Dating giant Match Group announced a series of changes to Tinder’s management team alongside the announcement of disappointing second-quarter earnings on Tuesday. Notably, Tinder CEO Renate Nyborg will be departing the company after less than a year in the top job. Match Group is also killing Tinder’s plans to adopt new technology, like virtual currencies and metaverse-based dating.
In a shareholder letter, Match Group CEO Bernard Kim expressed frustration with Tinder’s current performance, noting the popular dating app has not been able to realize its typical monetization success over the past few quarters and is failing to meet the company’s original expectations for revenue growth for the latter half of 2022.
Kim chalked up Tinder’s troubles to “disappointing execution on several optimizations and new product initiatives,” but added that Tinder’s product execution and velocity could still be improved.
Alongside the departure of Nyborg, Tinder will have a reorganized management team that also includes:
Faye Iosotaluno, formerly Match Group’s chief strategy officer, as Tinder’s COO
Mark van Ryswyk, as Tinder’s chief product officer. Ryswyk is an experienced gaming executive who joined the company in June.
Melissa Hobley, formerly OkCupid’s CMO, as Tinder’s chief marketing officer
Tom Jacques, as Tinder’s chief technology officer. An 11-year Match Group veteran, he has been Tinder’s CTO for the last five years.
Advisor Amarnath Thombre. The current CEO of Match Group Americas and 15-year Match Group veteran will advise the Tinder management team on product roadmap and growth.
Kim said he will oversee the team while Tinder searches for a permanent CEO.
Reading between the lines, there was also a hint that the younger generation of users may have lost its appetite for dating apps like Tinder — a culture shift which can’t just be chalked up to lingering pandemic impacts. The letter notes that people have moved past COVID lockdowns and re-entered “a more normal way of life,” but their willingness to try online dating apps for the first time hasn’t returned to pre-pandemic levels.
Instead, Match Group reports that its highest engagement is now coming from existing users.
As part of Tinder’s revamp, its “dating metaverse” ambitions have been dramatically scaled back. The company had been planning to leverage its Hyperconnect acquisition to create a new form of online dating in a virtual environment, but those ideas are on pause as Match Group now has to address broader issues.
“…Given uncertainty about the ultimate contours of the metaverse and what will or won’t work, as well as the more challenging operating environment, I’ve instructed the Hyperconnect team to iterate but not invest heavily in metaverse at this time,” wrote Kim. “We’ll continue to evaluate this space carefully, and we will consider moving forward at the appropriate time when we have more clarity on the overall opportunity and feel we have a service that is well-positioned to succeed.”
Also on the chopping block was virtual currency, which Match Group was experimenting with as Tinder Coins. (While Match Group hadn’t gotten so far as to announce blockchain integrations for the coins, the virtual currency’s role in its broader metaverse plans suggested crypto could be part of its long-term roadmap.)
“After seeing mixed results from testing Tinder Coins, we’ve decided to take a step back and re-examine that initiative so that it can more effectively contribute to Tinder’s revenue,” said Kim. “We also intend to do more thinking about virtual goods to ensure that they can be a real driver for Tinder’s next leg of growth and help us unlock the untapped power users on the platform,” he added.
The company says it’s still planning to develop features to make Tinder more appealing to women, including a subscription-based package that will provide “curated recommendations” as well as features designed to get friends involved in introductions. Across other products, it will also look to new features, like livestreaming video, to drive adoption.
Overall, Match posted Q2 2022 revenue of $795 million, up 12% year-over-year, but below average Wall Street estimates of $804.22 million. It also posted a loss of $31.86 million, or 11 cents per share, versus 46 cents in the year-ago quarter. Analysts were expecting earnings of 57 cents per share. Match said its operating loss was $10 million, impacted by a $217 million write-down of intangibles related to lower financial outlooks for its Azar and Hakuna apps from Hyperconnect.
Match Group paying users were up 10% year-over-year to 16.4 million. Tinder direct revenue grew 13% from the prior quarters, driven by 14% growth to 10.9 million paying users.
Image Credits: Match Group
Estimates for the quarter ahead weren’t good either, with Match Group forecasting flat Q3 growth to $790 million to $800 million in revenue, below estimates of $883 million. Tinder revenue growth is expected to be in the “mid single digits.”
Shares dropped more than 20% in after-hours trading on the news.
Updated 8/2/22, 6:00 pm ET to clarify Tinder had not formally announced blockchain integrations for Tinder’s virtual currency.
Tinder to kill virtual currency, metaverse plans amid Match Group earnings loss; Tinder loses its CEO
Архив рубрики: Mobile
This Week in Apps: Instagram backlash, TikTok gaming, Snapchat+ makes millions
Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy.
Global app spending reached $65 billion in the first half of 2022, up only slightly from the $64.4 billion during the same period in 2021, as hypergrowth fueled by the pandemic has slowed down. But overall, the app economy is continuing to grow, having produced a record number of downloads and consumer spending across both the iOS and Google Play stores combined in 2021, according to the latest year-end reports. Global spending across iOS and Google Play last year was $133 billion, and consumers downloaded 143.6 billion apps.
This Week in Apps offers a way to keep up with this fast-moving industry in one place with the latest from the world of apps, including news, updates, startup fundings, mergers and acquisitions, and much more.
Do you want This Week in Apps in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here: techcrunch.com/newsletters
Top Stories
Users demand the TikTok-ification of Instagram must stop
How do you modernize an app like Instagram, whose roots are in iconic iPhone photography, to support users’ growing engagement with short-form video? If you’re one of the many increasingly frustrated Instagram users, you simply wish it would not attempt this pivot at all. You’re sick of the app’s constant changes, its clutter, its ads, its force-fed recommendations, and you’re not a fan of its TikTok ambitions. You just want to see your friends’ posts.
This issue finally came to a head this week when celeb sisters and Instagram top creators Kylie Jenner and Kim Kardashian shared a petition that demanded Instagram to “stop trying to be tiktok.” The day after, Instagram head Adam Mosseri posted a video addressing the concerns and said the app would temporarily roll back some of its recent changes, including the test of a full-screen TikTok-like experience and the increase in “recommended” posts.
The company has brought this user backlash on itself, of course, with its continual “tests” of new UIs and its desperate admissions about how TikTok is eating its lunch, forcing it to adapt or die. Plus, Instagram claims video is what people want even when they’re saying otherwise. It insists its own data supports that video has been growing faster as mobile networks got faster and data became cheaper.
While that may be true, Instagram has been throwing out the baby with the bathwater as it attempts to prioritize elements of TikTok in its own app. People want different experiences from their social platforms — and Instagram is trying to do it all, without acknowledging that the real threat from TikTok is not the video content itself, necessarily, but rather TikTok’s addictive algorithm that increases users’ time spent in the app. TikTok has figured out how to recommend posts that users welcome, while Instagram’s attempt to do the same has fallen flat. Combined with TikTok’s ability to attract a younger demographic in terms of both creators and viewers alike, the app has become a massive force in social media.
Instagram will need to find a way to balance the demands of a user base that wants to still celebrate social connection (including through static media), with creator demands for increased discovery and the rise of video. This is not an easy task, but perhaps step one should be to allow users to engage with Instagram as they like. Just as how users can opt to scroll the main Feed instead of viewing Stories and vice versa, Instagram’s TikTok-ishness should rather be an optional entry point, not the entirety of the Instagram experience.
Snapchat+ outpaces Twitter Blue after just a month
Image Credits: Snapchat
Snapchat’s recent move into premium subscriptions has gained a bit of traction in its first weeks on the market.
The new Snapchat+ paid subscription launched on June 29, 2022 offering users access to various premium features, while also importantly giving the company a means of diversifying its revenue streams beyond advertising. This is critical for the social app given that the ad market is currently impacted by broader macroeconomic forces that have slowed demand. In addition, Snapchat continues to feel the effects of Apple’s 2021 privacy changes that allowed users to opt-out of tracking and is facing increased competition from rival TikTok.
For $3.99 per month, the Snapchat+ subscription allows devoted app users to see who has rewatched their Stories, change their app icon, pin another user as a “#1 Best Friend,” try out pre-release features and more. Earlier this month, the company also made web access a part of the Snapchat+ subscription.
Since the subscription’s arrival, Snapchat’s mobile app has generated approximately $7.3 million in worldwide consumer spending across iOS and Android according to Sensor Tower. This represents the first 30 days of Snapchat+’s availability, June 29, 2022–July 26, 2022. The figure is also around 116 times higher than the $63,000 the app pulled in via in-app purchases in the 30 days prior from May 30, 2022–June 28, 2022, indicating the bulk of the new revenue was driven by Snapchat+.
Notably, the number is already larger than Twitter’s in-app revenue, which totals nearly $4 million since Twitter Blue’s June 2021 launch — over a year’s time. Snapchat+ could be succeeding because it has more power users than Twitter, Sensor Tower data shows, as 34% of its active installs open the app every single day compared with just 19% for Twitter.
Image Credits: Sensor Tower
TikTok gets into mobile games
Here’s a scoop: TikTok is getting into gaming.
The company confirmed the launch of a pilot test of “mini-games” that can be played inside the social video app and discovered through creators’ videos. The gaming pilot quietly launched just weeks ago with a variety of new partners, including game developers Vodoo, Nitro Games, FRVR, Aim Lab and Lotem.
The launch follows reports earlier this year that the social video app maker was looking to expand into HTML5 gaming after first testing the waters with gaming giant Zynga last November. The two companies had then teamed up to launch a TikTok exclusive title, Disco Loco 3D, which was similar to Zynga’s successful game (by way of acquisition) High Heels.
TikTok’s mobile games today don’t monetize through ads or in-app purchases of any kind, but if they find traction with users, things could change as TikTok further developed its games platform. In that case, the app would not only recall the social gaming era of early Facebook (which incidentally drove Zynga’s success), it would also allow TikTok to route around the app stores’ commissions.
Image Credits: TikTok
Weekly News
Platforms: Apple
Apple released the fourth beta of iOS 16. The update offers a variety of new features, like the ability to edit and delete iMessages — a feature that now includes an edit history log in response to user concerns that the editing feature could be used maliciously. Other new features include the ability for developers to test Live Activities, improved integrations with Continuity Camera, a new interface when updating the Home Screen’s design, more options for the “unsend” time in Mail, and a few new wallpapers, among other smaller tweaks.
Apple announced Live Activities and Activity Kit won’t launch with the initial release of iOS 16 but will rather become available later in the year.
Apple is also hosting summer programs that allow developers to attend live presentations and Q&A sessions with App Store experts.
Apple reported Q3 earnings with revenue of $83B, up 2% YoY and above estimates of $82.8B. iPhone revenue was up 3% to $40.7B but Mac was down 10% to $7.4B. Apple’s services revenue grew 12% YoY to $19.6B and 860M paid subscribers, up from 825M in Q2.
Platforms: Google
Google announced new Play Store policies around intrusive ads, VPNs, alarms, health misinformation, impersonation and more. The policies will roll out at different intervals and will, among other things, restrict apps’ usage of full-screen ads that aren’t closeable after 15 seconds and full-screen interstitials that appear before the app’s loading screen. Apps that use icons that trick users into thinking they’re affiliated with another brand will also be restricted along with VPNs that track user data or reroute traffic to make money through ads.
At the Think with Google Gaming Day in China, Google shared ways to help developers earn more revenue and attract high-value players with a variety of new features and ad tools.
Google updated its Google Maps app with location-sharing notifications, immersive views and better bike navigation in several markets.
Augmented Reality
Snapchat launched its own spooky AR game called “Ghost Phone,” which sees players working to discover the secrets of an abandoned phone and hunting ghosts using AR. The game was built using the Lens Studio and web-first game engine PlayCanvas. It also uses Snap’s World Mesh technology and surface recognition to place game objects around the user. The company launched a Bitmoji dance game last month.
Fintech/Crypto
A U.S. Senator sent a letter to both Apple and Google asking for details as to how they’re preventing cryptocurrency apps from engaging in fraud on their respective app stores.
Messaging app Viber debuted a new digital wallet called Payments, offering bill pay, money transfers and support for buying goods.
The new Google Wallet rolled out to all users with Android 5.2+. The wallet app is available as a separate app in the U.S. and Singapore and as a Google Pay update for other markets.
Social
Snap missed in Q2 with revenue of $1.11 billion — a figure up 13% from the same period a year earlier but below its previous guidance of 20% to 25%. The company cited macroeconomic conditions for lower advertiser demand and continues to be impacted by Apple’s privacy changes. DAUs grew 18% YoY to 347 million. The company said it will reduce hiring, repurchase up to $500M in stock, and it locked in CEO and CTO roles until at least Jan. 1, 2027. Its stock tanked after earnings.
Snap announced a new creator fund that will award independent musicians posting their music on Snapchat up to $100,000 per month. The company will distribute payments for up to 20 songs per month at $5,000/song starting in August for musicians distributing to Snapchat via DistroKid.
Meta reported its first-ever decline in quarterly revenue year over year in its Q2 earnings. The company’s revenue was $28.82 billion, a 1% decrease from $29.07 billion in the second quarter of 2021. It also swapped its CFO.
Meta is killing Tuned, its social app for couples which will cease operations on Sept. 19, 2022. The app was a project from Meta’s New Product Experimentation Team (NPE) — one of many now shuttered attempts designed to test if Meta could create new social experiences in-house.
BeReal got ripped off. Because Instagram didn’t have enough drama this week, it also quietly rolled out a copycat of BeReal inside its app — which misses the point about why the new social network grew popular in the first place: It’s about your friends.
Instagram said it will begin to survey its U.S. users about race to assess if it is “fair and equitable.” The optional survey will be hosted by research group YouGov.
Twitter Blue is getting more expensive. Twitter announced it’s increasing the price of its premium subscription from $2.99 to $4.99 per month effective immediately for new subscribers and starting in October for existing subscribers. The hike is also rolling out to other Twitter Blue markets, including Australia, Canada and New Zealand at 6.99 AUD (previously 4.49 AUD), 6.49 CAD (previously 3.49 CAD) and 6.49 NZD (previously 4.49 NZD).
Twitter also began testing a status feature that lets you add a mood (hot take, vacation mode, unpopular opinion, etc.) alongside your posts and a way to post multiple forms of media in a single tweet.
The anticipated Twitter-Elon trial has set a date. The parties will battle it out in court starting October 17.
Photos
The Google Photos app gained an AI-based new movie editor and video editing features, but only for Chromebook users for the time being.
Amazon is killing its cloud storage service Amazon Drive and shifting users to Amazon Photos instead. Customers have until Dec. 31, 2023 to save their stored files.
Messaging
WhatsApp rolled out chat migration from Android to iOS and iOS to Android for all users. The feature requires Android 5 or higher, iOS 15.5 or above, and the Move to iOS app.
WhatsApp also appears to be working on a chatbot that will alert you to what’s new when the app is updated.
Streaming & Entertainment
Image Credits: YouTube
YouTube’s mobile app added a new feature that allows creators to select any segment up to 60 seconds from an existing long-form video and turn it into a YouTube Shorts video that links back to the original.
Baidu’s video streaming service iQiyi signed a content deal with TikTok’s Chinese sister app Douyin, which allows Douyin users to use iQiyi content to make short videos. The deal ends a dispute over alleged copyright infringement.
Comcast’s streaming app Peacock’s paid subscribers stayed flat at 13 million, as losses widen to $467 million in the company’s first quarter.
YouTube’s ad revenue grew just 4.8% YoY to $7.34 billion in Q2, below expectations of a 7% YoY increase to $7.49 billion. This YouTube’s slowest ad growth in over two years.
Twitter for iOS updated the Spaces bar for live audio streams to make it easier to see who’s hosting, what topics are being discussed and more.
Spotify rolled out a new Friends Mix playlist that gives users a way to discover new tracks based on the “Blends” they’ve created with their friends.
TikTok filed a trademark application for a service called TikTok Music that could allow users to buy, share and download music. Parent company ByteDance already runs a music service, Resso, but not in the U.S. — although ByteDance has considered expanding it in the past.
Gaming
Roblox rolled out an update that makes its materials appear more lifelike and overhauled aspects of its developer toolkit to support this change. The move is a part of the company’s mission to improve its visual fidelity, but game developers will be able to choose if they want to keep creating using the more blocky, traditional style.
Backbone, the maker of a popular gaming controller for iPhone, expanded with the launch of the Backbone One PlayStation Edition. The new device allows compatible mobile games to use proper PlayStation glyphs (Triangle, Circle, etc.) instead of ABXY. It will cost the same as the original Backbone One at $100.
K-pop stars Blackpink collaborated with PUBG Mobile, which just hosted its first in-game concert. The band released a new video featuring virtual avatars inside the game, which was earlier teased during the concert.
Government & Policy
The popular mobile game Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI) was pulled by Apple and Google from their respective app stores in India to comply with a government order. Krafton had said it cut ties with publishing partner Tencent, so it’s unclear why the game was pulled. The game had over 16.5M MAUs.
Google will be allowed to relaunch Street View in India in 10 cities initially, 10 years after the government shut down the service for security reasons.
China’s government asked TikTok for a stealth social account to target Western audiences with propaganda, Bloomberg reported, but TikTok execs pushed back and denied the request.
Security & Privacy
Messaging app JusTalk, popular in Asia, has been leaking users’ unencrypted private messages. The app, which has 20 million global users, had claimed to offer end-to-end encryption across its flagship apps and its child-friendly JusTalk Kids.
Funding and M&A
Livestream shopping app for collectibles Whatnot raised $260 million in Series D funding at a $3.7 billion valuation, up from $1.5 billion in September 2021. The livestream shopping market has only grown to $11 billion in the U.S. versus the $600 billion industry in China.
School communications app ClassDojo raised $125 million in Series D funding in September 2022, valuing the business at $1.25 billion. The company plans to launch a kids virtual space in August 2022.
Paris-based Contentsquare raised $400 million in Series F funding and $200 million in debt for its web and app analytics business. The round doubled the startup’s May 2021 valuation to $5.6 billion.
Conversational commerce startup Charles raised $20 million in Series A funding led by Salesforce Ventures to bring its service to WhatsApp in Europe. The company so far has seen the most traction in its domestic German market, but has received inbound interest from Italy, Spain, France, the Netherlands, and the U.K.
Blockchain infrastructure company Chain acquired Measurable Data Token for $100 million. The deal sees it acquiring a cash-back mobile app, RewardMe, and the financial data protocol MeFi.
Banking and networking platform Guava, targeting Black entrepreneurs, raised $2.4 million in a pre-seed round led by Heron Rock. The company aims to narrow the racial wealth gap by providing financial services to Black small businesses and creators.
Text-to-speech app Peech raised $550,000 in funding led by Flyer One Ventures. The app offers natural-sounding text-to-speech in 50 languages, allowing users to listen to Word docs, web articles or PDFs for $3/week.
South African startup Qwili raised $1.2 million in seed funding to scale its app and low-cost NFC-enabled smartphone. Qwili software can be downloaded to any phone in addition to being pre-installed on Qwili’s phones, which are used as point-of-sale devices for merchants selling data, pay-TV subscriptions, groceries or clothing to customers.
Brooklyn-based fantasy sports app Underdog raised $35 million in Series B funding, valuing the business at $485 million. The company plans to launch licensed sports betting in Ohio and Colorado in 2023.
Spotify’s latest SEC filing revealed it paid €291 million ($295 million) for its four recent acquisitions, Findaway, Podsights, Chartable, and Sonantic. Findaway, specifically, cost the company €117 million (around $123 million).
U.K. investing app Shares raised $40 million led by Peter Thiel-backed Valar Ventures, bringing its total raised to $90 million. The app has over 150,000 users.
U.S.-based digital bank Umba, which focuses on emerging markets, acquired a majority share of Kenyan microfinance bank Daraja for an undisclosed amount.
Downloads
Lock Screen widget TestFlights
A new type of app to download? We’re in!
If you’re running the iOS 16 public beta and looking to dig into Lock Screen widgets, there are a number of interesting apps now being tested that offer a look into how iOS developers are thinking about use cases for this prominent iPhone real estate. (If you ask nicely, the developers might add you to the TestFlight!)
A few apps we’ve found useful include:
Lock Screen Contacts: This allows you to put a favorite contact directly on your Lock Screen, without having to give the app access to your iPhone Contacts thanks to Apple’s more secure Contacts API. Users can toggle and choose to remove the text, image and background. The app will sell for $3.99 at launch. The same developer is also working on a Lock Screen Icon widget that will allow you to place any of some 4,000 icons on your Lock Screen to personalize your device.
The past month I’ve been making an iOS 16 Lock Screen widget app to quickly call contacts – much like speed dial.
I’m really pleased with how it’s turning out. pic.twitter.com/hVFJVeKgdY
— Rihab Mehboob (@elohohel) July 7, 2022
Day Ticker: This simple icon widget lets you quickly view how many more days until an important event — like a birthday, vacation, anniversary or anything else. Days until the kid goes to camp? Just two, my widget told me. We’d better start packing!
Can’t wait to use these!
Parcel’s Package Tracker: This widget keeps track of your expected deliveries and lets you see their status right on your Lock Screen.
Work in progress! pic.twitter.com/UntypJ1Pgu
— Parcel (@parcel_app) June 13, 2022
Home Widget: This widget will bring your HomeKit devices to your Lock Screen.
LockLauncher: Create custom Lock Screen widgets that can actually take actions — like open websites or apps, for example.
Tally: The current beta of this quick counter app includes a Lock Screen widget and other goodies.
Countdowns: Another widget for tracking the time until upcoming events.
Happy to announce that @HomeWidget beta version now supports iOS 16 Lock Screen Widgets!
If you’re on iOS16 beta and want to test this new feature, contact us.#iOS16 #ios16lockscreen #ioslockscreen #homekit #iOSWidgets #LockScreen #WWDC22 #iOS16beta pic.twitter.com/84mFMTiW4e
— Home Widget for HomeKit (@HomeWidget) July 21, 2022
This Week in Apps: Instagram backlash, TikTok gaming, Snapchat+ makes millions
Amazon shuts down its personal file storage service to focus on photos
Amazon’s consumer-focused storage service, Amazon Drive, will wind down over the next year, Amazon announced today. In an email to users, the company said that it was taking the opportunity to “more fully focus” its efforts on Amazon Photos, Amazon’s answer to iCloud Photos and Google Photos.
Amazon Drive customers have until December 31, 2023 to save their stored files; as of January 1, 2023, file uploading will cease to work. Photos and videos will be transferred to Amazon Photos automatically, but other file types must be downloaded manually from the Amazon Drive web dashboard.
Users who currently subscribe to paid Amazon Drive plans can cancel their subscriptions now for a potential refund. Cancellation can be done on the web or through the Android and iOS apps — at least before the apps are removed from the Google Play and App Store, respectively, on October 31.
Amazon launched Amazon Drive as Amazon Cloud Drive in 2011, initially offering pay-as-you-need tiered storage plans both for Amazon Prime and non-Prime users. November 2014 saw the rollout of an API that allowed third-party developers to integrate Amazon Drive into their own apps to save things like game settings, preferences and other app state data in the cloud.
Unlimited plans for Amazon Drive were introduced in 2015, and then discontinued two years later. Storage became limited to 5 GB for non-photo uploads a short time afterward. Amazon Prime members and Fire Tablet owners, however. retained free unlimited photo storage.
Competition was likely a factor in Amazon Drive’s demise. After all, countless providers offer cheap cloud file storage these days, including Google Drive, Dropbox, Box and OneDrive. Amazon Drive’s pricing wasn’t even particularly competitive — the service charged $119 a year for 2 TB, the going rate for the same volume of storage at Dropbox and Google Drive.
According to Statista, Google Drive was the most popular cloud storage service as of September 2021, followed by iCloud and OneDrive.
Amazon shuts down its personal file storage service to focus on photos
Google delays move away from cookies in Chrome to 2024
Google is again delaying plans to phase out Chrome’s use of third-party cookies — the files websites use to remember preferences and track online activity. In a blog post, Anthony Chavez, Google’s VP of Privacy Sandbox, said that the company is now targeting the “second half of 2024” as the timeframe for adopting an alternative technology.
It’ll be a long time coming. Last June, Google said it would depreciate cookies in the second half of 2023. Before then, in January 2020, the company pledged to make the switch by 2022.
“We’ve worked closely to refine our design proposals based on input from developers, publishers, marketers, and regulators via forums,” Chavez wrote. “The most consistent feedback we’ve received is the need for more time to evaluate and test the new … technologies before deprecating third-party cookies in Chrome.”
Google’s efforts to move away from cookies date back to 2019, when the company announced a long-term roadmap to adopt ostensibly more private ways of tracking web users. The linchpin is Privacy Sandbox, which aims to create web standards that power advertising without the use of so-called “tracking” cookies. Tracking cookies, used to personalize ads, can capture a person’s web history and remain active for years without their knowledge.
Privacy Sandbox proposes using an in-browser algorithm, Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC), to analyze a users’ activity and generate a “privacy-preserving” ID that can be used by advertisers for targeting. Google claims that FLoC is more anonymous than cookies, but the Electronic Frontier Foundation has described it as “the opposite of privacy-preserving technology” and akin to a “behavioral credit score.”
Privacy Sandbox has also prompted regulators to investigate whether Google’s adtech aims are anticompetitive. In January 2021, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) in the U.K. announced plans to focus on Privacy Sandbox’s potential impacts on both publishers and users. And in March, 15 attorneys general of U.S. states and Puerto Rico amended an antitrust complaint filed the previous December saying that the changes in the Privacy Sandbox would require advertisers to use Google as a middleman in order to advertise.
Google earlier this year reached an agreement with the CMA on how it develops and releases Privacy Sandbox in Chrome, which will include working with the CMA to “resolve concerns” and consulting and updating the CMA and the U.K.’s Information Commissioner’s Office on an ongoing basis.
In the meantime, Chavez says that Google will expand a trial of its Privacy Sandbox technologies to “millions” of Chrome users beginning in August. It’ll then gradually increase the trial population throughout the year into 2023, offering an opt-out option to users who don’t wish to participate.
Google now expects Privacy Sandbox APIs to be launched and generally available in Chrome by the third quarter of 2023.
“Improving people’s privacy, while giving businesses the tools they need to succeed online, is vital to the future of the open web,” Chavez wrote. “As the web community tests these APIs, we’ll continue to listen and respond to feedback.”
Google delays move away from cookies in Chrome to 2024
Datch secures $10M to build voice assistants to factory floors
Datch, a company that develops AI-powered voice assistants for industrial customers, today announced that it raised $10 million in a Series A round led by Blackhorn Ventures. The proceeds will be used to expand operations, CEO Mark Fosdike said, as well as develop new software support, tools and capabilities.
Datch started when Fosdike, who has a background in aerospace engineering, met two former Siemens engineers — Aric Thorn and Ben Purcell. They came to the collective realization that voice products built for business customers have to overcome business-specific challenges, like understanding jargon, acronyms and syntax unique to particular customers.
“The way we extract information from systems changes every year, but the way we input information — especially in the industrial world — hasn’t changed since the invention of the keyboard and database,” Fosdike said. “The industrial world had been left in the dark for years, and we knew that developing a technology with voice-visual AI would help light the way for these factories.”
The voice assistants that Datch builds leverage AI to collect and structure data from users in a factory or in the field, parsing commands like “Report an issue for the Line 1 Spot Welder. I estimate it will take half a day to fix.” They run on a smartphone and link to existing systems to write and read records, including records from enterprise resource and asset management platforms.
Datch’s assistants provide a timeline of events and can capture data without an internet connection; they auto-sync once back online. Using them, workers can fill out company forms, create and update work orders, assign tasks and search through company records all via voice.
Fosdike didn’t go into detail about how Datch treats the voice data, save that it encrypts data both in-transit and at rest and performs daily backups.
“We have to employ a lot of tight, automated feedback loops to train the voice and [language] data, and so everyone’s interaction with Datch is slightly different, depending on the company and team they work within,” Fosdike explained. “Customers are exploring different use cases such as using the [language] data in predictive maintenance, automated classification of cause codes, and using the voice data to predict worker fatigue before it becomes a critical safety risk.”
That last bit about predicting worker fatigue is a little suspect. The idea that conditions like tiredness can be detected in a person’s voice isn’t a new one, but some researchers believe it’s unlikely AI can flag them with 100% accuracy. After all, people express tiredness in different ways, depending not only on the workplace environment but on their sex and cultural, ethnic and demographic backgrounds.
The tiredness-detecting scenario aside, Fosdike asserts that Datch’s technology is helping industrial clients get ahead of turbulence in the economy by “vastly improving” the efficiency of their operations. Frontline staff typically have to work with reporting tools that aren’t intuitive, he notes, and in many cases, voice makes for a less cumbersome, faster alternative form of input.
“We help frontline workers with productivity and solve the pain point of time wasted on their reports by decreasing the process time,” Fosdike said. “Industrial companies are fast realizing that to keep up with demand or position themselves to withstand a global pandemic, they need to find a way to scale with more than just peoplepower. Our AI offers these companies an efficient solution in a fraction of the time and with less overhead needed.”
Datch competes with Rain, Aiqudo and Onvego, all of which are developing voice technologies for industrial customers. Deloitte’s Maxwell, Genba and Athena are rivals in Fosdike’s eyes, as as well. But business remains steady — Datch counts ConEd, Singapore Airlines, ABB Robotics and the New York Power Authority among its clients.
“We raised this latest round earlier than expected due to the influx of demand from the market. The timing is right to capitalize on both the post-COVID boom in digital transformation as well as corporate investments driven by the infrastructure bill,” Fosdike said, referring to the $1 trillion package U.S. lawmakers passed last November. “Currently we have a team of 20, and plan to use the funds to grow to 55 to 60 people, scaling to roughly 40 by the end of the year.”
To date, Datch has raised $15 million in venture capital.
Datch secures $10M to build voice assistants to factory floors