Facebook returns to its roots with Campus, a college student-only social network

Facebook is getting back to its roots as a college-focused social network. The company announced today the launch of a new social networking platform, Facebook Campus, which offers college students a private place to connect with classmates, join groups, discover upcoming campus events, get updates from their school’s administration and chat with other students from their dorm, clubs or any other campus group.

The new platform requires a school email address (@.edu) to join and will live within a dedicated section of the Facebook app. It will be accessible from a tab at the bottom of the screen or from the “More” menu alongside sections like Watch, Dating, Gaming, News, Marketplace and others.

“We wanted to create a product where it was easy for classmates to meet each other, foster new relationships and also easily start conversations,” explains Facebook Campus Product Manager Charmaine Hung. “And we really think that Campus is more relevant than ever right now. With COVID-19, we see that many students aren’t returning to campus in the fall. Now, classes are being held online and students are trying to react to this new normal of what it’s like to connect to clubs and organizations that you care about, when you’re not together,” she added.

More broadly, Facebook likely wanted to address its “teen problem,” and Facebook Campus is its solution.

Image Credits: Facebook

Facebook, according to reports, has been losing its grip on the younger demographic, as they’ve shifted their attention to other social apps, like YouTube, Snapchat and Instagram. According to a 2018 study from the Pew Research Center, only 51% of U.S. users ages 13 through 17 said they used Facebook, down from 71% who said the same in 2015. Meanwhile, a 2019 survey by Edison Research indicated that Facebook had lost 15 million users since 2017, with the biggest drop coming from the 12 to 34-year-old group.

Facebook Campus is built to bring these users back by offering a more exclusive place for private networking within Facebook. It’s similar, in some ways, to Facebook’s effort to address the needs of corporate users with Facebook Workplace. Instead of being new ideas for social networking, these platforms leverage Facebook’s existing technology, like News Feed and Groups, to deliver solutions for particular demographics.

At launch, Facebook Campus is only available at around 30 colleges and universities across the U.S. (see full list below), but the company plans to expand over time.

Some of the colleges have a deeper partnership with Facebook and have signed up to publish updates and news to their students’ Facebook Campus feed, as well. In these cases, the college or university may encourage various student leaders to join the network, too.

Image Credits: Facebook

Facebook will market the new app both within its app and offline. Students may be prompted to join Campus through a prompt in News Feed if Facebook has enough data to indicate they’re likely a student at a supported college. For example, if a Facebook user regularly visited a supported university’s Facebook Page, Facebook may display the Facebook Campus sign-up prompt. There are also student-led incentive programs where students who increase enrollment are rewarded with Facebook Campus swag, like t-shirts and towels.

In addition to requiring a .edu email address, Facebook Campus requires a graduation year — and it will need to be no more than five years out from the present.

After signing up, students create their Facebook Campus profile. While this is linked on the back end to the student’s main Facebook profile, it lets them add college-specific details that won’t automatically appear anywhere else on Facebook. Here, Campus users can add their graduation year, dorm, major and minor, classes they’re taking, hometown, Instagram profile and more.

Image Credits: Facebook

This information can only be viewed by other Facebook Campus users who attend the same school. It also helps power Campus’ student directory, where Facebook Campus users can search students by name, year, major or class, or browse to find classmates to add as friends, including those who are in their same dorm or clubs.

Image Credits: Facebook

Within Facebook Campus, students can also discover and join Groups and Events for their school. These can be those associated with official student clubs or Greek organizations, those associated with a particular dorm or even those just focused on a particular interest, like photography, cooking, writing, hiking, etc. Students can create buy/sell groups or roommate search groups, too, or anything else not in violation of Facebook’s terms.

These groups and events essentially function like those on Facebook itself, with the exception being that they can only be viewed, joined and accessed by students.

Image Credits: Facebook

Facebook Campus also has its own private Chat section, which is kept separate from Facebook and Messenger. These group chats work a little differently, as users don’t actually have to find and invite members. Instead, students in a particular group can opt to join its associated chat, if they choose.

All updates from your groups, clubs and events are in the Facebook Campus News Feed. But unlike on Facebook proper, students can’t post to their personal profile within Campus. They can only post to groups, events or chats.

Image Credits: Facebook

Facebook says this decision helps cut down on spam and allows users to focus their energy on engaging with smaller communities they’re involved with.

A small handful of universities have already partnered with Facebook to distribute announcements to their Facebook Campus channel for their students to see. However, any school can choose to opt-in to this feature at launch.

At launch, the following universities and colleges will support Facebook Campus:

Benedict College; Brown University; California Institute of Technology; College of William & Mary; Duke University; Florida International University; Georgia Southern University; Georgia State University; Johns Hopkins University; Lane College; Lincoln University (Pennsylvania); Middlebury College; New Jersey Institute of Technology; Northwestern University; Rice University; Sarah Lawrence College; Scripps College; Smith College; Spelman College; Stephen F. Austin State University; Tufts University; University at Albany – State University of New York; University of Hartford; University of Louisville; University of Pennsylvania; University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire; Vassar College; Virginia Tech; Wellesley College; and Wesleyan University.

While Facebook’s early days saw it targeting Ivy League schools, the company says these first Facebook Campus schools were selected for diversity’s sake. That is, diversity of the student population, diversity of geography and diversity of school specialties (like liberal arts). They also represent a mix of public and private schools.

Image Credits: Facebook

Facebook Campus, notably, won’t include advertising in its Feed. But it will support Facebook’s advertising business. Advertisers won’t be able to specifically target Facebook Campus users, but they can target users by interest — even if the only place the user indicated they had that interest was within Campus. For example, a user who joined a cooking club in Facebook Campus could be targeted by an advertiser looking to reach users interested in cooking.

Hung said Facebook hasn’t tested Facebook Campus before today, even with small groups. Instead, this launch is considered a pilot for the new experience. The company did spend time conducting roundtables with universities and with student groups to gain product insight and feedback, however.

 

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A lesson in turning adversaries into allies | Leah Garcés

A lesson in turning adversaries into allies | Leah Garcés

When you're on opposite sides of an issue, how do you broker peace with your adversaries and work together to solve a problem? Follow along as animal rights activist Leah Garcés she recounts three lessons she learned in hatching an ambitious plan to end chicken factory farming with the last person she expected: a chicken farmer.

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Click this link to view the TED Talk

Microsoft Surface Duo review

In the early days, Microsoft had misgivings about calling the Surface Duo a phone. Asked to define it as such, the company has had the tendency to deflect with comments like, “Surface Duo does much more than make phone calls.” Which, to be fair, it does. And to also be fair, so do most phones. Heck, maybe the company is worried that the idea of a Microsoft Phone still leaves a bitter taste in some mouths.

The Duo is an ambitious device that is very much about Microsoft’s own ambitions with the Surface line. The company doesn’t simply want to be a hardware manufacturer — there are plenty of those in the world. It wants to be at the vanguard of how we use our devices, going forward. It’s a worthy pursuit in some respects.

After all, for all of the innovations we’ve seen in mobile in the past decade, the category feels static. Sure there’s 5G. Next-gen wireless was supposed to give the industry a temporary kick in the pants. That it hasn’t yet has more to do with external forces (the pandemic caught practically everyone off guard), but even so, it hardly represents some radical departure for mobile hardware.

What many manufacturers do seem to agree on is that the next breakthrough in mobile devices will be the ability to fit more screen real estate into one’s pocket. Mobile devices are currently brushing up against the upper threshold of hardware footprint, in terms of what we’re capable of holding in our hands and willing to carrying around in our pockets. Breakthroughs in recent years also appear to have gotten us close to a saturation point in terms of screen-to-body ratio.

Foldable screens are a compelling way forward. After years of promise, the technology finally arrived as screens appeared to be hitting an upper limit. Of course, Samsung’s Galaxy Fold stumbled out of the gate, leaving other devices like the Huawei Mate X scrambling. That product finally launched in China, but seemed to disappear from the conversation in the process. Motorola’s first foldable, meanwhile, was a flat-out dud.

Announced at a Surface event last year, the Duo takes an entirely different approach to the screen problem — one that has strengths and weaknesses when pitted against the current crop of foldables. The solution is a more robust one. The true pain point of foldables has always been the screen itself. Microsoft sidesteps this by simply connecting two screens. That introduces other problems, however, including a sizable gap and bezel combination that puts a decided damper on watching full-screen video.

Microsoft is far from the first company to take a dual-screen approach, of course. ZTE’s Axon M springs to mind. In that case — as with others — the device very much felt like two smartphones stuck together. Launched at the height of ZTE’s experimental phase, it felt like, at best, a shot in the dark. Microsoft, on the other hand, immediately sets its efforts apart with some really solid design. It’s clear that, unlike the ZTE product, the Duo was created from the ground up.

Image Credits: Brian Heater

The last time I wrote about the Duo, it was a “hands-on” that only focused on the device’s hardware. That was due, in part, to the fact that the software wasn’t quite ready at the time of writing. Microsoft was, however, excited to show off the hardware — and for good reason. This really looks and feels nice. Aesthetically, at least, this thing is terrific. It’s no wonder that this is the first device I’ve seen in a while that legitimately had the TechCrunch staff excited.

While the Surface Duo is, indeed, a phone, it’s one that represents exciting potential for the category. And equally importantly, it demonstrates that there is a way to do so without backing into the trappings of the first generation of foldables. In early briefings with the device, Surface lead Panos Panay devoted a LOT of time to breaking down the intricacies of the design decisions made here. To be fair, that’s partially because that’s pretty much his main deal, but I do honestly believe that the company had to engineer some breakthroughs here in order to get hardware that works exactly right, down to a fluid and solid hinge that maintains wired connections between the two displays.

There are, of course, trade-offs. The aforementioned gap between screens is probably the largest. This is primarily a problem when opening a single app across displays (a trick accomplished by dragging and dropping a window onto both screens in a single, fluid movement). This is likely part of the reason the company is positioning this is as far more of a productivity app than an entertainment one — in addition to all of the obvious trappings of a piece of Microsoft hardware.

Image Credits: Brian Heater

The company took great pains to ensure that two separate apps can open on each of the screens. And honestly, the gap is actually kind of a plus when multitasking with two apps open, creating a clear delineation between the two sides. And certain productivity apps make good use of the dual screens when spanning both. Take Gmail, which offers a full inbox on one side and the open selected message on the other. Ditto for using the Amazon app to read a book. Like the abandoned Courier project before it, this is really the perfect form factor for e-book reading — albeit still a bit small for more weary eyes.

There are other pragmatic considerations with the design choices here. The book design means there’s no screen on the exterior. The glass and mirror Windows logo looks lovely, but there’s no easy way to preview notifications. Keep in mind the new Galaxy Fold and Motorola Razr invested a fair amount in the front screen experience on their second-generation devices. Some will no doubt prefer to have a device that’s offline while closed, and I suppose you could always just keep the screens facing outward, if you so chose.

You’ll probably also want to keep the screens facing out if you’re someone who needs your device at the ready to snap a quick photo. Picture taking is really one of the biggest pain points here. There’s no rear camera. Instead, I’m convinced that the company sees most picture taking on the device as secondary to webcam functionality for things like teleconferencing. I do like that experience of having the device standing up and being able to speak into it handsfree (assuming your able to get it to appropriate eye level).

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But when it came to walking around, snapping shots to test the camera, I really found myself fumbling around a lot here. You always feels like you’re between three and five steps away from taking a quick shot. And the fact of the matter is the shots aren’t great. The on-board camera also isn’t really up to the standards of a $1,400 device. Honestly, the whole thing feels like an afterthought. Perhaps I’ve been spoiled after using the Note 20’s camera for the last several weeks, but hopefully Microsoft will prioritize the camera a bit more the next go-round.

Another hardware disappointment for me is the size of the bezels. Microsoft says they’re essentially the minimal viable size so as to not make people accidentally trigger the touchscreen. Which, fair enough. But while it’s not a huge deal aesthetically, it makes the promise of two-hand typing when the device is in laptop mode close to impossible.

That was honestly one of the things I was excited for here. Instead, you’re stuck thumb-typing as you would on any standard smartphone. I have to admit, the Duo was significantly smaller in person than I imagined it would be, for better and worse. Those seeking a fuller typing experience will have to wait for the Neo.

The decision not to include 5G is a curious one. This seems to have been made, in part, over concerns around thinness and form factor. And while 5G isn’t exactly mainstream at this point in 2020, it’s important to attempt to future proof a $1,400 device as much as possible. This isn’t the kind of upgrade most of us make every year or so. By the time the cycle comes back around, LTE is going to feel pretty dated.

Image Credits: Brian Heater

Battery life is pretty solid, owing to the inclusion of two separate batteries, each located beneath a screen. I was able to get about a day and a half of life — that’s also one of the advantages of not having 5G on board, I suppose. Performance also seemed solid for the most part, while working with multiple apps front and center. For whatever reason, however, the Bluetooth connection was lacking. I had all sorts of issues keeping both the Surface Buds and Pixel Buds connected, which can get extremely annoying when attempting to listen to a podcast.

These are the sorts of questions a second-generation device will seek to answer. Ditto for some of the experiential software stuff. There was some bugginess with some of the apps early on. A software update has gone a ways toward addressing much of that, but work needs to be done to offer a seamless dual-screen experience. Some apps like Spotify don’t do a great job spanning screens. Spacing gets weird, things require a bit of finessing on the part of the user. If the Duo proves a more popular form factor, third party developers will hopefully be more eager to fine tune things.

There were other issues, including the occasional blacked out screen on opening, though generally be resolved by closing and reopening the device. Also, Microsoft has opted to only allow one screen to be active at a time when they’re both positioned outward so as to avoid accidentally triggering the back of the touch screen. Switching between displays requires doubling tapping the inactive one.

But Microsoft has added a number of neat tricks like App Groups, which are a quick shortcut to fire up two apps at once. As for why Microsoft went with Android, rather than their own Windows 10, which is designed to be adaptable to a number of different form factors, the answer is refreshingly pragmatic and straightforward. Windows 10 just doesn’t have enough mobile apps. Microsoft clearly wants the Duo to serve as a proof of concept for this new form factor, though one questions whether the company will be able to sufficiently monetize the copycats.

For now, however, that means a lot more selection for the end user, including a ton of Google productivity apps. That’s an important plus given how few of us are tied exclusively to Microsoft productivity apps these days.

As with other experimental form factors, the first generation involves a fair bit of trial and error. Sure, Microsoft no doubt dogfooded the product in-house for a while, but you won’t get a really good idea of how most consumers interact with this manner of device — or precisely what they’re looking for. Six months from now, Microsoft will have a much better picture, and all of those ideas will go into refining the next generation product.

That said, the hardware does feels quite good for a first generation device — even if certain key sacrifices were made in the process. The software will almost certainly continue to be refined over the course of the next year as well. I’d wait a bit on picking it up for that reason alone. The question, ultimately becomes what the cost of early adoption is.

In the grand scheme of foldable devices, maybe $1,400 isn’t that much, perhaps. But compared to the vast majority of smartphone and tablet flagships out there, it’s a lot. Especially for something that still feels like a first generation work in progress. For now, it feels like a significant chunk of the price is invested in novelty and being an early adopter for a promising device.

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Times Internet is growing despite influx of US firms in India

Times Internet said on Thursday it reaches more than 557 million active users in India each month and over 111 million users a day as several of its digital offerings demonstrated strong growth in the past year.

The Indian conglomerate — which operates over three-dozen properties, including on-demand streaming services MX Player and Gaana, and newspapers Times of India and Economic Times — added 107 million monthly active users in the financial year that ended in March, it said.

Its platform clocked over 67 billion page views in FY 2020, up from 47 billion from the year prior.

MX Player, which has now amassed over 200 million monthly active users, and Gaana, which now reaches 185 million monthly active users, grew 75% in the year, Satyan Gajwani, vice chairman of Times Internet told TechCrunch in an interview.

These figures put Times Internet, a subsidiary of 182-year-old Bennett Coleman and Company Limited (BCCL), at the centre of the world’s largest open battleground (well, almost), which is otherwise dominated by Google, Facebook and Amazon.

According to analytics firm Comscore, Google reached 98% of the digital population in India on web (desktop as well as mobile) in the month of June. During the same month, Facebook reached 94.9% of the population, Times Internet 77.7% and Amazon settled at fourth place with 76%. (The figures do not include app usage data.)

Founded over 20 years ago, Times Internet had a huge headstart over nearly every firm that dominates the digital landscape today. But it largely failed to cash in on that for several years, critics say. Under the current leadership, however, the firm has followed a steady path and grown.

Comscore data for the month of May (Image credit: Times Internet)

Gajwani acknowledged that some of Times Internet’s offerings weren’t in great shape at the beginning of the last decade. “So we put a lot more emphasis on just product quality during 2013 to 2016. The next few years after that we also bought and built good products.”

“We’ve sold products or exited products where we didn’t think we could be competitive. We’ve got a reasonably strong portfolio now,” he added.

The most recent phase of Times Internet’s growth, said Gajwani, is the push to find revenue channels beyond ads. Gaana, MX Player, ET Prime (ad-free tier for Economic Times) and Times Prime (which bundles and resells a range of third-party subscription offerings) are helping it find subscribers, while MensXP’s e-commerce section, ETMoney, MagicBricks, GradeUp and Dineout are driving transactions.

Overall, Times Internet said its revenue grew 24% to $221.5 million in FY20. The firm did not disclose how much revenue it clocked from subscriptions, but said it had over 2 million paying subscribers and its transacting businesses grew 68%. Its ad business was also up 22%.

But its heavy reliance on ads means it has also been hit by the coronavirus, which slashed consumers’ spendings across the industry, resulting in advertisers cutting their budget.

Gajwani said the month of March saw a “big drop” in ad revenue for the firm, but the next three months were “soft” and July and August delivered a big rebound. “The gains of July and August have now made up for the losses of April, May, June in terms of our net year over year,” he added.

The virus and New Delhi’s ban on Chinese apps in recent months haven’t been a complete downer. Both MX Player and Gaana are attempting to fill the void left by the ban on TikTok in India and have received better traction than some of the more heavily-funded firms such as Twitter-backed ShareChat, according to mobile insight firm App Annie, data of which an industry executive shared with TechCrunch.

MX TakaTak, the short-video app from MX Player, has amassed over 10 million daily active users and 45 million monthly active users, it claimed earlier this week. Users have uploaded more than 15 million videos on the app and clocked over a billion views within a month, it said.

Moving forward, Gajwani said the firm will also continue to try to deepen its relationship with users. “The number of people who consumed two or more of our businesses grew 48%. And the number of people who consumed three or more of our businesses, grew 120%,” he said, without disclosing the number of users.

BCCL has engaged in conversations with investors in recent months to sell stake in Times Internet, a person familiar with the matter said. The deal, if secured, would make Times Internet — which employs more than 6,000 people, up from 5,000 last year — financially stronger to explore more acquisition opportunities, the person said. Gajwani declined to comment. Bloomberg first reported about the talks.

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Taboola and Outbrain call off their $850M merger

Online advertising is a game of scale, but one attempt to consolidate two competitors to better take on Google and Facebook has fallen apart. Taboola and Outbrain, startups that each provide publishers with ad-based content recommendation platforms, have called off a planned $850 million merger that would have valued the combined company at more than $2 billion.

The news of the cancellation had been rumoured in the Israeli press (and tipped to me by Avihai Michaeli, a Tel Aviv-based senior investment banker and startup advisor), and TechCrunch has now confirmed it with both companies, too.

“We’ve seen changing conditions in the market due to COVID-19, and we decided to terminate the deal,” said a person close to the merger, who asked to remain anonymous. “It’s been such a long road, and it’s not great…but walking away is the right move.”

“No one gets divorced because they’re happy,” said another source close to the deal said about the feeling of resignation over the development.

We understand that a formal announcement will be made in the next couple of days. There are no “break fees” as a result of the deal not going through.

The deal had been years in the making — we first reported on the talks in 2015 — but was only finally pulled together about 11 months ago, in October 2019. However, between then and today, a combination of factors got in the way of it progressing.

The first of those was the global health pandemic. Both Taboola’s and Outbrain’s businesses are based around widgets that they integrate with publishers’ sites, which provide a way for publishers both to recirculate their own content, as well as share it, alongside sponsored content and ads, on other sites that also run the widgets. But in the last eight months, the world of ad-based media has taken a nosedive as many large brands reined in their ad budgets, and that had a knock-on effect on other players within the ecosystem.

And that has impacted financing prospects. The merger between the two was originally intended to have cash and stock components — specifically 30% of the value of Outbrain for $250 million in cash to be paid to Outbrain’s shareholders and employees — but in the contracting market, the financiers who were providing the capital for the cash component stalled. That deal ultimately expired in August, and it didn’t get extended. And then, attempts to convert the deal into an all-stock transaction were unpalatable to Outbrain, we understand. “The cash was a critical factor in the deal,” said a source.

On top of that was what was described to me as a “challenging cultural fit” between the two companies, something that only became more apparent as the closing of the deal dragged on. That again pointed to the cash element of the deal being important: “If you get the cash, you reduce the risk, so without that we grew even more uncomfortable,” the source said.

The third hurdle was ongoing regulatory issues. While it appeared that the U.S. regulators nominally approved the deal, the merger was still being investigated both in the U.K. and in Israel, investigations that were due to go on for several more months. In the U.K., the companies currently do not have any significant competitors, raising antitrust concerns.

The two companies, both founded out of Israel but headquartered in New York, had described their planned deal as a merger, but the combined entity would have been called Taboola, with Taboola’s founder Adam Singolda taking the CEO slot. Both Taboola and Outbrain were profitable going into the deal, each claiming some $1 billion in annual revenues. Taboola has raised some $160 million from investors that include Comcast, Fidelity and Pitango. Outbrain had raised $194 million, with investors including Index, HarbourVest and Lightspeed.

From what we understand, both companies will continue looking at ways they can continue to grow, even if it’s not as a team. That will include weighing up other strategic acquisitions and other opportunities, since some truisms remain in the worlds of media and advertising. “Scale and reach are critical to being successful in this market,” said our source.

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Apple iCloud, Google Drive and Dropbox probed over ‘unfair’ T&Cs in Italy

Italy’s competition authority has opened an investigation into cloud storage services operated by Apple, Dropbox and Google, in response to a number of complaints alleging unfair commercial practices.

In a press release announcing the probe, the AGCM says it’s opened six investigations in all. The services of concern are Google’s Drive, Apple iCloud and the eponymous Dropbox cloud storage service.

As well as allegations of unfair commercial practices, the regulator said it’s looking into complaints of violations of Italy’s Consumer Rights Directive.

A further complaint alleges the presence of vexatious clauses in the contract.

We’ve reached out to the three tech giants for comment.

All three cloud storage services are being investigated over complaints of unfair practices related to the collection of user data for commercial purposes — such as a lack of proper information or valid consent for such commercial data collection — per the press release.

Dropbox is also being accused of failing to clearly communicate contractual conditions such as procedures for withdrawing from a contract or exercising a right to reconsider. Access to out-of-court dispute settlement mechanisms is also being looked at by the regulator.

Other contractual conditions probed over concerns of unfairness include clauses with sweeping rights for providers to suspend and interrupt the service; liability exemptions even in the event of loss of documents stored in the user’s cloud space; the possibility of unilateral modification of the contractual conditions; and the prevalence of the English version of the contract text over the Italian version.

In recent years the European Commission has made a pan-EU push for social media firms to clarify their T&Cs — which led to Facebook agreeing to plainer worded T&Cs last year, as well as making some additional tweaks, such as amending its power to unilaterally amend contracts.

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Polls vs the Street

Polls vs the Street

Three years later, Google Maps is back on the Apple Watch

Google Maps has had a sort of spotty relationship with the Apple Watch over the years.

Google first shipped a Watch-friendly build of Maps back in September of 2015, just months after the Apple Watch first hit the shelves. In 2017, however, Google nixed Map’s Watch support with little more than a suggestion that it’d be back… eventually. Google didn’t offer up much of a reason as to why it was being pulled, nor did they suggest how long it might take to return.

Turns out the answer is three years. As of this morning, as spotted by 9to5Google, Google Maps is back on the Apple Watch.

We first found out about Google Maps’ pending return to the Apple Watch back in August alongside an announcement of deeper CarPlay integration. At the time, Google said it should show up within the “coming weeks.”

As Frederic noted at the time, even this second iteration might not be as feature-packed as Google Maps regulars might be hoping for. It’ll help you get from your current location to a handful of preset destinations (like home or work)… but if you want to go somewhere new, you’ll have to start the process on your phone first.

If you’ve already got Google Maps on your phone, updating the app should bring it back to your wrist.

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In a startup reprise, Courtne Smith launches NewNew, a social network based on shared content

Since her departure from Drake’s entourage (where she worked as his longtime personal assistant) Courtne Smith has launched a line of hair products; a giveaway game that dropped swag like Yeezy shoes and Kardashian beauty products called Suprize; and now, NewNew, a social network based on the videos its users like and share.

Think of the pitch as TikTok meets Facebook, where users congregate and create networks based on the videos, memes and images they share.

When Suprize launched in 2018 with the promise of tickets to a Drake show and an exclusive offer for a jacket from the artist’s Scorpion tour, sites like Complex and Refinery 29 took notice.

After a year in operation, so did investors. The company Smith co-founded with Filip Diarra, a graphic designer and developer, attracted the attention of Andreessen Horowitz, Founders Fund, Canaan, Dreamers VC and Shrug Capital. 

“We raised it really to transition Suprize into a social discovery platform based on ranking sharing and connecting over cool things that you connect and that you agree with,” said Smith. “After time running Suprize we saw NewNew taking over as the smarter, more scalable and more mature product to focus on really.”

Social media businesses have tried to use ranking, list-making and sharing to develop a following, with companies like Wishbone and The Tylt using lists and voting to generate traffic and as the hook for the site.

NewNew, by contrast, intends to create a social graph around shared interest in videos or visual content, in much the same way that Instagram created a new platform for social networking. The difference is that NewNew won’t focus on content creators, but instead the passive followers who amplify those creators.

“We saw an opportunity to do something around ranking,” said Smith. “We’re obsessed with short-form media and who it’s shared with. The creation of your own social media content. That’s difficult… our focus is how it’s shared and who it’s shared with rather than creating new content.”

Image Credits: NewNew

Smith said that her company will exist in a “symbiotic relationship” with all the other content creation platforms. “There’s not really a place to organize the conversation around all the content that’s being shared. And that’s what NewNew is trying to do.”

For Smith, the launch of NewNew is just the latest step in a lifelong journey toward entrepreneurship, the young founder said. “I always wanted to be an entrepreneur,” she said. “My dad was entrepreneurial. He had gone through a lot of career changes in his lifetime. He was a football player, and then a real estate entrepreneur and then a teacher.”

Another entrepreneurial role model was her friend and longtime employer, Drake. The two met when he was just becoming famous as a teenage actor in Toronto on the show Degrassi: The Next Generation.

Smith told Vogue, “Drake and I have been best friends since we were kids. I always found myself helping him organize his things for work and travel years before he was the ‘6 God’ we now all know and love, so it was a pretty natural transition from organized friend to assistant, at the time,” she said. “I consider Drake one of my role models and a great example of being aware of your strengths and working hard to get what you want in life.”

While Smith has worked in fashion and entertainment, the tech industry always beckoned, she said. “Tech was the thing that was big and impactful and has the way to make the most difference in the world,” she said. 

Ultimately, the hope is for NewNew to become a utility in the same way that other big social media platforms have become.

“There’s generations that grew up on those platforms. We see ourselves becoming a utility down the road,” Smith said. 

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AT&T customers can now make and receive calls via Alexa

Amazon this morning announced it’s teaming up with AT&T on a new feature that will allow some AT&T customers to make and receive phone calls through their Alexa-enabled devices, like an Amazon Echo smart speaker. Once enabled, customers with supported devices will be able to speak to the Alexa digital assistant to start a phone call or answer an incoming call, even if their phone is out of reach, turned off or out of battery.

The feature, “AT&T calling with Alexa,” has to first be set up under the user’s Alexa account.

To do so, users who want to enable the option will need to go to the “Communication” section in their Alexa app’s Settings. From there, you’ll select “AT&T” and then follow the on-screen instructions to link your mobile number.

Once linked, AT&T customers will be able to say things like “Alexa, call Jessica,” or “Alexa, dial XXX-XXX-XXXX” (where the Xes represent someone’s phone number).

When a call is coming in, Alexa will announce the call by saying, “Incoming call from James,” or whomever is ringing you. You can respond, “Alexa, answer,” to pick up, then speak to the caller via your Alexa device.

There are a few different ways to control when you want to receive incoming calls.

You can create an Alexa Routine that specifies you’ll only receive your calls through Alexa during workday hours of 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., for example. You could also make a routine that allowed you to disable AT&T calls on your device when you said a trigger phrase, like “Alexa, I’m leaving home.” Plus, you can manually turn off the feature when you’re leaving the house by switching on the “Away Mode” setting in the Alexa app.

The new feature is made possible by AT&T’s NumberSync service that allows users to make and receive phone calls on smartwatches, tablets, computers and, now, Alexa devices. There’s no cost associated with using the feature, which is included with all eligible AT&T mobile plans.

Amazon says AT&T Calling with Alexa is available on post-paid plans for those customers who have a compatible HD-voice mobile phone, like an iPhone or Samsung Galaxy device, among many others.

While only AT&T customers in the U.S. can take advantage of the feature, they’re able to place outgoing calls to numbers across Mexico, Canada and the U.K., as well as the U.S.

Amazon declined to say if it plans to offer a similar feature to customers with other carriers, but says it will respond to user feedback to evolve the feature over time.

This is not the first feature designed to make Alexa devices a tool for communication.

Amazon has already tried to make its Alexa devices work like a cross between a home intercom and a phone. With features like Drop-In, users can check in on family members in other parts of the home. Or they could use Announcements to broadcast messages, like “Dinner’s ready!” Meanwhile, calling features like Alexa-to-Alexa Calling or Alexa Outbound Calling have allowed users to make free phone calls to both other Alexa users and most mobile and landline numbers in the U.S., U.K., Canada and Mexico through Alexa devices or the Alexa app.

However, these features didn’t support incoming calls or calls to emergency services, like 911, so they weren’t full phone replacements.

Arguably, it may also be hard to get users to change their habit of using their cell phone in favor of an Alexa device, given that many people tend to keep phones nearby at all times, even when at home.

By offering a way to tie an Alexa device to a real phone number, however, users may be more inclined to try calling through Alexa.

The feature could also benefit the elderly, who couldn’t get to their phone in time, in the event of an emergency, or those with other special needs or disabilities that make walking over to a cell phone to answer a call more difficult.

Unfortunately, there’s still a major roadblock to using this service: spam calls. So many calls today are unwanted robocalls and spam. Having them announced over Alexa could become more of an annoyance than a help, unless users already subscribe to an advanced call blocker service.

Amazon says the new feature is live today across the U.S.

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Motorola gives its foldable Razr another go with the addition of a 5G model

Last year’s Motorola Razr reboot should have been a slam-dunk. An iconic name attached to a cutting edge form factor — what could possible go wrong? A lot, turns out, especially in the world of foldables where nothing seems to go according to plan. Some questionable design choices gave rise to a poorly reviewed device that continued the trend of foldable stumbles.

Motorola throws back to the future with a foldable Razr reboot

This week, however, the reboot is back. And this time, it’s, well, refined. In a blogpost announcing the launch of the “New Razr With 5G,” the Lenovo-owned brand is quick to note that, “We’ve heard from consumers that they feel tethered to their devices and want a way to stay connected while still living in the moment.” To put a finer point on it, here’s a quote offered to TechCrunch from a spokesperson,

We’re confident in our foldable system, which is why we retained much of the same technology from the first iteration of Razr. While evolving razr’s design to include 5G, we focused on areas to make mechanical refinements, based on direct consumer feedback.

In other words, the new Razr is the device that consumer feedback built. Now with 5G. It’s in keeping with the new version of the Galaxy Fold that Samsung recently launched. As many in the industry anticipated, the initial round of foldable devices would bump up against many of the issues commonly attributed to first generation devices. Here that means an update to things like the hinge, which drew some heat from reviews the first time around.

Attempt to fold Motorola’s Razr 100,000 times doesn’t go great

There’s also an improved camera — another issue with the original. This time out, it’s a quad pixel 48-megapixel sensor with improved low light shots and falser autofocus. There’s also a 20-megapixel one inside the device. The battery — another pain point on the original — has been upgraded slightly, from 2,510mAh to 2,800mAh. The company says it’s an “all day” battery, though the demands of 5G might have something to say about that. I suspect the demands of thinness really presented a brick wall when it comes to maxing out battery capacity.

The 5G comes courtesy of the Snapdragon 765G processor. That maintains the original’s inclusion of a mid-range processor (710 last time out), but this time Qualcomm has included next-gen wireless in an attempt to speed up adoption. At $1,400, it’s $100 less expensive than the original, but it’s certainly still pricey enough to make a middling processor a definite head scratcher. It’s true you’re paying for the foldable screen here, of course, but at that price, everything really ought to be the latest and greatest.

The new New Razr will be available in the fall.

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