Elude raises $2.1M to show spontaneous travelers the best destinations for their budgets
As more people dust off their luggage and passports after stowing them away during the global pandemic, Elude aims to show travelers a new way to take spontaneous trips.
The Los Angeles-based startup launched its travel discovery mobile app Thursday, a budget-first search engine that shows people h
Oh, Facebook changed its privacy settings again
Ever considerate of its users, Facebook has determined that its privacy settings needed a bit of a shuffle to keep things clear and easy to find. To that end they’ve taken the “privacy settings” settings and scattered them mischievously among the other categories.
“We've
Facebook cuts off NYU researcher access, prompting rebuke from lawmakers
Facebook shut down accounts belonging to two academic researchers late Tuesday, cutting off their ability to study political ads and misinformation on the world’s biggest social network.
The company accused the academics of engaging in “unauthorized scraping” and compromising user
Match Group to add audio and video chat, including group live video, to its dating app portfolio
Dating app maker and Tinder parent Match Group said during its Q2 earnings it will bring audio and video chat, including group live video, and other livestreaming technologies to several of the company’s brands over the next 12 to 24 months. The developments will be powered by innovations fro
Amazon expands same-day Prime delivery to 6 more US cities
Amazon announced this morning it’s expanding its faster, same-day delivery service to half a dozen more U.S. cities. The service, which the retailer has been working to make same-day delivery even faster over the past year, now offers consumers in a number of markets the ability to shop up to
ByteDance rival Kuaishou is shutting down controversial app Zynn
Kuaishou Technology, a Chinese firm perceived as a ByteDance rival by many, said on Wednesday it will shut down its controversial short-form video app Zynn later this month. The app was only available in the U.S.
The firm, which last month said it had amassed 1 billion monthly active users, didn
What Square's acquisition of Afterpay means for startups
On Sunday Square announced it was gobbling up Afterpay in a deal worth $29 billion at the time of announcement. Alex followed up yesterday with more details on why the deal made sense for Square and Afterpay over here, but we wanted to ask some notable VCs what it means for the startup market.
For
WhatsApp photos and videos can now disappear after a single viewing
WhatsApp said that it would soon let users send disappearing photos and videos and this week the feature will be rolling out to everybody. Anyone using the Facebook-owned messaging app can share a photo or video in “view once” mode, allowing a single viewing before the media in question
Discord now lets you customize your user profile on its apps
For mobile users, Discord is adding one new feature that you’d find on a more traditional social app. The company rolled out an option for users to customize their profiles across its iOS and Android apps Tuesday, following the feature’s release on the desktop version of Discord in late
Sendit gains 3.5M downloads after Snapchat suspends top anonymous apps YOLO and LMK
In May of this year, Snap suspended two Snapchat-integrated apps that allowed users to send anonymous messages, Yolo and LMK, following a lawsuit filed on behalf of a mother whose son died by suicide after being bullied through messages on the apps for many months. In the wake of the suspensions, a
Google Maps on iOS adds live location sharing in iMessage, home screen widget, dark mode
Google Maps announced today three feature updates to its iOS app. With live location sharing in the iMessage app, a traffic widget for the home screen and dark mode, Google Maps is positioning itself as a stronger competitor against iOS’ native Apple Maps.
Live location sharing was already po
YouTube’s $100 million Shorts Fund to challenge TikTok goes live
YouTube earlier this year announced its plans to significantly invest in original creator content for its TikTok competitor, YouTube Shorts, with the introduction of a $100 million YouTube Shorts Fund. The fund will reward creators for their most engaging and most viewed short-form videos over the
Substack doubles down on uncensored free speech with acquisition of Letter
Substack announced last week that it acquired Letter, a platform that encourages written dialogue and debate. The financials of the deal weren’t disclosed, but this acquisition follows Substack’s recent $65 million raise.
Newsletters are all the rage — Facebook launched its exclus
Controversial crime app Citizen launches $20/month Protect service
After months of testing with upwards of 100,000 beta testers, Citizen today is launching its premium Protect offering for all users. The subscription service runs $20 a month and opens up a number of features on the app.
Chief among the new paid features is a “Get Agent” button, which offers ac