Roughly a month after Spotify announced that a selection of audiobooks would become a part of its Premium subscription, the company is today expanding the service to U.S. users for the first time. Subscribers will now have access to 15 hours of audiobook listening time per month across a catalog that includes 200,000 titles — […]

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YouTube will begin to experiment with new generative AI features, the company announced today. As part of the premium package available to paid subscribers, YouTube users will be able to try out a new conversational tool that uses AI to answer questions about YouTube’s content and make recommendations, as well as try out a new […]

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Match may have settled its antitrust lawsuit with Google last week, but Fortnite maker Epic Games is still set to go to trial with the tech giant today, November 6, in hopes of convincing a jury that Google engages in anticompetitive behavior with regard to its Android app store, Google Play, and its commission structure. […]

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In a fast-moving news cycle, a personnel change wouldn’t seem to catch our attention, but this morning dating app Bumble announced a doozy: It’s replacing founder CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd with Slack CEO Lidiane Jones. Jones only started as CEO at Slack last year, replacing another founder CEO, Stewart Butterfield. Jones, whose background includes various […]

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TikTok owner ByteDance’s efforts to make its Pinterest-slash-Instagram competitor Lemon8 take off in the U.S. haven’t yet panned out. Since launching in the U.S. earlier this year, the Lemon8 app has only seen around 2.6 million total U.S. downloads, according to new data from app store market intelligence provider Appfigures. This paltry turnout comes despite […]

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Two years after testifying before the U.S. Senate over child safety concerns, including teens’ exposure to eating disorder content, YouTube today announced additional product safeguards around its content recommendations aimed at teens. Specifically, the company said it would limit repeated recommendations of videos on topics that can trigger body image issues, like those comparing physical […]

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Media software startup and streamer Plex is expanding its service to become more of a social network, not just a way to organize your home media or stream free content. Today, the app maker is launching a new feature, “Discover Together,” that allows users to create profiles and find and follow friends in order to […]

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Google and Match announced today they’ve reached a settlement in the antitrust battle Match waged against the tech giant, even as the court case continues with Fortnite maker Epic Games. As part of the settlement agreement, Match Group — which owns dating apps Tinder, Hinge, OKCupid, Match.com, and others — will be able to implement […]

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Does Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian have regrets over his creation? The entrepreneur and founder of venture fund Seven Seven Six, speaking at an event at the University of Virginia, espoused a fairly negative view of the current social media landscape and the creator economy — an environment where he says, everyone has “been so trained […]

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When you think of the term “creator” you generally think of someone making content for social media platforms like TikTok, YouTube, or Instagram. But Quora’s AI chatbot platform Poe is now paying bot creators for their efforts, including those who generate “prompt bots” on Poe itself, as well as server bots created by developers who […]

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Mastodon, the open source, decentralized alternative to Twitter/X is adding a feature to its app that will help make the transition smoother for newcomers: Lists. The company today announced the Mastodon app for Android is adding the much-in-demand feature, which allows users to create custom lists around specific topics or interests. An update for iOS […]

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Can an AI be your mentor? That’s what a startup called Practica believes. The company, which evolved out of a marketplace for one-on-one executive coaching, has now launched an AI system built on top of an existing knowledge base it developed over the years spent with a large group of human coaches. The resulting AI […]

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