Media

Microsoft wants a piece of the metaverse, too, so at its Ignite conference today, the company announced 3D avatars for those Teams meetings where you don’t want to be on camera. Those animated personalized avatars are part of what Microsoft calls “Mesh for Teams,” which combines t

Zoom is introducing a pilot advertising program that will show ads to users on its “Basic” free tier. The company says the ads will support investments and enable it to continue providing its platform to free users. Basic tier users will only see ads if they join a meeting hosted by ano

The final version of iOS 15.0 was released on September 20. While there are no major changes in the OS itself, Apple touts this new wave of updates will present faster, more stable and convenient operations for users. But what’s really important are a number of updates that will greatly affec

Epic Games announced today that its work to bring video game mega-title Fortnite to the Chinese market is shutting down. The company said in an official announcement that the long-running test of the popular shooter title in China will conclude on November 15. New users won’t be accepted star

As access to unique sounds is becoming a competitive advantage for social apps, Snapchat announced today it’s inked a deal with NBCUniversal to give users access to licensed audio clips from various NBCU movies and TV shows. With this latest launch, users can add to their Snaps audio clips fr

Netflix sees gaming as a big part of its future in the battle for consumer attention. In July, the company hired Mike Verdu to head a new gaming division, signaling just how serious it is about moving into this new territory. Verdu has a lot of gaming cred. He most recently served as vice president

WhatsApp will today begin beta testing a new, cloud-based version of its WhatsApp Business API, hosted on parent company Facebook’s infrastructure. With the shift to the cloud, the setup time for integrating with the API will drop from weeks to only minutes, the company claims, so businesses

Amazon announced today that a TikTok app is now available on its Amazon Fire TV for users in the U.S. and Canada. The app is also coming soon to Echo Show devices. After downloading TikTok from the Fire TV Appstore, users can log in to their TikTok account, or create one if they aren’t alread

Pinterest is getting into live shopping as part of its pivot from being only an inspirational shopping site to becoming a home for creator content.  The company this morning announced a new feature on its app called Pinterest TV — a series of live, original and shoppable videos focused on ar

Tinder is bringing back “Swipe Night,” its interactive in-app event that allows its users another way to break the ice besides just matching and chatting. After the first season’s “choose your own adventure” apocalyptic storyline brought in over 20 million users, Tinde

The traditional way to design for the mobile environment involves a lot of back-and-forth as developers design in one program, prototype in another and collaborate in yet a third tool. A new startup, Play, is touting itself as “the only native iOS product design tool that makes it possible to cre

Roblox, the gaming platform that is immensely popular amongst young players, said on Twitter Sunday evening that it is back online worldwide. Roblox is back online everywhere! Thank you for your continued patience as we get back to normal. — Roblox (@Roblox) October 31, 2021

Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen's message about Instagram's impact on teenage girls was unequivocal: Facebook's studies found that 13% of British teens said Instagram prompted thoughts of suicide, and 17% of teen girls say Instagram makes eating disorders worse. These statistics,

African e-commerce fulfillment startups backed by Y Combinator seem to be piquing investors' interest this year for their niche e-commerce play. Summer batch graduate ShipBlu is the latest on that list and confirmed to technewss that it has raised $2.4 million in seed funding.