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Skype upgrades its messaging feature with drafts, bookmarks and more
Skype is best known for being a video calling app and, to some extent, that’s because its messaging feature set has been a bit underdeveloped. Today, the company is working to change that image with a series of improvements to Skype’s chatting features aimed at further differentiating it from rival apps.
One of the most useful of the new features is support for Message Drafts.
Similar to email, any message you type up in Skype but don’t yet send...
You can now share music from Spotify to Facebook Stories
Spotify this morning announced a new way for you to share music with friends (or fans, if you’re an artist) — by way of a new Facebook Stories integration that includes 15-second song previews. Viewers can also optionally tap on the “Play on Spotify” button in the Story to be redirected to the Spotify app to hear more.
The feature is designed largely with artists and their teams in mind, as it gives them another way to promote their new music across...
Instagram may allow creators to syndicate IGTV videos to Facebook
Following the departure of Instagram’s founders, Facebook is working to more closely integrate the photo-sharing app with its flagship social network. It’s already added its brand name next to Instagram’s, and is working to make both platforms’ messaging products interoperable. Now, Facebook is prototyping a means of syndicating Instagram’s IGTV video to Facebook’s video site, Facebook Watch.
In another find from noted reverse engineer, Jane Manchun...
Facebook rolls out new business tools for Messenger, kills the ‘Discover’ tab
Facebook today is formally rolling out a new suite of tools for its 40 million active businesses on Messenger, including appointment booking, lead generation, and others announced earlier this year at its F8 developer conference. As a part of these changes, Facebook will also begin to phase out the Discover tab in Messenger — a feature that became home to both games and businesses following last fall’s redesign.
Today, Facebook says the Discover...
‘Behind the Screen’ illuminates the invisible, indispensable content moderation industry
The moderators who sift through the toxic detritus of social media have gained the spotlight recently, but they’ve been important for far longer — longer than internet giants would like you to know. In her new book “Behind the Screen,” UCLA’s Sarah Roberts illuminates the history of this scrupulously hidden workforce and the many forms the job takes.
It is after all people who look at every heinous image, racist diatribe, and porn clip that gets...
Facebook will require political advertisers provide further credentials, or have their ads paused
Ahead of the 2020 elections, Facebook today announced it’s tightening requirements for groups buying political ads on the social network. The company last year began requiring advertisers get authorized to run ads about social issues, elections, or politics, which involves advertisers providing identification to confirm who they are and where they’re located — including a U.S. street address, phone number, business email and website matching...
YouTube to reduce conspiracy theory recommendations in the UK
YouTube is expanding an experimental tweak to its recommendation engine that’s intended to reduce the amplification of conspiracy theories to the UK market.
In January, the video-sharing platform said it was making changes in the US to limit the spread of conspiracy theory content, such as junk science and bogus claims about historical events — following sustained criticism of how its platform accelerates damaging clickbait.
A YouTube spokeswoman...
How to use Amazon and advertising to build a D2C startup
Matt Altman & Tyler Elliston Contributor
Matt Altman runs the Amazon practice area for VMG Ignite, an eCommerce consultancy that helps early to mid stage CPG companies achieve growth. Tyler Elliston is the founder of VMG Ignite. Clients include Sun Bum, Perfect Snacks, Aloha, Pill Club, Solid Gold, and many more.
Entrepreneurship in consumer packaged goods (CPG) is being democratized. Every step of the value channel has been compressed...
Facebook succeeds in blocking German FCO’s privacy-minded order against combining user data
Facebook has succeeded in blocking a pioneering order by Germany’s Federal Cartel Office earlier this year that would have banned it from combining data on users across its own suite of social platforms — Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — without their consent.
Pioneering because the antitrust regulator had liaised with EU privacy authorities during a long-running investigation of Facebook’s data-gathering activities — leading it to conclude that...
Facebook really doesn’t want you to read these emails
Oh hey y’all, it’s Friday! It’s August! Which means it’s a great day for Facebook to drop a little news it would prefer you don’t notice. News that you won’t find a link to on the homepage of Facebook’s Newsroom — which is replete with colorfully illustrated items it does want you to read (like the puffed up claim that “Now You Can See and Control the Data That Apps and Websites Share With Facebook”.)
The blog post Facebook would really prefer you...
Pew: mobile and social media users in emerging markets have more diverse social networks
The latest study from Pew Research Center takes a look at the impact mobile technology, including the use of smartphones and social media, is having on the diversity of people’s social network in emerging markets. For the purpose of the study, Pew surveyed mobile users in eleven key markets: Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, South Africa, Kenya, India, Vietnam, the Philippines, Tunisia, Jordan, and Lebanon. It found that users in these markets had broader...
Tumblr’s next step forward with Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg
After months of rumors, Verizon finally sold off Tumblr for a reported $3 million — a fraction of what Yahoo paid for the once might blogging service back in 2013.
The media conglomerate (which also owns TechCrunch) was clearly never quite sure what to do with the property after gobbling it up as part of its 2016 Yahoo acquisition. All parties has since come to the conclusion that Tumblr simply wasn’t a good fit under either the Verizon or Yahoo...
Twitter picks up team from narrative app Lightwell in its latest effort to improve conversations
Twitter’s ongoing, long-term efforts to make conversations easier to follow and engage with on its platform is getting a boost with the company’s latest acquihire. The company has picked up the team behind Lightwell, a startup that had built a set of developer tools to build interactive, narrative apps, for an undisclosed sum. Lightwell’s founder and CEO, Suzanne Xie, is becoming a director of product leading Twitter’s Conversations initiative,...
YouTube is closing its private messages feature…and many kids are outraged
People love to share YouTube videos among their friends, which is why in mid-2017 YouTube launched a new in-app messaging feature that would allow YouTube users to private send their friends videos and chat within a dedicated tab in the YouTube mobile app. That feature is now being shut down, the company says. After September 18, the ability to direct message friends on YouTube itself will be removed.
The change was first spotted by 9to5Google, which...
‘This is Your Life in Silicon Valley’: The League founder and CEO Amanda Bradford on modern dating, and whether Bumble is a ‘real’ startup
Sunil Rajaraman Contributor
Sunil Rajaraman is the co-founder of Scripted.com
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Welcome to this week’s transcribed edition of This is Your Life in Silicon Valley. We’re...
