Sarah Perez, Author at TechCrunch

Chroma, backed by Pinterest and Twitter co-founders, sells to AI audio company Bronze

Sarah Perez — Tue, 19 Nov 2024 21:07:54 +0000

Chroma, a startup building a new type of audiovisual entertainment for mobile devices, has been sold. The company, which had financial backing from Twitter and Medium co-founder Biz Stone as well as Pinterest co-founder Evan Sharp, is headed to London-based audio technology company Bronze, an AI music startup. Founded by record producer Lex Dromgoole, who’s […]

Bluesky tops 20M users, narrowing gap with Instagram Threads

Sarah Perez — Tue, 19 Nov 2024 16:12:02 +0000

Bluesky, the social network and X competitor, has been benefiting from a surge of departures from the Elon Musk-owned app formerly known as Twitter. Today, Bluesky has hit a major milestone: it’s topped 20 million users. What’s more, new data indicates the app’s rapid growth is seeing it close the gap with another prominent X […]

Mastodon sees a boost from the ‘X exodus,’ too, founder says

Sarah Perez — Mon, 18 Nov 2024 18:44:43 +0000

Decentralized social network Mastodon is also seeing some uplift from the X “exodus,” founder Eugen Rochko shared on the platform just ahead of the weekend. While the Twitter-like startup Bluesky has been capturing headlines and attention for its rapid adoption among former X users, a smaller group has apparently turned to the open source networking […]

Partiful is Google’s ‘best app’ of 2024

Sarah Perez — Mon, 18 Nov 2024 17:31:18 +0000

Partiful, the New York-based event-planning app that’s taking on older solutions like Evite, Eventbrite, and Facebook Events, has been named Google’s app of the year, the tech giant announced on Monday as part of its “best apps and games of 2024” list. The list also highlighted the top game, AFK Journey, alongside other category winners […]

As Bluesky surges, Threads begins testing custom feeds

Sarah Perez — Fri, 15 Nov 2024 15:44:52 +0000

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Friday announced the company’s X competitor, Threads, would begin testing custom feeds for specific topics and profiles, making it easier for users to find communities and conversations that interest them. The news follows the rapid growth of the social networking startup and X rival, Bluesky, which prioritizes tools that allow […]

How to use Bluesky, the Twitter-like social app taking on Elon Musk’s X

Sarah Perez — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 21:53:05 +0000

Bluesky is continuing to blow up. The Twitter-like service and alternative to Elon Musk’s X, has now surpassed 16 million users after seeing rapid growth in the days following the U.S. presidential election. While many are leaving X over the service’s increasing right-wing leanings and Musk’s campaigning for Trump, others are unhappy with other changes […]

Spotify teases a ‘super premium’ tier for superfans and upcoming video expansion in Q3 earnings call

Sarah Perez — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 18:12:39 +0000

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek has once again teased the company’s long-delayed HiFi or “super premium” tier, a higher-qualify subscription offering the streaming service first announced in 2021 and then failed to roll out. In the company’s third-quarter earnings call with investors on Wednesday, the exec suggested that such a product was still on the way, […]

Apple now lets app developers apply to be featured on the App Store

Sarah Perez — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 16:09:17 +0000

App developers now have a new way to promote their app launches, updates, and other new features on Apple’s App Store. First announced at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference in June, Apple this week introduced a “Featuring Nominations” option in App Store Connect, which is the service developers use to submit their apps, games, and […]

Bluesky is benefitting from an exodus of unhappy X users following the election

Sarah Perez — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 19:26:15 +0000

X, formerly Twitter, is no longer the “digital town square” it once promised to be. Following the results of the U.S. presidential election, floods of users unhappy with the app’s latest direction are moving over to a competing app, Bluesky. Bluesky’s decentralized social media platform has steadily grown from 9+ million users as of September […]

Particle launches an AI news app to help publishers, instead of just stealing their work

Sarah Perez — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 15:40:55 +0000

The media industry today may not have a very favorable view of AI — a technology that’s already been used to replace reporters with AI-written copy, while other AI companies have scooped up journalists’ work to feed their chatbots’ data demands, but without returning traffic to the publisher as search engines once did. However, one […]

With this latest deal, Flipboard looks to build a news ecosystem beyond X

Sarah Perez — Thu, 07 Nov 2024 21:46:00 +0000

An effort to bring a broader news ecosystem to the open social web, also known as the fediverse, is now in the hands of the social magazine app Flipboard. Press.coop, a service that created mirrored accounts of top news publishers (including Reuters, AP, WSJ, NYT, BBC, CNN, and even yours truly), has transferred its collection […]

TikTok’s latest feature lets music fans ‘Share to TikTok’ from Spotify and Apple Music

Sarah Perez — Thu, 07 Nov 2024 17:44:45 +0000

TikTok on Thursday debuted a new feature that will more closely connect its app, which already influences which songs top the charts, to the streaming services where users discover and play their favorite music. With the launch of a new “Share to TikTok” feature, music fans will be able to directly share tracks from both […]

Apple iOS 18.2 public beta arrives with new AI features, but some remain waitlisted

Sarah Perez — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 21:38:43 +0000

Apple has released the AI-powered version of its latest mobile operating system, iOS 18.2, to its public beta users. The update includes new features like an AI emoji generator app called Genmoji, an Image Playground AI image app, ChatGPT integration with Siri, and visual search using the iPhone 16 cameras, among other things. Previously, these […]

The FTC comes after neobank Dave for misleading marketing, hidden fees

Sarah Perez — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 20:06:57 +0000

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced on Tuesday that it will be taking action against the online cash app and neobank Dave, which it says used “misleading marketing to deceive consumers.” At issue is how Dave marketed $500 cash advances to consumers that it rarely offered, and the “Express Fee” it charged if customers wanted […]

‘For You’ feeds fail on election night, offering outdated information, angering users

Sarah Perez — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 15:49:06 +0000

“For You” algorithms that promote the most interesting content across a social network, personalized to the individual user, offered a disjointed, outdated, and nearly unusable experience on election night in the U.S. as they highlighted hours-old posts that no longer reflected the current state of the race. Frustrations were particularly high on Threads, Meta’s X […]

Google ‘fixes’ issues with voting search results that weren’t actually broken

Sarah Perez — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 22:00:26 +0000

Google says it has addressed an issue with its search engine that saw it displaying a “where to vote” panel, which includes a map of polling places, for some specific voting-related searches but not for others. The tech giant even used the word “fixed” to respond to the matter, despite the fact that Google Search […]

Substack is giving out free subscriptions to boost app installs

Sarah Perez — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 19:18:03 +0000

Publishing platform Substack is now pushing users to install its mobile app by offering gifted subscriptions. While Substack itself is available across platforms, including the web, those who want to take advantage of the free subscription offer can only do so after downloading the mobile app to their device. The free subscription offer is being […]

Apple’s new widget puts Election Day updates on your Lock Screen and Home Screen

Sarah Perez — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 17:49:59 +0000

It’s Election Day in the U.S., which means you’re likely glued to the latest news about which presidential candidate is currently in the lead. To help with this, Apple has released a Live Activities widget within its Apple News app that will offer real-time election updates directly on your iPhone or iPad’s Home Screen and […]

Bluesky gears up for Election Day as X goes pro-Trump

Sarah Perez — Mon, 04 Nov 2024 19:20:09 +0000

As Election Day in the U.S. nears, social networking startup Bluesky, now flush with new capital, hopes to demonstrate that its platform can serve as a more trusted, fact-checked alternative to Elon Musk’s X. While the latter is dominated by Musk’s support for the Trump campaign, Bluesky tends to lean left, thanks to its influx […]

The brightest bling of TechCrunch Disrupt 2024

Amanda Silberling, Sarah Perez — Mon, 04 Nov 2024 17:53:48 +0000

At TechCrunch Disrupt, our team sits front and center, furiously typing away at our laptops to publish real-time news from impressive speakers like NFL quarterback-turned-founder Colin Kaepernick, Perplexity AI founder Aravind Srinivas, and Ashton Kutcher. We are a well-oiled machine. Some writers have been covering Disrupt since the old days, before Meta was Meta and […]