Epic Games isn’t just fighting the app stores over the right to process its own in-app payments in its popular game Fortnite, it’s also taken up its antitrust legal battle with the tech giants via Bandcamp, the internet music company Epic acquired in March. The following month, Epic filed an injunction asking for the right to allow Bandcamp to continue operating as usual instead of being forced to adopt Google’s own payments system as is now required via a policy change, or risk expulsion from the Google Play Store. On Friday, Bandcamp prevailed on this front, earning the ability to continue to legally operate its existing payment system on Android devices until Epic’s case with Google is resolved, per a new court agreement.
This means Bandcamp’s fans will be able to continue to support their favorite artists on Android devices by buying music and merchandise, as they have since 2015, and artists will receive the same percentage of sales, as usual, Bandcamp said. In addition, Google will not be able to de-list the Bandcamp app from the Google Play Store, nor delay or refuse to distribute its app updates as part of the new agreement.
Bandcamp also said it will now place 10% of the revenue generated by the digital sales on Android devices in escrow until Epic’s lawsuit with Google is decided. At that point, the court will determine whether it or Google will receive those funds based on whether it rules Google’s payments system is anticompetitive.
The 10% figure itself — which represents the commissions Bandcamp would otherwise have to pay Google — is a bit unusual. Google’s typical commissions on in-app purchases range from 15% to 30% for most Google Play developers. But Google offered Bandcamp a reduced fee of 10% in exchange for other concessions, the original court filing revealed. Despite the special offer, Bandcamp argued this was still too much, as it would “force Epic to change Bandcamp’s current business model or else operate the Bandcamp business at a long-term loss,” the filing said.
In a statement published last month to the Bandcamp blog, Bandcamp CEO and co-founder Ethan Diamond further explained that the company would have to “either pass Google’s fees on to consumers (making Android a less attractive platform for music fans), pass fees on to artists (which we would never do), permanently run our Android business at a loss, or turn off digital sales in the Android app,” in order to comply with Google’s new policy changes around in-app purchases.
He also pointed out that Bandcamp had used its own payments system for years, consistent with Google’s prior guidance that exempted digital music from incurring a revenue share.
Bandcamp isn’t the only company to come to some such agreement with Google over in-app purchases amid antitrust lawsuits.
Also on Friday, dating giant Match Group forged a similar compromise with Google, resulting in Match withdrawing its temporary restraining order against Google. Per the terms of its deal, Google agreed to not reject or delete Match Group apps from the Play Store for providing alternative payment options and Match said would place up to $40 million in an escrow account in lieu of paying its commissions to Google for the in-app payments taking place outside Google Play’s payment system.
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.
The app industry continues to grow, with 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. App Annie says global spending across iOS and Google Play is up to $135 billion in 2021, and that figure will likely be higher when its annual report, including third-party app stores in China, is released next year. Consumers also downloaded 10 billion more apps in 2021 than in 2020, reaching nearly 140 billion in new installs, it found.
Apps aren’t just a way to pass idle hours — they’re also a big business. In 2019, mobile-first companies had a combined $544 billion valuation, 6.5x higher than those without a mobile focus. In 2020, investors poured $73 billion in capital into mobile companies — a figure that was up 27% year-over-year.
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.
This past Thursday, May 19, 2022, marked the 11th Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD), which is a day focused on raising awareness about digital access and inclusion for the more than 1 billion people who live with disabilities or impairments. A number of app makers and tech companies took part in GAAD this year to either highlight or announce new features designed to better meet the needs of those with vision impairment, hearing loss and other disabilities.
Instagram’s @creators account shared information with its community about how and why to use accessibility features, like alt-text and auto-generated captions to create a better experience for your audience. The company also noted other developments it had rolled out, like dark mode, screen reader improvements, improved automatic and custom alternative text options for people with vision impairments, caption stickers for Reels and Stories, and more. The company also said it has started rolling out closed caption features to improve the Instagram experience for the deaf and hard of hearing communities. These changes help to improve the experience for everyone, however, as Instagram said one-third of video plays on Instagram are with the sound off. In March, Instagram made auto-generated captions the default for creators, which are supported globally across iOS and Android.
Google shared its approach to both hiring people with disabilities and building products to meet their needs. For example, it highlighted projects like Project Relate, a communication tool for people with speech impairments; the update to TalkBack, Android’s built-in screen reader; and the improved Select-to-Speak Chromebook tool; a multi-pin feature for Google Meet, which allows users to pin multiple tiles, like a presenter’s screen and interpreter’s screen. The company also noted all its English-language YouTube Originals content from the past year — and moving forward — will now have English audio descriptions available globally.
These included a universal Live Captions feature, improved visual and auditory detection modes and iOS access to WatchOS apps. Live Captions will be able to transcribe any audio content, like FaceTime calls, video conferencing apps and streaming video, as well as in-person conversations, all in English to start.
Image Credits: Apple
Apple’s Sound Recognition feature will be able to be programmed to recognize sounds unique to a person’s own home, like their doorbell or appliances. The Magnifier app will add a new ML and lidar-powered Door Detection feature within a new Detection Mode section. This will help users locate a door, understand how far they are from it and describe door attributes. Apple Maps will offer sound and haptics feedback for VoiceOver users. And Apple Watch will help users control Apple Watch remotely from their paired iPhone with Apple Watch Mirroring. It also gains new Quick Action like a double-pinch gesture to answer or end a phone call, dismiss a notification, take a photo, play or pause media in the Now Playing app, and start, pause or resume a workout.
Snap’s platform policies for third-party apps aren’t yet fully enforced
Image Credits: TechCrunch
A handful of Snap Kit platform developers have not yet complied with the new guidelines around anonymous messaging and friend-finding apps announced in March. The Snapchat maker revamped its developer platform policies on March 17, 2022, to ban anonymous apps and require developers to build friend-finding apps to limit access to users 18 or older. The policy changes were effective immediately and existing developers were given 30 days to come into compliance — a date that would have passed last month.
It is now mid-May and some developers of the newly banned and restricted apps are not yet meeting Snap’s new requirements.
Snap confirmed to TechCrunch a small number of apps were given extensions, including anonymous apps LMK and Send It. But others seemed to be working around Snap’s ban with their friend-finding apps marketed to users ages 12+, instead of the now required 18+. They got away with this by not actually using the SDK — something impossible to tell from their App Store marketing and screenshots which imply they’re directly integrated with Snap’s features. Another app had flown under the radar, continuing to operate in violation of the rules unless TechCrunch pointed it out, resulting in a belated ban. This lack of clarity on which apps are platform apps, and which are only pretending to be, could complicate things for Snap, which is engaged in litigation over bullying-related suicides. And like all social media, the company could be under new U.S. regulation related to child safety matters in the future, as well.
First, Elon Musk tweeted that the Twitter deal was “temporarily on hold” until Twitter could prove the percentage of spambots on its platform was actually less than 5%, as it reports. This Tuesday, he reiterated the deal would not move forward until Twitter would show him proof of this <5% figure. Twitter was having none of it, though. The company filed a proxy statement, saying it’s committed to the deal as agreed and is ready to close “as promptly as possible.”
If Musk’s move was an attempt to renegotiate the price, it didn’t seem to be working. Twitter’s top lawyer and head of policy, Vijaya Gadde, told staff at an all-hands meeting there’s “no such thing as a deal being on hold,” reported Bloomberg. Twitter execs also suggested that it could try to enforce the deal terms in court, if need be, but said that would be “pretty rare” for such a thing to occur. (Not that this Twitter deal is proceeding normally though!) There’s still some speculation that Musk is looking to fully back out and will find a way to do so, billion-dollar breakup fee notwithstanding. In the meantime, the bankers are still preparing the paperwork and execs are still leaving. This week, it was Twitter Service VP Katrina Lane, head of data science Max Schmeiser and VP of product management Ilya Brown — all of whom chose to leave on their own.
Apple’s new rules let apps raise subscription prices automatically
Image Credits: TechCrunch
Alongside the launch of the iOS 15.5 update, Apple introduced a new set of rules to govern auto-renewing subscriptions on the App Store. Now, instead of asking users to agree to any subscription price increases, developers will be able to roll out a price increase with the user’s explicit consent. The feature allows developers to simply inform customers they’ll be charged more, but not require the customer to opt-in to the higher pricing.
We first broke the news that Apple was pilot testing this program last month, when it appeared Disney+ subscription customers had simply been told their price was increasing but weren’t asked for their consent. Apple then confirmed this was the result of a “new commerce feature” it planned to launch soon, which it said would be “great for both developers and users.”
Apple’s position is that this could save customers the hassle of having their subscriptions automatically canceled just because they didn’t see the notification or email that asked them to opt in to the price increase.
“This has led to some services being unintentionally interrupted for users and they must take steps to resubscribe within the app, from Settings on iPhone and iPad, or in the App Store on Mac,” the company explained in its announcement on Monday.
However, the flip side of this argument is that those same customers who would have missed the consent notification will likely be the same ones who would now miss the notification informing them their subscription will be increasing in price. There’s also an argument here that this change could enable unscrupulous developers and scammers to better profit from their victims if Apple doesn’t carefully enforce the program rules.
Currently, those state that developers can’t increase prices more than once per year. The increase also can’t exceed 50% of the subscription price, and the difference in price can’t exceed $5 USD per period for non-annual subscriptions or $50 USD for annual subscriptions.
Weekly News
Platforms: Apple
Apple released the first public betas of iOS 15.6, iPadOS 15.6, tvOS 15.6, watchOS 8.7 and macOS 12.5. Now included in the beta lineup is HomePod Software 15.6.
The latest Swift Playgrounds update (ver. 4.1)added App Store Connect integration for macOS users.
Apple targeted data brokers in its latest ad that promotes iOS privacy features.
Platforms: Google
Google Play expanded its app sanctions against Russia to include Belarus. The company will block the download of paid apps and updates to paid apps in both Russia and Belarus, it said in an update to its help article on the matter.
Alongside its announcement of its new Fire 7 tablet, Amazon also revealed that its upcoming Fire OS 8, its own Android-based OS, will launch in June.
An update to the Google System Update changelog again indicates that Google’s Family Link software will allow parents to set a persistent launcher on their child’s supervised device. This would make it so that a child couldn’t change the phone’s launcher to do anything other than what’s approved. The feature hasn’t been publicly announced.
E-commerce and Food Delivery
Uber announced a partnership with Grocery Outlet to pilot on-demand and scheduled grocery delivery. Initially, users can shop at 72 Grocery Outlet stores in California, Oregon and Washington state via the Uber or Uber Eats app.
Uber also announced a whole host of new features at its global product event earlier in the week. Here, Uber launched an “Uber Travel” feature that helps riders pre-book rides to and from upcoming events, like flights or restaurant reservations. It also announced an Uber Charter service for booking party buses, passenger vans and coach buses; plus event vouchers, an EV and charging map, various new Uber Eats products and additional perks for its Uber One membership; and more.
Snapchat and eBay announce integrations. Snapchat users can now share eBay listings with their friends using the Snapchat Camera on Android and iOS.
YouTube teased new features that it claims will make it easier for viewers to discover and buy from brands. One new feature will allow two creators to go live at the same time to co-host a single live shopping stream. This could effectively double the draw for the event, as each creator would bring their own fanbase to the stream. Another upcoming option is called “live redirects.” With this, creators are able to start a shopping livestream on their channel, then redirect their audience over to a brand’s channel for fans to keep watching. This allows brands to tap into the power of the creator’s platform and reach their fanbase, but then gives the brands themselves access to that audience — and the key metrics and analytics associated with their live event — directly on their own YouTube channel.
Fintech
FTX US plans to launch FTX Stocks, a zero-commission stock trading feature available through the FTX mobile app, rolling out in the U.S. in the “coming months.” The news is particularly notable given that billionaire FTX US founder Sam Bankman-Fried recently acquired a 7.6% stake in Robinhood.
Robinhood will launch a standalone app that lets users hold their own cryptocurrencies and NFTs, putting it in direct competition with Coinbase and startups like MetaMask or Rainbow. The move comes at a time when Robinhood’s stocks are off by more than 70% since its IPO.
Coinbase backtracked on its hiring plans, citing the crypto market turmoil. The company had earlier planned to triple headcount this year, but is now reassessing its headcount needs.
Coinbase also said it would let a “small set” of users access Ethereum-based decentralized apps directly from its own app via the new dApp browser. The feature would allow users to purchase NFTs on OpenSea and Coinbase’s NFT platform; trade on decentralized exchanges like Uniswap and SushiSwap; and borrow and lend through DeFi platforms like Curve and Compound.
Plaid, whose service powers a number of fintech aps, announced two products for ACH transfers, including identity verification, putting it into competition with Stripe.
Greenlight, a $2.3 billion fintech focused on kids, launched a credit card for parents. The Greenlight-branded card, offered through Mastercard, offers up to 3% unlimited cash back on all purchases and gives parents the option to automatically invest those cash rewards in stocks and ETFs. They also can choose to invest the cash in other ways through the Greenlight mobile app or transfer funds to their bank.
Social
TikTok launched Branded Mission, a new ad product that lets advertisers crowdsource content from creators with at least 1,000 followers. Advertisers can launch branded campaigns by developing a brief and releasing it to the creator community, encouraging them to participate in Branded Missions. Eligible creators whose videos are selected by brands will then benefit from a cash payment and boosted traffic.
TikTok launched its first creator crediting tool to help video creators cite their inspiration for dances, jokes, sounds and other content. The tool allows a creator to pick a video that’s then automatically added to their own video’s caption, linking back to the original creator. The changes follow years of complaints that top TikTok stars were lifting choreography from smaller creators, often Black creators. The problem got so bad that last year, some Black creators went on strike, refusing to create new dance moves for a recently dropped Megan Thee Stallion single as a form of protest.
Image Credits: TikTok
Twitter rolled out the ability for creators to host Super Follows-only Spaces as a subscriber perk. Subscribers globally on iOS and Android will be able to join and request to speak in Super Follows-only Spaces. (Web users can only join and listen for now.) Users who aren’t Super Following a creator can still see the Space but won’t be able to access it unless they subscribe.
Snap announced its new Snap Originals shows, which were also recently previewed at a company event. The show features stars like Simone Biles, winner of 32 Olympic and World Championship medals; NAACP Image Award winner La’Ron Hines; Dixie and Charli D’Amelio; and others.
Facebook and Twitter struggled to contain the Buffalo shooting video which was circulating across their platforms where it was being reported by end users. The New York AG also announced plans to investigate Twitch, Discord and 4chan for their role in the mass shooting.
Snap-owned social maps app Zenly, used by 35 million people monthly,rolled out its own mapping data and engine following last month’s redesign. The project was built using open source data from OpenStreetMap and acquired datasets from third parties. The maps feature 3D landmarks, animated effects, tiny cars, people, 3D trees and more. The new maps are live in Taipei, Tokyo, Paris, Los Angeles, New York and Seoul.
Image Credits: Zenly
Photos
Photo and video-editing app Picsart laid off 90 employees, or around 8% of its workforce, amid the market downturn.
Dating
Regulatory filings indicated Tiger Global sold off its entire stake in Bumble, along with other apps like Airbnb and Didi, as well as ~80% of its stake in Robinhood during 2022’s tech stock sell-off, FT reported.
Match Group-owned Hinge introduced a new feature aimed at helping users initiate conversations about self-care. The new Self-Care Prompts may include things like “The last time I cried happy tears was…,” “My friends ask me for advice about…,” “To me, relaxation is…,” “I feel most supported when…,” “A boundary of mine is…,” and others.
Messaging
Meta launched its free WhatsApp Cloud API, aimed at SMBs, to all businesses worldwide after earlier beta testing. The API allows companies to build on top of WhatsApp to better serve their customers, but without the costs and longer integration time for the on-premise version. WhatsApp also said it would roll out paid features for its WhatsApp Business app later this year, including things like the ability to manage chats across up to 10 devices. The company will also provide new customizable WhatsApp click-to-chat links that help businesses attract customers across their online presence, it said.
WhatsApp is also developing a feature that will allow users to stealthily exit group chats without informing the group, according to a leak from WABetaInfo. The feature was developed for the new Communities feature rolling out slowly this year.
Indian users of the Google Messages app say RCS is being abused by businesses to spam users with ads, with the frequency of the ads picking up over the past few months.
Apple’s Communication Safety in Messages expanded to more countries with iOS 15.5, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the U.K.
Streaming & Entertainment
YouTube’s player gained new features, including Most Replayed, Video Chapters for big-screen devices, Single Loop and more. The company said it’s adding a graph that people can use to easily locate and watch the most replayed parts of a video — something that could be particularly helpful for longer videos or those that haven’t broken down their various sections using either timestamps or video chapters. It also rolled out Video Chapters to smart TVs and gaming consoles and an option to set a video on a looping mode.
Apple Music launched Apple Music Live, a new recurring series that will livestream concerts from major artists, kicking off with a Harry Styles concert Friday at 9 PM ET alongside the release of his third album, “Harry’s House.” Encore streams will run at 12:00 PM ET on May 22 and 5 AM ET on May 26. Apple wouldn’t say if VOD streams would ever be available.
Spotify and Accenture teamed up in order to offer Spotify Premium as an employee perk as part of a new offering called “Spotify for Work.” Accenture kicked off the deal by rolling out Spotify to its employees across Sweden, Latvia and Lithuania.
YouTube Music for Wear OS was updated to allow users to stream content over Wi-Fi and LTE. The feature means users will be able to listen to favorite songs even if their phone isn’t nearby.
Charli XCX is scheduled to play a “metaverse” concert on Roblox on June 17, 2022, at 7 PM ET. The concert will follow a five-week virtual event comprising mini-games and other digital challenges.
The Apple Podcasts app gained new storage clean-up tools, support for annual subscriptions and a new distribution system. The new Apple Podcasts Delegated Delivery system will soon allow creators to more easily distribute their podcasts directly to Apple Podcasts from third-party hosting providers, including Acast, ART19, Blubrry, Buzzsprout, Libsyn, Omny Studio and RSS.com. The clean-up tools, meanwhile, will come in handy for better controlling how many episodes are saved locally and give you a chance to bulk remove downloads for the first time, including on Mac.
Gaming
Fortnite launched to all iOS users via Nvidia’s GeForce Now cloud gaming service after a few months of closed beta trials. The launch means iPhone users have yet another workaround to play the popular game on their device, despite its ban from the App Store, following Fortnite’s launch on Microsoft’s Cloud Gaming service earlier this month.
A report from Reuters said TikTok was testing HTML5 games in Vietnam, but TikTok told TechCrunch that was inaccurate — no games were currently testing in that market. However, the company had previously confirmed it was engaged in further gaming partnership discussions after its Zynga deal was announced.
TechCrunch also reported and confirmed a separate effort focused on bringing interactive minigames — like “Draw & Guess” — to the TikTok LIVE platform.
Niantic’s Pokémon GO partnered with Amazon Prime Gaming and Prime Student to offer exclusive bonus item bundles every two weeks to Prime members. Users can log in to Prime and get a code, which they can redeem on Niantic’s rewards page. The items will then appear in the game.
Security & Privacy
Brave’s iOS web browser was updated with a new Privacy Hub featurethat offers users more visibility on exactly what Brave blocked, and how Brave protects your personal information online. It does so by showing a rolling update of how many trackers Brave blocked on a specific site, or in a given time span. The hub also offers education about trackers and privacy threats.
Apple patched almost 30 security flaws with iOS 15.5, as well as over 50 fixes for macOS 12.4.
Funding and M&A
Pintarnya, a startup building a super app for Indonesia’s blue-collar workers, raised $6.3 million in seed funding led by Sequoia Capital India and General Catalyst. The funding includes a $100,000 grant from Sequoia Spark, a program for women founders. The app offers verified job postings and financial services, like loans, for blue-collar workers.
Instant delivery app Gopuff, valued at $15 billion, announced a new advisor and investor: Bob Iger, the former CEO and chairman of The Walt Disney Company. The company wouldn’t say if the investment was coming as a separate investment, or as part of a $1 billion round (in debt and equity) that the company is in the process of closing.
Instabug, a startup that helps mobile developers monitor, identify and fix bugs within apps, raised $46 million in Series B funding led by Insight Partners. The company said its ARR doubled in 2021 and the number of enterprise customers grew 10x, as it added new clients like DoorDash, Verizon, Qualtrics, Porsche and Gojek. Last year, its software sat within 2.7 billion mobile devices, processed 110 billion mobile sessions (up at least 20x from 2020) and helped customers resolve 4.2 billion issues, it said.
Unit, a banking-as-a-service startup that allows developers to easily build new fintech apps, raised $100 million in Series C funding led by Insight Partners, at a $1.2 billion valuation. Unit said its transaction volume grew 7x over the past six months and has crossed an annualized transaction volume of $2.6 billion. It’s also issued over 430,000 cards to over 330,000 customers and saw a 10x increase in deposit volumes.
WhatsApp is continuing its push into the business market with today’s news it’s launching the WhatsApp Cloud API to all businesses worldwide. Introduced into beta testing last November, the new developer tool is a cloud-based version of the WhatsApp Business API — WhatsApp’s first revenue-generating enterprise product — but hosted on parent company Meta’s infrastructure.
The company had been building out its Business API platform over the past several years as one of the key ways the otherwise free messaging app would make money. Businesses pay WhatsApp on a per-message basis, with rates that vary based on the region and number of messages sent. As of late last year, tens of thousands of businesses were set up on the non-cloud-based version of the Business API including brands like Vodafone, Coppel, Sears Mexico, BMW, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, Iberia Airlines, Itau Brazil, iFood, and Bank Mandiri, and others. This on-premise version of the API is free to use.
The cloud-based version, however, aims to attract a market of smaller businesses, and reduces the integration time from weeks to only minutes, the company had said. It is also free.
Businesses integrate the API with their backend systems, where WhatsApp communication is usually just one part of their messaging and communication strategy. They may also want to direct their communications to SMS, other messaging apps, emails, and more. Typically, businesses would work with a solutions provider like Zendeks or Twilio to help facilitate these integrations. Providers during the cloud API beta tests had included Zendesk in the U.S., Take in Brazil, and MessageBird in the E.U.
During Meta’s messaging-focused “Conversations” live event today, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the global, public availability of the cloud-based platform, now called the WhatsApp Cloud API.
“The best business experiences meet people where they are. Already more than 1 billion users connect with a business account across our messaging services every week. They’re reaching out for help, to find products and services, and to buy anything from big-ticket items to everyday goods. And today, I am excited to announce that we’re opening WhatsApp to any business of any size around the world with WhatsApp Cloud API,” he said.
He said the company believes the new API will help businesses, both big and small, be able to connect with more people.
In addition to helping businesses and developers get set up faster than with the on-premise version, Meta says the Cloud API will help partners to eliminate costly server expenses and help them provide customers with quick access to new features as they arrive.
Some businesses may choose to forgo the API and use the dedicated WhatsApp Business app instead. Launched in 2018, the WhatsApp Business App is aimed at smaller businesses that want to establish an official presence on WhatsApp’s service and connect with customers. It provides a set of features that wouldn’t be available to users of the free WhatsApp messaging app, like support automated quick replies, greeting messages, FAQs, away messaging, statistics, and more.
Today, Meta is also introducing new power features for its WhatsApp Business app that will be offered for a fee — like the ability to manage chats across up to 10 devices. The company will also provide new customizable WhatsApp click-to-chat links that help businesses attract customers across their online presence, including of course, Meta’s other applications like Facebook and Instagram.
These will be a part of a forthcoming Premium service for WhatsApp Business app users. Further details, including pricing, will be announced at a later date.
In recent years, YouTube has been working to transform its platform into more of a shopping destination with product launches like shoppable ads or more recently, the ability to shop directly from livestreams hosted by creators. Now, it’s furthering that investment with new features for live shopping experiences. At yesterday’s YouTube Brandcast event, where the company pitched itself to advertisers as a better place for their TV ad dollars, YouTube teased upcoming features that it claimed would make it easier for viewers to discover and buy from brands.
The company touted its forthcoming tools as offering advertisers a better way to engage viewers and make connections with their audience.
One new feature, explained YouTube, will allow two creators to go live at the same time to co-host a single live shopping stream. This could effectively double the draw for the event, as each creator would bring their own fanbase to the stream.
This feature arrives shortly after YouTube in March announced a pilot program called “Go Live Together,” a new mobile collaborative streaming feature that would enable creators to invite guests to their livestream with a link before going live together. This trial suggested YouTube had its eye on developing tools to better power joint livestreams — just as it’s now planning to introduce with its upcoming two-person live shopping streams. The addition could also make YouTube more competitive with Instagram, which launched the ability for creators to go live with up to three people last year.
In addition to leveraging creators to build an audience for a live shopping event, YouTube’s shopping livestreams platform also offers other tools specifically designed to drive sales. The brand-integrated shopping experience actually allows viewers to shop the products shown in the video by tapping on a built-in “view products” button that then brings up a list of items featured by the creators.
The company says its new two-person live shopping feature will roll out sometime later this year.
Another upcoming option announced at Brandcast is something YouTube calls “live redirects.”
In this case, creators will be able to start a shopping livestream on their channel, then redirect their audience over to a brand’s channel for fans to keep watching. This allows brands to tap into the power of the creator’s platform and reach their fanbase, but then gives the brands themselves access to that audience — and the key metrics and analytics associated with their live event — directly on their own YouTube channel. This will also roll out sometime this year, says YouTube, but didn’t provide a timeframe.
Retailers, too, are getting in on the action. Nordstrom launched a live events platform, while Forever 21 and Macy’s are among those that added live shopping to their apps.
Meanwhile, big tech platforms are wooing brands by touting their wider reach.
While YouTube is certainly one of the largest creator platforms for video, there is some indication that it needs to catch up to its big tech rivals in livestream shopping, however. An eMarketer study from Jan. 2022 found that only 14.4% of survey respondents said YouTube’s platform drove them to purchase during a livestream event compared with 15.8% for TikTok, 45.8% for Instagram and 57.8% for Facebook.
Image Credits: eMarketer/Insider Intelligence
YouTube’s new livestream features — and particularly the one that pushes a creator’s fanbase to a brand’s channel — could make its solution more compelling.
“People come to YouTube every day to make decisions about what to buy, and 87% of viewers say that when they’re shopping or browsing on YouTube, they feel like they can make a faster decision about what to purchase because of all the information that we have in videos,” said YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, speaking to the audience at the Brandcast live event last night. “We have so much shopping activity that is already happening on YouTube, so we are making it even easier for viewers to discover and to buy,” she said.
Zenly, the popular social app with 35 million monthly active users, released a complete redesign just last month. But it turns out that this was just the first part of a bigger change at the company owned by Snap. Zenly is going to compete with the likes of Google Maps and Apple Maps as it has begun rolling out its own mapping data and engine.
This massive project began more than three years ago. And the result is a beautiful, living and breathing mapping experience. There are a ton of animations, thoughtful details and delightful easter eggs. For this reason, comparing Zenly’s maps with Google Maps or Apple Maps isn’t exactly fair.
“When I started at Zenly we were working with MapKit and Google Maps SDK. We were frustrated about not being able to express the ideas that we had,” Charly Delaroche, the software engineering manager that has led the map effort at Zenly, told me. “Knowing that the core of Zenly is a map, it was really frustrating — not being able to control it.”
This is how Zenly’s mapping project started under the codename ‘Wonka’. While Zenly started as a way to see what your friends are up to, the company wanted to control and own the canvas to expand beyond this location sharing feature. For instance, the new Zenly lets you search for places — not just people.
And starting a new maps app from scratch in 2019 presents many advantages. You don’t have to carry over the legacy of an old codebase that can run on old iPhones and Android devices. Knowing that it would be a multi-year project, the team targeted newer phones, which are not so new today.
For instance, on iOS, Zenly requires iOS 12. All devices that run iOS 12 support the new Zenly map. “What we called newer phones then is really current phones right now,” Delaroche said. “We wanted to do something that was more 3D and used video game technology to use the maximum performance of the device,” he added.
Image Credits: TechCrunch
A personal map
Apple Maps and Google Maps keep getting better and better. A quick look at Justin O’Beirne’s website will show you how detailed these two products have become.
But there’s one issue with these existing apps. They are a bit static and focused on giving you as much information as possible.
“The map that you’re using every day, they weren’t made for you. Everyone is seeing the same map,” Delaroche said.
For instance, Zenly displays a ‘fog of war’ on the map view. If you’ve played real-time strategy games, you’re already familiar with this feature. It displays a fog on top of the map if you’ve never been to a location so that you know where you should head next to explore new areas.
Right now, Zenly adds this layer on top of the map. They are two distinct elements. With Zenly’s own maps, the fog of war is seamlessly integrated in the map, which means that it looks better and is more customizable.
Similarly, when Zenly wants to show you your best friends, it doesn’t have to figure out whether your friend’s name appears on top of a city name. Zenly’s own map engine can prioritize your friend’s name over the city name when it makes sense.
Image Credits: Zenly
Reconstructing a global map with a team of 10
Zenly has built a global map. And yet, there are currently only 10 people working on the mapping project. The basis of Zenly’s map is accurate data and algorithmic transformation.
The company leveraged open-source data from OpenStreetMap and it acquired proprietary data sets from third-party partners. After that, the company created a ton of rules to understand what’s on the map and recreate it in Zenly’s style.
“We added many rules to transform it from something flat to something interesting,” Charly Delaroche said.
For instance, Zenly has classified different areas depending on their intrinsic nature. When there’s a river, Zenly knows that it’s water and users can tap on it to get a splashing effect. When there’s a forest, Zenly adds 3D trees to approximate the real-life version.
As for roads, Zenly automatically adds tiny cars and trucks that move up and down the street — yes, it looks really cute. There are also boats, ducks, golf carts and sea creatures.
Everything is automatically generated from various data sets and Zenly’s algorithmic rules. The company doesn’t manually edit maps to make them more accurate.
And then, there are landmarks — the only thing that is 100% handmade. The company has built its own art editor and created 3D models for popular landmarks. It works with studios for those assets, such as Ocellus Studio (based in Lyon) and Nieko Play (based in Lithuania).
I spent a lot of time looking at landmarks in Paris, from the Eiffel Tower to the Louvre, the Arc de Triomphe and more. There are still some missing landmarks, such as the statues on the Place de la République or Place de la Nation.
But the existing landmarks are beautiful. In that case, Zenly isn’t trying to recreate these landmarks. These are playful representations of iconic places.
Landmarks also have a purpose. People who live in big cities tend to identify where they are based on surrounding landmarks. With the new Zenly map, you can instantly identify where your friends are hanging out without reading any street name.
A new engine
In addition to data, Zenly had to create a 3D engine from scratch. Everything is custom made. It’s a fully cross-platform engine in low-level C and C++ code. It supports physically based rendering, deferred rendering and temporal shadow maps.
Of course, it doesn’t look as good as a 3D mobile game. But it’s fast. You can move around the map without any major performance hit. More importantly, there is no loading screen when you launch the app. It still feels like a social app — not a video game.
In addition to basic animations for cars and boats, the water is also animated and reflects light. At any point in time, the sun is accurately positioned so that shadows are more realistic as well.
Moving around Zenly becomes a different experience. You don’t swipe and pan to zoom like in other maps apps. You move the 3D camera to look around.
A progressive rollout
Because landmarks are an important feature, Zenly’s new maps are only available in a handful of cities at first —Taipei, Tokyo, Paris, Los Angeles, New York and Seoul.
The rollout started earlier this week, but it’s going to be a progressive rollout. Right now, only 5% of new Zenly users will see the new maps. And users can always change back to the default map style in the settings. But the goal is to roll it out to everyone this year and add a new city every two weeks or so.
Zenly is well aware that it can’t compete with Apple Maps and Google Maps when it comes to data accuracy. But what’s more exciting is that this new mapping engine unlocks a ton of possibilities. The company can integrate social data with mapping data in one seamless view.
“Do we really need to compete and be pixel perfect in every place of the world?” Delaroche said. Clearly, Zenly doesn’t want to be better, it wants to be different. And Zenly’s new map platform is a great starting point for some different features.
A small handful of Snap Kit platform developers have not yet complied with the new guidelines around anonymous messaging and friend-finding apps announced in March. The Snapchat maker revamped its developer platform policies on March 17, 2022, to ban anonymous apps and require developers to build friend-finding apps to limit access to users 18 or older. The policy changes were effective immediately and existing developers were given 30 days to come into compliance — a date that would have passed last month.
It is now mid-May and some developers of the newly banned and restricted apps are not yet meeting Snap’s new requirements, we’ve found.
Snap says only a small number of developers asked for and were granted additional time to bring apps into compliance, as they worked in good faith to make the necessary changes. But it may be difficult for consumers to tell which apps are compliant, which are skirting the new rules, and which are marketing Snap Kit integrations that they actually don’t have.
For example, one of the apps offered an extension is Sendit, the anonymous Q&A app that surged to the top of the App Store last year after Snap suspended other top anonymous Q&A apps, YOLO and LMK. Those latter two apps had been banned from Snap’s platform after the company was sued by a mother of a teen who died by suicide after being bullied via those tools. This year, Snap was named in a second lawsuit, alongside Meta, related to an alleged lack of safeguards across social media platforms which a mother says contributed to her 11-year-old’s suicide.
Snap has since conducted a review of its platform policies with a focus on potential child safety issues related to third-party apps that integrate with Snapchat’s features and functionality.
This culminated in the new policies that were introduced in March which impact apps that build using the Snap Kit platform. This suite of developer tools allows third-party apps to offer sign-in with Snapchat for user verification, or utilize Snapchat features like Snap’s Camera, Bitmoji, Stories, and more.
At the time Snap announced its new policies, it said the changes would impact a small subset of its over 1,500 developers in its wider community. Around 2% would be impacted by the ban on anonymous messaging apps, Snap said, and another 3% would be impacted by the new requirement to age-gate friend-finding apps.
Here, Snap offered an example of how something called “Identity Web View” could be adopted by third-party developers who today use Snap Kit to build anonymous Q&A apps. The feature would allow anonymous Q&A apps to come into compliance with the new policies as it will require apps to present a new modal to users that they must click to send their Bitmoji avatar URL and abbreviated Display Name to the third-party application. Then, they can use the third-party app to post their question — but no longer anonymously. Essentially, it allows Q&A apps to continue to function in much of the same way as before, but without the potential dangers of anonymous bullying — the user is identified.
Sendit, however, doesn’t currently use this modal even though it’s the example shown in the developer documentation screenshot. But Snap says the developer asked for more time to make these changes, which was granted. Snap believes the app, currently No. 8 in the Lifestyle section on the App Store, will soon come into compliance.
Other third-party apps also appear to be still operating as usual and, at first glance, seem to not be in compliance with Snap’s new policies.
Apps skirting the rules — or operating outside them?
But this is where things get more tricky — some apps have been granted an extension, some are routing around Snap’s rules, and others are marketing themselves as Snapchat-connected apps when they’re not actually using the SDK.
For instance, the app LMK — to be clear, a different LMK than the original LMK app that was banned last year — is still offering its “anonymous polls” app which integrates with Snapchat’s features. The app is rated 12+ on the App Store and is functioning as usual. But LMK was among that requested and was granted an extension.
Anonymous messaging apps HMU, rated ages 9+ on the App Store, and Intext, rated ages 4+ are also still operating. Both advertise themselves as Snapchat-connected apps. But Intext has been banned from Snap’s platform — you’ll get an error if you try to authenticate with Snapchat using the app’s “Login with Snapchat” button.
HMU appears to have skirted the ban, however. Its app still works.
Meanwhile, a number of friend-finding apps, like Hoop, Wink, Swipr, Purp, and Dope — all of which are now supposed to be only available to adult users — are still published on the App Store with an age rating of 12+, as of the time of writing. If Snap had vetted and approved them, then they would have the highest age rating on the App Store, which is 17+. (Apple should change this to 18+!)
Confusingly, these apps’ lower age ratings don’t necessarily mean all the apps are breaking Snap’s policies. As it turns out, some of these apps are simply positioning themselves as being Snapchat-connected in their marketing materials — like their App Store screenshots. But in reality, they’re working around their lack of access to Snap’s SDK in other ways.
For instance, Hoop’s App Store page says it’s for making friends on Snapchat, and yet it’s downloadable to anyone aged 12 or up. If it was a Snap Kit platform app, then it would be in violation. But Hoop is not in violation because it’s no longer using the SDK. (But who could tell?!)
Image credit: Hoop
Instead, Hoop has users enter their Snapchat username during onboarding and provides an in-app Snapchat button to “request” someone share their username with you. It’s a workaround that allows the app to still function as a tool for finding friends on Snapchat, but allows the app to operate without relying on developer access to the SDK. But this sort of deviousness on developers’ parts could cause complications for Snap in the future, as it faces potential litigation and regulations related to platform safety.
Requests for comment to the third-party app makers themselves were not returned.
For parents, this lack of consistency across the Snapchat app ecosystem also means they can’t rely on using Apple or Google’s built-parental controls to block the Snapchat friend-finding apps from being downloaded to their child or younger teen’s device. And, once in the hands of younger users, bypassing the age-gate is as simple as using a fake birthdate.
Snap tells us that since it announced the new policies, it has removed the vast majority of apps that were out of compliance with its policies.
But given the extent to which apps are skirting the rules, it could be more useful if the app stores themselves would integrate these same guidelines into their own app review processes. Or perhaps this is all a sign that regulation, in fact, is needed to protect children and teens from accessing experiences that are either potentially harmful or designed for adults.
After all, Snapchat shares the top charts with other apps that cater to a younger, often teenaged, user base — and the rules that apply to it, should apply to anyone.
For instance, one app eating into the Gen Z market is the newer app called BeReal, which prompts users for spontaneous photos. BeReal has now surpassed 10 million cumulative downloads to date, according to estimates from app intelligence firm data.ai (formerly App Annie). 3.3 million downloads took place in Q1 alone, and the majority of users in key markets are Gen Z, the firm said.
Another app, LiveIn, caters to Gen Z as well by allowing users to post photos to each others’ Home Screens via a widget — a feature BeReal also adopted. It’s now No. 2 on the U.S. App Store’s Top Apps chart, while its rival Locket Widget, is No. 24.
These apps are offering experiences that not only cater to Snapchat’s core demographic, but also features that overlap in some ways with what Snapchat is used for — fun, off-the-cuff photos that aren’t meant to stick around. While Snapchat is still growing, its rivals could expand their own platforms to adopt more Snapchat-like features over time, at which point they could also become a cause for concern if they ventured into similar anonymous Q&A or friend-finding spaces.
For now, however, these apps present a different type of threat: one that could see Snapchat losing its users’ time and engagement as they try out new ways to connect with friends.
It’s neither surprising, nor necessarily new scuttlebutt, but one of the most reliable Apple news scoopers of all time has chimed in to say that Apple is indeed at least serious enough about a potential switch from Lightning to USB-C on future iPhones that it’s doing testing with models equipped with the latter connector.
Don’t chuck those Lightning cables in the trash just yet: Gurman’s report says that the earliest this could possibly happen is 2023, as the design for the current new iPhones likely arriving fall 2022 are set with Lightning on board like their predecessors.
As Bloomberg notes, a big driver for considering this change could be the EU ruling from April that approved a requirement that consumer electronics companies adopt USB-C as a common wired connection standard. Apple could theoretically work around the requirement in other ways, but standardizing USB-C as the connector of choice across all their devices would probably also be a win for them in the consumer satisfaction department, especially after moving to using it in other mobile devices like the most recent iPad and iPad Pro tablets.
Dropping Lightning would be a headache in other ways, for both Apple and consumers: It would mean Apple loses out on licensing fees and parts supply revenue for third parties looking to get official “MFI” status for iPhone accessories, and it would mean iPhone users have to either replace existing Lightning accessories or go with the rumored adapter. Plus, AirPods also still rely on Lightning for the time being, so you still can’t shift to a fully USB-C lifestyle.
USB-C is also one of the most confusing connector technologies out there in terms of the different types of cables it terminates. An older USB-C cable might provide exclusively power transfer, for instance, and very low wattage to boot. The situation has gotten a bit easier to parse with more recent cables and devices, though, so at least the possibility would exist for people to streamline their charger and cable mix.
Selfishly, I want Apple to do this because I obsess over the arithmetic of how many cables and chargers I need to pack on trips to keep all my kit charged with a necessary, but minimal, amount of redundancy. As with any reports detailing work at this stage of development, however, there’s always the chance Apple could abandon this development direction and go with Lightning again in 2023 and beyond, however, dooming us to a more complicated cable nest for the foreseeable future.
It’s been said that no one uses Alexa for voice-based shopping. But retail giant still sees the potential for Alexa as a shopping companion — just in a different way. That’s why this month the company quietly rolled out a new feature designed to boost consumers’ use of Alexa’s Shopping Lists: cashback offers.
The company confirmed to TechCrunch it introduced “Alexa Shopping List Savings,” which puts rebate offers from brands and manufacturers directly into consumers’ hands through the Alexa app, its mobile companion app for Echo device owners. The company says the offers will be displayed in the Alexa Shopping List section within the app and then can be used across retail stores nationwide to help customers save money.
To use the feature, you’d first select the offers of interest and activate them in the app, then visit your favorite grocery store, drug store, or chain store to buy the product, the Amazon website explains in an FAQ. The details about the offers around how they can be applied are also available in the app, Amazon notes. When you’ve completed your purchase, shoppers claim their rebate by taking a photo of the store receipt that shows the store’s name, location, date and time of purchases, product price, and total, then submit it to Amazon through the app. Customers also have to scan the barcode on the product itself to complete the process.
Amazon will send the rebate to the customer via their Amazon Gift Card account. This process may take up to a week, but typically takes just 24-48 hours, Amazon says. The Gift Card balance can be used to shop across tens of millions of eligible products on Amazon.
Image Credits: Amazon
As you may expect, this system provides Amazon with a treasure trove of customer shopping data beyond just the offers customers were interested in and were redeeming.
The website notes that by choosing to participate in the Alexa Shopping List Savings program, customers are agreeing to share their personal information and data with Amazon:
“…we will get any information you provide, including receipt images and information we may extract from those receipts, and the offers you activate. You understand and acknowledge that your personal information may be shared with Amazon’s service providers.”
The data will be used and shared per Amazon’s privacy policy terms, the site notes. Further details were not provided.
Broadly, this business model is not unique to Amazon. Other apps offer similar tools to turn customers’ retail store receipts into “free” gift cards. (They’re not really free — you paid with your data!) For instance, apps like Fetch Rewards, Ibotta, Checkout51, and others make money through affiliate commissions, through the resale of customers’ anonymized data, or both, then share some of that revenue back with the customer in the form of cashback or gift cards.
Like rival apps, Amazon’s offers tend to be the same sort of grocery rewards you’d see elsewhere. This includes consumer packaged goods, health and beauty items, baby items, canned food, and more — not fresh groceries or other retail categories, like electronics or apparel.
Of course, some people don’t mind sharing their data with businesses in exchange for rewards or cashback — top apps like Fetch and Ibotta have millions of users, in fact. But consumers should be aware that Amazon’s privacy policy makes no promises of anonymizing any data nor does it explain in detail exactly how this data will be put to use.
The feature is live in the Amazon Alexa mobile app today.
As Snapchat’s app continues to grow, the company is turning to the open source community to help further improve its technology infrastructure. This morning, Snap announced it’s acquiring the Toronto-based KeyDB, the developer of an open-source, high-performance database, for an undisclosed sum.
The startup’s six-person team, including its co-founders John Sully and Ben Schermel, will join Snap’s infrastructure team following the deal’s close, and will work to improve Snap’s caching technology and its sizable engineering workloads, the company says.
A Y Combinator-backed startup, KeyDB touted its solution as being a faster alternative to Redis, offering a focus on things like multi-threading, memory efficiency, and high throughput. For Snap, it sees the advantage in bringing the technology — and the team’s expertise — in-house to help the company reduce its operational costs across teams and to free up engineering bandwidth. This also allows Snap to focus more on building out other core Snapchat experiences, the company said.
A Snap spokesperson told TechCrunch that KeyDB’s technology will be of significant use across all of Snap, including its monetization and Spotlight platforms. The latter is Snapchat’s short-form video product and a rival to TikTok, which is now a key part of Snap’s business.
KeyDB’s multithreaded database utilizes Redis data structures, flash storage, and replication and runs at Snap scale, the company noted. It’s also an open source project that has a large community with over 3 million public downloads.
Fortunately for other engineers, Snap says it will continue the open source project and will also open source KeyDB’s Pro and Enterprise offerings following the acquisition. This will allow the company to continue to benefit from the broader community contributions, we’re told, but will also help Snap to better establish its own presence within the open source community and establish relationships with more developers.
Plus, as Snap’s engineers merge their own internal improvements into the KeyDB project, the company believes it will be able to help solve challenges across the broader community.
The company had disclosed the prices for FitAnalytics and WaveOptics in an SEC filing due to their size, but said all over 2021 acquisitions in aggregate only totaled $266.1 million. The company would discuss KeyDB’s price, but Crunchbase reports the company was seed-funded with $1.3 million.
At its I/O developer conference, Google today launched Google Wallet, a new Android and Wear OS app that will allow users to store things like credit cards, loyalty cards, digital IDs, transit passes, concert tickets, vaccination cards and more.
That’s pretty straightforward, but from here on out, it gets a bit confusing. Google, after all, has long offered the Google Pay app (and yes — a Google Wallet app, too), where you could store your credit cards for online and contactless payments. Back in 2020, Google made some major changes to Google Pay to refocus it more on tracking your spending and sending and receiving money between friends and family members. At that point, Google even wanted to launch its own bank account, in partnership with financial institutions like Citi, that users would manage in Google Pay. That project, dubbed Plex, never saw the light of day and was quickly shelved after the executive behind the project left Google barely six months after the announcement.
Image Credits: Google
Currently, Google Pay is available in 42 markets, Google says. Because in 39 of those markets, Google Pay is still primarily a wallet, those users will simply see the Google Pay app update to the new Google Wallet app. But in the U.S. and Singapore, Google Pay will remain the payments-focused app while the Wallet app will exist in parallel to focus on storing your digital cards. Meanwhile, in India, Google says that “people will continue to use their Google Pay app they are familiar with today.”
Image Credits: Google
“The Google Pay app will be a companion app to the Wallet,” said Arnold Goldberg, the VP and GM of Payments at Google, who joined the company earlier this year after a long stint at PayPal. “Think of [the Google Pay app] as this higher value app that will be a place for you to make payments and manage money, whereas the wallet will really be this container for you to store your payment assets and your non-payment assets.”
Goldberg noted that Google decided to go this route because of the rapid digitization we’ve been seeing during the last two years of the pandemic. “We talk about ten years of change in two years from just a behavior perspective and people almost demanding now digitization versus it being a nice-to-have pre-COVID,” he said. “It’s clarified our focus on what we need to do, as a payments organization — what we need to do as a company — to reimagine not just what we’re doing from a payments perspective online and in-store, but also thinking about what we can enable people to do with their digital wallets.”
Google today announced that its Chrome browser will now offer users the ability to use a virtual credit card number in online payment forms on the web. These virtual card numbers allow you to keep your ‘real’ credit card number safe when you buy something online since they can be easily revoked if a merchant’s systems get hacked. A number of credit card issuers already offer these virtual credit card numbers, but they are probably far less mainstream than they should be.
Image Credits: Google /
Google says these virtual cards will roll out in the U.S. later this summer. Since Google is working with both card issuers like Capital One, which is the launch partner for this feature, but also the major networks like Visa and American Express, which will be supported at launch, with Mastercard support coming later this year. Having support from the networks is definitely a big deal here, because trying to get every individual card issuer on board would be a difficult task.
The new feature will be available on Chrome on desktop and Android first, with iOS support rolling out later.
“This is a landmark step in bringing the security of virtual cards to as many consumers as possible,” said Arnold Goldberg, the Vice President and General Manager of Payments at Google. “Shoppers using Chrome on desktop and Android can enjoy a fast checkout experience when shopping online while having the peace of mind knowing that their payment information is protected.”
From the user perspective, this new autofill option will simply enter the virtual card’s details for you, including the CVV that you can never remember for your physical cards, and then you can manage the virtual cards and see your transactions at pay.google.com. While these virtual cards are typically used for one-time purchases, you will also be able to use these cards for subscriptions, too.
Since this is Google, some users will obviously worry that the company will use this additional data about your purchase habits, but Google says it will not use any of this information for ad targeting purposes.
YouTube is expanding on its latest feature that made any public YouTube video potential fodder for its TikTok competitor, YouTube Shorts. Today, the company is announcing the launch of “Green Screen,” a tool that will allow users to use up to a 60-second video segment from any eligible YouTube video or YouTube Short as the background for their new original Short video.
The feature joins a number of other effects available now to YouTube Shorts creators, including the appearance-smoothing Retouch feature; a Lighting feature to boost dark environments; an Align feature that aligns the subject from the last frame of a video with a new video; a text and timeline editor to add messages over top videos; various video filters; and, most recently, Cut — the tool that effectively made all of YouTube’s public content possible Shorts material.
As with Cut, YouTube says the new Green Screen remix feature can be used with any public YouTube video unless the creator has opted out. The only exception to this involves music videos which include copyrighted content from YouTube’s partners or others with visual claims. Also similar to Cut, any video created with Green Screen includes a link back to the original content creator for attribution’s sake.
On iOS, creators can also use the Green Screen tool in the Shorts camera to choose any photo or video from their device gallery as the background, the company says.
Image Credits: YouTube
YouTube’s decision to make its platform’s videos available for remixing is meant to be a competitive advantage as the competition with TikTok heats up. It’s notable that it made the feature opt-out by default, meaning videos are essentially up for grabs unless a creator says otherwise. So far, there hasn’t been a major backlash to this decision, as some creators feel that Shorts is just another way to get their channel discovered, or generally aren’t worried about Shorts eating into their own audience, as it’s a different type of viewing experience.
Given the integration with YouTube content, Green Screen makes sense as the next new video effect for Shorts. On TikTok, a similar feature is heavily used to allow creators to comment on and reference each other’s content. But in Shorts’ case, the original video creator isn’t necessarily a Shorts creator, too — they may only produce long-form content for YouTube proper. That could lessen the appeal of the Green Screen tool as a community conversation tool, as the person whose video is being referenced may not even participate in the Shorts community itself.
Google says. the new Green Screen tool is beginning to roll out on iOS today and will come to Android soon.
Asked why the company was prioritizing iOS over Google’s own mobile platform, YouTube only replied that it was prioritizing the need to move quickly when launching the new features.
“Our priority is bringing the best experience to our creators as quickly as possible, and sometimes that means we bring particular features to one platform before another,” a spokesperson said.
The addition of Green Screen follows a rougher quarter for YouTube, where the company missed its projections for ad revenue, bringing in $6.87 billion, when it was forecast to pull in $7.51 billion. YouTube chalked this up to the lingering pandemic impacts, saying the slower growth is more of a reflection of last year’s gains. At the time, it also reported Shorts was now generating 30 billion views per day.
Pintarnya, a startup building a super app for Indonesia’s blue-collar workers, 
