Instagram is introducing the ability for users to broadcast live to just their Close Friends list, the company announced on Thursday. The new “Close Friends on Live” feature allows users to go live with up to three other people. Instagram says the new feature can be used to share what’s on your mind, spontaneously catch…
LTK (formerly LiketoKnow.it and RewardStyle), the influencer shopping app with 40 million monthly users, announced on Thursday the launch of a free direct message tool for creators to instantly share preset responses with followers. The new tool, called LTK DM, is integrated into the posts section of the LTK app. When a creator shares an…
Gynger, a platform that lends capital to companies for technology purchases, has raised $20 million in a Series A round led by PayPal Ventures, it told TechCrunch exclusively. The financing brings the New York-based startup’s total venture capital raised to $31.7 million and included participation from Gradient Ventures (Google’s AI-focused venture fund), Velvet Sea Ventures,…
Christopher O’Donnell has hobbies. He likes music and playing guitar, but above all, he loves building software. Which is why three years after leaving HubSpot, he built Day.ai, a CRM for the age of AI. Unlike modern CRMs, which are essentially giant spreadsheets that somebody needs to populate and keep updated, Day learns everything about…
Zal Bilimoria has been a solo general partner since 2018, and has no plans to stop. And he credits the decision to former colleague David Lee, who started Refactor Capital with him in 2016. He said that he would not have been able to start the Burlingame-based firm without Lee, a former Google executive who…
Spotify is now letting non-hosted podcasters upload videos to the platform. The company quietly rolled out the new feature last week, a Spotify spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch. Previously, creators who wanted to upload video podcasts to Spotify were required to sign up to be hosted on Spotify for Podcasters, a free platform for podcast creators,…
Wordsmith, a fledgling Scottish legal tech startup, has somehow managed to attract the backing of two well-known venture capital firms. The startup targets in-house legal teams and law firms with an AI platform that they can configure to help other workers in the company. This way, anyone in the company can solicit help with legal…
Malicious hacking is getting increasingly sophisticated, and that’s leading to a very clear trend in security technology. To keep people and organizations safe, security also has to continue advancing its own complexity. Security startup PQShield has gotten an early start on that concept with a focus on “post-quantum” cryptography: software and hardware solutions that, in…
Four years after acquiring Shine, a French fintech startup that offers bank accounts to freelancers and very small companies, Société Générale has announced plans to sell Shine to Ageras. In 2020, TechCrunch reported that Société Générale spent around €100 million to acquire Shine. It wasn’t a huge acquisition but it attracted quite a bit of…
With India’s election process completed and the new government starting its tenure in office, Meta has removed its restriction on election-related queries using its Meta AI chatbot. However, Google is still applying limits as part of its global restrictions on this type of queries. Meta’s restrictions lift means you can search for queries related to…
