Photo-printing services abound online, from dotcom-era brands like Shutterfly to services launched through the years by Apple, Amazon, Costco and Walgreens. Startups keep cropping up, too — no surprise given the number of photos people take and share these days, thanks to the proliferation of smartphones and social media. Now, one photo-printing startup called Chatbooks has raised… Read More
Chatbooks raises $11.5 million to put photo printing on autopilot
We’re hearing from sources that Kuaishou — a hot photo-sharing application in China — is planning to go public in the U.S. later this year. Sources tell us the app has more than 40 million daily active users against 100 million monthly active users, and was most recently valued at around $3 billion. The app is in some ways similar to Instagram, with photos (some of which… Read More
Chinese photo-sharing app Kuaishou planning U.S. IPO later this year
Messaging apps can amass a lot of user data over time including everything from personal photos and videos users have shared to records of who they talk to most, where they’ve been, and what online financial services they use. Over the last few years, more and more of these messaging apps began to offer end-to-end encryption to win over users who want privacy at least as much as they… Read More
Viber now lets users set photos and videos to disappear after they’re viewed
It began shortly after lunch. The texts appeared, first a trickle. It wasn’t long before the deluge began in earnest. “A friend* added you on ChitChat,” they said. “Tap here … to get it,” they said. WTF is chitchat? — Willis F Jackson III (@wfjackson3) February 4, 2017 What ChitChat is I’m not prepared to say, as I refuse to download it.… Read More
Now that Snap is revealing its financial guts to the world in its filing for its initial public offering, we’re getting a small glimpse at how much the company is paying to acquire startups. As Snap becomes a larger company and is able to amass more of a cash pile, it’ll be able to start picking off startups that can either fill out the company’s ranks with talent or add… Read More
Snap paid $114.5M to acquire Vurb and gives acquisition details for Bitstrips and Looksery