The upsell we all fall for at fast food joints and places like Costco doesn’t seem to work on purchasers of in-game currencies, according to a study conducted on millions of Candy Crush players. Turns out the decision to buy fictional bars of gold isn’t quite rational, economically speaking. Who would have thought? Read More
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DIY Co., the education tech startup led by Vimeo designer and co-founder Zach Klein, has launched a new online learning platform for kids called JAM.com. The company also quietly closed a $4 million round of venture funding led by Learn Capital, joined by Spark Capital, at the end of 2015 to support the development of JAM, Klein told TechCrunch. Courses on DIY’s new site JAM were… Read More
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High-quality local sports coverage isn’t dead. At least that’s the premise upon which The Athletic is building its business. The young startup, part of Y Combinator’s Summer 2016 class, is trying to reinvent local sports media – an industry that has been on the decline ever since newspapers realized that advertising revenue wouldn’t be enough to support a team… Read More
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And so, the dating pool for queer women across the world got that much bigger. Her, the dating app focused exclusively on ladies who are into other ladies, has finally opened up the app to Android users. The app launched all the way back in 2013 in the UK, and back then it was known as “Dattch.” Since, the app has rebranded to Her and launched across the United States, with… Read More
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Integral Ad Science is unveiling some new steps to combat ad fraudsters, including the acquisition of a bot detection company called Swarm. CEO Scott Knoll told me that he was particularly interested in Swarm’s technology for side channel analysis, a technique for examining a web browser to identify whether or not it’s a bot. That’s an area where Integral Ad Science has… Read More
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Surf Air, the travel startup that offers “all you can fly” service to paying members, will begin running routes in Europe this October, the company announced today. Specifically, Surf Air’s European routes will include multiple daily flights between UK’s London Luton Airport, and other business hubs like Cannes, Geneva and Zurich. The company also intends to offer… Read More
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Here’s an interesting twist in one of the bigger enterprise acquisition stories of 2016. After Mitel earlier this year announced that it would acquire Polycom for $1.96 billion and consolidate the two companies’ enterprise communication businesses, today private equity firm Siris Capital has come in with a higher offer: it has agreed to acquire Polycom for $2 billion in cash and… Read More
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As large platforms like Facebook and Apple position themselves as the new go-to places to read news, an independent app that started in Japan has landed a new round of funding to raise its own game. SmartNews — a news aggregation app that works with some 1,500 publications and selects stories for you based on your reading activity in the app — has raised another $38 million in… Read More
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Mark Zuckerberg believes Facebook Live could illuminate wrongdoing in the world.
Facebook still hasn’t explained the details of its policy on censorship of Live video. But today in response to the police shooting of Philando Castile whose last moments of life were broadcast on Facebook, CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted that “The images we’ve seen this week are graphic and… Read More
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Two weeks ago, we reported that Uber was in talks to raise $1-2 billion in leveraged loans. The Wall Street Journal is circulating new information that the company has closed a $1.15 billion leveraged loan, with a 5 percent yield. This number comes in on the low side of our previous estimates. Last month, sources confirmed to TechCrunch that Uber had plans to raise $1-2 billion in… Read More
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