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iOS 12 makes your phone faster than ever
iOS 12 could be summed up in one feature: speed. The rest is just a footnote, especially when you compare iOS 12 to iOS 11.
You may remember that iOS 11 was filled with many new features, especially on the iPad. But it was also the buggiest release to date. Even the Calculator app wasn’t working properly. And let’s not forget about messages arriving out of order or your keyboard replacing the letter “it” with “I.T”.
Like many of you, I’ve been using a beta version of iOS 12 for the past few weeks. Even though it was just a beta, iOS 12 is by far the fastest version of iOS of all time. And Apple just released iOS 12.0 today. Here’s a quick rundown of what’s new in iOS 12.
Low level
If you are reading this article on an iPhone or iPad, chances are you’re using iOS 11. Many devices support iOS 11 — the iPhone 5s, the iPad mini 2, the last iPod touch, and everything that Apple released since then.
And the good news is that Apple hasn’t dropped support for a single device with iOS 12. While this might seem anecdotal, it reveals Apple’s mindset with iOS 12.
In the past, Apple usually added new intensive tasks for your CPU, GPU and RAM. And at the end of the development process, those features would be vaguely optimized for older devices. That’s why older phones never got some features. Or some features were simply too demanding. In some cases, your battery life took a hit.
This time, when it comes to performance, Apple started from the bottom of the iPhone chain. For instance, if you optimize app launches and typing on the iPhone 6, newer devices will also benefit from those optimizations. Even after updating my iPhone X from iOS 11 to iOS 12, everything feels much smoother.
Apple didn’t stop at raw performance. The company worked on some much needed refinements for notifications, Do Not Disturb and the way you use your phone.
Android users will laugh at this feature, but iOS 12 finally groups notifications together. Most of the time, your notifications are grouped by apps. For instance, if you receive multiple New York Times and CNN notifications, you will get two stacks of notifications that you can expand or dismiss altogether.
More interestingly, your notifications are now grouped by threads. For instance, you may have some very active groups in WhatsApp. iOS doesn’t just group all WhatsApp notifications together. You can see all the notifications from a specific group in one stack. This way, you can ignore the noise and concentrate on the rest.
While you could already silence notifications in iOS 11, iOS 12 makes this incredibly easier. You can now swipe on a notification and hit “Deliver Quietly”. This option is the combination of multiple notification settings.
If you select that, notifications won’t make your phone buzz and will skip the lock screen. The only way to view them is by manually pulling up the Notification Center. I already use it for most news apps as I don’t need to see the headlines right away.
And if you keep getting spammed from a free-to-play game and never tap on those notifications, you get a suggestion on your lock screen to silence notifications from this app.
Do Not Disturb is also receiving some minor but important improvements. You can now use 3D Touch to turn on Do Not Disturb for an hour, until this evening (or the next morning), until the end of an event or until you leave a location.
Many people never use Do Not Disturb because they forget to turn it off. And yet, it’s one of the most powerful tools when it comes to using your phone less.
Talking about digital wellbeing, Apple is going all in with a bunch of new features. Screen Time sends you a notification every week to help you understand how you use your phone. You may know that you spend too much time on Instagram, but seeing that you spend an hour or two every day in the app might be an eye-opening moment.
In the Settings, you can now configure Downtime and App Limits so that only the most essential apps remain accessible at night, such as Messages and Phone. You’ll have to bypass the restriction screen to keep using other apps. It’s pretty smart as it works across your devices and also recognizes if you’re trying to access a social network in Safari for instance.
Medium level
A new version of iOS also means new features. Competition with Android means that Apple needs to keep pushing forward on the feature front.
If you have an iPhone X or later, the big new thing is Memoji. In Messages, you can now create your own Bitmoji-style avatar. You can then use your digital face in selfies, use it as a sticker and record audio messages. There are also new Animojis.
The Photos app is getting a new “For You” tab and an improved search experience. There’s not much to say about this except that it works better than before. It’s easier to look for a specific location, events and more. Photos already had some smart albums, but the “For You” tab make them more prominent.
The Stocks app has been redesigned with better looking charts and business news headlines. Apple News has also been slightly redesigned, especially on the iPad. And Voice Memos now works with iCloud. You can record a memo on your iPhone and find it on your iPad or Mac.
Apple Music now supports lyrics and features new artist pages that look more like Spotify. And Apple Books (the new name of iBooks) is getting a visual redesign similar to the App Store redesign from last year. It looks great.
Finally, if your car supports CarPlay, Google Maps and Waze are working on navigation apps for your car. You won’t be limited to Apple Maps anymore.
Apple was supposed to add group conversations in FaceTime, but it isn’t available just yet. Apple says it will be available later this fall.
Top level
Now that the most straightforward features are out of the way, I’d like to talk about Siri, Shortcuts and Siri Shortcuts. While those three names sound similar, those are three different things in iOS 12.
Siri is the voice assistant of iOS 11 that you know and (rarely) use. It can do some basic things reasonably well, such as weather reports and setting timers. And it has also become quite good at understanding your voice and turning it into a text query.
In many cases, Siri understands what you say but can’t answer your question. That’s why many people now rely on an Amazon Echo or Google Home for voice queries.
Apple found a clever way to solve that by leveraging its developer community and acquisition of Workflow. Developers can now add new features to Siri through their apps. Those extensions to Siri’s brain are called Siri Shortcuts.
For instance, you can configure Carrot Weather and ask for a hyperlocal weather forecast using Siri. You can start a playlist in Overcast and listen to your latest podcasts on your HomePod. You can open a specific note in Ulysses much more quickly. All you have to do is set up customized phrases to run the Siri Shortcuts.
But expert TechCrunch readers like you can also go one step further and create scripts in the Shortcuts app. It looks and works just like the existing Workflow app.
For instance, you can create a “Going to Bed” shortcut that turns on Do Not Disturb, turns down the brightness and ringtone levels, turns off Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and your Philips Hue lights, and sets Low Power Mode on.
Shortcuts also work with many third-party apps. The ability to chain actions together has changed the way I use my iPhone and iPad. This is not new if you were already using Workflow. But many more users will use Shortcuts now that it is deeply integrated in the operating system and with HomeKit.
Conclusion
iOS has grown immensely over the years. At first, it was a mobile operating system with no support for third-party apps. I’m sure the first release of iOS (iPhone OS 1.0) was much faster than iOS 12. But systems on a chip are also an order of magnitude faster.
That’s why the combination of hardware improvements with software optimizations make iOS 12 a great release when it comes to user experience. For this reason alone, there’s no reason not to install the update.
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iOS 12 is now available to download
Apple has just released the final version of iOS 12. This update is all about making your phone work better — and there are also a bunch of new features. The update is currently rolling out and is available both over-the-air in the Settings app, and by plugging your device into iTunes for a wired update.
Many people try to download these major updates at the same time. Apple usually implements a queue system to ensure speedy downloads once you’re at the front of the queue.
iOS 12 is compatible with any device that can run iOS 11 — the iPhone 5s and later, the iPad mini 2 and later, the iPad Air and later as well as the most recent iPod touch.
But first, backup your device. Make sure your iCloud backup is up to date by opening the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad and tapping on your account information at the top and then on your device name. Additionally, you can also plug your iOS device to your computer to do a manual backup in iTunes (or do both, really).
Don’t forget to encrypt your backup in iTunes. It is much safer if somebody hacks your computer. And encrypted backups include saved passwords and health data. This way, you don’t have to reconnect to all your online accounts.
Once this is done, you should go to the Settings app as soon as possible to get in the queue. Navigate to ‘Settings,’ then ‘General’ and then ‘Software Update.’ Then you should see ‘Update Requested…” It will then automatically start downloading once the download is available.
The main feature of iOS 12 is a performance improvement, especially for older devices. If you have an iPhone 6 or an iPad Air for instance, you should see a big improvement when it comes to launching apps, triggering the camera and entering text.
The other big theme of the year is new features to help you spend less time using your phone. There’s a new Screen Time feature to see and control how much time you spend using each app. Notifications are now grouped and you can silence them from the lock screen. You also can turn on Do Not Disturb when you’re in a meeting, for a few hours or for longer.
Apple didn’t stop there, and added new power features as well. Developers will be able to take advantage of a new file format for augmented reality and new features in ARKit 2.0. Apple is releasing the Workflow app as a new Siri Shortcuts app. Developers will be able to add information to Siri, as well, so that you can add a boarding pass or a music playlist to Siri.
The Photos, News and Stocks apps have been improved, as well as Apple Books (the app formerly known as iBooks). Apple is introducing Memoji on the iPhone X. It’s a customized avatar that you can use in iMessage and FaceTime to represent you.
While you download the update, why don’t you head over to my review and read about all the new features in iOS 12. And if you want to impress all your friends, learn some neat little hidden features in iOS 12.
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Blippar picks up $37 million hoping to become profitable in the next year
Blippar, the AR startup that launched in 2011, has today announced the close of a $37 million financing led by Candy Ventures and Qualcomm Ventures.
The company started out by offering AR experiences for brand marketers through publishers and other real-world products, letting users unlock AR content by scanning a tag called a “Blipp”.
Blippar then transitioned to a number of different AR products, but took a particular focus on computer vision, launching a consumer-facing visual search engine that would let users identify cars, plants, and other real-world objects.
Most recently, Blippar has introduced an indoor positioning system that lets commercial real estate owners implement AR mapping and other content from within their buildings.
The AR industry has been in a state of evolution for the past few years, and Blippar has constantly reshifted and re-positioned to try and take advantage of the blossoming market. Unfortunately, several pivots have put the company in a tough spot financially.
BI reports that Blippar posted revenue of £8.5 million ($11.2 million) in the 16-month period up to March 31 2016, with losses of £24 million ($31.5 million). These latest rounds have essentially let Blippar keep the lights on while trying to pick up the pace on revenues.
The company says that this latest round is meant to fuel the company’s race to reach profitability in the next 12 months. Blippar has raised more than $137 million to date.
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Natural Cycles contraception app told to clarify pregnancy risks
A multi-month investigation by Sweden’s Medical Products Agency into a number of unwanted pregnancies among users of ‘digital contraception’ app Natural Cycles has been closed after the startup agreed to clarify the risk of the product failing.
But, on the self-reported data front, the agency said it was satisfied the number of unwanted pregnancies is in line with Natural Cycles’ own clinical evaluations which are included in the certification documentation for the product.
In its marketing and on its website Natural Cycles describes the app-based system as “93% effective under typical use” — a finding that’s based on a clinical study it conducted of more than 22,000 of its users.
The investigation by Sweden’s MPA began around eight months ago, after a number of users in Natural Cycle’s home market had reported unwanted pregnancies to a local hospital — which then reported the app to the regulator.
The Natural Cycles app uses an algorithm to track fertility by monitoring the user’s menstrual cycle. The process requires women take their body temperature at least several times a week, and do so first thing in the morning, inputting the data into the app which is designed to adapts its ‘fertile’ or ‘not fertile’ predictions to each user’s cycle.
Several users have reported falling pregnant while using the app. But the proportion of women who have done so (at least in Sweden) is in line with efficacy rates reported by Natural Cycles, according to the regulator’s assessment.
Earlier this year the MPA said it had received “approximately 50 complaints” related to unwanted pregnancies in users of the app. But late last week it announced it had concluded its assessment of the app — which it said focused on “product safety, instructions for use and post market surveillance documentation in order to confirm if the product is in compliance with regulations”.
As well as looking at parts of the certification documentation for Natural Cycles, the agency says it assessed monthly reports of unwanted pregnancies among active app users in Sweden, covering a six-month period — with pregnancy data supplied by the company itself on a month by month basis during the first half of 2018.
The agency found the number of reported unwanted pregnancies reported by users to be in line with Natural Cycles’ certification documents for the product, finding a failure rate in typical use of 6.9%.
But it also asked the company to clarify the risk of unwanted pregnancies in instructions for the app.
“Our conclusion is that the number of unwanted pregnancies during the assessed time period is consistent with data shown in the clinical evaluation included in the certification documentation. Since it is important that a contraception app is correctly used, we requested the manufacturer to clarify the risk of unwanted pregnancies in the instructions for use and in the app. These issues have been addressed by Natural Cycles and thereby our review is completed,” said Mats Artursson, investigator at the agency in a statement.
As we reported earlier this year, the startup has lent heavily on aggressive social media marketing of its novel ‘digital contraception’ method — which has sometimes appeared to downplay the risk of failure for what is undoubtedly a relatively complex contraception option, given it requires users to consistently self-monitor (and accurately measure their body temperature) as well as use alternative contraception on days when the app informs them they are fertile.
Natural Cycles admits that factors such as illness, disrupted sleep, drinking alcohol and having an irregular menstrual cycle can have a negative impact on the accuracy of its algorithmic fertility predictions. And says itself that the method is not a suitable contraception choice for every individual.
Nor does the app offer any protection against STDs — unless users combine it with additional barrier methods of contraception.
But despite that, until very recently on its website (and in some of its marketing) Natural Cycles has been making the misleading claim that its contraception app is “99% effective” if used “perfectly”. (Perfect use implying, well, superhuman use.)
And just last month the company was wrapped on the knuckles by the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority — which banned one of its social media ads for being misleading, also warning the company against exaggerating the efficacy of the app in preventing pregnancies.
The assessment by the Swedish MPA looks to have reached similar conclusions about certain aspects of the claims Natural Cycles’ has been making for the app.
When we covered the ASA’s ruling last month Natural Cycle’s website still included the misleading 99% ‘perfect use’ claim — within this confusingly worded paragraph: “With using the app perfectly, i.e. if you never have unprotected intercourse on red days, Natural Cycles is 99% effective, which means 1 woman out of 100 get pregnant during one year of use.”
It’s since scrubbed the paragraph from its website, focusing solely on the 93% effective stat — on which it now writes: “Natural Cycles is 93% effective under typical use, which means that 7 women out of 100 get pregnant during 1 year of use. Typical use effectiveness takes into account all possible reasons for becoming pregnant while using the app: from having unprotected sex on a red day, to the app wrongly attributing a green day or the chosen method of contraception on a red day having failed.”
It’s not clear whether Natural Cycles removed the 99% ‘perfect use’ claim as a result of the ASA ruling — or following the Swedish MPA’s assessment. (We’ve asked the company to clarify the exact changes it made related to the MPA’s findings, which the regulator also says relate to software versioning, and will update this story with any response.)
Its app gained certification as a contraception in the EU in February 2017, and went on to gain FDA clearance (via a De Novo classification request) this summer — giving the product a major credibility boost, even as regulatory clearances still come with plenty of caveats. (In the FDA‘s case it warns that: “Users must be aware that even with consistent use of the device, there is still a possibility of unintended pregnancy.”)
It’s also worth noting that it’s still the case that Natural Cycles has not carried out a randomized control trial to more robustly prove out the efficacy of the product, i.e. by using standard scientific methods.
Instead, users must rely on the findings of its self-selecting clinical study of its own users — which may have its own weaknesses, given that, for example, any user who fails to report an unwanted pregnancy to Natural Cycles would not be reflected in the data it’s providing to regulators.
Commenting on the conclusion of the Swedish MPA’s investigation in a statement, Natural Cycles CEO Raoul Scherwitzl said: “We are pleased that the MPA has concluded its investigation, following a review of our real-world effectiveness data. There has been a lot of discussion about this investigation, and we hope that it will provide some reassurance to women to see eminent bodies like the Swedish MPA and the US FDA in alignment based on the strength of our clinical evidence. We never doubted the effectiveness of our product since the number of reported pregnancies is monitored closely on a monthly basis — this is an ongoing responsibility that we commit to as part of operating in a regulated environment.”
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Uber fires up its own traffic estimates to fuel demand beyond cars
If the whole map is red and it’s a short ride, maybe you’d prefer taking an Uber JUMP Bike instead of an UberX. Or at least if you do end up stuck bumper-to-bumper, the warning could make you less likely to get mad mid-ride and take it out on the driver’s rating.
This week TechCrunch spotted Uber overlaying blue, yellow, and red traffic condition bars on your route map before you hail. Responding to TechCrunch’s inquiry, Uber confirmed that traffic estimates have been quietly testing for riders on Android over the past few months and the pilot program recently expanded to a subset of iOS users. It’s already live for all drivers.
The congestion indicators are based on Uber’s own traffic information pulled from its historic trip data about 10 billion rides plus real-time data from its drivers’ phones, rather than estimates from Google that already power Uber’s maps.
If traffic estimates do roll out, they could make users more tolerant of longer ETAs and less likely to check a competing app since they’ll know their driver might take longer to pick them up because congestion is to blame rather than Uber’s algorithm. During the ride they might be more patient amidst the clogged streets.
Uber’s research into traffic in India
But most interestingly, seeing traffic conditions could help users choose when it’s time to take one of Uber’s non-car choices. They could sail past traffic in one of Uber’s new electric JUMP Bikes, or buy a public transportation ticket from inside Uber thanks to its new partnership with Masabi for access to New York’s MTA plus buses and trains in other cities. Cheaper and less labor intensive for Uber, these options make more sense to riders the more traffic there is. It’s to the company’s advantage to steer users towards the most satisfying mode of transportation, and traffic info could point them in the right direction.
Through a program called Uber Movement, the company began sharing its traffic data with city governments early last year. The goal was to give urban planners the proof they need to make their streets more efficient. Uber has long claimed that it can help reduce traffic by getting people into shared rides and eliminating circling in search of parking. But a new study showed that for each mile of personal driving Uber and Lyft eliminated, they added 2.8 miles of professional driving for an 180 percent increase in total traffic.
Uber is still learning whether users find traffic estimates helpful before it considers rolling them out permanently to everyone. Right now they only appear on unshared UberX, Black, XL, SUV, and Taxi routes before you hail to a small percentage of users. But Uber’s spokesperson verified that the company’s long-term goal is to be able to tell users that the cheapest way to get there is option X, the quickest is option Y, and the most comfortable is option Z. Traffic estimates are key to that. And now that it’s had so many cars on the road for so long, it has the signals necessary to predict which streets will be smooth and which will be jammed at a given hour.
For years, Uber called itself a logistics company, not a ride sharing company. Most people gave it a knowing wink. Every Silicon Valley company tries to trump up its importance by claiming to conquer a higher level of abstraction. But with advent of personal transportation modes like on-demand bikes and scooters, Uber is poised to earn the title by getting us from point A to point B however we prefer.
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Facebook rolls out photo/video fact checking so partners can train its AI
Sometimes fake news lives inside of Facebook as photos and videos designed to propel misinformation campaigns, instead of off-site on news articles that can generate their own ad revenue. To combat these politically rather than financially motivated meddlers, Facebook has to be able to detect fake news inside of images and the audio that accompanies video clips. Today its expanding its photo and video fact checking program from four countries to all 23 of its fact-checking partners in 17 countries.
“Many of our third-party fact-checking partners have expertise evaluating photos and videos and are trained in visual verification techniques, such as reverse image searching and analyzing image metadata, like when and where the photo or video was taken” says Facebook product manager Antonia Woodford. “As we get more ratings from fact-checkers on photos and videos, we will be able to improve the accuracy of our machine learning model.”
The goal is for Facebook to be able to automatically spot manipulated images, out of context images that don’t show what they say they do, or text and audio claims that are provably false.
In last night’s epic 3,260-word security manifesto, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained that “The definition of success is that we stop cyberattacks and coordinated information operations before they can cause harm.” That means using AI to proactively hunt down false news rather than waiting for it to be flagged by users. For that, Facebook needs AI training data that will be produced as exhaust from its partners’ photo and video fact checking operations.
Facebook is developing technology tools to assist its fact checkers in this process. “we use optical character recognition (OCR) to extract text from photos and compare that text to headlines from fact-checkers’ articles. We are also working on new ways to detect if a photo or video has been manipulated” Woodford notes, referring to DeepFakes that use AI video editing software to make someone appear to say or do something they haven’t.
Image memes were one of the most popular forms of disinformation used by the Russian IRA election interferers. The problem is that since they’re so easily re-shareable and don’t require people to leave Facebook to view them, they can get viral distribution from unsuspecting users who don’t realize they’ve become pawns in a disinformation campaign.
Facebook could potentially use the high level of technical resources necessary to build fake news meme-spotting AI as an argument for why Facebook shouldn’t be broken up. With Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp combined, the company gains economies of scale when it comes to fighting the misinformation scourge.
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Snapchat enlists 20 partners to curate Our Stories from submissions
Themed collections of user generated content chosen by news publishers for viewing on and off Snapchat are the teen social network’s next great hope for relevance. Today Snap launches Curated Our Stories with the help of 20 partners like CNN, Cosmopolitan, Lad Bible, and NowThis. Instead of sifting through and selecting submissions to Our Story all by itself around events, holidays, and fads, these publishers can create slideshows of Snaps about whatever they want. They’ll both be featured in Snapchat Discover that sees 75 million Our Stories viewers per month, but also on the publishers’ own properties thanks to Snap’s embeds that have been underused since their January launch.
To entice partners, Snap has built in monetization from day one, splitting revenue with publishers from ads run in the Our Stories they curate. That’s in sharp contrast to Snap’s work with independent creators, where it still won’t split revenue with them directly, though at least it’s finally connecting them with brand sponsors.
Snap’s head of Stories everywhere Rahul Chopra tells me that in exchange for its cut, Snap provides a content management system that publishers can use to search through submitted Snaps using a variety of filters like keywords in captions and locations. A human at Snap will also moderate Curated Our Stories to ensure nothing objectionable slips through.
The new revenue stream could help Snap offset its declining user count by squeezing more cash out of each user by exposing them to more content and ads, or score it new users through embedded Curated Our Stories on its partners’ apps and sites. Snap beat revenue expectations last quarter but it still lost $353 million, contributing to a share price decline that hit an all-time low yesterday.
Snap first created Our Stories in 2014 to let people get the perspectives of tons of different attendees to music festivals and sporting matches. With time it expanded to creating college-specific Our Stories and ones of more relatable activities like enjoying Fridays. Snapchat also lets users search its publicly submitted content, but seems to have found people are too lazy or unimaginative to do it, or the uncurated content isn’t high quality enough to be worth watching.
The full list of publisher partners is: Brut, CNN, Cosmopolitan, Daily Mail, Daquan, Dodo, Harper’s Bazaar, iHeart, The Infatuation, Jukin, Lad Bible, Love Stories TV, Mic, NBC News, NBC Sports, NBC, Today Show, New York Post, NowThis, Overtime, Refinery 29, Telemundo, The Tab, Viacom, Wave.TV, and Whalar. They run the gambit from traditional publishers to online news sources, and includes Snapchat’s Yellow startup accelerator portfolio company Love Stories TV, plus CNN’s return to Discover after cancelling its daily anchored news show there.
The curation possibilities are infinite. Partners could create reels of reactions to major news stories or shots from people with eyes on the ground at the scene of the action. They could highlight how people use a certain product, experience a particular place, or use a certain Snapchat creative feature. The publishers might produce daily or weekly collections around a topic or try a wide range of one-offs to surprise their viewers. You could think of it as a little bit like YouTube playlists, but cobbled together from real-time short-form submissions that might be too brief to make an impact on their own.
This is the start of Snapchat crowdsourcing not only content but curation to dig out the best citizen journalism, comedy, and beauty shot on its app and turn it into easily consumable compendiums. Given that Snapchat lost three million users last quarter, it could use the help keeping viewers coming back. But like most everything it launches, if Curated Our Stories blows up, you can bet Facebook and Instagram will turn on their copying machines.
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10 critical points from Zuckerberg’s epic security manifesto
Mark Zuckerberg wants you to know he’s trying his damnedest to fix Facebook before it breaks democracy. Tonight he posted a 3,260-word battle plan for fighting election interference. Amidst drilling through Facebook’s strategy and progress, he slips in several notable passages revealing his own philosophy.
Zuckerberg has cast off his premature skepticism and is ready to command the troops. He sees Facebook’s real identity policy as a powerful weapon for truth other social networks lack, but that would be weakened if Instagram and WhatsApp were split off by regulators. He’s done with the finger-pointing and wants everyone to work together on solutions. And he’s adopted a touch of cynicism that could open his eyes and help him predict how people will misuse his creation.
Here are the most important parts of Zuckerberg’s security manifesto:
Zuckerberg embraces his war-time tactician role
“While we want to move quickly when we identify a threat, it’s also important to wait until we uncover as much of the network as we can before we take accounts down to avoid tipping off our adversaries, who would otherwise take extra steps to cover their remaining tracks. And ideally, we time these takedowns to cause the maximum disruption to their operations.”
The fury he unleashed on Google+, Snapchat, and Facebook’s IPO-killer is now aimed at election attackers
“These are incredibly complex and important problems, and this has been an intense year. I am bringing the same focus and rigor to addressing these issues that I’ve brought to previous product challenges like shifting our services to mobile.”
Balancing free speech and security is complicated and expensive
“These issues are even harder because people don’t agree on what a good outcome looks like, or what tradeoffs are acceptable to make. When it comes to free expression, thoughtful people come to different conclusions about the right balances. When it comes to implementing a solution, certainly some investors disagree with my approach to invest so much in security.”
Putting Twitter and YouTube on blast for allowing pseudonymity…
“One advantage Facebook has is that we have a principle that you must use your real identity. This means we have a clear notion of what’s an authentic account. This is harder with services like Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitter, YouTube, iMessage, or any other service where you don’t need to provide your real identity.”
…While making an argument for why the Internet is more secure if Facebook isn’t broken up
“Fortunately, our systems are shared, so when we find bad actors on Facebook, we can also remove accounts linked to them on Instagram and WhatsApp as well. And where we can share information with other companies, we can also help them remove fake accounts too.”‘
Political ads aren’t a business, they’re supposedly a moral duty
“When deciding on this policy, we also discussed whether it would be better to ban political ads altogether. Initially, this seemed simple and attractive. But we decided against it — not due to money, as this new verification process is costly and so we no longer make any meaningful profit on political ads — but because we believe in giving people a voice. We didn’t want to take away an important tool many groups use to engage in the political process.”
Zuckerberg overruled staff to allow academic research on Facebook
“As a result of these controversies [like Cambridge Analytica], there was considerable concern amongst Facebook employees about allowing researchers to access data. Ultimately, I decided that the benefits of enabling this kind of academic research outweigh the risks. But we are dedicating significant resources to ensuring this research is conducted in a way that respects people’s privacy and meets the highest ethical standards.”
Calling on law enforcement to step up
“There are certain critical signals that only law enforcement has access to, like money flows. For example, our systems make it significantly harder to set up fake accounts or buy political ads from outside the country. But it would still be very difficult without additional intelligence for Facebook or others to figure out if a foreign adversary had set up a company in the US, wired money to it, and then registered an authentic account on our services and bought ads from the US.”
Instead of minimizing their own blame, the major players must unite forces
“Preventing election interference is bigger than any single organization. It’s now clear that everyone — governments, tech companies, and independent experts such as the Atlantic Council — need to do a better job sharing the signals and information they have to prevent abuse . . . The last point I’ll make is that we’re all in this together. The definition of success is that we stop cyberattacks and coordinated information operations before they can cause harm.”
The end of Zuckerberg’s utopic idealism
“One of the important lessons I’ve learned is that when you build services that connect billions of people across countries and cultures, you’re going to see all of the good humanity is capable of, and you’re also going to see people try to abuse those services in every way possible.”
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Snapchat shares hit all-time low as search acquisition Vurb’s CEO bails
Snapchat’s sagging share price is making it tough to retain talent. Bobby Lo, founder and CEO of mobile search app Vurb that Snap Inc acquired for $114.5 million two years ago is leaving day-to-day operations at the company. That means Lo cut out early on his four-year retention package vesting schedule, which was likely influenced by Snapchat falling to new share price lows. Snap is trading around $9.15 today, compared to its $17 IPO price and $24 first-day close.
That’s down over 7 percent from yesterday following BTIG analyst Rich Greenfield gave Snap a sell rating with a target price of $5 saying “We are tired of Snapchat’s excuses for missing numbers and are no longer willing to give management ‘time’ to figure out monetization.” Greenfield is known as one of the top social network analysts, so people take him seriously when he says “We have been disappointed in SNAP’s product evolution (as have users) and see no reason to believe this will change.”
Vurb is a good example of this. The app let users make plans with friends to visit local places, allowing them to bundle restaurants, movie theaters, and more into shareable decks of search cards. It took over a year after the October 2016 acquisition for the tech to be integrated into Snapchat in the form of context cards in search. But Snap never seemed to figure out how to make its content-craving teen audience care about Vurb’s utility. Snap could have built powerful offline meetup tools out of the cards but never did, and lackluster Snap Map adoption furthered clouded the company’s path forward around local businesses.
Now Lo tells TechCrunch of his departure, “Building experiences at Snap has been a wonderful culmination of my seven-year startup journey with Vurb. My transition to an advisor at Snap lets me continue supporting the amazing people there while directing my time back into startups, starting with investing and advising in founders.”
Lo was early to embrace the monolithic app style pioneered by WeChat in China that’s become increasingly influential in the states. Snap confirmed the departure while trying to downplay it. A spokesperson tells me, “Bobby transitioned to an advisory role this summer, and we appreciate his continued contributions to Snap.”
Given Snap is known to back-weight its stock vesting schedules, Lo could be leaving over half of his retention shares on the table. That decision should worry investors. As a solo founder, Lo already made off with a big chunk of the acquisition price that including $21 million in cash and $83 million in stock, so with the company’s share price so low, he might have had little incentive to stay.
Snapchat Context Cards built from Vurb’s acquired technology
Since last July, Snap has lost a ton of talent including SVP of Engineering Tim Sehn, early employee Chloe Drimal, VP of HR and Legal Robyn Thomas and VP of Securities and Facilities Martin Lev, CFO Drew Vollero, VP of product Tom Conrad, TimeHop co-founder Jonathan Wegener, Spectacles team lead Mark Randall, ad tech manager Sriram Krishnan, head of sales Jeff Lucas, and just last week, its COO Imran Khan.
With its user count shrinking, constant competition from Facebook and Instagram, and talent fleeing, it’s hard to see a bright future for Snap. Unless CEO Evan Spiegel, without the help of his departed lieutenants, can come up with a groundbreaking new product that’s not easy to copy, we could be looking at downward spiral for the ephemeral app. At what point must Snap consider selling itself to Google, Apple, Tencent, Disney, or whoever will take on the distressed social network?
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HQ Trivia nabs Target to sponsor game with biggest ever single winner prize of $100K
HQ Trivia is aiming to attract more players following a slight decline in downloads with a new, large prize. The company announced today it has bagged Target to sponsor to sponsor a special Emmy-themed game featuring its biggest-ever single winner prize of $100,000. The game will air on Monday, September 17 at 9 PM ET, but will be played in a different fashion than usual.
Typically, HQ Trivia players compete to win or split a cash prize, which often doesn’t amount to much more than enough for a cup of coffee. But this time around, HQ Trivia will run in a “one winner takes all” format, meaning only one individual will earn the winnings from the game.
Instead of a normal 12-question round with 10 second to answer, the game will continue until only one winner remains. Players can still use their extra lives, but only until question number 15. After that, they won’t work.
The game’s content will be Emmy Awards-themed, featuring questions about shows, actors, the Emmy telecast, and other historical facts.
Target is stepping up as the game’s sponsor for this winner-takes-all milestone game. The game itself will also be branded, but the exact nature of the creative is something Target is keeping under wraps for the time being as it’s a first for the retailer.
HQ Trivia has worked with a number of other big-name brands in the past through its game, including Warner Bros, Nike, MillerCoors, National Geographic, Chase, Viacom, and NBCUniversal.
The news of the milestone game comes at a time when HQ Trivia’s downloads have been trending slightly downwards. As TechCrunch’s Josh Constine reported last month for the app’s Apple TV launch, the iOS version of HQ Trivia had fallen from being the No. 1 U.S. trivia game to No. 10, and the No. 44 game to No. 196.
Today, it’s the No. 135 game and No. 467 Overall app.
According to data from Sensor Tower, the app has 12.8 million downloads across platforms, the majority of which (11M) were this year.
HQ Trivia claims the app continues to have the “largest live audience on mobile daily.”
The company responded at the time that games are a “hits business” and “don’t grow exponentially forever.” Rus Yusupov, CEO of HQ Trivia parent company Intermedia Labs, also noted that HQ was working on new game formats as a result.
Despite the fickle nature of mobile gamers, HQ Trivia has spawned a number of clones and other live games, including Fox’s FN Genius, ProveIt, FameGame, Gravy, MajorityRules, Cash Show, and many others. Even Facebook caught onto the trend, launching its own gameshows platform to support interactive video.
However, it remains to be seen if live game-playing is a lasting interest for mobile gamers, or just a flash in the pan.
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