Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry continues to grow, with a record 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020. Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes […]
The fintech giant Square is changing its name to Block, effective December 10. The name change, which has been in the works for over a year, is intended to house the company’s various products — including music streaming service Tidal, Cash App, TBD, and of course, Square — under one brand. This announcement comes just […]
For even a casual observer of the tech industry, it’s been a good week for Bret Taylor: He was named board chair at Twitter on Monday, and yesterday, he became the co-CEO and co-chair at a SaaS company called Salesforce. From outward appearances, Taylor seemed extraordinarily well positioned to influence what goes on at Twitter […]
Twitter updated its private information safety policy this morning to ban sharing images or videos of private individuals without their consent. The platform already banned users from sharing others’ personal information without permission, like their address or location, identity documents, non-public contact information, financial information or medical data. But this update makes these anti-harassment and […]
Is this the end of ‘founder-led’ startups? When Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey announced today his plans to step down as CEO, he didn’t go quietly. “There’s a lot of talk about the importance of a company being ‘founder-led,’” he wrote. “Ultimately I believe that’s severely limiting and a single point of failure. I’ve worked hard […]
Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry continues to grow, with a record 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020. Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes […]
Twitter is updating its iOS app to prevent tweets from disappearing while users are still reading them. The change comes as the social media giant recently updated its web platform to no longer automatically refresh timelines with new tweets. Twitter acknowledged that in the past, tweets would often disappear from view as users were reading […]
Twitter’s e-commerce initiatives now include livestream shopping and Walmart will be the first retailer to test the new platform. Over the past year, Walmart has invested in live shopping by hosting events across social platforms like TikTok and YouTube, and soon it will debut Twitter’s first-ever shoppable livestream. On November 28, Walmart will kick off […]
On October 3, “Big Brother Naija,” a reality show sponsored by Nigerian social payments company Abeg, came to a rapturous close after 72 days on air. The show, which commenced on July 24, is the most popular and most-watched reality show in Africa, raking in impressive numbers in terms of money and viewership. The “Big […]
Twitter is rolling out its in-app tipping feature to all Android users above the age of 18, following the iOS launch in September. The social media giant says the “Tips” feature is geared toward users looking to get a little financial support from their followers through Cash App, PayPal, Venmo and Patreon directly through the […]