Category Archive

 If you’ve ever wanted a text message conversation to simply go away, but still wanted to do it gracefully, there’s a new bot that will help do that for you. Burner, which helps users create temporary phone numbers for various purposes, is today rolling out a new tool called Ghostbot. Whenever you hand out a temporary phone number that’s built through Burner — say, a… Read More

 From a merchants perspective, Instagram, Facebook and other sites are easy ways to post photos of items you are selling in your ‘shop’, but discovery and payments are tricky issues for customers. There have been plenty of companies trying to bring a more orderly approach to things, the latest of which is Goxip, a Hong Kong-based startup that is building a search and discovery platform. Read More

 Tripstir is a new app that helps you share travel plans and tips with your friends. Think of it as a way to avoid those exasperating moments when you come back from a trip and you realize that one of your friends was in the same place at the same time — but you’re only finding out when it’s too late. Basically, you use Tripstir by entering information about upcoming trips.… Read More

 Facebook users can expect to start seeing more of the company’s Canvas format. For those of you who haven’t been following all of Facebook’s different ad formats, a Canvas is basically a mobile ad that opens into an interactive, full-screen page. (Like Instant Articles, it’s supposed to circumvent the long load times that can come with mobile web pages) Facebook made… Read More

 Twitter has Periscope. Amazon has Twitch. Google has YouTube’s live streaming. And Facebook has Facebook Live. Now, Tumblr is getting into live video, too. The company is preparing to launch a new live video feature on its service, beginning tomorrow, which will introduce a series of live broadcasts as well as a user-facing feature that could compete with Facebook Live, among… Read More

 Trust greases the wheels of the sharing economy, paving the way for transactions to take place between total strangers. But figuring out who is trustworthy and who is not remains a sticky bottleneck for digital businesses wanting to scale faster. Meanwhile the consequences for customers when startups screw up these risk calculations can be very unpleasant indeed. Read More

 If you’ve been aching for some high-minded chatter on the topic of how we, as social animals living in a postmodern society, interact with and are affected by social media and technology, you’re in luck. Snapchat is funding a site called “Real Life” on which just such chatter will be published. Read More

 As we roll merrily into the future of media it’s time to define some terms. I spoke to a number of folks over the past few weeks about the Gawker case as well as the future of journalism and have come away with some interesting information regarding the disconnect between readers and writers and the general concept of clickbait. I’d like to clear a few things up. You did this… Read More

 459,000 years. That’s how long Twitch users spent watching other people play video games last year, and Facebook wants a piece of the pie. It might sound weird, but e-sports are wildly popular, and Facebook is getting serious about owning those video views. A source tipped us off that Facebook has hired e-sports super-connector and former professional gamer Stephen… Read More

 We haven’t heard much from Fleksy — one of a number of custom keyboards for Android and iOS — lately, and it seems we may have an answer why: It’s been acquired by Pinterest. But it isn’t a total product acquisition. While the app will continue running (with minimal updates) for the forseeable future, half of the team will be integrated into Pinterest’s… Read More