Month: January 2023

Public universities across a widening swath of U.S. states have banned TikTok in recent months, and two of the country’s largest colleges just followed suit.

The University of Texas and Texas A&M University are two of the latest colleges to take action against the social app, which is owned by Beijing-based parent company ByteDance.

The flurry of recent campus TikTok bans was inspired by executive orders issued by a number of state governors. Public universities in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Oklahoma, South Dakota and now Texas have taken measures to restrict access to the app, blocking it from campus wi-fi networks and school-owned devices.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered Texas state agencies to ban the app from government devices in early December, citing privacy and security concerns stemming from TikTok’s Chinese ownership. Abbott characterized the concerns as “growing threats” and gave agencies until mid-February to plan around the changes.

“The university is taking these important steps to eliminate risks to information contained in the university’s network and to our critical infrastructure,” University of Texas Advisor to the President for Technology Strategy Jeff Neyland wrote this week.

“As outlined in the governor’s directive, TikTok harvests vast amounts of data from its users’ devices — including when, where and how they conduct internet activity — and offers this trove of potentially sensitive information to the Chinese government.”

A Texas A&M spokesperson confirmed to the Texas Tribune that “… Students, faculty, staff and visitors will not be able to use the app when connected to an A&M network.”

At the start of 2023, TikTok remains in a strange and contradictory state of limbo in the United States. The app, which regularly tops U.S. charts, is also under intense scrutiny at the federal and state level.

The Biden administration banned TikTok from government devices in a bill signed at the end of December. FBI Director Christopher Wray raised red flags over TikTok’s ability to collect data on its users and its potential to spread Chinese state influence operations around the same time.

“All of these things are in the hands of a government that doesn’t share our values and that has a mission that’s very much at odds with what’s in the best interests of the United States,” Wray said. “That should concern us.”

The U.S. government has also long been suspected of running its own covert influence operations on social media apps, though the evidence to date suggests that U.S. tech companies didn’t facilitate that behavior, which would run afoul of platform policies.

While the irony of that particular accusation against ByteDance is worth noting, apps headquartered in the U.S. do have more recourse for pushing back against government requests and more channels for transparency around those relationships.

The Biden administration’s concerns about TikTok’s Chinese ownership are themselves an extension of worries that took root in the U.S. government during the Trump era. The Trump administration attempted to force ByteDance to sell TikTok’s U.S. business to a new owner, though those unprecedented efforts fell apart over time.

ByteDance has certainly failed to be forthright about how data flows between its U.S. and China operations, raising eyebrows about what else the company conceals. Last month, Forbes reported that TikTok’s parent company tracked journalists’ IP addresses in an effort to identify which employees were sharing unauthorized information.

Whether ongoing concerns around TikTok’s prevalence in the U.S. are valid or not, the university bans aren’t likely to have much impact on the app’s popularity. Students can easily switch to their own mobile data plans to get around network-level bans on campus, though many school employees will soon have a firewall between the app and their university accounts — and potentially one less social channel to monitor.

More universities are banning TikTok from their campus networks and devices by Taylor Hatmaker originally published on TechCrunch

Twitterrific, one of the most iconic third-party Twitter clients, said today that it has removed the iOS and Mac apps from the App Store. Iconfactory, the company that made Twitterrific, said in a blog post that under Elon Musk’s management, the social media network has become “a Twitter that we no longer recognize as trustworthy nor want to work with any longer.”

The app has had a rich association with Twitter. It was one of the first mobile and desktop clients for the platform, and it helped form the word “Tweet”. In fact, Twitterrific was built back in 2007 — even before Twitter made its own iOS app.

Twitterrific’s demise comes after Twitter intentionally started blocking third-party clients last Friday without any explanation. Earlier this week, the TwitterDev account posted that the company had been suspending these apps in breach of “its longstanding API rules.” But it didn’t specify what rules were broken.

Late Thursday, Twitter updated its developer terms to list “use or access the Licensed Materials to create or attempt to create a substitute or similar service or product to the Twitter Applications.” under restricted usage of its APIs. Not long-standing at all. That move essentially kills third-party apps.

But Twitterrific is not alone. A ton of other apps have started to remove or preparing to remove their apps from different app stores. Paul Haddad, who is a co-creator of Tweetbot told TechCrunch in an email that the company has already pulled the Mac client from the App Store and the iOS app will follow soon.

Despite Twitter’s announcement, some Twitter clients are still working, but it’s probably just a matter of time before the company suspends them.

While Twitter hasn’t given an explanation for this move, it could be to exert control over users and force them to use its own clients.

Third-party clients have added so much to Twitter as a platform. Tweetie, an app Twitter acquired in 2010, was behind the pull to refresh the timeline feature that everyone is familiar with. Twitterrific has contributed to things like the bird logo, character count, and conversations (replies). It’s sad to see Musk & co. not valuing developers that give users an option to experience the platform in different ways.

Twitter’s bad blood with developers

Twitter has had a long history of disregarding developers contributing to the ecosystem. The company started restricting third-party Twitter clients in 2012. Two years later, it curtailed access to its firehose data by terminating agreements with partners.

One of the classic examples of Twitter ignoring non-native clients is Tweetdeck, a company that it acquired in 2011. The company shut down Tweetdeck for Mac last yearand has been testing a new web version with a select number of users. But given how Musk has handled the company, there is not much hope for a full release.

In the last few years, the social media company started rebuilding trust with developers. In 2020, it launched a new API with multiple access levels to cater to many use developer cases. In 2022, it launched Twitter Toolbox, a way to showcase and promote third-party apps. In an interview with TechCrunch, Amir Shevat, who was heading developer platforms at Twitter at that time also said that the company is exploring building some kind of app store.

But all that came crashing after Musk took over the company. Twitter Toolbox and many other developer projects are no longer going ahead.

Last month, in a column for TechCrunch, Shevat (who is no longer at the company) wrote that the new Twitter management broke the trust of developers. He also criticized the way the company is now communicating with developers.

The way ahead

Developers are heartbroken by this move as the pro and premium subscription to their apps contributed to their income, and now it’s suddenly gone. Some have already started on other projects. Tweetbot maker Tapbots is building a Mastadon client called Ivory and aims to release it soon. Fenix developer Matteo Villa has also released a test version of his Mastadon app called Wooly.

Twitter’s move might throw off other developers who make tools for the platform. In December, composer apps like Typefully and Chir App told TechCrunch that while they were cautious they want to continue to develop for Twitter. Content moderation tool Bodyguard also noted that it wanted to scale back Twitter-related development. With the latest step of leaving third-party clients high and dry, other developers might pull back on their projects around Twitter.

You can contact this reporter on Signal and WhatsApp at +91 816-951-8403 orim@ivanmehta.comby email.

Twitterrific and other clients begin offloading their apps after Twitter shuts them out by Ivan Mehta originally published on TechCrunch

Finding a product-market fit isn’t always easy, but when you are the end-user experiencing a real pain point, the solution might be more obvious. That’s the case for newly-funded Share Creators, a platform that helps game developers manage and store large media assets as remote work becomes increasingly common in the industry.

Based in the Bay Area, the startup recently closed a new round of funding, a $3 million tranche from China’s 5Y Capital and $2 million from PDF reader Foxit.

Before getting into art asset management, Ada Liu ran a game design consulting firm that was raking in several million USD in revenue a year; that business is now running alongside her new venture.

“Dropbox started in 2007, the year when the first iPhone was launched, ushering in the transition from PC to mobile. A decade later, the fundamental way of data storage hasn’t really evolved,” says Liu when asked why she decided to launch another startup despite having handsome income from the consulting firm. “Asset management technology will have to advance.”

Having worked as a game artist for the San Francisco outpost of NetEase, China’s second-largest gaming firm, Liu is uniquely positioned to understand gaming businesses in China and the U.S.

Indeed, she spotted an opportunity as China tightened control over the domestic gaming sector, which drove Tencent, NetEase, and rising developers like MiHoYo to seek more growth abroad. A number of them began outsourcing production to Liu’s firm, whether it’s designing in-game characters or making promotional material for overseas markets — any work that can’t be efficiently done in-house as video games become more sophisticated by the day.

As her design business took off, Liu detected another demand from her Chinese clients.

“When companies sent raw material to us, it took a long time for the files to download, but we often only had four weeks to work on a project,” she says. “We looked for productivity tools on the market, but they were either too expensive or outdated, so we made our own internal tool… and others soon started asking if we could sell the software to them.”

Anyone who’s run a media business knows the pain of looking up an old asset, which is probably lost in the ever-ballooning server as employees come and go. If one ends up working on the wrong asset, money is wasted and deadlines are missed.

“A game can have like 200 characters, each of which can take about 30 days of work, so messing up even one [character] is losing a big chunk of time,” Liu says.

There are a handful of digital asset management tools out there, but few are designed to deal with large-size 3D assets. Share Creators is built for transferring files of several hundred gigabytes that can be viewed on the cloud without the need for native software, a feature that existing file-sharing services lack, Liu claims. The preview option, which can process over 100 file types, is made possible by compressing assets and converting media formats to be compatible with the platform.

Developers also won’t have to worry about imposing a consistent file naming system. That’s taken care of by Share Creators, which uses AI to recognize and tag images so users can simply search assets with keywords like “grass”. Just like many other creative tools that benchmark against Figma, the platform makes remote collaboration one of its key features. It’s also tapping another buzzy tech trend — machine-generated content — as it weighs the option to let users produce simple assets like trees directly from AI engines.

Share Creators, which went live a year ago, received 200 sales quotes just within the last month, according to Liu. The “top 20” gaming firms in China have now used the platform to manage media assets. Three key accounts are paying more than $200,000 a year for privately deployed and customized services — big companies might have qualms about uploading their prized art assets to a third party, which is why the platform supports private hosting. Ten other customers are paying for its regular subscription service, says the founder.

Share Creators wants to solve asset management mess for game developers by Rita Liao originally published on TechCrunch

Swiggy plans to lay off 380 jobs and shut down its meat marketplace as the Prosus Venture and SoftBank-backed Indian food delivery giant looks to navigate the market downturn that has forced firms to become leaner and more disciplined.

In an email to employees on Friday, Swiggy co-founder and chief executive Sriharsha Majety said the startup has advanced its plans for profitability and needs to make difficult decisions to reserve cash. The Bengaluru-headquartered startup, which was valued at $10.7 billion in a funding round in January last year, employs about 6,000 individuals.

“Over the last year, we’ve also identified many areas for improvement in our pace of execution. Due to the iterative build-up of the different orgs, there have been some extra layers created in pockets. This definitely increased our communication overhead, and compromised our agility. This meant that instead of doing more with less, we were doing less with more in these cases,” he wrote in an email, seen by TechCrunch.

Majety said the startup plans to also shut down its meat marketplace “effective very soon.”

“While we continue to be fully committed to exploring new business opportunities, we have also taken a harder look at some of our existing new verticals. Effective very soon, we will be shutting down our Meat marketplace. While the team has done exceptionally well with solid inputs, we haven’t hit product market fit here despite our iterations. From a customer perspective, we will still continue to offer meat delivery through Instamart. We will continue to stay invested in all other new verticals.”

(More to follow)

Indian food delivery giant Swiggy to cut 380 jobs by Manish Singh originally published on TechCrunch