Sarah Perez, Author at TechCrunch

Instagram Threads missed a moment to shine, as OpenAI’s drama took place on X

Sarah Perez — Mon, 20 Nov 2023 18:45:08 +0000

Instagram Threads missed its moment to truly challenge X, this weekend’s OpenAI scandal indicates. Over the past few days, as news spread about the board’s decision to remove Sam Altman as OpenAI CEO, and the impacts of this wild and unexpected change rippled through Silicon Valley’s tech ecosystem, the conversation was largely not taking place […]

Advertiser exodus expected to deeply impact X ad revenue, analysis indicates

Sarah Perez — Mon, 20 Nov 2023 17:09:55 +0000

Even before major brands like Apple, Disney and IBM paused their ad spending on X in the wake of Elon Musk’s endorsement of an antisemitic post, the company formerly known as Twitter had seen its revenues severely impacted by brand safety concerns. According to an October forecast from Insider Intelligence, X ad’s business was on […]

OpenAI’s leadership moves to Microsoft, propelling its stock up

Sarah Perez — Mon, 20 Nov 2023 15:32:26 +0000

Microsoft is the real winner of the OpenAI chaos that reigned over the weekend, and its rallying stock price is indicative of that. Upon the shocking news that OpenAI’s board had unexpectedly fired CEO Sam Altman on Friday, reportedly to due internal strife over OpenAI’s direction, Microsoft stock dropped more than 2% in after-hours trading, […]

This Week in Apps: Apple’s iPhone app of the year finalists, plus 7 hidden gems

Sarah Perez — Fri, 17 Nov 2023 18:28:08 +0000

Is the App Store still a source for new technology innovations or has AI development become the hotter new tech to build for these days? We pondered this question this week when Apple unveiled its iPhone App of the Year finalists, which surprisingly included a trio of longtime favorites — hiking app AllTrails, language learning […]

Rooms, an interactive 3D space designer and ‘cozy game,’ arrives on the App Store

Sarah Perez — Fri, 17 Nov 2023 15:52:51 +0000

Cozy game, interior decorating app, learn-to-code primer or something in between, the interactive, 3D spaces builder known as Rooms has made its way to the App Store. The startup, which earlier raised $10 million in seed funding led by a16z, offers a way to design 3D spaces — its “rooms” — that are filled with […]

X rival Bluesky hits 2M users, says federation coming ‘early next year’

Sarah Perez — Thu, 16 Nov 2023 21:09:19 +0000

Bluesky, the company building a decentralized alternative to Twitter/X, announced today it has hit 2 million users — up by another million since September, despite remaining an invite-only app. It also revealed its time frame regarding other key goals, indicating that it planned to have a public web interface go live by the end of […]

A Quibi-like app called ReelShort hit record downloads and revenue this month

Sarah Perez — Thu, 16 Nov 2023 18:24:31 +0000

Was Quibi a failure or just before its time? This month, a short-video app and Quibi-like entertainment service called ReelShort found its way to the top of the App Store, which led to the app gaining 1.9 million downloads (so far) in the month of November alone. Last Saturday, the app also hit a daily […]

Several popular AI products flagged as unsafe for kids by Common Sense Media

Sarah Perez — Thu, 16 Nov 2023 16:06:57 +0000

An independent review of popular AI tools has found that many — including Snapchat’s My AI, DALLE, and Stable Diffusion, may not be safe for kids. The new reviews come from Common Sense Media, a nonprofit advocacy group for families that’s best known for providing media ratings for parents who want to evaluate the apps, games, podcasts, […]

Threads starts testing hashtags…without the hash

Sarah Perez — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 22:55:02 +0000

Instagram’s Threads app has been duping Twitter/X in a number of ways, and today it’s adding one more feature that’s been core to the Twitter experience for years: hashtags. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Threads will begin testing the ability to tag topics on Threads to categorize posts by interest or theme. Though users […]

Instagram adds new features, including custom AI stickers, photo filters, a clip hub and more

Sarah Perez — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 20:04:23 +0000

Alongside a bevy of creator updates, Instagram is adding a new feature that will allow users to create custom stickers for their Reels and Stories using AI. Driven by Meta’s Segment Anything AI model, the stickers can be created by uploading your own photos or videos from your phone’s Camera Roll, or choosing from eligible […]

Ads watchdog files FTC complaint against X, formerly Twitter, over unlabeled ads

Sarah Perez — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 18:49:38 +0000

X, formerly Twitter, was caught running unlabeled ads on its platform in September. Now that issue, which has been ongoing, has been brought to the FTC’s attention. An independent nonprofit Check My Ads has filed a formal complaint with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission urging an investigation over the advertising practices at X, including the […]

Meta seeks legislation that would require parents to approve teens’ app downloads

Sarah Perez — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 17:13:10 +0000

Meta wants to shift the burden of monitoring social media usage among teens back to the app stores — and to parents. In a blog post published today, Meta’s global head of Safety, Antigone Davis, argues that parents should be responsible for approving their teens’ app downloads and staked Meta’s position in supporting federal legislation […]

Google Photos turns to AI to organize and categorize your photos for you

Sarah Perez — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 16:00:41 +0000

Google Photos is rolling out a set of new features today that will leverage AI technologies to better organize and categorize photos for you. With the addition of something called Photo Stacks, Google will use AI to identify the “best” photo from a group of photos taken together and select it as the top pick […]

Google overhauls Search with tools to follow interests, annotate web pages and more

Sarah Perez — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 15:00:33 +0000

There have been a growing number of complaints that Google Search is not as useful as it used to be. In fact, Google execs even admitted that young people are turning to services like TikTok and Instagram for their search needs, or are appending terms like “Reddit” to the end of queries to get more […]

Online pet goods retailer Chewy lays off 200+ employees

Sarah Perez — Tue, 14 Nov 2023 19:03:08 +0000

Chewy, the online pet supplies company that sold to PetSmart in 2017 for $3.35 billion, but then split off a few years later, is the latest company to undergo layoffs, TechCrunch has learned. According to multiple sources, the pet supplier has laid off more than 200 employees — a figure Chewy confirmed — including those […]

Andreessen Horowitz backs Civitai, a generative AI content marketplace with millions of users

Sarah Perez — Tue, 14 Nov 2023 16:41:06 +0000

AI image generator Stable Diffusion already has a lot of fans, and now those experimenting with the new AI technology to develop their own models have a place to share their work with other enthusiasts. A startup called Civitai — a play on the word Civitas, meaning community — has created a platform where members […]

YouTube adapts its policies for the coming surge of AI videos

Sarah Perez — Tue, 14 Nov 2023 14:49:13 +0000

YouTube today announced how it will approach handling AI-created content on its platform with a range of new policies surrounding responsible disclosure as well as new tools for requesting the removal of deepfakes, among other things. The company says that, although it already has policies that prohibit manipulated media, AI necessitated the creation of new […]

Venmo gets a new way to split expenses among groups

Sarah Perez — Tue, 14 Nov 2023 14:00:37 +0000

PayPal-owned Venmo is rolling out a new feature starting today that will allow its users to track and manage multiple expenses among groups — like families or roommates’ household expenses, clubs or sports teams, community organizations and more. With Venmo Groups, users will be able to track, split, manage and settle up these ongoing expenses […]

TikTok’s newest feature lets you save favorite songs directly to Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music

Sarah Perez — Tue, 14 Nov 2023 13:57:16 +0000

TikTok is teaming up with streaming music services, including Spotify, Amazon Music and Apple Music on a new feature that will allow users to save directly to their preferred streaming music app the songs they hear in TikTok videos. The addition comes at a time when TikTok’s influence is increasingly a factor in music’s top […]

Pebble, a startup that tried and failed to take on Twitter, finds new life on Mastodon

Sarah Perez — Mon, 13 Nov 2023 22:49:09 +0000

Pebble, a startup that took on Twitter and failed, has returned from the dead — as a Mastodon instance, it seems. The company announced last month that it was shutting down its Twitter/X alternative citing the increasingly competitive landscape, X’s ability to retain users and its own failure to gain traction with a wider audience. […]