Author: TechBrunch
The drama that unfolded across mainstream social media platforms like TikTok this month briefly took a dark turn in the U.S., but has since quickly rebounded. Instagram recently faced backlash for ending its third-party fact-checking program. At the same time, startups like Favorited are gaining attention from investors, creators, and viewers. On Wednesday, the livestream app announced a $1.3 million pre-seed funding round. Favorited is a lot like TikTok Live, as it aims to allow creators to interact with their followers in real time. Key features include gifts, interactive games, streaks, leaderboards, and more. Gifts works similarly to TikTok Live,…
On Tuesday, the day after Donald Trump was inaugurated as the new US president, the Department of Homeland Security notified members of several advisory committees that they had effectively been fired. Among the affected boards is the Cyber Security Review Board (CSRB), according to sources familiar with the board who spoke to TechCrunch and other news outlets. The CSRB is comprised of both private sector and government cybersecurity experts. One person familiar with the CSRB, who received a letter informing him that his membership in the CSRB would be revoked, criticized the decision. “It was terribly short-sighted to shut down…
TikTok is back online in the US for the time being, but its future remains uncertain. As many apps scramble to capture TikTok users and creators, a bookmark backup service called Dewey has launched a solution to save your favorite TikTok videos and always have access to them, even if TikTok disappears again. First released in May 2021 to help users organize their Twitter bookmarks (before the social network was rebranded to X), Dewey has since been expanded to include Bluesky, Threads, LinkedIn, and more. It now includes various tools to back up your bookmarks and saves from other social…
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It's no secret that 2024 was a breakout year for AI, with over $100 billion in funding for the field. This represented almost a third of total global investment in that year. Today on TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Julie Bort speaks with Gené Teare, senior data editor at Crunchbase News, to dig deeper into this year's modest investment growth from $304 billion to $314 billion in 2023. . The two explore how AI came to be. A dominant force in the landscape. As Teare puts it, “Technology is in a bubble. What bubbles tell us is that if everyone is putting…
YouTube on Wednesday added new experimental features for premium users, including higher quality audio, faster playback speed options on mobile, and a “jump to” feature on the web that lets you skip to more interesting parts of a video. Then he announced. The company regularly tests new features that users can enable from youtube.com/new. The company says users can now enable an experimental feature that allows them to listen to music videos at higher audio bitrates (up to 256kbps). YouTube Music already allows you to listen to audio at this quality by setting the setting to High in the playback…
Conduent, a U.S. government contractor that provides technology for support services such as child support and food assistance, acknowledged that the recent outage was caused by a cybersecurity incident. Conduent acknowledged to TechCrunch on Tuesday the disruption that left some U.S. residents unable to receive support payments, but declined to say whether the outage was related to a breach of its systems. In an updated statement sent to TechCrunch on Wednesday, Conduent spokesperson Sean Collins acknowledged that the disruption was “due to a cybersecurity incident,” but its nature was not confirmed. . “This incident has been resolved and all systems…
Driven by demand for generative AI, consumer spending on apps will reach $150 billion globally in 2024, an increase of 13% year over year. Interest in AI apps has skyrocketed over the past year, according to the annual “State of Mobile” report published by app intelligence provider Sensor Tower (which acquired original report author Data.ai last March). It is said that he did. This led to more than 200% year-over-year growth in consumer spending on AI apps such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and ByteDance's Doubao, pushing total spending in this category to nearly $1.1 billion in 2024. If this growth rate…
President Donald Trump has said Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison are open to acquiring TikTok as part of a joint venture with the U.S. government. At a press conference on Tuesday, President Trump was asked if he was open to “Elon buying TikTok.” He replied that he would, and added, “I'd like Larry to buy one, too.” President Trump on Monday signed an executive order delaying TikTok's ban by 75 days and directing the Justice Department not to enforce the ban's penalties. The app is back online, but you can't find it in the app store…
It's only January, but the recent hack of US edtech giant PowerSchool could be one of the biggest breaches of the year. PowerSchool, which provides K-12 software to more than 18,000 schools to support approximately 60 million students in the United States, confirmed the breach in early January. The California-based company, which Bain Capital acquired for $5.6 billion in 2024, said at the time that hackers used compromised credentials to break into its customer support portal, which schools use to manage The company announced that it has enabled further access to the school information system “PowerSchool SIS.” Student grades, grades,…