Plex introduces a social experience to its streaming app with launch of ‘Discover Together’

Plex introduces a social experience to its streaming app with launch of ‘Discover Together’

Streaming media platform Plex, already an expansive service for personal media, free streaming TV, and new content discovery, is venturing into a new area with today’s launch of a new feature, Discover Together. The friends-focused feature is laying the groundwork to develop Plex as not just a streaming hub, but a streaming community. Initially, this includes […]

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Meta Portal owners can now use their devices as a second screen for PCs and Macs

Meta Portal owners can now use their devices as a second screen for PCs and Macs

Portal, the beleaguered brand of smart displays released in 2018 by Meta (then Facebook), is reportedly slated for a phase-out as the company refocuses the product line on the enterprise. Ahead of the transition, Meta is releasing new features — perhaps some of the last for current owners, as the case may be — that […]

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FullStory secures $25M to help companies spot issues in their apps and websites

FullStory secures $25M to help companies spot issues in their apps and websites

FullStory, which sells analytics tools for apps and websites, secured $25 million in new equity financing, paperwork filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission this week shows. TechCrunch couldn’t independently confirm the investors and the company hadn’t responded to a request for comment as of press time. But according to Crunchbase, the infusion is […]

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OpenAI expands access to DALL-E 2, its powerful image-generating AI system

Businesses including Stitch Fix are already experimenting with DALL-E 2

It’s been just a few weeks since OpenAI began allowing customers to commercially use images created by DALL-E 2, its remarkably powerful AI text-to-image system. But in spite of the current technical limitations and lack of volume licensing, not to mention API, some pioneers say they’re already testing the system for various business use cases […]

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Snap upgrades its AR Shopping features with real-time pricing, more product details

Snapchat officially introduces parental controls through a new ‘Family Center’ feature

Snapchat today is rolling out its first set of parental controls, after announcing last October it was developing tools that would allow parents to gain better visibility into how their teens used the social networking app. The update follows the launches of similar parental control features across other apps favored by teens, including Instagram, TikTok […]

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HBO Max attempts to fix its notoriously buggy app with oft-requested features

HBO Max attempts to fix its notoriously buggy app with oft-requested features

For years, HBO Max has been under fire for its buggy app. Today, the streaming service’s re-platformed app completed its global rollout on desktop, iOS, Android and Amazon Fire tablets. New features include a shuffle button on mobile, SharePlay support for iPhone and iPad users in the U.S., a dedicated home for downloaded content and […]

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Less than 1% of Netflix’s subscribers want to play its mobile games

Less than 1% of Netflix’s subscribers want to play its mobile games

As Netflix struggles to keep consumers subscribed to its streaming service, its mobile games venture is looking like a flop. CNBC reported that according to app analytics company Apptopia, Netflix games have been downloaded 23.3 million times in total, and on average, there are 1.7 million daily users. This means that fewer than 1% of […]

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Twitter to revamp Spaces, tests themed stations and a daily digest

Twitter to revamp Spaces, tests themed stations and a daily digest

Twitter is developing an updated version of its audio chat rooms product known as Spaces, TechCrunch learned and Twitter confirmed. The company said it’s currently working a new experiment for the Twitter Spaces tab in its app but declined to discuss the specifics of that change. However, screenshots of one of the earlier versions of […]

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TikTok Music’s trademarks spotted in multiple countries, hinting toward global launch plans

TikTok Music’s trademarks spotted in multiple countries, hinting toward global launch plans

ByteDance may be preparing for a global launch of TikTok Music service, according to trademarks filed in several countries found by TechCrunch. The China-based conglomerate has filed TikTok Music trademark in countries like the U.K., Singapore, New Zealand, Mexico, Malaysia and Costa Rica. This comes after a Business Insider report last week, which pointed toward a […]

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TikTok Music’s trademarks spotted in multiple countries, hinting toward global launch plans

TikTok to overtake Facebook in influencer marketing spend this year, YouTube by 2024

Instagram may be worried about TikTok’s threat to its business, but in the near-term, it’s still far ahead when it comes to the influencer marketing dollars spent on its platform in the U.S. According to a new analyst report, Instagram is on track to capture nearly 3x the amount of influencer marketing spend compared to […]

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