Instagram responds to criticism with shocking revelation that it will ‘continue to support photos’

Instagram head Adam Mosseri posted a video this morning addressing mounting concerns about changes to the app’s feed and its increasing emphasis on video. Even Kim Kardashian and her sister Kylie Jenner, the most-followed women on Instagram, posted their distaste for the new features, so you

Netflix gives ‘The Gray Man’ its own universe with a confirmed sequel and spin-off

Netflix will be giving its spy thriller “The Gray Man” its own universe. The film was just released on the platform last week and is already a global hit, garnering broadly positive reviews. Seemingly inspired by “John Wick,” the action movie starring Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans wi

Shopify lays off 10% of its workforce as rapid pandemic growth slows

Shopify is laying off around 10% of its workforce, or about 1,000 employees, the Wall Street Journal has reported. The Ottawa, Canada-based company told staff in a memo sent on Tuesday that the layoffs are necessary as users are pulling back on online orders and returning to old shopping habits. &#

Best Buy is testing a digital-first, smaller retail store

Best Buy is opening a new digital-first 5,000 square feet small store in Monroe, North Carolina on July 26. This store will have selected tech products like home theater and audio, computing, headphones, wearables, fitness, cell phones, cameras, smart home and small appliances that shoppers can exp

Messaging app Viber launches Payments, a new digital wallet for paying bills, money transfers and buying goods

Viber, the messaging app owned by Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten, has long been dancing around the area of fintech, launching services like money transfer and chatbot payments in various countries over the years. Now it is making a move to double down on that strategy: it’s launching Payme

Cordial, which personalizes and automates cross-channel messaging campaigns, raises $50M

Cordial, a cross-channel marketing and data management platform, today announced that it closed a $50 million Series C funding round led by NewSpring, with participation from new investor ABS Capital. Jeremy Swift, Cordial’s CEO and co-founder, said that the fresh capital will be used to expa

The Fashion Kingdom, an Egyptian fashion e-commerce startup, raises $2.6M in seed funding

The Fashion Kingdom (TFK), an Egyptian e-commerce marketplace for fashion, beauty and home accessories items, announced today that it has raised $2.6 million in seed funding led by CVentures, a corporate venture capital firm based in Egypt. A15, an early-stage VC in the MENA region that has backed

Instagram gets worse with dark patterns lifted from TikTok

I, of all people, got a fresh new user interface in Instagram the other day. Although the company has not rolled it out to all users yet, the changes seem in line with its intention to move away from its original model of photo sharing among friends, to the one pioneered by TikTok: showing as much

Peech is a text-to-speech app that actually sounds good

When you go into the App Store to download the Peech app, you’ll notice right away that the app’s icon displays the Ukrainian flag along with the company’s simple logo. But this is more than just a show of solidarity. With three Eastern European founders — Andrey Poznyak, Al

Can a baby's cry identify neurological disorders? Ubenwa says ‘yes’

When Charles Onu’s cousin was born with birth asphyxia and later developed a hearing condition, the seed for Ubenwa, an audio biometric company geared at identifying neurological disorders in infants, was also planted. Onu, CEO and co-founder, said he hopes Ubenwa will change the way physicia

Google is adding new Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides and Keep optimizations for tablets

Google announced today that it’s updating some of its apps to work better on tablets. Google introduced Android 12L earlier this year to make tablets easier to use, and at I/O, the company announced plans to update more than 20 Google apps on tablets to optimize them for larger screens. Today

How e-commerce brands can outlast this market downturn

The biggest startups in the world are laying employees off. The yield curve has become inverted, inflation is at 8.6%, and economic pessimism is the highest it's been since 2009. For e-commerce brands, the wave of bad economic news is a shot across the bow heralding a major change in consumer s

Disney+ revives 'Daredevil' after Netflix canceled it four years ago

During Hall H's presentation at Comic-Con this Saturday, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige announced “Daredevil: Born Again,” a new series for Disney+ that stars Charlie Cox as Daredevil and Vincent D'Onofrio as Kingpin. “Born Again” will get an 18-episode first season and will s

Creators on Facebook can now earn money through videos that use licensed music

Meta announced today that creators on Facebook can now earn money through their Facebook videos that use licensed music. The company is launching “Music Revenue Sharing” to allow video creators to include licensed music in their videos on Facebook and earn a share of in-stream ad revenu