Tag: social media

Posted on

Gamitee becomes Joyned as it secures $4M for social shopping platform

Joyned, formerly known as Gamitee, announced Wednesday that it raised $4 million in seed funding to continue developing its e-commerce platform that puts merchants in the driver’s seat of social engagement.

CEO Jonathan Abraham explained that Gamitee means “joined” in Hebrew, but the Jerusalem-based SaaS company decided to spell it “joy” because it aims to “spark joy in its customers’ experiences.”

Leading the round is Arthur Stark, former president of Bed Bath & Beyond, Yair Goldfinger, founder of Dotomi and ICQ, and Rafael Ashkenazi, managing director and executive chairman at Hard Rock Digital.

“Arthur is a legend in retail, and he is helping us a lot in the U.S. market,” Abraham said. “Yari was the first to build a messaging app, and with Rafael we will penetrate the U.S. market and build our brand there.”

Livestream video shopping app NTWRK raises $50M from Goldman Sachs, Kering

Rather than helping e-commerce companies do a better job advertising on social media, Joyned enables retailers to offer a collaborative shopping platform experience right from their websites without having to rely on the social media platforms, Abraham said. Now shoppers can stay on a retailer site and bring in friends to check out products with the click of a button.

Interestingly enough, Abraham came up with the idea for the company four years ago while planning his wedding. He had to pick out a suit to wear, and after appointing family members to help, his life became inundated with suit options and his computer had hundreds of tabs open. That’s when he had the idea for co-browsing and began developing the company with co-founder Michael Levinson.

Though co-browsing is not a new concept — Abraham said Netscape, Google and Zoom all attempted or did something similar to create collaboration on the web — Joyned is doing something more specific.

Using the company’s technology, a merchant can inject some Javascript into their website, essentially a plug-and-play for Shopify and other websites, and it will put a “shop with me” button on the website where the shopper can invite friends to a shared shopping cart, mood board and speak with the merchants.

“The essence of joy is to empower merchants to own their shopping experience and let people shop together,” he added. “Joyned puts the social part into online shopping and narrows the gap between online and offline.”

Using Joyned, retailers are able to lower customer acquisition costs, optimize conversion rates and build loyalty. On average, retailers can expect overall sales increases of between 6% and 15% after users invite friends to join them, while also experiencing up to 250% in retention rates and a 40% increase in traffic, according to Abraham.

The new capital will lay the foundation for Joyned’s large-scale U.S. expansion, where the company is already seeing impact. The company wants to build on its marketing team in Florida and add sales and support functions.

Over the last year, the company launched its platform and saw sales grow rapidly, close to $500,000 and is on target to hit $1 million in sales, Abraham said.

Looking forward, Joyned will be going after a Series A as it closes three or four major brands in the U.S. to begin using the platform.

“Today, social media marketing is making big companies exist, but merchants are dependent on it,” Abraham added. “Instead of having a blackbox of engagements, we are bringing a new perspective that gives merchants the ability to go into the black box, and that gives them a huge competitive advantage.”

Brands considering a live-shopping strategy must lean on influencers

Posted on

Mark Cuban and Coinbase back Eternal, an NFT marketplace for trading Twitch streamer clips

The NFT world collectively seems to be trying to turn internet memories into one big game — with a lot of cash involved of course. The original “Doge” image sold for $4 million back in June, the original “Pepe” comic image sold for $1 million in April, in short, people are becoming meme millionaires. Buying and selling six-figure JPEGs is a weird phenomenon but in the end doesn’t do a ton to convince the average internet user that NFTs are worth caring about though.

Eternal wants to turn trading internet history into a game, but it’s focused on a very particular slice of the web — popular clips from game streamers. In a user interface that functions and feels very similar to NBA Top Shot, users can buy packs of serialized clips from Eternal’s network of game streamers they’ve partnered with. The marketplace is built by startup Zelos Gaming, helmed by co-founders Jeffrey Tong and Derek Chiang, which has pivoted from building out a sort of cross-platform battle pass (which we covered here last year) towards now embracing the wild world of NFTs with Eternal.

The startup is building up a pretty wide roster of crypto investment firms and personalities as its backers including Mark Cuban, Coinbase Ventures, Gary Vaynerchuk, Dapper Labs and Arrington Capital, who have invested $4.5 million in the startup in its latest funding round. The team was previously backed by Y Combinator.

It’s very much a Top Shot for X type platform at the moment — which is apparent in the site’s design — but the team has big ideas for how the platform evolved down the road. Unlike Top Shot, which was able to nab deals with the NBA and Players Association, there’s no overarching esports or Twitch equivalent, leaving Eternal destined for a fairly complicated weave of partnerships with streamers and streamer networks designed to ensure they don’t take their business elsewhere. The startup says they’re largely focused on popular streamers operating in the top 0.05% of Twitch.

Streamers can sell top clips, which are conveniently already tracked by platforms like Twitch, as well as videos from their social media, “immortalizing” the moments on the blockchain. The company hopes that by pairing up-and-coming streamers with more established personalities they can bring awareness to more creators and help build a network of users that “own a piece” of them and have a vested interest in their success.

Image: Eternal

“I think Top Shot is a great model but it works way better for creators because it gives creators a brand new way to monetize,” CEO Jeffrey Tong tells TechCrunch.

Building a closer relationship between fans and creators has shown early promise as an exciting nuance of the NFT world as investors showcase their investments pumping up creators in the process, what’s less clear is how this looks on a smaller scale when users have tens or hundreds of dollars of investment in a creator versus thousands or millions.

A big selling point of the platform is that it’s built on Dapper Labs’ Flow, a consumer app-friendly blockchain which cuts back on complexity (and a bit of decentralization) in favor of building an onboarding flow users actually make it through. Living outside the Ethereum ecosystem and trading in USD means moving further away from a sizable network of crypto rich NFT acolytes, but it also means approaching what is potentially a much larger consumer audience. The company wants Eternal to end up on more blockchains down the road by next year, though cross-chain maneuverings seem to get tricky pretty quickly today.

Flow has a pretty low-key suite of active marketplaces on its chain at the moment, but Eternal has shown early momentum. According to Cryptoslam, the marketplace has done about $300k in transactions this summer.

Zelos is like a cross-game battle pass, rewarding you for completing challenges in games you already play

Posted on

Do you need another app to discover beautiful places when you travel?

In the summer of 2019, Timilehin Ajiboye became intrigued with the idea of building a travel app after conversations with a circle of friends.

One friend reached out to Ajiboye asking if he knew of any platform where she could find new, aesthetically pleasing places to dine in, visit and take pictures. And then, during a trip to Miami, he and his friends actively sought out beautiful places to eat — and take photographs.

No doubt: These needs are pretty vain. But Backdrop is not unlike other global social media platforms that allow users to take ephemeral photos, flex their lifestyle on disappearing stories or discover millions of personalized short videos.

And while social media, growing exponentially over the past decade, has changed the way we communicate and connect, it has also changed how we travel.

More than 36% of social media users use platforms for travel ideas, according to Statista; over 60% of these people share photos when traveling.

Instagram controls most of this traffic, yet Ajiboye believes that the process of sourcing travel-related information on the platform has become ridiculously time-consuming. He argues that massive platforms like Instagram that venture into any content created a need for niche platforms.

“Instagram is like an operating system for pictures. Everything is happening on Instagram — travel, beauty, e-commerce. Same with Pinterest,” he said to TechCrunch in an interview. “Increasingly, you’ll find that for some people, they use these platforms for travel and there hasn’t been any experience created for travel that takes into consideration 2021, which is people like to take pictures in front of places that look great and share with their friends.”

Ajiboye came up with the name Backdrop and reached out to two friends, Damilola Odufuwa and Odunayo Eweniyi, to build the platform and turn it into a company.

Social media and travel

There’s currently no go-to platform to find attractive places just for the sake of it. The founders say Backdrop is primarily built for this, as well as travel discovery.

For instance, travelers vacationing in Dubai and seeking trendy places tend to do three things: quiz friends and acquaintances, run a Google search, or punch in a hashtag on Instagram.

“If you run a Google search or use Instagram, everything comes up, including results irrelevant to your search,” Odufuwa said. “If you’re looking for pink restaurants in Dubai, you might not be able to get that on Instagram, and Backdrop changes all of that.”

Image Credits: Backdrop

With Backdrop, users can discover and share beautiful places to take pictures based on their interests and criteria. The founders believe that with post-pandemic travel becoming more complex, Backdrop can serve as a travel companion for millennials and Gen Zs, especially those obsessed with traveling to pretty places.

The critical information on each backdrop includes opening and closing times, address (linked to Google Maps), cost and entry fee (if any), Wi-Fi availability, pet policy, outdoor seating, wheelchair access, and dress code.

TechCrunch spoke to a few Backdrop beta users. Depending on their interests, two camps emerged. Some enjoy its Collection feature, which allows them to save backdrops, combining the worlds of Google Maps and Pinterest. Others prefer the Explore feature, viewing it as a combination of Google Maps and Instagram.

With hashtags, users can find specific places, and the “Backdrop Near Me” feature allows them to discover other places they can visit close to their current Backdrop location.

The company has a photo research team that finds these places across 26 cities globally. They also take pictures and input the necessary information in each backdrop.

While Backdrop wouldn’t comment on the number of users in beta, the founders say its research team has collated thousands of pictures from these cities: Amsterdam, Dubai, Istanbul, London, Los Angeles, New York, Seoul, Paris, Tokyo, Cape Town, New Orleans, San Francisco, Chicago, Las Vegas, Miami, Marrakech, Fez, Tangier, Rabat, Cancun, Cabo, Tulum, Lagos, Abuja, Madrid and Valencia. On average, there are 100 to 300 pictures in each city on the platform.

Using a dedicated team to upload pictures is not scalable in the long run and Backdrop knows this. Therefore, the company allows users to upload backdrops themselves and input the necessary information on each. Other users review the posts before listing on the platform, either by upvotes or downvotes. They can also review others and earn redeemable points for helping build the community.

“That’s how we’re trying to transition from having to personally curate backdrops and letting the community decide the sort of backdrops that make it to the platform,” Ajiboye said.

“While there are cases where not necessarily the best photo or content is on top of the search, there’s a kind of democracy involved in crowdsourcing votes on content or, in our case, backdrops. From our end, we try to detect if the information is accurate, too, automatically.”

Backdrop plans to add 20 more cities this year and has secured a six-figure family-and-friends round to scale the product. But with scale comes more responsibility, a phrase the three founders have grown accustomed to over the years.

The trio met over six years ago at a Zikoko, an Africa-focused youth publication, and their careers in tech and digital media branched out from there. 

Backdrop

Image Credits: Backdrop. Backdrop founders Odunayo Eweniyi (COO), Damilola Odufuwa (CEO), and Timilehin Ajiboye (CTO)

Odufuwa, who acts as Backdrop CEO, leads PR for Binance in Africa. She is also the co-founder of the Feminist Coalition, a Nigeria-based womens’ rights and equality group, alongside Eweniyi, who is Backdrop’s COO.

Eweniyi is also the COO at PiggyVest, one of the most popular fintech platforms in Nigeria.

CTO Ajiboye is the executive and technical head at crypto-powered remittance product Sendcash and YC-backed cryptocurrency platform Buycoins.

Building a global product

While the founders have handled several ventures, they have primarily been Nigeria- or Africa-focused. But Backdrop is quite different; the target market is a global one. So I couldn’t help but ask the founders: Did they feel focused or capable enough to run the company?

Odufuwa answered by saying running a global product isn’t any different. Because each founder has run multiple ventures in quick succession, they will not see any problem adding Backdrop to the mix. 

“I think we [millennials and GenZs] are just really good at juggling. And though it might come with exhaustion and burnout, you learn to juggle and I think that’s life in general. But I know we’re 100% committed.”

Ajiboye added that while the founders are great teammates and leaders, they will need to build a global team to sustain the company in the long run.

“People have done way more complex things all at the same time, so I don’t think that will be an issue,” Ajiboye joked. 

Social media platforms are known to be hyper-focused on user growth before making revenue or profits. And Backdrop, being one of the few social platforms built by Africans that stands a chance to catch on with a global audience, does not plan to be an exception.

Should it gain significant traction, the founders have some ideas on how the platform will make revenue, citing advertising, bookings, reservations, tourism from private and public partnerships, and revenue from content creators as some examples.

“There are many opportunities with discovery and content creation around travel,” Ajiboye said. “What’s very important is that a community has to exist and our early users will shape what the platform is. So right now, growth is the priority and we think there are different ways money can be made.”

Posted on

UK clears Facebook’s purchase of CRM maker, Kustomer

The UK’s competition watchdog has cleared Facebook’s acquisition of Kustomer, a maker of CRM tools.

The purchase was announced last November — with a price-tag we reported as $1BN — but is pending closing after facing regulatory scrutiny.

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) opened an inquiry on the proposed merger this summer, at the end of July. The European Commission has also been digging into the implications of the deal, opening an investigation in August.

Facebook buys Kustomer for $1B to expand into customer service tools

In a summary of its decision to greenlight Facebook’s latest bit of b2b shopping, the CMA said it looked at whether letting Facebook go ahead and scoop up the customer service software maker would dent competition by raising barriers to entry in the online display advertising market; whether Facebook might harm the competitiveness of customer service tools maker by limiting or degrading their access to its messaging channels; whether the tech giant might harm the competitiveness of other b2c messaging services by preventing them from integrating with Kustomer’s services; and whether Facebook could rely on cross-subsidizing from its online ads business to undercut competitors by offering Kustomer for free or on a freemium basis, thereby undermining the ability of others to compete.

For each concern (or ‘theory of harm’), the CMA goes on to explain that it was satisfied the acquisition did not meet the required bar of a “substantial lessening” of competition.

The small size of Kustomer appears to have helped allay concerns that letting Facebook assimilate the CRM maker might damage the wider market for such business tools.

“The CMA considers that, even if some competitors would struggle to respond to Facebook offering Kustomer on a free or freemium basis, sufficient competitive constraints would remain,” the regulator writes in its conclusion on the last theory of harm, for example, adding that it “considers that the largest providers may be in a position to adopt a freemium model, or to develop a basic low-price CRM product targeted at small businesses, with the expectation that CRM revenues would increase as businesses’ needs grew”.

“Most importantly, it is not necessary for other CRM providers to replicate the Merged Entity’s strategy in order to remain competitive,” it also writes. “While price is certainly an important dimension of competition, there are several other dimensions along which CRM providers could compete against the Merged Entity.”

Commenting on the green light in a statement, a Facebook spokesperson sought to spin the clearance as a positive endorsement of the deal as a boon to competitors, writing: “We welcome the CMA’s decision, which shows that this deal is good for competition. The transaction will increase competition and bring more innovation to businesses and consumers in the dynamic and competitive CRM and business messaging spaces. More people will benefit from customer service that is faster, richer and available whenever and however they need it.”

While the CMA has decided there’s nothing to see here, the EU is still considering whether to clear Facebook-Kustomer. So the regulatory scrutiny continues.

Facebook’s Kustomer buy could face EU probe after merger referral

A Commission spokesperson had no comment on the CMA’s clearance — but confirmed its own “in-depth investigation” is ongoing, adding that there’s a provisional deadline of January 7, 2022, for EU regulators to take their own decision.

Despite the CMA’s relatively quick clearance of this particular Facebook purchase, the UK regulator does continue to dig into competition concerns attached to Facebook’s earlier acquisition of animated Gif platform, Giphy.

After a finding of provisional concerns on Facebook-Giphy earlier this summer, it proposed remedies that could include ordering Facebook to unwind the acquisition — leading the tech giant to respond with a stinging rebuttal of any harms, earlier this month, accusing the regulator of making “fundamental errors” in its assessment of the competitive implications of that deal.

Regulatory scrutiny of big tech’s acquisitions in the region tends to focus on a fairly narrow consideration of competitive harms — such as how the CMA has looked at the Kustomer buy through the lens of the overall competitiveness of the CRM market.

However, in the Kustomer case, concerns have also been raised about the privacy implications of letting adtech giant Facebook get its hands on the support service’s customer data given that the smaller company operates in sectors including the health sector where it is likely to be processing sensitive information on behalf of its customers.

Back in February, for instance, the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) raised a series of privacy concerns in a letter to Facebook — which it also published online, querying what uses the tech giant would be making for customer data held by Kustomer and asking whether such data would be combined with any other data held by Facebook and Facebook-owned companies.

Months later tbe ICCL said it had not had any response from Facebook to the letter raising privacy concerns.

Despite Europe’s comprehensive data protection framework — which is supposed to help safeguard people’s digital information — competition watchdogs in the region rarely consider privacy implications as part of their assessments of digital markets.

And there have been calls for more joined up working between competition and privacy regulators in order to properly tackle the market effects and consumer harms that can flow from digital giants’ command of other people’s information.

One outlier on this front is German’s Federal Cartel Office (FCO) which has been doing just that — in a pioneering case against Facebook’s superprofiling (which is ongoing).

The FCO is also looking at whether Facebook’s plans to acquire Kustomer fall under the scope of German merger control rules.

Perspectives on tackling Big Tech’s market power

Posted on

Instagram puts kids version ‘on ice’ after critical backlash

The head of Instagram has just announced that it’s “pausing” a planned version of the social media software aimed at under 13 year olds. The development comes hard of the heels of critical reporting in the Wall Street Journal which unearthed internal documents that suggest the Facebook-owned company was aware the social media service caused anxiety and mental health issues in teenaged girls.

Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri references the WSJ report in a Twitter thread today — but he tries to play down the impact of the investigative journalism, seeking to re-spin the ‘pause’ as intentional and thoughtful as opposed to a panicked reaction to extremely negative revelations about the impact of the service on the mental health of young girls.

The WSJ obtained an internal research slide from 2019 — in which Instagram’s parent Facebook acknowledged “we make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls.”

“We’re pausing our project to build an Instagram experience for tweens, often referred to as ‘Instagram Kids’,” wrote Mosseri in a series of tweets today.

“This experience was never meant for kids. We were designing an experience for tweens (10-12yo), and it was never going to be the same as Instagram today. Parents approve tween accounts and have oversight over who they follow, who follows them, who messages them, time spent etc.

“But the project leaked way before we knew what it would be. People feared the worst, and we had few answers at that stage. Recent WSJ reporting caused even greater concern. It’s clear we need to take more time on this.”

If ‘taking more time’ is a euphemism for ‘never’, Mosseri’s conclusion might be welcomed by the scores of child protection groups and stakeholders who have been urging Facebook to ditch the plan for months.

Back in May, for instance, attorneys general from 44 U.S. states and territories penned a letter to Facebook calling on it to abandon its plan for an Instagram for under 13s.

Mosseri, however, has previously sought to play down concerns around the app’s negative impact on teens — dismissing them as “quite small”, as we reported earlier this month.

Facebook knows Instagram harms teens. Now, its plan to open the app to kids looks worse than ever

“Critics will see this as a concession that the project is a bad idea. That’s not it,” the Instagram CEO went on to claim in today’s tweet thread announcing the shelving of the project — before going on to fear-monger that alternative apps under 13s might find and use could be way worse. So, uh, stay classy, Mosseri…

In an additional announcement that’s bundled with the headline-grabbing news it’s pulling Instagram ‘tweens’ (as Mosseri couches it), the social media giant also reveals it’s building what it calls “optional parental controls for teens”.

At the time of writing the link to Instagram’s blog post about this change was not working so details are scant — but the move implies that the Facebook-owned company is feeling the heat in the wake of revelations that, per the WSJ’s reporting of its internal documents, 32% of teenage girls reported that Instagram made them have a worse body image.

The WSJ report also cited that, of research participants who experienced suicidal thoughts, 13% of British teens and 6% of American teens directly linked their interest in killing themselves to Instagram.

“Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression,” another internal slide stated. “This reaction was unprompted and consistent across all groups.”

Lawmakers press Instagram for details on its plans for kids

Instagram to default young teens to private accounts, restrict ads and unwanted adult contact

 

Posted on

Apps to reach record highs in Q3 of 36B downloads and $34B in consumer spending

A new forecast on the state of the app economy indicates the third quarter will see record-breaking revenues spent on apps and games. According to App Annie, consumers worldwide will spend $34 billion on apps and games in Q3, a 20% year-over-year increase on spending. The increase indicates that the Covid-19 pandemic’s impact on consumer habits and behavior is having a lasting effect when it comes to how people are now using apps for entertainment, shopping, work, education, and more.

App Annie, we should note, made headlines last week for having massaged its data in earlier years using confidential sources, then misrepresented this to its trading firm clients as having been statistically modeled with internal controls to prevent such a thing from occurring. This resulted in a $10+ million securities fraud settlement with the SEC, as firms used the data to make investment decisions, as a result.

But App Annie data today still remains a fairly accurate representation of the mobile market, despite these manipulations, and for now is still one of many top companies that supply large app publishers, marketers, and investors with information related to the mobile ecosystem.

App Annie and co-founder charged with securities fraud, will pay $10M+ settlement

The firm said that the largest contributor to app revenue in Q3 continues to be in-game spending and mobile subscriptions — the latter, a focus of lawsuits and increased regulation as both Apple and Google fight to retain their right to a cut of the purchases flowing through their app store platforms. Gaming continues to account for the majority of consumer spend, though non-gaming spending has grown its share over the past few years, thanks to subscriptions.

Android also still continues to outpace iOS on downloads, but the reverse is true when it comes to consumer spending.

Image Credits: App Annie

Downloads in Q3 will have grown by 10% year-over-year to reach a record high of 36 billion, driven by Google Play and particularly downloads in emerging markets like India and Brazil. The strongest growth was also seen in Brazil, the Philippines, and Mexico, and the Latin American market has begun to catch the attention of global publishers now, as well, as one with growth potential.

Industries driving download growth include travel, education, and medical — all three of which have had pandemic impacts. Travel app downloads grew 35% quarter-over-quarter on Google Play and 15% on iOS as the summer travel season has picked up amidst widespread vaccine rollout. Medical and education apps, of course, have pandemic ties, as users turned to mobile technology to keep up with online learning and with doctors’ appointments, Covid testing, and vaccine appointments.

But iOS still reigns when it comes to revenue generated by mobile apps, accounting for 65% of app stores’ consumer spending globally, which is in line with the past four quarters.

Image Credits: App Annie

Consumer spending on iOS apps grew 15% year over year to $22 billion, and 15% year-over-year on Google Play to reach around $12 billion. Most of this revenue is generated by gaming apps, which account for 66% of the spend across both apps stores. In terms of non-gaming apps, iOS commands 76% of consumer spending. Much of the growth outside of gaming, across both platforms, comes from entertainment apps, photo and video apps, social media, and dating apps, the firm says.

The U.S. and China are the largest iOS markets for consumer spending, with Japan, the U.S., and Taiwan accounting for the strongest growth. On Google Play, the U.S., Japan, and South Korea were the largest markets by consumer spend, but Japan, Russia, and Australia drove the growth.

While examinations of revenue and downloads have historically helped to paint a broad picture of the state of the mobile economy, as markets mature there’s greater interest in user engagement with apps — like those consumers already have installed on their devices.

A report from an App Annie competitor Sensor Tower, also out today, dives into active users, sessions, and retention metrics for games and non-games alike. The firm found that the top 500 apps worldwide now average 91.7 million monthly active users and this number has grown by 8.4% year-over-year during the second quarter, up from 84.6 million in Q2 2020.

Image Credits: Sensor Tower

Business apps saw the highest compound annual growth rate (CAGR) between Q1 2018 and Q2 2021, climbing nearly 42% over that time frame, Sensor Tower said. Meanwhile, consumers in Q2 2021 spent the most time in entertainment apps, with each of the top 100 seeing nearly 29 minutes of daily usage, on average.

Image Credits: Sensor Tower

Among games, shooter genre games — like PUBG Mobile and Garena Free Fire  — saw the most daily active users in Q2, as the top 50 games in this genre averaged 7.6 million daily active users. In terms of weekly actives, however, hypercasual games came out on top.

Sensor Tower also credits earlier increases in active users across apps to the Covid-19 pandemic as users who turned to mobile devices during lockdowns. But after a slight dip in Q3 2020, growth in active users has now returned to pre-pandemic levels, it said.

Posted on

Facebook stock drops after company warns Apple’s privacy changes to have bigger Q3 impact

Facebook today provided an update on how Apple’s privacy changes have impacted its ad business. The company had already warned investors during its second quarter earnings that it expected to feel an even more significant impact in its ad targeting business by Q3. This morning, it reiterated that point, but also noted that it had been underreporting iOS web conversions by approximately 15%, which had led advertisers to believe the impact was even worse than they had expected.

According to Facebook’s announcement published to its business blog, this exact percentage could vary broadly among individual advertisers. But it said the real-world conversions, including things like sales and app installs, are likely higher than what advertisers are seeing when using Facebook’s analytics.

Facebook’s stock has dropped by nearly 4% on this news, as of the time of writing.

This is not the first time Facebook has shared misleading metrics. In the past, however, it had inflated its video ad metrics and didn’t quickly act to correct the problem, leading to a class-action lawsuit. In this case, however, the issue with the metrics isn’t making Facebook look better than it is, but worse. The company noted it’s been hearing from its advertising community that they are seeing a larger-than-planned impact to their ad investments on the network, raising concerns.

Facebook offered advertisers a few tips to help them better understand a campaign’s impact and performance in this new era. It suggested waiting a minimum of 72 hours or the full length of the optimization window before evaluating performance rather than making assessments on a daily basis, as before. It also said advertisers should analyze reporting at the campaign level, when possible, as some estimated conversations are reported with a delay. And it suggested advertisers choose web events (like a purchase or sign-up) that are most aligned with their core business, among other things.

To address the issues with improving its measurements, Facebook said it’s working to improve its conversion modeling, accelerating its investments to address reporting gaps, launching new capabilities to track web conversions, and extending its ability to measure in-app conversions in apps that have already been installed. The company said it would work quickly to fix bugs, including one that recently had led to underreporting of approximately 10%, which was previously shared with advertisers.

The company in August explained how it’s been working to adapt its personalized ads business in light of both Apple and Google’s privacy changes and the new regulatory landscape, but those efforts will take time, it said.

Outside of the ad tech updates themselves, Facebook has also been working on new products that would allow advertisers to better position themselves in front of consumers browsing Facebook’s apps. Just last week, for instance, it revamped its business tool lineup with the introduction of new features and expansions of smaller tests that would offer businesses more ways to be discovered. One such test in the U.S. would direct consumers to other businesses and topics directly underneath news feed posts. It also now allows businesses to add WhatsApp buttons to their Instagram profiles and create ads that send Instagram users to WhatsApp business chats.

Facebook has been warning advertisers for some time that Apple’s new privacy features, which allow mobile users to opt out of being tracked across their iOS apps, would cause issues for the way its ad targeting business typically operated. And it repeatedly argued that Apple’s changes would impact small businesses that relied on Facebook ads to reach their customers. When the changes went into effect, Facebook’s concerns were validated as studies found very few consumers are opting into tracking on iOS.

 

Posted on

Rippling launches computer inventory management as more workers remain remote

Rippling, a startup building a platform to manage all aspects of employee data, from payroll and benefits through to device management, launched Rippling Inventory Management, what founder and CEO Parker Conrad is touting as the “world’s first cloud IT closet.”

The dashboard enables businesses to automatically store, ship and retrieve employee computers in a way that is remote and hands-free. Rippling stores and monitors company devices so they no longer need an “IT closet” on-site or utilize an employee’s home. Rippling also manages the logistics related to the devices, including wiping and assigning devices and issuing prepaid mailers for machines that need to be returned.

Customers pay a per employee, per month fee to use the dashboard to hire, or fire employees, and set up all of the apps (and access) that the employee will need on their computer. In addition, the user can see all of the outstanding shipments and where they are in the process of being delivered or returned.

The product launch is buoyed by a massive $145 million Series B round in 2020 that gave the company a valuation of $1.35 billion.

Rippling inventory management gif. Image Credits: Rippling

The inventory management platform stems from a problem Rippling saw as remote work became more prevalent over the past 18 months, Conrad told TechCrunch. The company itself used to have an IT closet, which he considers “the last physical part about managing employees.”

“What this does is kill the IT closet,” he added. “If you don’t work in an office and decide to leave, some companies don’t have a process on how to get the former employee’s device back. We had a situation ourselves where employees would ship computers back to one person, and she had them stacked up in her apartment.”

The leadership team spent a long time looking for an inventory management service, and also saw customers posting about it on social media. However, Conrad considers this a problem that didn’t really exist until March 2020.

He explained that with the exception of a few outlier companies, most were not remote and physically handed a computer to new employees or gathered them from the desk of someone who left. Once they were remote, it was difficult to keep track of who had which device and how to get them back if needed.

“Everyone can be done online now, and you don’t have to come into the office to sign paperwork,” Conrad said. “This is the last piece that companies need and works to solve the last-mile problem.”

Rippling nabs $145M at a $1.35B valuation to build out its all-in-one platform for employee data

 

Posted on

Tumblr’s subscription product Post+ enters open beta after much scrutiny from users

Tumblr is entering open beta for its subscription product Post+, meaning that all U.S. users can now try out the monetization feature. The product launched in closed beta in July, allowing users hand-picked by Tumblr to place some of their content behind a monthly paywall. This marked the first time that Tumblr allowed bloggers to monetize their content directly on the platform, but the feature was met with backlash from users who worried about how the feature would change the site’s culture.

Now, Tumblr has responded to user feedback by removing the blue Post+ badge that appeared next to the names of users who enabled the feature. Tumblr differentiates itself from other sites by not revealing users’ follower and following counts, so users were concerned that this distinction, which looked like a Twitter verification badge, contradicted that key aspect of Tumblr culture. Tumblr is also adding a $1.99/month price point in open beta — before, subscriber-only content could be priced at $3.99, $5.99, and $9.99. Tumblr will only take 5% of creator profits — comparatively, Patreon takes between 5% and 12% depending on the tier. Payments will be processed through Stripe.

Trouble in fandom paradise: Tumblr users lash out against its beta subscription feature

Still, Tumblr users were dismayed by the way Post+ was rolled out. Many bloggers were concerned that in the closed beta, Post+ users didn’t have the ability to block paying subscribers without first contacting support — this could potentially expose users to harassment without the tools to manage it. Tumblr corrected that mistake in the open beta, so now, users can block subscribers themselves. Creators can also put existing content behind the Post+ paywall.

Some users upset with the Post+ rollout staged a protest, which — with over 98,000 notes — is the first thing that shows up when you search “post plus” on Tumblr. Many people on Tumblr have amassed followings by posting iterative fan content, like fanfiction. Tumblr cited fanfiction as an example of the kind of content that creators can put behind a paywall, but users remain concerned that they will be subject to legal action if they were to do so. Archive of Our Own, a major fanfiction site, prohibits its users from linking to sites like Patreon or Ko-Fi, since some intellectual property rights holders can be litigious about the monetization of fanfiction. While it’s considered fair use to make fan content, profiting from it can be considered a violation of copyright.

When Tumblr banned pornographic content in 2018, monthly page views decreased by 29% — to date, the blogging platform hasn’t regained that traffic. After being sold to Automattic in 2019, Tumblr has committed to capturing the attention of Gen Z audiences, who the platform says make up about 48% of its users. Tumblr says it’s catering Post+ to serve Gen Z audiences, but the results of the open beta will begin to reveal whether or not this is what users on the platform want.

Posted on

Paralympians bring home gold medals, but we’re failing them on web accessibility

Joseph Wengier Contributor
Joseph Wengier competed in five Paralympics and won nine gold medals. He promotes the advancement of a more inclusive internet as an ambassador for accessibility technology company UserWay.

After winning my first gold medal in the 1972 Paralympics, I went out with the swim team for a celebratory dinner. I’ll never forget the paradoxical sight of my teammates — all world-class athletes — being carried in their wheelchairs up the few steps into an inaccessible restaurant. While far from a rare occurrence at the time, the stark contrast between that moment and our victory in the pool earlier that day made it stand out.

As I strapped on my braces and slowly made my way up the stairs, I reflected on the irony of the situation. As Paralympic champions, we were sources of inspiration to millions. We were breaking down stereotypes and changing perceptions about what disabled people could accomplish. Yet while we were celebrated by society, we were not accommodated by it.

Accessing many basic goods and services required herculean feats of strength and agility. Attempts at participating fully in the physical world were met with hurdles and obstacles. At that time, it was clear that for the Paralympic movement, which strived to promote disability rights through Paralympic sport, the work was not yet done. In fact, it was just beginning.

Over the subsequent four Paralympic games that I participated in, we began to see the gradual shift toward more accessible cities. The Paralympic movement played no small part in that advancement. By putting a wide range of disabled people on TV around the world, it brought the need for equal access from the shadows into the spotlight.

Joseph Wengier and his teammates at the 1980 Paralympics. Wengier is second from left. Image Credits: Joseph Wengier.

The Paralympics also demanded host cities do better, requiring meaningful and lasting improvements to the accessibility of cities’ infrastructure. Today, while there is certainly still much room for improvement, disabled people have found solutions for most problems and are able to participate in society more than ever before.

Yet with the internet taking an increasingly central part in our daily lives, we are seeing the same exclusionary practices that we experienced — and fought against — all those years ago reappearing in a new form. A recent study reviewed the world’s top 1 million websites and found accessibility issues on the homepages of more than 97% of them.

A restaurant website that lacks support for keyboard navigation or does not work properly with screen readers can prevent a person who relies on these technologies from ordering food, similar to the way that lack of wheelchair access can prevent them from entering the establishment.

Now, with COVID-19 upending our daily routines, the shift online has accelerated. More and more businesses are going digital, with their website being the only way to schedule an appointment, buy groceries or apply for a job. This makes the need for accessible websites more critical than ever. It is not a matter of a minor inconvenience or an inability to access a new technology or service. We are seeing basic day-to-day needs moving online and becoming less accessible in the process. It is this slide backward that has compelled me to speak up and share my story.

As we go online to watch the highlight clips of our favorite athletes’ performances in Tokyo, take to social media to congratulate them, or visit our favorite sports site to read the coverage of the events, let’s demand that these businesses make their websites accessible so that Paralympic champions can do the same.

A recent image of Joseph Wengier at his computer with his medals in the background. Image Credits: Joseph Wengier.