TECH CRUNCH - Jan 29 - The newly resurrected Gowalla wants to realize its mobile dreams from the early-aughts in an AR world, and they've raised $4M in seed funding co-led by Google's venture arm GV and Spark Capital. Other investors include Niantic, Upside Partnership, Otherwise Fund, Capital Factory, Form Capital, and a host of angels like April Underwood, Leah Culver, Jason Calacanis, John Lilly, Scott Belsky, Dennis Crowley, and Dave and Brit Morin at Offline Ventures. Gowalla was originally founded back in 2009 as a Foursquare competitor, it gathered some early traction and excitement from investors, raising just ~$10M before things petered out a couple of years later and the team was acquired by Facebook for $3M.
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Gowalla Raises $4M for Its AR Social App
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Reddit Partners With Ethereum Foundation to Accelerate Scaling
FINANCE MAGNATES - Jan 29 - Reddit, a prominent social media network, announced that it has partnered with Ethereum Foundation to bring value and independence of the blockchain technology to ~50M daily Reddit users. According to an official post by Reddit admin, u/jarins, the platform is planning to enhance its presence in the Ethereum ecosystem to accelerate scaling and resources for the network. The admin mentioned that the platform has maintained a decentralized environment to help users grow their own communities. Reddit is also planning to develop large-scale applications including community points on Ethereum. ETH is currently trading near $1,300 after crashing to nearly $1,200 during the latest crypto market sell-off. Ethereum now has a market cap of approximately $150B.
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PodMatch.com Reaches 4k Registered Members and ~1.2k Confirmed Podcast Bookings
PR NEWSWIRE - Jan 29 - PodMatch.com, podcasting social network announced that it had recently registered over 4k members to its dedicated free platform in a continuing effort to connect both podcasters and professional guests looking to book interviews. PodMatch uses a matching core algorithm that connects specific hosts with the perfect guests needed to produce high-quality interviews, driving audience engagement for podcast success. Professional guests can be rebooked for future interviews or move on to other podcasts as they see fit, while podcasting hosts can continue to use the site to fill their interview queue with weeks and months of similar interviews for future shows. PodMatch offers basic services for free, and Professional Plans on a subscription basis.
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Literati Raises $40M for Its Book Club Platform
TECH CRUNCH - Jan 28 - Literati has raised a $40M Series B to pursue an unusual startup opportunity - namely, book clubs. Founder and CEO Jessica Ewing (a former product manager at Google) explained that the Austin-based company started out with book clubs for kids, before launching its Luminary brand for adult book clubs last year. And the Luminary clubs live up to the name - they're curated by notable figures like activist and Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai. On the children's book side, Literati is also working to build personalization tools designed to recommend the best books for each child.
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ByteDance Is Valued at $180B
THE HUSTLE - Jan 28 - The revenue of TikTok's parent company, ByteDance doubled to ~$37B in 2020. ByteDance is currently valued at $180B, but when it goes public - which it wants to do in 2021 - it will likely skyrocket based on 2 comparisons. Facebook, Despite having ~½ of FB's revenue ($37B vs. $79B), it’s valued at ~¼ of the American social network ($180B vs. $800B). Kuaishou, A competing Chinese social app is aiming for a $60B IPO on ~$4B of revenue; at the same market value-to-sales ratio, ByteDance would be worth $500B+.
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Indian App Chingari Plans to Hire Fired TikTok Employees
BUSINESS TODAY - Jan 28 - As TikTok hands over pink slips to ~1k employees following the permanent ban by the government of India, Indian app developer Chingari plans to hire some of the fired employees. Chingari will be looking forward to hiring people across domains, however, the company hasn't shared any information on the number of employees it plans to hire. Similar to TikTok, Chingari is an Indian video-sharing social networking platform where users could record and share short video clips. The app is available in multiple Indian languages including Hindi, Bangla, Gujarati, Marathi, Kannada, Odia, Punjabi, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu.
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Dr. Mari-Sanna Paukkeri - Using Ethical AI to Moderate User Content
LTR CONFERENCE - Jan 28 - Abusive and undesirable content is a persistent issue in online dating and social networks. Dr. Mari-Sanna Paukkeri, CEO of Utopia Analytics, demonstrates the application of ethical artificial intelligence to improve user experience. Machine learning designed to adhere to ethical principles can assist with the moderation of user-generated content. Utopia Analytics has developed an AI-powered service to help businesses enforce community content guidelines. Dr. Paukkeri details the benefits of artificial intelligence and machine learning in the latest video in the LTR conference series.
LTR stands for Love, Technology, Relationships and the online conference covers the Internet dating and Online Social Communities space. It is for members of IDEA and OSCA.
The December LTR was kindly sponsored by RealMe, vPaaS by The Meet Group & Utopia Analytics.
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Bytedance Rival Kuaishou Aims to Raise up to $5.42B in Hong Kong IPO
REUTERS - Jan 27 - Chinese online video company Kuaishou Technology is aiming to raise $4.95B to $5.42B in an IPO that will be the largest in Hong Kong for more than a year. The online video site, backed by Tencent Holdings, will price 365.2M shares at between HK$105 and $HK115 apiece. The IPO will value Kuaishou at between $55.6B and $60B, pre greenshoe. If the extra shares are sold it would take the market capitalization from $56.3B to $61.7B. If Kuaishou raises $6.2B, it will beat the most recent largest IPO in Hong Kong which was Budweiser Brewing Company's $5.75B IPO in September 2019. Kuaishou, which means "fast hand" in Chinese, operates apps that allow user-uploaded videos as well as live-streaming programs through which vendors can promote consumer products.
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Twitter Acquires Newsletter Platform Revue
TECH CRUNCH - Jan 27 - Twitter is getting into the newsletter business by acquiring Revue, a Dutch startup that allows users to publish and monetize email newsletters. Product Lead Kayvon Beykpour and VP of Publisher Products Mike Park suggested that that Newsletter is a new way for Twitter to serve writers and publishers who have built a following with their tweets. Twitter will continue to operate Revue as a standalone product, with its team remaining "focused on improving the ways writers create their newsletters, build their audience and get paid for their work." The company is also making the platform's pro features free for all users and lowering the fee charged on paid newsletters to 5%.
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Dutch Company Azerion Acquires the Developer of Social Game Habbo Hotel
SILICON CANALS - Jan 27 - Azerion (founded in 2014), a Schiphol-based digital gaming and adtech company, has reached an agreement with its co-shareholder, Elisa Oyj, to acquire the remaining 49% shares in Finnish game studio, Sulake Oy, known for the social game Habbo Hotel. Founded by Sampo Karjalainen, Sulake is an online entertainment company focused on virtual worlds and social networking. Sulake's management and the team of 96 will remain in place, and it will continue to operate from its headquarters in Helsinki. This acquisition will help Sulake to make use of Azerion's growing ecosystem and will be able to leverage promotions provided via the Azerion network, which continues to grow through acquisitions like Spil Games' Portal business and Woozworld.
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TikTok Vulnerability Left Users' Private Information Exposed
CNET - Jan 27 - A vulnerability identified in TikTok exposed users to having personal information scraped from their profile, including their phone number and profile settings, security researchers at cybersecurity firm Check Point said. The flaw in the app's Find Friends feature also exposed users' nicknames, profile and avatar pictures, and unique user IDs, Check Point said. "We continue to strengthen our defenses, both by constantly upgrading our internal capabilities such as investing in automation defenses, and also by working with third parties," a TikTok spokesperson said in a statement.
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IMVU Raises $35M From China's NetEase and Others
TECH CRUNCH - Jan 26 - NetEase (founded in 2005), the second-largest gaming company in China behind Tencent, is among a group of investors who just backed IMVU, an avatar-focused social network operating out of California. Menlo Park-based Structural Capital among other institutions also joined in the strategic round totaling $35M. IMVU has raised over $77M from five rounds since it was co-founded by The Lean Startup author Eric Ries back in 2004. The fresh investment will be used to fund IMVU's product development and comes fresh off a restructuring at the company.
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Soul App: a New Social Playground for 100M Gen Z
PR NEWSWIRE - Jan 26 - Soul App - Chinese version, a representative of new social connections, has recently reached ~100M registered users and ~30M monthly active users around the world. Topping the Social category list of the App Store in mainland China, SOUL has already launched in North America, Japan, and South Korea. Soul App saw the unique market opportunity toward Gen Z who views the Internet as an indispensable lifestyle and life scene. SOUL focuses on the spiritual needs of users by exploring users' inner characteristics, and identifies people with common interests and similar characteristics, offering them a platform to share common interest topics with each other. The matching mechanism is based on Soul's innovative big data and AI technologies.
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Lips, a New Social Network Where Sexual Expression Is Welcome
MASHABLE - Jan 26 - Lips, a new social network geared towards free sexual expression, aims to provide that space. Founder Annie Brown and her team want users - sex workers, erotic artists, queer people, activists, and more - to post without fear of censorship or harassment. It's a much-needed alternative to mainstream social networks that started to censor sexual content. Lips is created in the form of a progressive web app because it is more cost-effective than an iOS or Android app and they may not have gotten past the stores' approval processes.
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The Future of Social Networks Might Be Audio
MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW - Jan 26 - The latest apps bring back the intimacy of the spoken word - but there are serious moderation issues to be addressed. The best-known audio-focused network is Clubhouse but it lacks moderation. Gaming chat app Discord has also exploded in popularity. The service uses voice-over-IP software to translate spoken chat into text. By Oct, Discord estimated 6.7M users - up from 1.4M in Feb. Jimi Tele, the CEO of Chekmate, a "text-free" dating app that connects users through voice and video, says he wanted to launch an app that would be "catfish-proof". Users start voice memos that average 5s and then get progressively longer. And while Chekmate has a video option, Tele says the app's users favor using just their voices. This immediacy and authenticity is the reason Gilles Poupardin created Cappuccino, an app that takes voice recordings from a closed group of friends or family and delivers them as downloadable audio.
by Tanya Basu
See full article at MIT Technology Review
See the top news on Clubhouse
See the top news on Discord
This post also appears on OnlinePersonalsWatch
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