WP Pro Online

We’ve met with Mojo Vision for several CESes, watching the startup’s AR contact lenses develop, year by year. These sorts of things take a lot of time and money, of course – and these days it seems increasingly difficult to find either. Today, the California -based firm announced that it is “decelerating” work on the Mojo Lens, citing, “significant challenges in raising capital.”

In an announcement posted to it site, CEO Drew Perkins blames insurmountable headwinds, including the bad economy and the “yet-to-be proven market potential for advanced AR products” in its ability to raise the necessary funding required to keep the project afloat.

“Although we haven’t had the chance yet to see it ship and to reach its full potential in the marketplace, we have proven that what was once considered science fiction can be developed into a technical reality,” Perkins writes. “Even though the pursuit of our vision for Invisible Computing is on hold for now, we strongly believe that there will be a future market for Mojo Lens and expect to accelerate it when the time is right.”

Instead of focusing on Lens, Mojo is focusing its resources on the Micro-LED technology that powers it. The company had developed a 14,000 ppi microLED display as the product’s foundation. “We believe Micro-LED will disrupt the entire $160B display industry and our unique technology puts us at the forefront of this disruption,” Perkins adds.

Along with the pivot, the company has also made a dramatic cut to head count, reducing its staff by 75%. The lays will impact roles and divisions across the startup.

Perkins adds that the Mojo may return to the project, writing,

Although we haven’t had the chance yet to see it ship and to reach its full potential in the marketplace, we have proven that what was once considered science fiction can be developed into a technical reality. Even though the pursuit of our vision for Invisible Computing is on hold for now, we strongly believe that there will be a future market for Mojo Lens and expect to accelerate it when the time is right.

The company’s most recent funding round was a $45 million Series B-1 announced a year ago tomorrow. The company declined further comment.

Mojo Vision puts contact lens production ‘on hold’ as it lays off 75% of staff by Brian Heater originally published on TechCrunch

Market headwinds continue to dog startups chasing venture backing. That’s the top-level finding of a new PitchBook report that looked at VC trends toward the end of 2022, specifically Q4, including investments made at the seed, late-stage and nearing-the-exit levels.

First, the good news: “On an annual basis, angel- and seed-stage deal activity remained relatively resilient in 2022, with $21.0 billion invested across an estimated 7,261 deals,” the report said. Last year set an annual record for capital raised, in fact, with $162.6 billion closed across 769 funds — the second consecutive year to exceed $150 billion.

But the year was ultimately mixed. Q4 2022 marked the fourth consecutive quarter of declining deal counts while exit activity for the entire year fell to $71.4 billion — the first time the figure dipped below $100 billion since 2016. Acquisition volume also took a nosedive, with Q4 posting only $763 million in total acquisition deal value — the lowest quarterly value in more than a decade.

“Public exits of VC-backed companies have slowed to almost nonexistent levels, with just 14 public listings occurring in Q4, demonstrating how drastically institutional-investor appetite has been affected by rising interest rates and volatile macroeconomic factors,” the authors of the PitchBook report wrote.

Why the instability? PitchBook blames a variety of factors, including nontraditional investors slowing their capital deployment to VC amid less attractive risk/return profiles. According to the report, relative to 2021, the upside potential for VC-backed startups fell precipitously in 2022, which turned many investors away from the space.

VC deal activity fell in 2022, signaling tough times ahead by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch

Given Logan Paul’s dubious history on YouTube, it probably doesn’t come as a surprise that his CryptoZoo NFT project has allegedly turned out to be a scam. Some investors ended up losing up to half a million dollars, according to independent YouTube reporter Coffeezilla. The development of CryptoZoo has been stalled due to alleged nonpayment of coders.

The twenty-seven-year-old Paul rose to prominence in 2013 by posting sketches on Vine; but when the short video platform shut down, he transitioned to YouTube and even fights in the WWE. In August 2021, Paul took to his YouTube podcast to announce his NFT project.

“It’s so fun. It provides a yield with a token, it can earn you money, and as a person who understands, I think, the NFT space enough to know what works, what people want and what they’re looking for, I think my game is going to make some waves,” Paul said.

Between his main YouTube channel and his podcast, Paul has around 28 million subscribers, plus another 24.6 million followers on Instagram and 16.6 million on TikTok. In other words, he had the audience necessary to generate hype around a new collection of NFTs.

Paul’s fans could buy an NFT of an egg, which hatches into an animal that is assigned one of five levels of rarity. These animals can be bred to produce more eggs that hatch hybrid animals, which also have specific rarity levels. When animals are hatched, they yield $ZOO tokens — the rarer the animal, the more it yields.

Paul promised fans that they could play games with their animals, which would eventually “enter the metaverse,” according to CryptoZoo’s product roadmap. But most of the goals on the product roadmap have not been achieved.

The independent reporter Coffeezilla released a three-part video series at the end of December, chronicling his research into what went wrong with CryptoZoo. As it turns out, Paul had employed multiple conmen to work on the project.

TechCrunch has reached out to Paul’s manager Jeff Levin for comment.

Coffeezilla interviewed Cryptozoo’s developer “Z,” who is holding the code hostage for $1 million, since he claims that Paul never paid him. In a response video, Paul claimed that “Z” is actually Zach Kelling, a convicted felon.

“I know what you’re thinking. What type of idiot would work with an unsavory individual like Zach Kelling?” Paul says in his response video. He blames this hire on Eddie Ibanez, the former lead developer of CryptoZoo. “I guess that’s what I get for trusting the team that I relied on to vet and manage Eddie’s hiring process, who has turned out to be a professional con man.”

But Ibanez’s scammy past is not new information. In February 2022, Philadelphia culture blog Billy Penn — part of the regional NPR network — reported an investigation into the tech founder’s past.

While operating a data analytics company called Zenabi in 2019, Ibanez was accused of sharing sensitive data about one of his clients, the Mormon church, with another client, the International Champions Cup. He also claimed on his website to have worked with the CIA and two NFL teams — he even said that he had a Philadelphia Eagles Super Bowl ring from their victory in 2018. But Billy Penn reported that Ibanez never even met with anyone from the Eagles until after the Super Bowl, and though Ibanez did have some meetings with the team, these conversations never turned into an actual partnership. Ibanez also claims to have studied at MIT, but the MIT News Office told Billy Penn that he was never enrolled at the university.

Then, Zenabi received a total of $1.5 million in PPP loans from the federal government. Around the same time, Ibanez’s landlord sued for $118,000 in back rent and property damage. According to a former Zenabi employee who spoke to Billy Penn, Zenabi is being investigated by the FBI about its PPP loans.

Despite a laundry list of suspicious claims, Paul continued working with Ibanez until July 2022.

This isn’t the first time that Paul has been accused of promoting crypto scams — in July 2021, he promoted the “shitcoin” called Dink Doink, which almost immediately lost all of its “value.”

Other influencers like Kim Kardashian have faced consequences for promoting crypto to their followers without the necessary disclosures. The SEC settled with Kardashian for $1.26 million over her partnership with EthereumMax. Though she wrote “#ad” at the bottom of her Instagram post, the SEC said she should have disclosed that she was paid $250,000 for the promotion.

What does the future hold for CryptoZoo? Well, nothing, until Logan Paul manages to get that code back from Zach Kelling, who Coffeezilla says fled to Switzerland. But Paul ended his response video with a promotional screen, stating that CryptoZoo is coming in 2023 or 2024.

YouTuber Logan Paul’s CryptoZoo NFT project is a total mess by Amanda Silberling originally published on TechCrunch

Mastercard, one of the biggest financial payments providers in the world, is launching a web3-focused incubator to help artists connect with fans through a new medium, the company shared at CES 2023 on Friday.

“The core of this program is providing emerging artists with the web3 tools and skills they need to excel and advance their music careers in this digital economy,” Raja Rajamannar, chief marketing and communications officer at Mastercard, said to TechCrunch. “By providing access to experts and innovators in the space, the artists will be guided on how to incorporate web3 into their work throughout the entire program and then beyond.”

Mastercard partnered with Polygon, a scaling blockchain built on top of Ethereum, which has been making huge strides in the Web 2.0 ecosystem lately. In the past year, Polygon partnered with a number of other big brands like Starbucks for its Odyssey digital collectible rewards program and Disney for its accelerator program, while also having major clothing brands like Prada and Adidas launch NFT projects through its blockchain.

After joining the incubator, participating artists should know how to mint NFTs, represent themselves in virtual worlds and establish a community, Rajamannar said. “We see that web3 holds tremendous promise for artists and creators to create, own and monetize their content, but only if they know how to leverage it.”

This announcement points to the company’s expansion further into the digital asset world as it joined forces with a number of crypto-focused companies to launch credit cards and partnered with Coinbase to help expand the NFT ecosystem, among other things.

“This past year was big for us, with experimental web3 activations around the world,” Rajamannar said.

For example, Mastercard hosted the first Grammy week with Roblox in the metaverse, where it provided immersive activations, in-game branding, artist meet and greets, red-carpet photo opportunities and more.

In the past, high-level employees at Mastercard have been vocal about their bullish sentiments toward the crypto space.

“I feel like once you get the momentum for an institution up and running, it’s hard to get them to turn their head and pivot,” Grace Berkery, director of startup engagement at Mastercard, said at Benzinga’s Future of Crypto event in December. “So if [institutions are] going to enter, they’re going to stay in the space.”

Mastercard launches web3-focused artist incubator with Polygon by Jacquelyn Melinek originally published on TechCrunch

After surpassing 1.02 billion total hours viewed in the third week of its debut, Netflix’s “Wednesday” has been renewed for a second season, the company announced today.

The series originally premiered in November with eight episodes. It’s centered around the popular “Addams Family” character, Wednesday Addams (played by Jenna Ortega), as she begins her first year as a Nevermore Academy student. There, she hones her psychic ability and tries to solve a supernatural mystery that haunts the town.

Netflix tweeted the announcement alongside a video that shows a recap of season one, with Wednesday being hunted by the Monster of Nevermore Academy (a.k.a the Hyde), haunted by her ancestor, Goody, and more spooky antics. In the video, Ortega says, “Over the past few weeks, I’ve been hunted, haunted, and mimicked millions of times across the internet. It’s been pure torture. Thank you.”

(Note that this TechCrunch story contains spoilers.)

“Wednesday” Season 2 should be a shocker to no one as the first season was streamed by more than 150 million households, making it the second most popular English-language series on Netflix.

Since the Season 1 premiere, the show took the internet by storm, becoming a trending hashtag on TikTok and the culprit behind the revival of The Cramps song, “Goo Goo Muck.” It also managed to earn two Golden Globe nominations, a noteworthy accomplishment for a family-friendly title. Fans can tune into the award ceremony next Tuesday, January 10, to see if the comedy series gets a Thing-friendly thumbs up or not.

Needless to say, many Netflix subscribers will be pleased to watch another round of adventures from their favorite outcasts and freaks.

“We can’t wait to dive headfirst into another season and explore the kooky, spooky world of Nevermore,” the co-showrunners of “Wednesday,” Miles Millar and Alfred Gough, said in an interview to Tudum, the official Netflix blog. “It’s been incredible to create a show that’s connected with people across the world. We’re thrilled to continue Wednesday’s torturous journey into Season 2.”

Millar also pointed to the season one finale as a hint of what viewers can expect in the next season. For those that watched the finale, we know that Wednesday gets a text from an unknown stalker, signifying that threat of the Hyde still remains.

“[The stalker proves] that threats remain out there… to both Wednesday and the school,” Millar added. “Not all not loose ends have been tied up neatly as she thinks they have.”

A release date for Season 2 has yet to be revealed. Hopefully, we’ll soon find out what awaits for the characters of Nevermore.

Netflix’s ‘Wednesday’ gets a second season by Lauren Forristal originally published on TechCrunch

Being driven around the gridlocked-streets of Las Vegas during CES can be nauseating — at the best of times. But doing so with a virtual reality headset blocking your view? Certainly, it’s a recipe for disaster.

I don’t have the strongest of stomachs; and I pack Dramamine wherever I go. So it was with more than a little trepidation that during CES 2023I agreed to experience morning traffic on The Strip in the back of a car while wearing a VR headset.

This wasn’t just any car, though, and it wasn’t just any VR system. The car was a 1967 Cadillac DeVille, remarkable in so many ways but, in this context, notable for its abject lack of technology. (Worryingly, it also lacked seatbelts, thankfully not needed on this day.) The headset was an HTC VIVE Flow, paired with a Holoride’s new retrofit kit, a $199 add-on that allows you to get in-car VR experiences in literally any car.

Holoride’s initial launch was in partnership with Audi, which started integrating the company’s tech into its cars last year.

Holoride CEO Nils Wollny told me, while they have more OEM partnerships coming (“we can’t announce this yet”) this retrofit kit makes for an instant, massive expansion for the product’s market reach. Wollny calls it “an easy way for people that want to go on a Holoride to equip their car that they have, so they don’t need to have the latest Audi.”

All you do need is a place to mount the Holoride device, a puck-shaped thing that contains an accelerometer, a high-quality GPS, and a wireless module to connect to the HTC Vive Flow. Stick it on the windshield, turn it on and you’re good to go. Data from that module drives the various app experiences provided by Holoride, experiences that all include some sort of visual cues to prevent motion sickness.

I sampled what the retrofit pack had to offer while sitting in the generous back seat of the Cadillac, a broad stretch of vinyl that’s probably seen some experiences of a very different sort.

I started with Pixel Ripped 1995: On the Road. This is a Holoride-specific spin-off of the indie VR darling. Here, you’re playing a 2-D platformer on a virtual handheld gaming system (a “Gear Kid Color”), sitting in the virtual back seat of a virtual car while your virtual parents exchange idle banter up front.

As you really drive through traffic, the game simulates a world around you, an endless, idyllic neighborhood. It looks nothing like the hulking excess of Sin City. It does match the general street layout, so that when the real car stops at an intersection the virtual car does the same. The game is basic but fun, miles better than looking out at the gridlock.

In Cloudbreakers: Leaving Haven, a roguelike shooter that’s exclusive to Holoride, you pilot a giant robot through digital clouds, blasting wave after wave of geometric opponents. Around and beneath you, vertical and horizontal sweeping lines give a visual representation for streets. As the car makes a turn, the action in the game swings left or right to match.

The good news is that, while playing those experiences and more, I never felt even a little nauseous. In fact, I got more car sick after 10 minutes in the back of a cab on the way to my next appointment than I did in the 30 minutes I spent in that Cadillac wearing a VR headset.

The bad news is that none of the titles right now seem compelling enough to justify the $19.99 monthly or $180 per year to get access to Holoride’s service. Wollny says that they’re working with developers to add more titles to its library with an expected rate of new content every two weeks.

More of these simple experiences may not be the answer. To my eye, the killer app here is media consumption. Exit the games and you can mirror your smartphone into VR, jumping into any streaming app that you like. The Holoride software again renders a virtual landscape, like a giant theater screen floating across a moving background, meaning you can enjoy your content free from both distractions and motion sickness.

The next step? Wollny says they’re working to get the smartphone out of that equation: “We’re currently planning to have a native movie app or streaming app where you can also download the latest movies or the TV shows and then just relax, sit back on a virtual 180 inch screen.”

The retrofit kit is a great way to bring this tech to more people, and for Holoride to access far more customers.

However, Wollny told me that adding OEM partnerships are still very much the focus with Holoride working to make integration as seamless as possible.

With more cars packing accelerometers and high-quality GPS, adding support often just requires some software.

“We lowered the barrier as much as we could for car manufacturers to integrate our solution, because for them it’s an attractive solution for their passengers,” Wollny told TechCrunch. “And, it’s an additional revenue stream for mobility data they have. They provide us with the data we do a rev-share with them.”

More recurring revenue plus happier back-seat stomachs sounds like a proper win-win.

Finding Vegas VR nirvana in the backseat of a ’67 DeVille at CES 2023 by Tim Stevens originally published on TechCrunch

Verizon last month introduced a new subscription service aggregator, +Play, into open beta, allowing its customers to purchase and manage subscriptions to over 20 services, including Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, HBO Max, ESPN+, discovery+, AMC+, NFL+, NBA League Pass and NBA TV. But while the initial version of the service is expected to launch in the late Q1/March timeframe, exclusively to Verizon customers, the company today confirmed the eventual plan is to make +Play broadly available to all — even those who aren’t with Verizon.

Speaking at the Variety Summit at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Erin McPherson, Verizon’s Chief Content Officer and head of partnerships, said the service would, “at first” be for Verizon Wireless customers, then “eventually opened up to everyone down the road. But we’re starting out with our customer base,” she said,

“We’ve got roughly 20 premium subscription services,” McPherson noted, adding that it expects to grow that number to “about 50” by the end of 2023. That growth, however, won’t continue to expand to include the long tail of smaller streamers, she clarified.

“It’s not an attempt to aggregate the world’s apps, though — that’s not what we’re about doing. It’s going to always remain a curated selection. And our hope is also to push the industry forward by creating consumer-centric bundles and offers with these services,” said McPherson.

Verizon ended Q3 with 122 million total retail connections and 25% of its consumer wireless phone customers now have 5G-capable devices, it said. Its consumer division counted 234,000 fixed wireless net additions in the third quarter and 58,000 Fios Internet net additions. The company’s main mission is to keep growing that so this is also the endgame when it comes to the company’s media and content strategy these days.

McPherson hinted that longer-term plans may include bundles of services on its platform, as well.

“Again none of this is announced yet — but think about a bundle where a customer could get a video subscription service, something to do with health and wellness — since we offer Peloton and Calm. We might start to work with delivery services — anything that’s a monthly subscription,” she said.

One of the perks of +Play is a free year of Netflix Premium for customers who sign up for a subscription — something Verizon is helping to underwrite as a marketing initiative.

“As we go on forward with Netflix, we’re going to be doing other exciting things in this space as far as thinking about where we go with next-gen — perhaps next-gen bundling and other types of offers with all of our partners. We’ve got great trials. Think of it as our way of providing our customers with more value,” she said.

These types of offerings won’t be available in the near term. Instead, when the service exits beta testing later this year, McPherson said Verizon’s focus will be on enhancing the “features and functionality, making things prettier, and taking friction points away in the buy flow.”

We have contacted Verizon for comment.

Verizon’s +Play subscription store to later open to non-Verizon customers by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch

The global economic and political turmoil of the past year has had a meaningful impact on corporate innovation in the technology industry and beyond.

The worldwide battle with COVID, the Ukraine-Russia conflict and the economic fallout of the COVID lockdowns and supply chain disruptions have together created a painful combination of a global recession, global inflation and unpredictable instability in the worldwide economy.

All of these factors have led to belt-tightening in the corporate world, layoffs and hiring freezes and a more conservative investment posture from the investment community. Inevitably, these changes will have a chilling effect on innovation in the years to come.

However, there is perhaps a silver lining when it comes to the prospects for innovation. In some ways, these market forces might actually serve as an accelerant for creativity and advancement in technology.

Short-term impacts

In the short term, the impact of these negative economic trends and the political instability will be felt by the centers of innovation in both the corporate and startup worlds.

Corporations are likely to slash spending on internal and external innovation. That is, they will reduce their research and development budgets and likely focus R&D on projects that can have immediate impacts on profitability at the expense of long-term visionary projects.

Corporations will also spend less on collaborations with other innovators and expensive acquisitions of advanced technology. We expect to see more acquisitions of early-stage companies as they become weaker and corporations look to develop new technologies more cheaply by buying at a discount rather than building from scratch.

How global unrest will impact innovation in 2023 by Ram Iyer originally published on TechCrunch

It’s impossible to plan for everything that can go wrong while building a startup.

A definitive guide would have to include chapters like, “So you’ve hired the wrong person,” or, “Five ways to tell if an investor is lying to you.”

Mentors and advisors come in handy, but startups move at breakneck speed. Investors say they want to add value, but for founders under pressure, it’s hard to know exactly when to ask for help.

Before Tracy Young was co-founder and CEO of TigerEye, she held the same roles at construction productivity software startup PlanGrid.

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Even though she led the company to $100 million in ARR before its acquisition by Autodesk, she has had “years to dissect the mistakes I made with my first startup,” she writes in TC+.

Young looks back at “five key failure points” that are common potholes on every founder’s path, and shares tactical advice for addressing internal conflict, losing product-market fit, and other stumbles.

“If these reflections help even one founder make one less mistake, I would consider this effort worthwhile.”

On Thursday, January 19 at 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET, Tracy Young will join me in a Twitter Space to talk about how she dealt with these and other common founder challenges. Bring your questions and join the chat!

One last note: TC+ roundup is TechCrunch’s fastest-growing newsletter! Thanks very much for reading and subscribing!

Walter Thompson
Editorial Manager, TechCrunch+
@yourprotagonist

3 questions founders should be asking investors in Q1 2023

Money is power, and VCs know it.

It’s one of the reasons why so many founders perform inadequate due diligence on their investors, says Talia Rafaeli, a partner with early-stage European VC fund Kompas.

Instead of going into a pitch meeting hoping to eke out favorable terms, Rafaeli advises entrepreneurs to interrogate investors with direct questions about liquidity, exit expectations and how they intend to add value over time.

“A tough economic climate doesn’t mean the power dynamic automatically tips in favor of those with the cash,” she says.

“The best working relationships are those built on an equitable footing with honesty and clarity.”

Will record levels of dry powder trigger a delayed explosion of startup investment?

There’s a subtext to the waves of layoffs and Craigslist ads for discounted office furniture: tech investors have amassed approximately $290 billion in dry powder.

“Despite the downturn, strong cash supply and tailwinds for spending on digitization are leading some market participants to believe we’re in a strong investment cycle,” according to Raphael Mukomilow and Pierre Bourdon at Picus Capital.

After they tracked uninvested capital by year going back to 2006, the pair found that “a crisis within the investment landscape has often been followed by years of systematic outperformance of returns, and history has a way of repeating itself.”

Whoops! Is generative AI already becoming a bubble?

Generative AI is making a splash with apps like Lensa AI, DALL-E and ChatGPT, but does that make it a strong investment?

Several VCs who responded to a recent TechCrunch+ survey “said the tech’s growth has reminded them too much of crypto,” writes Rebecca Szkutak.

“Everyone is piling on faster than they should be.”

When will IPOs return? The past may hold some clues

Natalia Holgado Sanchez, head of capital markets at Secfi, studied the impact of five downturns since 2002 to see how well privately-held startups held up, “and, most importantly, how long it took the IPO market to reopen.”

For each period, Sanchez looked at the inciting events, the similarities and differences between this downturn and past crises, and how startups were impacted.

“Based on historical data, the IPO market has opened up after 18 to 24 months, on average,” she found. “Given that we’re now about 9 months since our window closed, we could see movement by June 2023.”

Dear Sophie: How can I transfer my H-1B to my new startup in 2023?

Dear Sophie,

I am RESOLVED: This is the year I finally live my dream and create my startup! I currently have an H-1B for my full-time engineering role at another company.

How can I transfer my visa to my startup? How do we structure the startup for immigration success?

— Restless & Resolved

Teach yourself growth marketing: How to set up a landing page

In the first article of a five-part series on growth marketing fundamentals, Jonathan Martinez explains how to create an essential part of every company’s sales funnel: a landing page.

This overview includes basic steps for writing a clear headline, offering visitors social proof that builds credibility, and crafting calls to action that drive results.

Next week, Martinez, who helped scale startups like Uber, Postmates and Chime, will share his tips for launching a paid acquisition channel.

TechCrunch+ roundup: Dry powder’s slow fuse, landing page basics, generative AI hype by Walter Thompson originally published on TechCrunch

TikTok users regularly complain of hours lost on the platform, especially at night. In an effort to address these concerns, the company is testing new sleep reminders that include the option to set up alerts when it’s your bedtime and to mute notifications during the recommended seven hours of sleep. TikTok confirmed to TechCrunch on Friday that the new sleep reminders are being tested with select users globally.

Screenshots shared by product intelligence firm Watchful.ai show that the new feature appears under the “screen time” settings in the app. Users who are part of the test will see a new “sleep reminders” option. The app says sleep reminders will help you “know if you reach your sleep time on TikTok to help you get to bed when you want to.” After you select a sleep time, you will be reminded to close the app when the clock reaches that time. TikTok will also mute push notifications for seven hours after your sleep time to help you avoid distractions.

A spokesperson for the company said TikTok is continuously working on new ways to support users’ well-being and that this new tool builds on its current digital well-being features. The app first launched screen time management tools in February 2020, and has since introduced additional features aimed at giving users more control over their app usage.

Last June, the company launched an in-app tool to help users control how much time they spend on TikTok in a single sitting by allowing them to schedule regular screen time breaks. By default, it suggests break reminders of either 10, 20 or 30 minutes, though users can set reminders for a custom time if they wanted to engage in either longer or shorter sessions before being shown the notification. The app also has restricted nighttime notifications for teen accounts. Users aged 13-15 don’t receive push notifications from 9pm, and users aged 16-17 have push notifications disabled starting at 10pm.

Thanks to TikTok’s unmatched ability to distract and engage users via its advanced recommendation technology, its addictive nature has been the subject ofnumerouspsychological studies. As a result, it’s not surprising that TikTok is testing additional tools designed to put users in better control of their TikTok usage. As with any other test feature, it’s unknown when or if TikTok plans to officially roll out the sleep reminders feature more widely.

TikTok is testing a ‘sleep reminders’ feature that nudges you when it’s bedtime by Aisha Malik originally published on TechCrunch