The price of Amazon Music’s ‘Unlimited Individual Plan’ will go up by $1 to $10.99 per month, while its ‘Unlimited Individual Student Plan’ will go up to $5.99 from $4.99 per month, according to the company’s FAQ page.
More universities are banning TikTok from their campus networks and devices
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
Google to lay off 12000: Read CEO Sundar Pichai's email
Google is set to cut 12,000 jobs. The company’s CEO Sundar Pichai shared the “difficult news” in an email to employees. The job cuts will impact the company’s operations globally. Many of the affected employees in the US will get the email today. The letter also mentions the severance that the affected Google employees in the US will be getting. For others, the letter says that it will be “in line with local practices”. Here’s the full text of the email sent by Pichai.
Twitterrific and other clients begin offloading their apps after Twitter shuts them out
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.
Image Credits: Twitter/TweenApp (opens in a new window)
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 year and 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 or im@ivanmehta.com by email.
Twitterrific and other clients begin offloading their apps after Twitter shuts them out by Ivan Mehta originally published on TechCrunch
Share Creators wants to solve asset management mess for game developers
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
Indian food delivery giant Swiggy to cut 380 jobs
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
DCG’s crypto lending subsidiary Genesis files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy
Genesis Global Trading, a subsidiary of the crypto conglomerate Digital Currency Group (DCG), filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the Southern District of New York (SDNY) court late Thursday night.
Genesis Global Holdco and two of its lending business subsidiaries Genesis Global Capital and Genesis Asia Pacific filed voluntary petitions under the bankruptcy code for SDNY, its press release stated. “Genesis’s other subsidiaries involved in the derivatives and spot trading and custody businesses and Genesis Global Trading are not included in the filing and continue client trading operations,” it added.
Genesis stated it has over $150 million in cash, which it plans to use as liquidity to support its ongoing operations and facilitate its restructuring process.
As part of its filing, Genesis plans to consider a “dual track process” for sale, capital raise or equitization transaction that would potentially allow the business to “emerge under new ownership,” the release said.
The filing followed a series of attempts from Genesis to stay afloat.
The firm struggled to raise capital for its lending unit, cut 30% of its staff in early January and took a financial hit from major catastrophic crypto events last year like the collapse of crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital and the decline of crypto exchange FTX.
Genesis had a trading and lending relationship with both Three Arrows Capital and Alameda, FTX’s sister company, DCG’s CEO Barry Silbert shared in a letter from January 10.
“While we have made significant progress refining our business plans to remedy liquidity issues caused by the recent extraordinary challenges in our industry, including the default of Three Arrows Capital and the bankruptcy of FTX, an in-court restructuring presents the most effective avenue through which to preserve assets and create the best possible outcome for all Genesis stakeholders,” Derar Islim, interim CEO of Genesis, said in a statement on Thursday.
In mid-November 2022, Genesis halted withdrawals and new loan originations and later that month the firm warned of a possible bankruptcy filing as creditors looked for alternative options to prevent it. Around that time, a Genesis spokesperson told TechCrunch, “We have no plans to file bankruptcy imminently.” The spokespersson added, “Our goal is to resolve the current situation consensually without the need for any bankruptcy filing. Genesis continues to have constructive conversations with creditors.”
Aside from Genesis, DCG is the parent company of digital currency asset manager Grayscale, media company CoinDesk, mining and staking company Foundry, digital asset exchange and wallet Luno and API-centric platform TradeBlock. Silbert said in the mid-January letter that Genesis is a “separate and distinct operating subsidiary” from DCG.
On January 12, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged Genesis and cryptocurrency exchange, wallet, and custodian Gemini for the unregistered offer and sale of securities to retail investors through Gemini Earn crypto asset lending program. The prosecutors said Genesis and Gemini raised billions of dollars’ worth of crypto assets from hundreds of thousands of investors.
“In November 2022, Genesis announced that it would not allow its Gemini Earn investors to withdraw their crypto assets because Genesis lacked sufficient liquid assets to meet withdrawal requests following volatility in the crypto asset market,” the SEC release stated. “At the time, Genesis held approximately $900 million in investor assets from 340,000 Gemini Earn investors. Gemini terminated the Gemini Earn program earlier this month. As of today, the Gemini Earn retail investors have still not been able to withdraw their crypto assets.”
This is a developing story and may be updated to reflect new information.
DCG’s crypto lending subsidiary Genesis files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy by Jacquelyn Melinek originally published on TechCrunch
Google to cooperate with Indian authorities after losing Android antitrust ruling bid
Google will continue to challenge the Indian antitrust watchdog’s ruling but will cooperate with the authorities “on the way forward,” it said Friday, responding to a high-profile decision by the top Indian court this week that is cornering the Android-maker into making a series of changes that could topple how it conducts business in the key overseas market.
India’s Supreme Court on Thursday rejected Google’s plea to block an antitrust order, instead giving the Android-maker just one additional week to comply with the Competition Commission of India’s directions.
The matter will now go back to the country’s appellate tribunal, the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), where Google previously failed to secure any relief. The Supreme Court has directed NCLAT to make its decision by March 31.
As TechCrunch wrote on Thursday, the challenge for Google is that unless NCLAT reaches a decision in Google’s favor by this month, the tech giant will have to make a series of changes to its business practices in India.
The CCI has ordered Google to not require licensing of its Play Store to be linked with mandating installation of several Google apps such as Chrome and YouTube. The watchdog has also ordered Google to allow removal of all its apps from phones and give smartphone users the ability to change their search engine provider.
The CCI also fined Google $162 million in its first order.
“We are reviewing the details of yesterday’s decision which is limited to interim relief and did not decide the merits of our appeal,” a Google spokesperson told TechCrunch.
“Android has greatly benefited Indian users, developers and OEMs and played a key role in India’s digital transformation. We remain committed to our users and partners and will cooperate with the CCI on the way forward, in parallel with our appeal.”
India is Google’s largest market by users. The firm, which has ploughed more than $10 billion in India over the past decade, has amassed over half a billion monthly active users in the country. The vast majority of the smartphones in India run Android.
Google warned earlier this month that if the Indian antitrust watchdog’s ruling is allowed to progress it would result in devices getting expensive in the South Asian market and lead to proliferation of unchecked apps that will pose threats for individual and national security.
Many Indian startups that compete with Google’s services welcomed the Supreme Court’s decision. Rohan Verma, chief executive of MapmyIndia, said he was “elated” by the decision, noting that Google requiring smartphone vendors to pre-install Google Maps had hurt MapmyIndia’s business outlook.
Rakesh Deshmukh, chief executive of Indus OS, an Android marketplace, called the court’s order a “watershed moment.”
Google to cooperate with Indian authorities after losing Android antitrust ruling bid by Manish Singh originally published on TechCrunch
A $32 million seed round for Chris DeWolfe’s next gaming biz defies 2023 trends
A $32 million seed round may seem like a throwback to frothier times like . . .2021. But that’s how much PLAI Labs just raised in a deal led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).
It a lot of moolah in a volatile market, even coming as it does from two separate a16z funds: the firm’s $600 million debut games vehicle and its $4.5 billion crypto fund, both of which were announced last May.
Then again, PLAI Labs checks all the boxes on VCs’ wish lists.
First and foremost, the L.A.-based outfit was founded by veteran tech entrepreneurs Chris DeWolfe and Aber Whitcomb. The pair previously co-founded the once-hot social media platform MySpace (which originally sold to MySpace for $580 million in 2005) and the mobile game studio Jam City.
The latter remains privately held, but after scrapping plans to go public through a special purpose acquisition company, it managed to snag $350 million in funding in 2021 from Netmarble, Kabam, and affiliates of funds managed by Fortress Investment Group, which suggests it’s doing just fine. (Indeed, Jam City, which claims to have 30 million monthly active users, announced this morning that a third cofounder, Josh Yguado, is now running the show after serving as the company’s COO and president previously.)
Beyond being launched by seasoned founders, PLAI (pronounced /plā/) is also apparently weaving every buzzy trend into one offering, describing its own mission as leveraging “web3 and generative AI technology to offer the ultimate online social experience.”
Crypto? Check. Generative AI? Check. A new social platform? Where do I write the check, is the question the a16z team must have been asking.
For what it’s worth, PLAI’s first offering sounds compelling. We’re talking to DeWolfe in the next couple of days for more information, but in a blog post, a16z’s team describes that project, “Champions Ascension,” as a “massively multiplayer online role playing game where players can port in their existing non-fungible token (NFTs) characters, go on quests, trade items, fight in the colosseum, build their own custom dungeons, and more.”
PLAI, the post continues, is also “building an AI protocol platform,” one that aims to help users generate their own content and assets with the help of generative art protocols that the outfit says it has been developing.
Again, more details are coming.
In the meantime, the bet is just the latest by investor Andrew Chen, who currently leads the gaming practice at Andreessen Horowitz. Just two days ago, Carry1st, a publisher of social games and interactive content across Africa, said that had raised $27 million in “pre-Series B” funding from investors, including a16z.
Andreessen Horowitz also recently led an $8 million round in Gym Class, a VR-based basketball app that passed through the famed accelerator Y Combinator.
In the fall of 2021, before a16z’s gaming practice existed, its crypto team bet big on another NFT game, “Axie Infinity,” which invites users to “play to earn” crypto tokens that enable them to create and play with breedable characters called “Axies.” Though the game was big and growing at the time of that investment, the Ronin blockchain on which “Axie Infinity” is based was hacked last July and $620 million worth of crypto stolen.
The company, which is still trying to recover users funds, re-opened for business shortly afterward.
A $32 million seed round for Chris DeWolfe’s next gaming biz defies 2023 trends by Connie Loizos originally published on TechCrunch
Copilot lands $10M to help service businesses build digital customer experiences
Copilot, a platform aimed at helping companies, including marketing agencies, accounting firms and law firms, run and grow their businesses, today announced that it raised $10 million in a Series A funding round led by YC Continuity and Lachy Groom at a $100 million post-money valuation. Co-founder and CEO Marlon Misra said that the funds will be put toward expanding Copilot’s team, particularly on the engineering and product organization side, to build a “Shopify-like” app store specifically for services business.
“While in the first two years we focused on building a great core product, future years will center around building out our platform,” Misra told TechCrunch in an email interview, noting that Copilot has raised $13 million in capital to date. “Thousands of tech-enabled services businesses including marketing agencies, financial services companies, consulting firms, law firms and various types of startups run on Copilot.”
Misra co-founded Copilot with Neil Raina in early 2020. Prior to starting the company, the pair went through Y Combinator and worked on multiple other startup ideas, including Piccolo, where they developed a gesture-based home “vision assistant.”
“As a result of several company-building experiences, our team became the clients of dozens of service businesses — marketing agencies, accounting firms, immigration firms, recruiting agencies and others,” Misra explained. “Those experiences helped us identify a critical problem that almost all service businesses have. Specifically, service businesses struggle to provide clients with a streamlined user experience because they generally don’t have the technical expertise to build their own client-facing product.”
Using Copilot for invoice payments. Image Credits: Copilot
With Copilot, businesses can set up a client portal, enabling clients to send messages, make payments, sign contracts and access custom apps. Companies get a choice between using Copilot’s in-house apps or integrating with a software-as-a-service (SaaS) product they’re already paying for.
This gets around the problem many companies face, Misra asserted, when they attempt to use a mix of software-as-a-service tools that don’t seamlessly work together — fragmenting the client user experience. “Clients generally have no way of managing their account and no way of easily accessing important information,” he added. “Instead, clients receive email notifications from the various SaaS tools that the services business uses … We found that when companies switch to Copilot and ‘productize’ their business, they see higher customer satisfaction, improved retention, new growth channels and more efficiency.”
Misra perceives Copilot competing with a number of vendors in range of different — but somewhat related — industries. For example, he considers Bill.com and Freshbooks rivals (in the payments space) but also Box and Dropbox (in file-sharing), DocuSign and HelloSign (in contracts), JotForm and Typeform (in forms) and Intercom and Zendesk (in help desks).
When asked whether he anticipates challenges to 15-employee Copilot’s business down the line, Misra said that he doesn’t, pointing to Copilot’s large existing customer base. He declined to answer a question about revenue but volunteered that Copilot has more than four years of runway.
“When the pandemic first started, the most immediate effect was companies closing their physical offices and investing more in their online presence, online customer acquisition and new software. Many companies tried to reinvent themselves as online-first businesses, which is why there’s now this big trend toward building these online, modern, customer-centric and highly automated businesses,” Misra said. “The economic slowdown in the economy that succeeded the pandemic exacerbated the need to be efficient. And here, we saw companies once again looking for more ways to automate and find more ways to consolidate their software stack. That’s benefitting us.”
Copilot lands $10M to help service businesses build digital customer experiences by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch