Архив рубрики: social media

Auto Added by WPeMatico

33% of US TikTok users say they regularly get their news on the app, up from 22% in 2020

Earlier this summer, a Google exec admitted that TikTok was eating into its core Search business, particularly among younger users. But that’s not all TikTok is now being used for, a new Pew Research Center study indicates. According to the findings from a report that examined Americans’ use of social media for news consumption, 33% of TikTok users now say they regularly get their news on the social video app, up from just 22% in 2020.
Meanwhile, nearly every other social media site saw declines across that same metric — including, in particular, Facebook, where now only 44% of its users report regularly getting their news there, down from 54% just two years ago.
Image Credits: Pew Research
This data suggests TikTok has grown from being just an entertainment platform for lip syncs, dances, and comedy to one that many of its users turn to in order to learn about what’s happening in their world.
That may raise concerns, given TikTok’s connections to China — a topic it was recently pressed to clarify in a Senate hearing focused on national security. The hearing had followed the release of a BuzzFeed News report that had discovered how China-based ByteDance employees had been regularly accessing TikTok’s U.S. users’ private data.
If TikTok were to become one of the primary ways younger people in the U.S. learned about news and current events, then the app could potentially provide a channel for a foreign power to influence those users’ beliefs with subtle tweaks to its algorithm.

Meta, TikTok, YouTube and Twitter dodge questions on social media and national security

For the time being, however, TikTok is not a primary source of news consumption across social media — that honor still resides with Facebook.
Pew found that 31% of U.S. adults report regularly getting their news from Facebook, which is higher than the 25% who get their news from YouTube, the 14% who get it from Twitter, or the13% who get it from Instagram.
TikTok was in fifth place by this ranking, as only 10% of U.S. adults said they regularly get their news on the video app. (Of course, when TikTok’s sizable user base of those under the age of 18 grows up, these metrics could quickly change.)
LinkedIn (4%), Snapchat (4%), Nextdoor (4%), WhatsApp (3%) and Twitch (1%) were much smaller sources of news among Americans, the study also found.
Image Credits: Pew Research
In addition, Pew somewhat backed up Google’s assertion that it was losing traction to TikTok and other social media apps, as it noted that the percentage of U.S. adults who got their news via web search had dropped from 23% in 2020 to 18% in 2022.
But it didn’t necessarily point to TikTok or any other social platform as gaining, as the percentage of adults using social media of any sort for news consumption dropped from 23% to 17% between 2020 and 2022, as did other forms of news consumption like news websites and apps.
Image Credits: Pew Research
It’s not clear that any single platform is benefiting from these declines, as Pew didn’t uncover a shift from digital news sources to others, such as TV, print or radio — all those saw declines in news consumption as well.
Image Credits: Pew Research
Still, digital devices continue to outpace TV, Pew said, as the latter has seen its usage drop as a source for news consumption from 40% in 2020 to 31% in 2022.
Plus, when asked about preferences, more Americans (53%) said they would rather get their news digitally than on TV (33%), radio (7%), or print (5%) — an answer that’s stayed consistent since 2020.

Google exec suggests Instagram and TikTok are eating into Google’s core products, Search and Maps

33% of US TikTok users say they regularly get their news on the app, up from 22% in 2020 by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch
33% of US TikTok users say they regularly get their news on the app, up from 22% in 2020

Google, YouTube outline plans for the US midterm elections

Google and its video sharing app YouTube outlined plans for handling the 2022 U.S. midterm elections this week, highlighting tools at its disposal to limit the effort to limit the spread of political misinformation.
When users search for election content on either Google or YouTube, recommendation systems are in place to highlight journalism or video content from authoritative national and local news sources such as The Wall Street Journal, Univision, PBS NewsHour and local ABC, CBS and NBC affiliates.
In today’s blog post, YouTube noted that it has removed “a number of videos” about the U.S. midterms that violate its policies, including videos that make false claims about the 2020 election. YouTube’s rules also prohibit inaccurate videos on how to vote, videos inciting violence and any other content that it determines interferes with the democratic process. The platform adds that it has issued strikes to YouTube channels that violate policies related to the midterms and have temporarily suspended some channels from posting new videos.
Image Credits: Google
Google Search will now make it easier for users to look up election coverage by local and regional news from different states. The company is also rolling out a tool on Google Search that it has used before, which directs voters to accurate information about voter registration and how to vote. Google will be working with The Associated Press again this year to offer users authoritative election results in search.
YouTube will also direct voters to an information panel on voting and a link to Google’s “how to vote” and “how to register to vote” features. Other election-related features YouTube announced today include reminders on voter registration and election resources, information panels beneath videos, recommended authoritative videos within its “watch next” panels and an educational media literacy campaign with tips about misinformation tactics.
On Election Day, YouTube will share a link to Google’s election results tracker, highlight livestreams of election night and include election results below videos. The platform will also launch a tool in the coming weeks that gives people searching for federal candidates a panel that highlights essential information, such as which office they’re running for and what their political party is.
Image Credits: YouTube
With two months left until Election Day, Google’s announcement marks the latest attempt by a tech giant to prepare for the pivotal moment in U.S. history. Meta, TikTok and Twitter have also recently addressed how they will approach the 2022 U.S. midterm elections.
YouTube faced scrutiny over how it handled the 2020 presidential election, waiting until December 2020 to announce a policy that would apply to misinformation swirling around the previous month’s election.
Before the policy was initiated, the platform didn’t remove videos with misleading election-related claims, allowing speculation and false information to flourish. That included a video from One America News Network (OAN) posted on the day after the 2020 election falsely claiming that Trump had won the election. The video was viewed more than 340,000 times, but YouTube didn’t immediately remove it, stating the video didn’t violate its rules.

YouTube declares war on US election misinformation… a month late

In a new study, researchers from New York University found that YouTube’s recommendation system had a part in spreading misinformation about the 2020 presidential election. From October 29 to December 8, 2020, the researchers analyzed the YouTube usage of 361 people to determine if YouTube’s recommendation system steered users toward false claims regarding the election in the immediate aftermath of the election. The researchers concluded that participants who were very skeptical about the election’s legitimacy were recommended significantly more election fraud-related claims than participants who weren’t unsure about the election results.
YouTube pushed back against the study in a conversation with TechCrunch, arguing that its small sample size undermined its potential conclusions. “While we welcome more research, this report doesn’t accurately represent how our systems work,” YouTube spokesperson Ivy Choi told TechCrunch. “We’ve found that the most viewed and recommended videos and channels related to elections are from authoritative sources, like news channels.”
The researchers acknowledged that the number of fraud-related videos in the study was low overall and that the data doesn’t consider what channels the participants were subscribed to. Nonetheless, YouTube is clearly a key vector of potential political misinformation — and one to watch as the U.S. heads into its midterm elections this fall.

Facebook will disable new political ads a week before US midterm elections

Google, YouTube outline plans for the US midterm elections

Daily Crunch: Snap lays off one-fifth of its workforce after missing revenue and growth targets

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here.
Midweek? More like mid-weak! Okay, terrible pun, but we’re a little low energy in this heat wave today, so it kinda made sense.
Oh! And good news, btw, we’re offering 15% off Disrupt tickets (excluding online or expo tickets) for you, our trusty Daily Crunch readers. Use promo code “DC” to claim your discount!
See you tomorrow!  — Christine and Haje
The TechCrunch Top 3
Slumdog $5-illonnaire: Landa is the latest startup to attract venture capital, in this case $33 million, to democratize real estate ownership, Mary Ann writes. Its approach enables people to invest in the real estate sector, which is known for providing generational wealth, but in a less expensive, more fractional way, and in some cases, for as little as $5 initially.
Snap, crackle and . . . fizzle: Despite the myriad of news and new revenue streams we’ve reported about Snap right here in this newsletter, Evan Spiegel said the words no tech employee wants to hear right now: “restructuring our business.” Amanda reports that this unfortunately means cutting 20% of staff.
Obstacles abroad: Amazon faces some tough competition in India, and Manish reports that has presented some challenges in the e-commerce giant’s ability to gain a more prominent foothold in the country.
Startups and VC
This week, Haje went deep with a founder who’s building digital license plates. He mused that building an easy-to-copy hardware product in an incredibly tightly regulated industry where winner-takes-all would be an utter nightmare, but when it works, it works, and it’s fascinating to see Reviver build a company, one license plate at the time.
Populus, the San Francisco–based transportation data startup, got its start as shared scooter mania took hold and cities tried to make sense of how infrastructure was being used by fleets of tiny vehicles. Now, Populus co-founder and CEO Regina Clewlow is repositioning the company to take advantage of another hot opportunity: curbs and congestion, Rebecca writes. It’s a really good read from the TechCrunch transportation desk with an undertone of “the power of great pivots.”
Raisin’ money, raisin’ hell:
Looking beyond the matrix: Ron reports on CodeSee’s latest product, which helps organizations visualize their code base.
Turning coaching into a team sport: Natasha M reports that the founder of Human Q disagrees with some of the biggest and most valuable competitors out there. Instead of one-to-one coaching, Human Q wants to make group coaching an impactful alternative. This founder wants to take on the biggest coaching startups with a group-focused approach.
Stretching the chains: Supply chain firm NFI inks a $10 million deal to deploy Boston Dynamics’ Stretch robots, reports Brian.
Fintech, that’s like fly-fishing, right?: Christine reports that Solid raised a $63 million Series B round of funding to continue providing its fintech-as-a-service offering for companies wanting to launch and scale their own fintech products. 
Like twitch3: Rita reports that Stacked raised $13 million to be the Twitch for web3 gamers.
 Crafting a XaaS customer success strategy that drives growth
Image Credits: THEPALMER (opens in a new window) / Getty Images
Giving users better service than they expected could literally save a software startup. In one study, companies that spent 10% of yearly revenue on customer success attained peak net recurring revenue.
“Companies mostly deploy two or more customer success archetypes,” according to TC+ contributors Rachel Parrinello and John Stamos. “They usually vary by customer segment, business versus technical focus and sales motion focus: adopt, renew, upsell and cross-sell.”
If you’re interested in optimizing revenue through CS, read the rest for a full overview of job design methodology, because “companies should not design their customer success roles in a vacuum.”

Crafting a XaaS customer success strategy that drives growth

(TechCrunch+ is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)
Big Tech Inc.
Social media and privacy don’t often go hand in hand, especially when children can see a lot on the internet already. Twitter got caught up in this when it reportedly tried to monetize adult content in an effort to compete with OnlyFans. It later scrapped the program when it was found that its system couldn’t “detect child sexual abuse material and non-consensual nudity at scale,” Amanda writes. Meanwhile, California lawmakers wasted no time moving ahead to put in place statewide online privacy protections for children where there are none at the federal level, Taylor reports.
Stepping on the gas, er, EV pedal: Toyota is accelerating its investment in U.S. electric vehicles, and will park some $3.8 billion into that initiative, up from an initial $1.3 billion, Jaclyn writes.
Cashing in on NFTs: Event organizers working with Ticketmaster can now issue NFTs tied to tickets on Flow, Ivan reports.
It’s almost fall and that means another Apple event: Brian has the skinny on all the things you should know about Apple’s iPhone 14 event on September 7.
New satellite on the block: Royal Caribbean is going “all-in on satellite service,” and will outfit its fleet of ships with Starlink internet, Devin writes.

Daily Crunch: Snap lays off one-fifth of its workforce after missing revenue and growth targets

Consumers swap period tracking apps in search of increased privacy following Roe v. Wade ruling

Consumers are ditching their current period tracking apps in favor of what they perceive to be safer options in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision that allows individual U.S. states to criminalize abortion. The app switching trend is impacting all manner of period tracking apps, including leading app Flo, which owns a 47% share of the period tracking app market in the U.S., according to data provided by Apptopia. The app may have both lost customers to rival apps while gaining new users from others over the weekend. Other apps are seeing similar trends.
The patterns of app switching indicate consumers are seeking increased privacy, as many of those gaining from this trend are companies that have made public statements in support of strengthened data security and privacy practices. But it’s also clear that consumers don’t necessarily have a good understanding of which apps to trust given that the current beneficiary of this increased switching activity is a potentially problematic app called Stardust, which had yet to implement its new privacy protections at the time it was making promises to users.
As a result of its claims, Stardust saw its daily average downloads increase by as much as 6,000% over the past weekend, Apptopia said. The relative newcomer to the period tracking market drew attention by promoting itself as a small, women-led team that wanted to provide users with a more secure app. Those claims resonated with consumers, driving the app to No. 1 on the App Store on Saturday. But in terms of data security, being a small team is not necessarily an advantage. TechCrunch found various data privacy issues with the version of the app that users downloaded over the weekend, including its sharing of users’ phone numbers with a third party.

Period tracker Stardust surges following Roe reversal, but its privacy claims aren’t airtight

Despite these issues, app intelligence firm Sensor Tower said the app gained 82% of its total 400,000+ lifetime installs this past Saturday through Sunday.
Another top app, Clue, also benefited from consumers seeking alternatives. Apptopia found Clue’s app saw a 2,200% increase in installs over the weekend after it made comments in the press that it won’t divulge sensitive information to states. Sensor Tower reported Clue had also reached its highest-ever rank on Saturday as the No. 15 overall free app on the App Store. It has since dropped to No. 93, which suggests the rank change had been the result of a surge of app switchers.
Image Credits: Clue
Several other apps saw increased installs on Saturday, June 25, too. Compared with the month of June, Glow’s ovulation app saw its average daily downloads jump 21% and its period tracker Eve saw average daily installs increase 83%, Apptopia said. An app called Natural Cycles – Birth Control saw average daily installs rise 53%; another called Period Tracker by GP Apps saw a 17% increase; and the app Femometer saw a 10% increase. Single-digit increases were also seen in apps, including My Calendar – Period Tracker and Ovia Fertility & Cycle Tracker, the firm found.
Finally, leading app Flo moved up slightly on Saturday as a result of the app switching activity. Flo jumped from No. 197 on June 23 before the ruling to No. 187 on Saturday, June 25, Sensor Tower said. It’s now moved up more to No. 180 as of the time of writing. It’s worth noting that Flo’s average daily installs had been on the decline for several months, Apptopia had reported — in part, likely due to news of its 2021 settlement with the FTC over earlier privacy violations. That indicates consumers had been thinking about data privacy well before the Supreme Court ruling.
Image Credits: Flo (opens in a new window)
After the court’s decision on Friday, Flo issued a statement in hopes of stemming the tide of app switchers or those inclined to delete their accounts. It said:
Flo will always stand up for the health of women, and will do everything in its power to protect the data and privacy of our users. To add to our security measures already in place (read more about that here), we will soon be launching a new feature called “Anonymous Mode” – an option that allows users to remove their personal identity from their Flo account. Lastly, Flo will never require a user to log an abortion or offer details that they feel should be kept private, and users can delete their data at any time. We firmly believe that our users deserve complete control over their data and we are here to support our users every step of the way.
Clue also issued a lengthy response to Roe v. Wade on its website, which stressed its adherence to strict European data privacy laws and use of encryption. GP Apps, the maker of Period Tracker, published a strong statement, as well, though its privacy policy indicates that it would comply with legal requests and subpoenas. (However, it noted that consumers can opt to use its account without an online account, which would then only store data locally on the user’s device.) Other companies have published statements on their websites and social media accounts, as well.
But without a deeper analysis of each company’s privacy policy and more sophisticated testing of each app’s privacy and security protections, it’s hard to recommend that the use of any third-party period tracking app is a 100% safe decision at this time, regardless of their statements and claims.
One possible solution to this problem is to simply use Apple’s Health app alone for the time being, where end-to-end encryption of users’ Health records is available through iCloud. Unfortunately, data on Apple’s first-party apps isn’t available, so we’ll never know how many consumers made this choice.

Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade: Should you delete your period-tracking app?

Consumers swap period tracking apps in search of increased privacy following Roe v. Wade ruling

Poparazzi hits 5M+ downloads a year after launch, confirms its $15M Series A

Poparazzi, the anti-Instagram social app that hit the top of the App Store last year, is today, for the first time, detailing the growth stats for its business, its future plans and its previously unconfirmed Benchmark-led Series A round. The L.A.-area startup now reports its iOS-only has seen over 5 million installs in its first year, with users primarily in the Gen Z demographic.
The startup says that 75% of its users are between the ages of 14 and 18 and 95% of users are between 14 and 21. Most of its users are U.S. based, and to date, they’ve shared over 100 million photos and videos on the app.
While the startup positioned itself as an Instagram alternative where friends create your profile, the app’s competition today is not really the established tech giants. Instead, it’s the newer set of “alternative” social media apps that are targeting a younger crowd, like Yubo, Locket, LiveIn, HalloApp, BeReal and others. In general, this group of apps shares a thesis around how big tech is no longer the best place to connect with your real-life friends. With differentiated angles, they all claim to offer that opportunity.
Some of these are already outpacing Poparazzi. Yubo says it’s seen 60 million sign-ups to date. BeReal, which has declined press, has an estimated 12.3 million global downloads, according to app intelligence firm Sensor Tower. The firm also reports that Locket has seen about 18.7 million worldwide installs to date, while LiveIn has hit a little more than 8 million installs. (Sensor Tower also sees 4.6 million downloads for Poparazzi, which is largely in line with the startup’s claims, as these estimates aren’t an exact science.)
This heated competition among alternative social apps could explain why Poparazzi is taking to its blog today to share its metrics and confirm its financing after a year of silence. (Or it could be that it’s hiring.)
Image Credits: Poparazzi
Though Poparazzi appears to be an overnight viral sensation, it’s actually taken 3 years to get to this point, explains co-founder and CEO Alex Ma. He, along with his brother, co-founder Austen Ma, went through several pivots to get to Poparazzi, he told TechCrunch.
“Poparazzi was maybe the 11th or 12th app that we built,” Alex says. Among those was the audio social network TTYL, a sort of “Clubhouse for friends.” But, says Alex, 9 months into TTYL the team realized that things weren’t working and they made the decision to wind it down.
The co-founders understood that most social apps fail and had decided the best thing to do was to keep building and experimenting until one hit. At other points, they tested a live texting app called Typo and many other social experiences. But when they built Poparazzi, they knew from day one it was something special. The app blew up, primarily among high schoolers, who were testing the app via TestFlight.
The app’s idea was, effectively, to turn one of Instagram’s core features — photo tagging — into a stand-alone experience. But in its case, photo tagging wasn’t an afterthought; it was the full focus.
Image Credits: Poparazzi
On Poparazzi, users can create social profiles for photo-sharing purposes, but only your friends are allowed to post photos to them. That makes your friends your own “paparazzi,” of sorts — which is how the app got its name.
“It started off almost like a novel, dumb idea — like, what if you could build Instagram but didn’t let people post photos of themselves?” Alex says. “But the more we thought about it, the more we realized we were actually fundamentally changing the engine of what drives social today. And that was the big bet.”
To its credit, Poparazzi perfectly executed a series of growth hacks to generate buzz for its app that drove downloads at launch. The app launched on May 24, 2021, and quickly shot to the No. 1 position on the App Store.

Poparazzi hypes itself to the top of the App Store

Like many apps now, it smartly leveraged the TikTok hype cycle to drive App Store preorders. This helped to ensure the app would hit the Top Charts as soon as it became publicly available, given how the App Store ranks apps based on a combination of downloads and velocity, among other factors. Poparazzi also implemented a clever onboarding screen that used haptics to buzz and vibrate your phone as its intro video played — something that helped generate word-of-mouth growth as users took to Twitter to post about the unique experience.
But the app also bypassed some best practices around user privacy by requesting full access to users’ address books to get started. This allowed it to instantly match users to their friends based on stored phone numbers and quickly build a social graph.
However, it overlooked the fact that many people, particularly women, store the phone numbers of abusers, stalkers and exes in their phone’s contacts, so they can use the phone’s built-in tools to block the person’s calls and texts. Because Poparazzi automatically matched people by phone number, abusers could gain immediate access to the user profiles of the people they were trying to harass or hurt.
Alex says Poparazzi has since taken steps to address this, but explains the thinking around the original decision.
“It’s really hard to compete with Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram for the social graph,” he says. “So the starting point for building a social app typically is the address book because that’s the place where we can get information.” Plus, he adds, “I think the value of the app is close to zero without that initial friend graph.”
Image Credits: Poparazzi
The app also rolled out other new features over the past year, including the ability to block and report users, and it’s invested in machine learning–powered content moderation for detecting things like nudity or hate speech. It’s added the ability to upload from the camera roll; provided support for video, messaging, comments and captions; and introduced in-app challenges that encourage participation — like “pop a friend eating ice cream,” “pop a friend at a mall,” or “pop a road trip.”
It’s now working to allow users to set their profiles to private and is planning an Android version. Longer term, it may monetize via events or merchandise, not ads — but this is still largely to be determined.
Prior to today’s update, the broad strokes of Poparazzi’s A round were already known.
In May 2021, Newcomer scooped the news that Benchmark partner Sarah Tavel had led Poparazzi’s “approximately $20 million” Series A, beating out Andreessen Horowitz for the deal. Alex says the round was actually a $15 million Series A, and confirmed Tavel joined its board.
This is on top of the company’s $2 million seed round closed in late 2018, before Poparazzi was developed. That round was led by Floodgate and included other investors like SV Angel, Shrug Capital and various angels. (Disclosure: unbeknownst to us until now, former TechCrunch co-editor Alexia Bonatsos was among them.) Floodgate’s Ann Miura-Ko joined the board with that fundraiser.
The funding gives Poparazzi, now a team of 15, a runway of over 2 years, Alex says.
And although some of the competition may be ahead of it for now, the startup believes in its potential largely because its premise is unique. Unlike every other social app on the market, it’s not for performative social media.
“We’re very different in the sense that it’s not about yourself,” Alex points out. “We’re putting the attention on the people you’re physically with, and the people that are in your life, rather than on yourself.”
Poparazzi hits 5M+ downloads a year after launch, confirms its $15M Series A