‘Mulan’ drove Disney+ app downloads up 68% week-over-week, but didn’t beat ‘Hamilton’

Disney’s live-action remake of “Mulan” skipped theaters to instead stream on Disney+ over the weekend, for the added fee of $30. According to early data, the launch helped grow Disney+ mobile installs by 68%, compared with one week prior. Consumer spending in the app also grew by

TikTok joins Europe’s code on tackling hate speech

TikTok, the popular short video sharing app, has joined the European Union’s Code of Conduct on Countering Illegal Hate Speech. In a statement on joining the code, TikTok’s head of trust and safety for EMEA, Cormac Keenan, said: “We have never allowed hate on TikTok, and we believ

PUBG cuts publishing ties with Tencent Games in India a week after ban

PUBG said on Tuesday Chinese giant Tencent Games will no longer be the publishing partner of the popular game in India as it attempts to allay concerns of New Delhi, which banned the game and 117 other apps last week. Prior to Tuesday's announcement, Tencent Games published and distributed PUBG

Why a startup with $10M in annual revenue took 18 months to get VC funding

Back in 2006, Joseph Heller went to China where he spent the next decade learning about the manufacturing business. Based on that experience he eventually built a startup called The Studio. The idea was to help connect people with a small business idea to manufacturers in China in a fully digital w

Apple iCloud, Google Drive and Dropbox probed over ‘unfair’ T&Cs in Italy

Italy’s competition authority has opened an investigation into cloud storage services operated by Apple, Dropbox and Google, in response to a number of complaints alleging unfair commercial practices. In a press release announcing the probe, the AGCM says it’s opened six investigations

Local governments that embrace digital services during challenging times can make real change happen

It has been a hard year. We wake up every morning to new developments in the tragedies of the moment spanning a pandemic, the greatest unexpected loss of life since 9/11, national civil unrest, natural disasters and a looming economic collapse. In the face of these developments, a completely unders

Tinder’s interactive video event ‘Swipe Night’ will launch in international markets this month

Tinder's “Swipe Night” is going global. The dating app announced today that its interactive video series will be available in Asia and other international markets starting on September 12, giving users another way to connect as they continue to stay at home because of the COVID-19 p

That Whole Foods is an Amazon warehouse; get used to it

Earlier this week, in Brooklyn, near the waterfront, Amazon opened what looks from the outside like a typical Whole Foods store. It isn’t open to the public, however; it’s a new fulfillment center. “Grocery delivery continues to be one of the fastest-growing businesses at Amazon,” t

Nintendo rips the seal off the next generation of nostalgia, but fans fret

It has always been considered a matter of if, and not when, Nintendo would begin capitalizing in earnest on content from beyond the SNES generation. The company is finally showing its intent to do so today — but with an uneven approach that leaves some fans worried about its intentions for other

Nintendo is remaking the first portable gaming system it ever built

Quick, what was the first portable gaming system Nintendo made? If you said “Game Boy”… solid guess, but not quite. For nearly a decade before Nintendo released that iconic gray beast, it was making the Game & Watch — a collection of handheld devices, each dedicated to playi

Daily Crunch: Apple delays ad-tracking changes

Apple announces a surprising delay, Facebook bans new political ads for the week before the U.S. election and SpaceX is testing its Starlink internet system. This is your Daily Crunch for September 3, 2020. The big story: Apple delays ad-tracking changes At this year’s Worldwi

Twitter and Facebook wrestle with Trump telling Americans to vote twice

President Trump’s recent suggestion that North Carolina voters should cast multiple ballots has run afoul of Twitter’s election integrity rules. In a series of tweets Thursday morning, the president elaborated on previous statements in which he encouraged Americans to vote twice to R

Media Roundup: Patreon joins unicorn club, Facebook could ban news in Australia, more

Welcome to the very first edition of Extra Crunch's Media Roundup. Over the past few months, we've launched features like Decrypted, Deep Science and The Exchange, which aggregate and analyze the latest news in a given sector, so it seemed overdue to do something similar for media. The goal

As it awaits its US fate, TikTok rolls out new marketing tools and Stitch to let users sample other videos

There’s a big question mark hanging over the future of TikTok right now, in the form of what exactly will happen to its U.S. business come September 20, when President Trump said he plans to shut down the Chinese-owned app over security concerns. But in the meantime, it seems to be business a