CYCLING INDUSTRY – Nov 17 - Strava, a social network for athletes and commuters, has secured $110M in Series F financing in a funding round led by TCV and Sequoia Capital. In 2020, Strava has added ~2M athletes per month to its community, as well as launch over 60 new features for athletes as part of a renewed commitment to subscribers. The company has made Strava Metro free for urban planners and city governments as its data helps over 300 city governments and urban planners create safer cities for pedestrians and cyclists.
Strava Secures $110M in Series F Financing
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Travevel: a Social Platform Designed to Give Back
PHOCUSWIRE – Nov 17 - Travevel is an interactive social platform, free from traditional ads, focused on user-generated image and video travel, tourism, and adventure content. The startup will use 10% of all profits to provide living essentials and affordable housing for disadvantaged communities in high tourism areas. Companies that subscribe can have a business profile listing and share ad-free images and videos alongside user-generated content and on their own business profile page feed.
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Nextdoor Neighborhood Sponsorships: a Hyper-Local Ads for Small Business
SMALL BUSINESS TRENDS - Nov 17 - Nextdoor, the hyperlocal social networking service for neighborhoods has launched a Neighborhood Sponsorships feature. The service offers businesses a new marketing tool to promote their business and engage with the local community on a zip code level. This feature enables sponsors to receive two Business Posts per month and enable businesses to respond to private message and comments on their posts to maximize engagement with potential customers.
by Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead
See full article at Small Business Trends
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TechMae: Networking App of Women Empowerment
ENTREPRENEUR - Nov 17 - TechMae (founded in 2018) is a networking app for women built by Pamela Hibbler (now the CEO and co-founder) to offer support and guidance for women in all facets of their lives. "We wanted our app to be the ultimate safe space for women to connect with one another in real-time, share their stories, find much-needed advice, and benefit from the network. It's not just for career guidance, but also for friendship, health, inspiration and more," Hibbler says.
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TikTok Gains Extension of Divestiture Deadline
WALL STREET JOURNAL – Nov 16 - Federal officials have granted TikTok and ByteDance Ltd. a 15-day extension of a deadline for completing a divestiture deal, in another delay of the Trump administration's efforts to turn TikTok into an American company. The deadline extension was granted by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US. TikTok also has filed a petition in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, asking for the divestiture order to be invalidated.
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Yibe: an App for Improving Students' Networking and Productivity
REDBULL – Nov 16 - The winners of Red Bull Basement University from India, Suraj Suryavanshi and Shweta Morale from MIT ADT University, Pune, conceptualized a productive networking application that can help students connect with like-minded individuals or groups across campus called Yibe. The app will have features like Events, where students can find the latest information on college festivals, workshops, and other events they can be part of; Growth+, where students can learn skills from others and sign up for internship and other work opportunities; Money Matters, where they can keep track of their borrowing and lending with regular reminders; social networking, and much more.
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LTR - Love, Technology, Relationships - FULL
LTR - Nov 17 - The first LTR conference happened in September and sold out within 72 hours. (See speakers and attendees list).
The latest by-invitation-only LTR conference happens this Thursday also filled up within 72 hours of invites going out. You can see the speaker line up here. Presenters will present on ideas worth sharing.
This conference is all online, and includes peer networking. LTR is for leaders of Internet dating companies and online social communities. Members of the very established Internet Dating Excellence Association, and very fledgling Online Social Community Association were invited.
Please email me at mark@courtlandbrooks.com if you work in the dating or online social community industries and would like to join IDEA or OSCA for invites to future LTR conferences.
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VSN - Nov 15 - We'd like to keep you informed daily. Just subscribe here, and we'll keep you up to speed.
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Rumble: Video Platform Trump's Supporters Are Flocking to
FAST COMPANY - Nov 13 - Rumble, a video-sharing website that is seeing a surge in user growth after Biden won the 2020 U.S. election. Rumble has seen an increasing number of conservative video content makers jump ship from YouTube to its platform after said conservatives have seen some of their more incendiary videos demonetized on YouTube. Rumble's service isn't limited to ad-based revenue for content creators. If a content creator's video is licensed by one of Rumble's partners (MTV, Xbox, Yahoo, or MSN), they can get ~90% of what the video makes on YouTube as well as another 60% of what the video makes through other partners. If a video makes it to the front page of Rumble, they'll get $100 a pop.
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CloutHub Has Been Deplatformed by IBM
RECLAIM THE NET - Nov 13 - Alternative social network CloutHub says its video hosting provider IBM has removed its video channels without warning. CloutHub describes itself as a "next-generation social network for social, civic and political networking" and said that all 57 of its video channels were taken down by IBM. CloutHub is now working to get the video channels restored and is currently moving its video hosting to another platform.
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ByteDance Asks Federal Appeals Court to Vacate U.S. Order Forcing It to Sell TikTok
TECH CRUNCH - Nov 12 - In a new filing, ByteDance asked the federal appeals court to vacate the United States government order forcing it to sell the app's American operations. ByteDance asked the CFIUS for an extension on November 6, but the order hasn't been granted yet. The new filing is part of a lawsuit TikTok filed against the Trump administration on September 18. It won an early victory when the court stopped the U.S. government's ban from going into effect on its original deadline that month.
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LimitChat Leaked Sensitive User Media
TECHNADU - Nov 12 - The investigators of CyberNews have discovered a case of an Amazon bucket containing sensitive user image files and videos left to public access configuration potentially involving the social media platform "LimitChat," owned by a Beijing-based company. An unsecured Amazon bucket was found containing 83,016 images, 4,932 videos, 43,369 audio clips and 899 gifs. The bucket only contains media files, so there are no other information that points to the identity of specific people.
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Yalla's Q3 2020 Results: Revenue up 90%
PR NEWSWIRE - Nov 8 - Yalla, the voice-centric social networking and entertainment platform in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), announced Q3 results. Paying users increased 895% to 5.1M users. Revenue was up 90% to $33.8M, YOY. The increase was primarily driven by the Yalla's and Yalla Ludo's increased user base. Revenue generated from chatting services (Yalla) was $30.3M, and $3.5M from Yala Ludo games. Net loss was $31M. Operating income was $15.6M, up 70% YOY. Average MAUs increased 359% to 14.3M. For Q4 2020, the company expects revenues to be $35M to $36M.
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TikTok Expands the Range of Hate Content It Bans
JTA - Nov 11 - TikTok announced that it is expanding the range of hate content that it will ban from the network. The move comes following complaints that TikTok users were demeaning the Holocaust by portraying themselves as concentration camp inmates in videos. The site also said it would ban "misinformation about notable Jewish individuals and families who are used as proxies to spread anti-Semitism."
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Parler Has Shot to the top of the App Store
FAST COMPANY – Nov 10 - In the days following Joe Biden's victory in the election, the conservative social networking app Parler has vaulted to the top of the download charts in both Apple and Google's app stores. The app, which was founded in 2018 as a "non-biased free speech" alternative to Twitter, has pitched itself as a haven for conservatives who are frustrated with content policies on Twitter and other social networks. With many GOP's leaders refusing to recognize Biden's win and an unfounded disinformation campaign to undermine the election's results by claiming voter fraud continuing to circulate on right-wing media, Parler was perfectly positioned to take advantage by gaining 2M users.
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