitrust suit against Apple and EU antitrust officials investigating the Play Store.

Meet Pineapple, the platform aiming to reshape professional networking for Gen Z • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 10, 2022Posted in Apps, pineapple, professional networking, SocialNo Comments

Pineapple, an app that’s aiming to reshape professional networking for Gen Z, is officially launching to the public today. The idea behind Pineapple is to give young professionals a way to network with others through a visual story profile that’s kind of like a digital portfolio. For now, the platform is only available on iOS. The professional network is the brainchild of Pineapple’s 22-year-old co-founder and CEO David Diamond, who got an early start in tech as a product design intern at Intercom at age 15. Diamond was initially rejected from Intercom after applying with a standard paper resume and was also told he was too young to work there. After strengthening his resume and building a portfolio, Diamond says he landed the role. “I started to think about how I landed the job and how lucky I was,” Diamond told ZebethMedia in an interview. “I wondered, if I had to put together a portfolio, what was the rest of my generation doing? From there, we had a clear vision of building a professional network for Gen Z. We saw that other networks weren’t accurately representing Gen Z. We wanted to make a network that helps Gen Z network with each other and gain opportunities, rather than focusing on creating another jobs board. The goal was to give users profiles that really represent them.” In 2020, Diamond founded Pineapple alongside Oliver Cruise with the goal of changing professional networking for Gen Z. After beta testing the platform with 10,000 users, Pineapple is now ready to grow. Image Credits: Pineapple Diamond says the main focus of Pineapple is user profiles, which are designed to help create deep and meaningful professional connections by allowing users to express themselves in a visual way. The app’s profiles are a cross between LinkedIn and Instagram, as they showcase a user’s introduction, experience, projects and more in a visual Story-like way. Another big part of Pineapple is Communities, which aim to help users find other people who are passionate about the the same thing as them. From VCs to marketers to designers, there are specific communities for all sorts of topics. You can see the member directory for each community and connect with specific people. Within Communities, there are Jams, which are threaded conversations for discussions that last for 24 hours. Jams can be used to go in-depth about a specific topic. For instance, a founder can start a Jam to answer questions that people may have about their journey. Pineapple also includes an Explore page where you can discover more Jams, people and communities. The app also has a TikTok-inspired For You page that is designed to help you keep up with your connections. Some may see Pineapple as the “LinkedIn for Gen Z,” but Diamond says the platform still has a ways to go before looking to take on LinkedIn. Right now, Pineapple is focused on helping people network in different ways than LinkedIn is. For instance, Diamond says that some young users may use LinkedIn to find a mentor, but Pineapple is where they can come to network with their peers, learn new things and find people for their side projects. Pineapple also isn’t focused on status/job updates or the hustle culture that is often associated with LinkedIn, Diamond says. Image Credits: Pineapple For the time being, Pineapple is going to focus on growth before venturing into monetization. When Pineapple is ready to add monetization features to its platform, Diamond says the company will focus on helping creators earn money. One of the ways the company plans to due this is through creator subscriptions where popular creators will be able to offer educational content to users for a price. In addition, Pineapple hopes to partner with companies who will be able to recruit employees directly from the platform. “We want to be the go-to professional network for Gen Z and folks who are early on in their career,” Diamond says. “From a roadmap standpoint, we want Pineapple to be the obvious solution for people who are starting their career. I think in order to do that, we need to up our game when it comes to profile-building. I think you should be able to build a mini-website within Pineapple, and I don’t think there should be a need to ever have a portfolio website if you have Pineapple.” In terms of funding, Pineapple raised a $1.1 million pre-seed round in April that was co-led by F7 Ventures and 500 Global. The round included participation from angel investors Bradley Horowitz, the VP of product at Google, and Julie Zhou, the former VP of design at Facebook. Diamond says the funding mainly went toward research and development, along with making key early hires. Pineapple is kicking off its seed round soon and plans to close it sometime next year.

Coefficient wants to bring live data into your existing spreadsheets • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 10, 2022Posted in analytics, Apps, battery ventures, business intelligence, Coefficient, Enterprise, startup, StartupsNo Comments

With the explosive adoption of software-as-a-service (SaaS) apps, the average company now has more than 100 SaaS apps to manage — leading to data being siloed across countless different systems. That makes analysis challenging. To wit, according to Forrester, between 60% and 73% of all data within an enterprise goes unused for analytics. Ideally, analysts need something that connects disparate enterprise systems, like business intelligence and analytics tools. But these tools are often complex and unintuitive, leading employees to spend hours each day searching and gathering information. In search of an answer, Navneet Loiwal teamed up with Tommy Tsai, with whom he’d previously founded an e-commerce app, to build Coefficient, an app that brings live data into Google Sheets and other existing spreadsheet platforms. “Tsai and I had worked on consumer technologies for many years, and we saw a big opportunity to bring consumer-grade experiences to companies,” Loiwal told ZebethMedia in an email interview. Loiwal was previously a software developer at Google working on AdWords, while Tsai was an early engineer at location-sharing smartphone app Loopt. “Most data products are designed for the technical user, which results in a poor user experience and low adoption for business users. We wanted to bring the power of technical products to the business user with the simplicity that they expect in their consumer lives.” To this end, Coefficient — which today closed an $18 million Series A funding round — is designed to cut down on the number of manual and repetitive tasks business users have to complete daily to cross-reference data across systems. The platform lays on top of Google Sheets (with support for Excel forthcoming), bringing in data from customer relationship management (CRMs) systems, SQL databases and other SaaS tools. Using Coefficient, users can create, share and automate live reports, set up alerts and write data back to connected SaaS tools. A template gallery provides pre-made spreadsheet dashboards for common reports used by business operations teams (think team KPIs, leadership dashboards and decks and revenue analyses), which users can integrate with existing data systems to enable live data to power all charts within their spreadsheets. Coefficient’s spreadsheet add-on. Image Credits: Coefficient “Business users are more technical in the spreadsheet than anywhere else, yet business teams are often forced to resort to archaic methods of managing data — requesting frequent updates from technical teams with data expertise or exporting raw data from dashboards or CRMs to report repeat, manual analysis, reducing team efficiency and productivity,” Loiwal said. “Coefficient’s products extend the reach of advanced, connected data and analytics to business users, enabling the business to become more self-sufficient through real-time connectivity to the data in their source systems from where they’re working: in spreadsheets.” That’s a lot to promise. And to be sure, Coefficient isn’t the first to attempt this sort of thing. Startups like Airtable and Smartsheet already offer spreadsheet-like UIs to organize business data. Others have tried to put their own spins on the formula, like spreadsheets with apps and spreadsheets with granular access controls. Indeed, at first glance, Coefficient sounds a lot like Actiondesk, which similarly connects with databases, CRMs and SaaS tools to feed live data into Excel and Google Sheets spreadsheets. Like Coefficient, Actiondesk supports common formulas and offers templates for getting started. But to its credit, Coefficient got off to an auspicious start — Loiwal claims that Zendesk, Spotify, Foursquare, Contentful and Miro are among its customers. Combined, tens of thousands of people are currently using the platform. “We are seeing our customers grow their contracts with us despite undergoing layoffs — a testament to the value proposition of making business teams more efficient,” Loiwal said. “Additionally, with increased remote work and complex economic headwinds, companies need their employees to become more self-sufficient.” Loiwal says that the proceeds from the Series A will be put toward expanding Coefficient’s product offerings and “scaling global operations.” In the coming months, the startup plans to add new SaaS system integrations and expand the scope of its reporting automation tools. Battery Ventures led Coefficient’s Series A with participation from Foundation Capital and S28 Capital. To date, the company has raised $24.7 million in capital. Neeraj Agrawal, a general partner at Battery Ventures, added: “It is a testament to the Coefficient team’s product craftsmanship that users become evangelists, promoting use of the product throughout the organization … Coefficient products equip business users with the tools and automation needed to reach peak performance, a critical advantage amid an unpredictable macroeconomic environment.”

“Self-therapy” startups are blooming in the ‘moderate mental health’ space • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 10, 2022Posted in Apps, Biotech & Health, StartupsNo Comments

Mental health problems – and the tech products which aim at them – come in all shapes and sizes. There are ‘mental wellness’ products like Calm and Headspace. On the more severe side of things there is Cerebral, Betterhelp, and, of course, marketplaces for actual, card-carrying therapists. If you have more moderate mental health problems there are players such as Noom (raised $657.3M) with NoomMood, NASDAQ-listed Talkspace with Lasting, and Youper (raised $3.5M) which offers self-guided CBT therapy. Also in the CBT field there are chatbots like Woebot (raised $123.3M) and Journals like Alan Mind that leverage CBT. In this ‘moderate mental health’ problems space is also Bloom, a New York-based digital mental health “self-therapy” startup that claims it can help with mild to moderate mental health problems. The startup says its users become “their own therapist” by using cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) via video self-therapy sessions, to address stress, anxiety, and sleep issues. All the sessions are devised by Dr. Seth Gillihan, author on CBT and Bloom’s Head of Therapy and CBT. It’s now secured a $8m seed round, led by Berlin-based VC Target Global. Also participating was Elysian Park Ventures, Angelpad and Sequoia Scout, plus founders as Scott Chacon (Github), Dominik Richter (HelloFresh), Niklas Jansen (Blinkist), Roland Grenke (Dubsmash), Joshua Cornelius & Mehmet Yilmaz (Freeletics), Ryan Bubinski (Codecademy), Mariya Nurislamova (Scentbird). So a pretty European-band line-up of Angels. Leon Mueller, Bloom’s CEO and co-founder says “Bloom is doing for therapy what Calm and Headspace have done for meditation – making it affordable, accessible, mainstream and everyday” (he said in a statement). He and cofounder Daniel Lohse say they got the idea for Bloom after moving to New York last year and each trying to find therapists.

Reddit’s latest feature lets you mute entire communities • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 10, 2022Posted in Apps, Reddit, Social, subredditNo Comments

Reddit is rolling out a new “community muting” feature to give users more control over what they do and don’t want to see on the platform. The new feature is launching on Reddit’s mobile apps over the next few weeks. Reddit plans to expand the feature to the desktop version of its platform in the coming months. You can use the new feature to mute an entire community, after which posts from that specific community will be removed from your notifications, Home feed and Popular feed. Users have to ability to mute up to 1,000 communities. Reddit notes that muting a community doesn’t restrict you from visiting or taking part in it, as you will still be able to view, post and comment in communities you have muted. If you change your mind, you can unmute a community at any time in your Settings, where you can also manage community notifications and other preferences. Reddit says it plans to incorporate muting into other feeds after bringing the feature to desktop in the future, such as the All and Discover pages. The company says it sees muting as part of a larger effort to give users more control over their Reddit experience. There are three ways you can go about muting a community. You can do so through your settings, via the three dots menu in the top right of a community page or through the three dots menu on the top right corner of your Popular and Home feeds. The company says that although muting allows users to create a more curated experience, it’s not a replacement for reporting content that breaks its policies. The new feature is a welcome addition to the platform, as it will help users filter out content they don’t want to see on their popular and home feeds. The launch of the new feature isn’t exactly a surprise, given that Reddit teased the roll out a few months ago. At the time, Reddit said it had heard feedback from users regarding community muting and was working on ways to give users more control over their feeds.

Pinterest launches its collage-making app Shuffles to the general public • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 10, 2022Posted in Apps, SocialNo Comments

Pinterest’s new collage-making app Shuffles is now available to the general public, after entering an invite-only test phase earlier this summer. The app grew in popularity with Gen Z users, who used the creative expression tool to make “aesthetic” collages, sometimes set to music and posted to TikTok, or shared privately with friends or the Shuffles community. This resulted in Shuffles surging to become the No. 1 Lifestyle app on the U.S. App Store in August. The app’s popularity has since declined. While Pinterest’s flagship app remains the No. 1 Lifestyle app in the U.S. at this time, Shuffles has sunk to No. 228, according to data from Sensor Tower. Last month, Shuffles was downloaded 20,000 times, a big drop from the 211,000 iOS installs it saw in its first month on the App Store in July 2022. In part, Shuffles’ adoption could be suffering because the app remained invite-only even as it was gaining traction through viral videos. In order to access the app, you’d have to get an invite code from an existing user or join a waitlist. This exclusivity did create some initial demand among young people, but it’s not a long-term strategy to generate interest in a new product. At some point, an app has to launch and see if it can stand on its own. That’s now the plan. The app itself was built by Pinterest’s TwoTwenty team, whose goal is to foster more internal experimentation at the social network and increase its pace of innovation. This team was also behind the launch of Pinterest’s live shopping feature, Pinterest TV. Shuffles, however, was the first standalone app to emerge from this group. To use Shuffles, users build collages using Pinterest’s own photo library or by snapping photos of objects they want to include with their iPhone’s camera. Pinterest also built a technology that allows users to cut out objects from their own photos, their Pinterest boards or by searching for new Pins. This works similarly to iOS 16’s image cutout feature, where you can copy and paste an object from a photo into other apps. Shuffles makes this cut-out process a bit easier as it automatically identifies the object in the photos to make them available for pasting into your collages. You can also choose to add effects and motion to your images to make them shake, spin, pulse, swivel and more. These effects can be applied to individual items, as well. For example, you could add an image of a record player, then animate it so it actually spins. The photo collage could then be saved to your phone or shared to the Shuffles community, with friends, or elsewhere on social media. The app is tied to Pinterest, and not only as a source for imagery. The objects in the collages are linked back to Pinterest, so users can tap on items they like and then view them directly in Pinterest’s app where they can even be purchased if they’re for sale on a retailer’s website. Shuffles had initially caught fire as it targeted a younger demographic who often uses social media for creative, self-expression, not only for networking. In September 2020, Pinterest itself had captured the interest of this crowd as it became the go-to tool to help create custom iPhone Home Screens, after Apple launched the ability for users to add widgets in iOS 14. This led to an explosion of Home Screen designs with widgets, custom icons and matching wallpapers. More recently, a startup called Landing has created a digital platform for crafting vision boards, which has also gained traction with Gen Z users and may have inspired the idea for Shuffles. With Shuffles’ public launch, Pinterest is now dropping the requirement to sign up for a waitlist or have an invite code to get in. However, the company says it still considers Shuffles in a “test phase.” The iOS-only app will be available in the U.S., Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand.