Twitter’s premium subscription service, Twitter Blue, is launching today in the U.S. as well as New Zealand, offering an expanded slate of features meant to appeal to Twitter’s most engaged users. The service will be available across iOS, Android and the web for $2.99 per month (or $4.49 NZD). Twitter Blue first arrived this summer in Canada and Australia, giving subscribers a set of tools to organize their bookmarks, read Twitter threads in a clutter-free format, and quickly fix typos before tweets were posted, among other things. With the expanded rollout, Twitter Blue will also enable early access to new features via the recently launched Twitter Labs, and it will offer ad-free news articles from hundreds of publishers, thanks to Twitter’s springtime acquisition of Scroll.

And, as an added perk, Twitter is bringing back Scroll’s news aggregator Nuzzel as a new feature called “Top Articles.”

Nuzzel had a small but devoted user base, who had been disappointed to see Twitter had closed down their favorite service following its buyout of Nuzzel’s parent company Scroll. The service had acted as a missing curation layer to Twitter’s tweets by showing users what people you were connected with on Twitter were reading about and sharing across the platform. This served as a more personalized way to tune into what was being discussed compared with just scrolling through Twitter’s trends.

Today, Twitter says it will make this same feature available to Twitter Blue subscribers as Top Articles. The feature will allow users to see the most shared articles in their network over the past 24 hours.

The addition joins other now standard Twitter Blue offerings, including the ability to sort saved tweets (aka “Bookmarks”) into folders for easier access, the ability to customize Twitter’s theme, choose a custom app icon, and view long Twitter threads in a cleaned-up, distraction-free reading experience with just tap.

Image Credits: Twitter

And of course, Twitter Blue gives subscribers the closest thing you’ll get to Twitter’s most-requested feature — an “edit” button — with its alternative, an “Undo Tweet” button. This allows users to catch a typo and fix it before the tweet is fully posted, but not correct tweets that are already live.

Twitter Blue also includes a few personalization features as well, including theming, custom icons, and now, the ability to customize the app’s bottom navigation tab with your own favorite Twitter destinations, like Twitter Spaces, Bookmarks, Top Articles, Lists, Monetization, and others. This may make Twitter feel more personalized to you, but limits Twitter’s ability to place new features it may want to promote in key spots in the app going forward.

Image Credits: Twitter

Subscribers also gain access to Twitter Labs, which is where Twitter will roll out its early-stage experiments first. At launch, Twitter Labs offers longer, 10-minute video uploads from the web (instead of 2 minutes for non-subscribers), and the ability to pin favorite Direct Message (DM) conversations to the top of the inbox, both of which were previously announced.

Image Credits: Twitter

Another new feature is the ability to read news articles shared on Twitter without advertising and clutter. This feature is also enabled through Twitter’s acquisition of Scroll, and essentially works the same way as Scroll had. The company partnered with hundreds of publishers to offer a fast-loading, ad-free reading experience to Twitter Blue subscribers who click the links they come across on the platform. Among the notable names participating are The Washington Post, BuzzFeed and BuzzFeed News, Rolling Stone, Variety, Deadline, The Hollywood Reporter, IndieWire, Huffpost, The Atlantic, Insider, USA Today, MacRumors, BGR, Slate, Daily Beast, Miami Herald, Stylecaster, TV Line, Salon, Mother Jones, The Sacramento Bee, The Philadelphia Inquirer, SEJ, and others.

When Twitter Blue members click news links to these sites, the publisher itself will serve the ad-free reading experience to the user — not Twitter. Currently, Twitter says it has 300 U.S.-based sites up and running on Twitter Blue and “many more” will arrive in the future.

Image Credits: Twitter

Quick loading, clutter-free articles is a feature that other tech giants have offered, including Facebook with its Instant Articles and Google with AMP. But these earlier efforts have been controversial for locking publishers into the format, which could then dictate their visibility on the respective platform. They were also sometimes criticized for not delivering on their promises, like increased monetization, and for offering publishers limited user data.

Twitter, however, touts its news reading feature as a way for subscribers to support their favorite sites, as a portion of the Twitter Blue subscription will be paid out directly to the participating publishers. The app will display a chart that shows you which sites have received payments based on your own readership, and how much they’ve made.

The plan, says Twitter, is to make the micro-payments deliver more revenue than ads.

“Our goal is that each site makes 50% more per person than they were making serving ads to that person,” said Twitter Senior Direct of Product, Tony Haile, when introducing the feature. “At Twitter, we recognize that a great public conversation requires a thriving journalism ecosystem. So with Blue, we’re not just trying to enable a better internet for subscribers, but a better internet for journalism, too,” he added.

But these micro-payments may not go far enough in terms of replacing the potential monetization that comes from having readers visit a site directly, where they’ll encounter not only ads, but other promotions and initiatives a site has to offer — like subscriptions, free and paid newsletters, event tickets, or whatever else the publisher may want to put in front of its audience. Twitter Blue readers may also not be able to recirculate through the site as web visitors do, decreasing overall engagement.

Image Credits: Twitter

Twitter notes that some of Twitter Blue’s features will vary by market and platform, at launch.

Top Articles is initially live on Android and desktop at launch. Personalization features like app icons and themes are iOS only, as is custom navigation and pinned DM conversations. Support for longer video uploads from the web, obviously, is desktop-only.

With today’s launch, Twitter Blue is now available in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The company says it plans to offer the subscription in other markets, but couldn’t comment on those plans at this time.

Twitter has been steadily updating its rebuilt API following its mid-2020 relaunch. Most recently, the company added support for Twitter Spaces to its developer platform. Today, it’s announcing support that will enable developers to build better Twitter bots by launching new endpoints that allow you to tweet, delete tweets, post polls, use Reply settings, and tag people in images. It also now supports Super Follows functionality, so developers can build out solutions to support creators, the company says.

While bots that post spam are unwanted, Twitter has made it clear that it sees other bots as being helpful. The company in September introduced a new label that would allow what it calls the “good bots” to properly identify themselves on the platform, for example.

At the time, it cited examples of good bots including the public service account @earthquakesSF; a bot offering COVID-19 updates called @vax_progress; a bot that offers an ongoing breakdown of the last 100 bills introduced in Congress, @last100bills; an accessibility-focused bot, @AltTxtReminder; and others that just add value in their own way, like @met_drawings, which shares public domain works from The Met’s Drawings & Prints department, or the goofy @EmojiMashupBot, among others.

Today, Twitter again touts the @vaxprogress bot and its developer, Brian Moore, who’s also behind bots like @NYTIMESALLCAPS and @chernobylstatus, and who will become an early adopter of the new Twitter API v2 features, he says.

While things like polls and image tagging will make tweets more interactive, Twitter’s new “manage tweets” endpoints will allow for more basic functionality — like posting tweets or deleting tweets for an authenticated account. This could enable more Twitter cleanup solutions, perhaps, like those that remove old tweets on behalf of their users, or solutions that post automatic updates, like the above bots, for instance.

In addition to supporting features that will allow developers to post tweets and do more, in terms of how those tweets operate or what they include, the company is also expanding the new API to support its creator platform, Super Follows.

Launched publicly in September, Super Follows allow users to support their favorite creators on the platform by subscribing to their exclusive content, like member-only tweets and newsletters, for instance. Fans may also gain access to private communities, deals, and discounts, or other membership perks, and receive a supporter badge, depending on how the creator sets up their Super Follow membership program.

With the API changes, Twitter is adding the ability to share tweets to Super Followers via the API, which would allow developers to build out solutions that help creators make money from their Twitter fan base. While today, Super Follows is still limited to only a select number of creators, the audience for this functionality isn’t yet large. But Twitter has its eye on the future here, thinking about how third-party apps aimed at creators may need to build in support for sharing content to a wide variety of platforms — Twitter among them.

Combined the updates allow developers to build platforms where users are able to take advantage of Twitter-native features directly — like conversation controls, polls, Super Follows, and other features — much of which hasn’t been possible before. That could lead to improved third-party Twitter clients, as well.

Twitter said much of this new functionality was prioritized for the new API release based on community feedback, and the company asked for the feedback to continue so it can help plan what to build next.

Apple is furthering its investment in Original Podcasts with today’s debut of the new true crime-focused Apple Original Podcast “Hooked.” The nine-part series will explore the story of a top engineer, Tony Hathaway, whose addiction to opioids led him to become one of the most prolific bank robbers in U.S. history. The podcast is produced by Campside Media and is hosted by its co-founder, Josh Dean. It features interviews conducted over three years with Hathaway, his family, law enforcement officers, and others involved in the story.

While the subject matter may be compelling, what makes this podcast stand out is that, despite being branded an “Apple TV+ podcast,” the show “Hooked” is not a tie-in to another Apple TV+ series or film. (At least not one that’s been announced.)

Image Credits: Apple

Other Apple TV+ branded podcasts, meanwhile, serve as companions to the streaming platform’s original video programming, including “The Line” (tied to the warfare documentary airing later this month), as well as “For All Mankind: The Official Podcast,” “Foundation: The Official Podcast,” and “The Problem With Jon Stewart: The Official Podcast.”

This is not the first time Apple has experimented with a standalone podcast of some kind, however.

Last year, it launched the music interview podcast “The Zane Lowe Interview Series,” which saw Apple’s Global Creative Director Lowe having conversations with popular artists like Billie Eilish, Justin Bieber, Kanye West, Hayley Williams and, Lady Gaga. Before that, Apple published corporate news as podcasts, including its keynotes, earnings calls, and events at the Apple Store. It also once used the podcasting medium to distribute its 2019 Grammy’s Celebration, which had first live-streamed on Beats 1.

Although produced by Campside Media, the new “Hooked” podcast was developed through the Apple TV+ creative team, which is why Apple TV+ is credited on the podcast’s page alongside the media company.

The launch of a standalone podcast in a top genre like true crime could indicate an interest in testing the market for more Originals that aren’t necessarily tied to other efforts, like Apple TV+ or Apple Music.

Unlike some of rival Spotify’s Originals and Exclusives, this show won’t be locked into the Apple Podcasts app. Instead, users can choose to tune in via an app of their choosing, as the episodes are published both on Apple Podcasts and via RSS.

Apple Podcasts is available in over 100 languages and in over 170 countries and regions across iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, Apple Watch, Apple Tv, HomePod mini, CarPlay, iTunes on Windows, and via other smart speakers and car systems, notes Apple.

But RSS means the show can also be streamed via a third-party podcast app, like Pocket Casts, Overcast, Castbox, Podbean, and others.

The first three episodes of “Hooked” are live today and new episodes will subsequently roll out every Wednesday.

Microsoft is bringing back Google Wave, the doomed real-time messaging and collaboration platform Google launched in 2009 and prematurely shuttered in 2010.

Maybe we should’ve seen this coming. Back in 2019, Microsoft announced the Fluid Framework (not to be confused with the Fluent design system). The idea here was nothing short of trying to re-invent the nature of business documents and how developers build real-time applications. Last year, the company open-sourced Fluid and started building it into a few of its own Office applications. Today, at its Ignite conference, it’s launching a whole new product built on top of Fluid: Microsoft Wave Loop.

Loop is a new app — and concept — that takes the Fluid framework, which provides developers with flexible components to mix and match in order to create real-time editing-based applications, to create a new experience for users to collaborate on documents. In many ways, that was also the promise of Google Wave — real-time collaboration plus a developer framework and protocol to bring Wave everywhere.

Image Credits: Microsoft

Now, you may say: isn’t that what Teams is for? Why isn’t this built into Teams. And yes, all of that is in the works, but there will also be a Loop app, which Microsoft says “combines a powerful and flexible canvas with portable components that move freely and stay in sync across apps – enabling teams to think, plan and create together.”

Image Credits: Microsoft

There are three elements to Loop: Loop components, “atomic units of productivity” (tip of my hat to whoever came up with that phrase) like lists, tables, notes and tasks; Loop pages, “flexible canvases where you can organize your components and pull in other useful elements like files, links, or data to help teams think, connect, and collaborate;” and Loop workspaces, shared spaces where you somehow can catch up on what everybody is working on and track progress toward shared goals.

One thing Wave never had that is apparently a core feature of Loop is that Loop tracks your cursor position in real time. That’s the current state of the metaverse for you right there. Nothing says I’m present and active in a meeting like moving your cursor around, after all.

Some new Loop/Fluent components coming soon are a voting table (a day-one feature of Google Wave, I might add) and a status tracker.

Google Wave was clearly ahead of its time.

Apple has now launched a beta version of its “App Privacy Report,” a new feature that aims to provide iOS users with details about how often their everyday apps are requesting access to sensitive information, and where that information is being shared. The feature was first introduced at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference in June, amid other privacy-focused improvements, including tools to block tracking pixels in emails, a private VPN, and more. Apple explained at the time the new report would include details about an app’s access to user data and sensors, including the user’s location, photos, contacts, and more, as well as a list of domains that the app contacts.

Though announced as a part of the iOS 15 update, the App Privacy Report was not available when the new version of iOS rolled out earlier this fall. It’s still not accessible to the general public but has entered into a wider beta test with the release of the iOS 15.2 and iPadOS 15.2 betas.

The new report goes beyond the potentially fallible App Privacy labels, which detail what sort of sensitive data an app collects and how it’s used. Developers may not always fill out their labels accurately — either by mistake or with a desire to mislead end users — and Apple’s App Review team may not always catch those ommissions.

Instead, the new App Privacy Report works to collect information about how apps are behaving more directly.

When enabled by users in their device’s Privacy Settings, the App Privacy Report will create a list of their apps’ activity over the past seven days. You can then tap on any app to see further details about when the app last accessed sensitive data or one of the device’s sensors — like the microphone or location, for example. This information is available in a list where each access is logged with a timestamp.

In another section, “App Network Activity,” users will be able to see a list of domains apps have communicated with over the past seven days. This list could include domains used by the app itself to provide its functionality, but will also reveal those from third-party trackers and analytics providers the app works with for analytics and advertising purposes, for example.

The “Website Network Activity” offers a similar list, but focuses on websites that contacted domains, some of which may have been provided by an app. You can also view the most contacted domains and drill down into individual domains to see which trackers and analytics they may be using as well as which apps have been contacting them, and when.

Ahead of the beta launch, Apple made a feature called “Record App Activity” available, which allowed developers to preview what users would see when the App Privacy Report became available. This option produced a JSON file where they could confirm their app was behaving as expected. Already, this feature produced some interesting findings. For instance, Chinese super app WeChat was found to be scanning users’ phones for new photos every few hours.

While the App Privacy Report will put into users’ hands a treasure trove of data, it could present complications for developers who may have to now explain to users that some of these data requests are not truly privacy violations — they’re about providing the promised app functionality. A weather app, for example, may need to pull a users’ location on a regular basis if the user has requested push notifications about changing weather patterns, like storm updates, to help them prepare for travel.

When presenting the app to developers, Apple said the report would give them an opportunity to “build trust” with users by providing transparency about what their app is doing. The company also suggested it could give the developers themselves better insight into the SDKs they’ve chosen to install, to ensure their behavior aligns with what the developer wants and expects.

Apple has not said when the new feature may exit beta, but it’s possible it will ship when iOS 15.2 becomes publicly available.

Apple finally put itself on equal footing with rivals by allowing users to rate and review its own, first-party apps for the first time this fall, amid increased regulatory pressure ahead of a likely antitrust investigation. Although some of Apple’s apps had been available to download separately, they had never been able to be reviewed. And some didn’t fare well, as it turned out — like Mail, News, and Podcasts, for example, which started off under 3 stars. Now, Apple has opened up a few more first-party apps to the App Store for ratings and reviews, including the Phone app, Messages, Photos, Safari, and others.

The change was first spotted by developer Kosta Eleftheriou, who has been a prominent figure in pushing for App Store reforms, particularly on the matter of App Store scammers.

Citing Appfigures data, Eleftheriou noted a number of Apple apps have now become available to rate and review with iOS 15.1. This includes several default apps, like Clock, Phone, Messages, Camera, Photos, Apple Health, and Safari. It also includes Apple Watch-enabled apps like Workout, World Clock, Find Devices, and Heart Rate. (Users on iOS 14.x may be able to see the apps, but won’t be able to rate and review them, he noted.)

This change could allow Apple to independently update its default apps outside of iOS updates as it does now. This is a tactic Google follows with many of its core Android features and functions, which have their own Play Store listings.

Appfigures confirmed to us the apps appear to have been added as separate listings on October 25th, independently of the latest iOS update. As many consumers are likely unaware of the apps’ listings at this time, they have few reviews. For instance, the Phone app only has 6 ratings so far, they pointed out.  Messages has just a handful of ratings, as well, but they’re positive, giving the app 4.7 stars. (See below)

Image Credits: Appfigures (opens in a new window)

Oddly, Safari — which has 4 ratings, so far– has an age rating of only 4+ for its web browser, while its rivals like Chrome and Firefox are rated 17+, as are other web browsers.

It will be interesting to see how well these apps hold up as more people discover they can rate and review Apple’s default apps. Hopefully, by opening themselves up to consumer feedback, Apple will be motivated to make the changes users want to see in these built-in apps, and get alerted earlier to possible bugs as they arise.

Google today announced a preview of Android 12L, which sounds like a new version of Android, but Google calls it “a special feature drop that makes Android 12 even better on large screens.”

The idea here is to provide users on tablets, foldables and Chrome OS laptops — anything with a screen above 600 dp — with an improved user interface.

The developer preview of Android 12L is now available for developers who want to give it a try, as well as a new Android 12L emulator and support for it in Android Studio. 

But 12L is also for phones, Google says, confusing no one. Since you won’t really see most of the new features there, though, the focus right now is on other devices, with beta enrollments for Pixel devices launching later in the preview.

Since Google calls it a ‘feature drop’ and ‘feature update’ in its announcement today, we’re not looking at a full fork of Android for these devices the way Apple split up iOS and iPadOS. Instead, it’s an update for large-screen devices that introduces additional multitasking tools and an optimized user interface. By default, Android 12L should also make apps look better on these devices, too. 

Image Credits: Google

Specifically, this means Google refined how notifications, quick settings, lock screen, overview and the home screen look on large screens. System apps on Android 12L have also been optimized, too. 

What’s probably most interesting here is the new multitasking features, with a new taskbar that is a bit reminiscent of iPadOS. Android already supported split-screen mode on tablets, but Google notes that it’s now more discoverable. You simply drag and drop an icon from the taskbar onto the screen to invoke it. This also means every app on Android is now enabled to support split-screen mode (something that developer previously had to opt-in to).

Google plans to release 12L early next year, “in time for the next wave of Android 12 tablets and foldable.” We should probably expect to hear a lot about Android tablets and foldable at MWC then.

In addition to Android 12L, Google also today announced new features in OS and Play for developers to better support these devices. These include updates to its Material Design guidance for large-screen devices, but also updates to Jetpack Compose to make it easier to build for these machines and to ensure that apps can more easily adapt to various screen orientations and sizes. Android Studio is also getting a resizable emulator to help developers test their apps on a wider variety of screen sizes and a new visual linting tool to surface UI warnings and suggestions when the layout has issues.

As for Google Play, the company will now check apps against its large screen app quality guidelines and its search rankings will take the results of this into account. “For apps that are not optimized for large screens, we’ll start warning large screen users with a notice on the app’s Play Store listing page,” Google says. 

In September, analysts at eMarketer predicted Spotify was poised to overtake Apple Podcasts in U.S. listenership sometime this year. Today, Spotify announced for the first time it may have succeeded on that front. During the company’s Q3 2021 earnings call, the company said that according to Edison Research and its own internal sources, it “recently became” the No. 1 podcast platform U.S. listeners use the most. Given the U.S. is the largest global podcast market, the milestone is significant and speaks to the sizable investment Spotify has made in podcasts over the past few years.

The company didn’t break down its podcast listener numbers specifically, however. Instead, it shared its monthly active users overall grew 19% year-over-year to reach 381 million in the quarter, up from 365 million last year. Premium subscribers also grew 19% to reach 172 million, up from 165 million last year.

According to eMarketer’s recent data, Spotify and Apple Podcasts have been neck and neck in terms of U.S. podcast listeners. Its analysts said last month Spotify would reach 28.2 million monthly U.S. podcast listeners by year-end, topping Apple Podcast’s 28.0 million by a thin margin. (The firm had predicted these same numbers earlier in 2021, as well.) It forecast Spotify’s number of U.S. podcast listeners would continue to grow to reach 43.6 million by 2025.

Reached for comment, Edison Research confirmed the podcast milestone is based on usage, not downloads.

The data is from the firm’s second-quarter Podcast Consumer Tracker, its subscription service that covers the podcast industry. Respondents were asked “what platform or service do you use most to listen to podcasts?” and Spotify came in at No. 1, at 24% of weekly podcast consumers. This put it ahead of Apple Podcasts for iOS (21%) and YouTube (18%). Edison Research says its sample is in excess of 8,000 weekly podcast consumers.

But without hard numbers from Spotify or Apple, it’s hard to specifically confirm how close the race still is at this time.

Spotify attributed its podcast listenership growth not only to its content slate, but also to its product improvements.

“We started our journey three years ago in podcasting with a catalog of about 185,000 podcasts. And we were really nowhere, compared to the largest players in the industry. Today, we have 3.2 million podcasts on the platform, a growth rate of over 1500%,” noted Spotify CEO Daniel Ek. In the prior quarter, Spotify had 2.9 million podcasts.

“So why did we succeed this fast? Well, obviously our content investments have helped a great deal,” said Ek. “But it’s also another proof point of the impact our platform improvements and product innovations are having on our business overall. And the velocity of shipping matters — from the recent launch of interactivity and enhancements like polls and Q&A, to the release of enhanced listening features and new original programming around the world. We fought hard to gain new listeners. And our success is not attributable to just one thing, but literally hundreds, if not thousands, of improvements that we’re working on in parallel for the benefit of creators, users, and advertisers alike,” he said.

Ek said that the company’s culture of innovation, which leads to an improved user experience, brings more creators to the platform to share their content. This is in turn, brings more advertisers.

“And all of these things coupled together — users, creators, and advertisers — unlock the power of our flywheel,” he added.

However, Spotify’s milestone in U.S. podcast listenership (which Spotify confirmed to TechCrunch had not yet been shared until now), comes shortly after a revamp of Apple’s Podcasts app which was criticized by creators and end users. Podcasters complained of bugs, errors, and a confusing interface. Apple issued a fix for one critical bug related to automatic downloads in an update this summer, but the damage to its reputation may take longer to recover.

During the quarter, the percentage of monthly active users remained strong, Spotify said, and was up 20% year-over-year on a per-user basis. Podcasts’ share overall consumption hours also reached an all-time high in the quarter.

Meanwhile, podcasts are helping Spotify boost its bottom line. Spotify noted it had its biggest-ever quarter for ads in Q3, partially fueled by its growing podcast slate, and said 2021 would mark the first time it surpassed one billion euros in advertising revenue. It did not break out how much of its ad revenue is now generated by podcasts, but said its podcast advertising growth rate was “in the triple digits.”

On the product side, the company released a number of updates to its podcasts platform in the quarter, including the launch of paid podcast subscriptions in the U.S., new interactive features for Anchor creators, an expansion of its Music + Talk podcast format, video podcast support, among other things. It also released 32 new Originals & Exclusives, including “Armchair Expert” with Dax Sheppard and “Call Her Daddy” in July, and announced a multi-year content partnership with The Ringer and WWE for original and exclusive content. Internationally, Spotify release 76 new Originals & Exclusives.

Overall, Spotify revenue was $2.9 billion in the quarter, up 27% year-over-year, with ad sales rising 75% to reach $374 million, at the top end of its guidance.

The company added that it had not been significantly impacted by the iOS privacy changes that had impacted other ad-supported businesses, like Snap and Facebook, as it had “a ton of first-party data” thanks to all its users being logged in.

Facebook’s network meltdown earlier this month — an outage that initially stemmed from a configuration error — was a huge pain for many users (and a big cost to Facebook). For enterprises, it also served as a poignant reminder about a salient fact of networks: The complexity and interdependency of systems today mean that when something doesn’t work between two entities — be it apps, servers or something else — the effects can be disastrous, unless those overlaps can be detected and mitigated ahead of a live deployment, or found and fixed quickly even if they are already out in the wild.

Today, a startup called Gluware that has built a platform that aims to do just that — specifically by providing network orchestration and automation tools that identify and automatically fix when something is about to go awry on a network, described by the CEO to me as “RPA” for network ops — is announcing $43 million in funding to continue building out its business, in a growth round led by Bain Capital with participation from Acadia Woods Partners and other unnamed existing investors.

Gluware is not disclosing its valuation but from what we understand it is around $700 million, notable considering how little it’s raised to date (just under $47 million in the last 10 years, according to PitchBook data, and bootstrapped before that). It’s also notable for being based in California but not the Bay Area: it’s HQ is in Sacramento, apparently a newly-emerging location for people leaving more established tech enclaves.

In a period where a number of enterprises have put the gas on network growth and operations to handle both increased traffic but also new working architectures for its people, Gluware said its ARR growth in the last year has been 400% (it does not disclose actual figures).

Gluware got its start originally as a Cisco shop, inking a strategic deal with the company early on to build orchestration and automation systems that ran specifically on its servers, specifically a software-defined wide-area network controller to work with Cisco kit. As networks evolved and became continually more complex, the opportunity changed and became about working in multi-vendor networks and for a variety of different enterprises that might not be the typical Cisco service provider customers. Its services now integrate, by way of APIs, to cover network operations across more than 30 different platforms and operating systems. Gluware’s CEO and co-founder Jeff Gray estimates that Gluware’s coverage currently points to a $10.8 billion addressable market.

Currently, and in keeping with changing use cases and architectures, Gluware’s sweet spot up to now has been working with larger enterprises in highly regulated sectors like healthcare or finance that are heavily dependent on cloud or hybrid network architectures that bring in many disparate operations, may lack large enough in-house teams to build and operate their own automation and orchestration solutions, but have a lot of requirements to stay operational and protect user data in the process. The list is heavy of Fortune 500 and Global 2000 names, with Mastercard, EY and Merck among them.

Large tech companies — web scalers, as Gray described them — were out of Gluware’s sights simply because they typically build and operate those tools in-house, and the idea was that Gluware was building tools for the rest of the market that performed just as well. However, as Gray put it, incidents like Facebook’s definitely change the game.

“We haven’t been targeting the web scalers, and we presented ourselves as an alternative to DIY. Traditionally I have always said that if you are a Google, a FB or a Goldman Sachs, you could pour a tremendous amount of resource into scripts and build you own automation software,” he said. “But Facebook’s audit tool issued a rogue command and broke its network, at scale. So  even the large web scalers of the world are not immune. I think we could be a great fit.”

The company’s focus on network operations has a natural synergy with security operations, since many, but not all, outages covering, say, border gate protocol or domain name server errors have been linked also to data breaches, and that lays the groundwork for how Gluware sees its role in the network operations IT stack. Its tools can be applied to device management, operating system management, configuration modeling, workflows and more to minimize downtime, speed up operations, to meet compliance requirements, and more.

That long list, and Gluware’s traction to date in meeting its demands, are what have attracted investors. “As enterprises continue to struggle with network automation progress, Gluware’s unique platform delivers enhanced network security and agility while creating real business value and outcomes for customers,” said Olof Bergqvist, a Managing Director at Bain Capital, in a statement. “We are excited to support Gluware’s next phase of growth and accelerate the company’s innovative technology and mission-critical solutions to continue meeting the modern needs of enterprises while strengthening its value-proposition to its customers, suppliers and partners.”

Last year we covered Adtech startup Admix’s $7 million Series A funding. The London-based company brings ads to games, e-sports, virtual reality, and augmented reality. In-game advertising at scale, where advertisers can bid programmatically through traditional ad-buying platforms, rather than relying on an ad agency model, remains an enormous area, largely under-exploited.

Today Admix is doubling down on this very model, with a $25 million Series B round to scale up its ‘In-Play’ solution and prep it for new platforms like metaverses – the likes of Facebook and others are clearly building.

The new raise brings Admix’s total funding to USD $37 million.

The round was co-led by Elefund and DIP capital. Also participating is Force Over Mass, Notion Capital, Speedinvest, Rocket Capital, Colopl Next, Sure Valley Ventures, and Sidedoor Ventures as well as growth investor Kuvi Capital and angels from the gaming industry.

Samuel Huber, CEO and Co-founder at Admix, commented:“We see the internet entering a new stage: Web 3.0 or the metaverse, characterized by real-time 3D interactions and a new creator economy, spearheaded by the video games industry… While many players in our industry are essentially agencies, Admix is building critical infrastructure for creators to monetize their content in the best way possible.”

Serik Kaldykulov, Founder and Managing Partner at Elefund, commented: “Sam and Joe are exactly the type of founders we want to work with at Elefund. They created Admix and In-Play with their incredible vision for the future of digital gaming, and we believe that they will continue to play a significant role in shaping how consumers and businesses exist and interact in what the world will come to know as the metaverse.”

Elaborating, Huber told me that companies in the same space include Bidstack, Adverty, Anzu and Frameplay. However, he said the difference with these entities is that Admix is “building infrastructure to automate the process and serve non-intrusive ads to the right user in the right game at the right time, using data. This tech means scalability (across 300+ games and hundred of advertisers we worked with in the last 2 years, 90% are self onboarded) and network effects defensibility, which is why VCs are betting on us to dominate the category.”

Admix recently signed deals for In-Play campaigns with Calvin Klein, Schuh, Movember, and Sky.

YouTube says it will soon begin to demonetize some of the channels on its platform that market themselves as “made for kids” if the content they produce is low-quality, encourages negative behavior or attitudes, or is heavily commercial. The company had previously warned this sort of content would no longer be eligible for inclusion in its dedicated YouTube Kids app, but starting next month YouTube will also begin to enforce new monetization policies as well, which may impact the creators’ eligibility for or possible removal from the YouTube Partner Program.

YouTube first announced its plans to increase its protections for minors in August, saying that some of the updates would directly address upcoming regulations, while others were going beyond what would be required by law. At the time, YouTube said it would shift the default settings on videos for users ages 13 to 17 to private, would enable “take a break” and bedtime reminders for minors, would stop leveraging “interests” data for targeting teens and kids with ads, and more.

Among the changes was a warning to those creators specifically making content aimed at kids, noting the company planned to remove “overly commercial content” from its standalone YouTube Kids app aimed at younger children.

Ahead of this move, a number of consumer advocacy groups had been pressuring YouTube and regulators alike to put an end to these types of videos, saying they blurred the lines between content and advertising. Plus, they argued, some creators weren’t disclosing that they had brand relationships behind the scenes that were fueling this sort of content production.

But without enforcement and guidelines around what’s appropriate for kids, some of YouTube’s largest creators were channels like multimillionaire Ryan Kaji of Ryan ToysReview (now Ryan’s World), which focused heavily on consumerism and toy unboxings.

YouTube in August said that it would remove content from YouTube Kids that incited viewers to buy a product and “content focused on the excessive accumulation or consumption of products.” Now, YouTube is warning that any channel targeting younger audiences or those that are classified as “made for kids” could be at risk of demonization if they put out other sorts of low-quality content.

This includes content that encourages negative behavior and attitudes (like bullying, dishonestly, disrespect to others, dangerous pranks, unhealthy eating habits, and more); content that’s deceptively educational; content that hinders comprehension; content that’s sensational or misleading; and content that includes strange use of children’s characters. (The latter had been a particular problem in recent years as videos featuring characters like Peppa Pig in situations that were not kid-friendly).

Image Credits: YouTube

Starting in November, YouTube says it will begin to enforce additional monetization policies with these quality principles in mind for channels designated “made for kids” or that frequently create content that’s made for kids.

If the creators are making low-quality content, according to these principles, they may be removed or blocked from joining the YouTube Partner Program. Other videos that fall under the low-quality principles may receive limited or no advertising. Initially, YouTube says it will start with videos that encourage negative behavior. Others that have a strong focus on low-quality “made for kids” content will also go under review, the company added.

These negative principles were already factors that determined if the content is appropriate for YouTube Kids and informed the larger YouTube algorithm. But monetization changes are a much more powerful tool to shape what sort of content creators actually produce.

YouTube says creators whose channels could be impacted by the monetization changes will receive an email before the changes go into effect. In addition, even those channels that aren’t immediately impacted but produce low-quality kids’ content may receive a yellow icon in a warning to advertisers. The company didn’t say how many channels may be impacted as a result of its new policy.

On the flip side, content that adheres to high-quality principles will be recommended more by the YouTube algorithm going forward, in addition to being included in the YouTube Kids app.

The high-quality principles include things like content that encourages kids to be a good person; content that encourages learning and curiosity; content focused on creativity, play and a sense of imagination; content that focuses on interaction with real-world issues; and content that promotes diversity, equity, and inclusion.

The announcement arrives on the heels of an increased examination of the role tech companies are playing when it comes to the well-being of minors using their services. Already, Google and YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok have announced updates that place more emphasis on the safety and privacy of their younger users. YouTube also launched new parental controls. This week, Snap and TikTok will have to face their first Congressional hearing, too.

YouTube says it will continue to reevaluate and update its principles going forward.

Android 12 is now officially available for Google’s Pixel phones and will slowly roll out to others in the coming months. Chances are, you think of Android as a consumer product, but over the course of the last few years, Google has put a lot of work into making it an enterprise tool, too. It’s maybe no surprise that with the launch of Android 12, which already includes a number of new enterprise features by default, Google is also now announcing a couple of new security-focused initiatives around Android Enterprise, too.

This includes a new bug bounty program, the aptly named Android Enterprise Vulnerability Program, which promises up to $250,000 for a full exploit of a Pixel device that runs Android Enterprise.

But Goole is also working with its wider partner ecosystem to expand its support for the Zero Trust security model on Android. This means, for example, working with partners like Okta, Ping and ForgeRock to move their authentication workflows from WebView to Chrome Custom Tabs on Android. Google has long argued that developers should use Custom Tabs whenever they render content from outside of their own domain, in part for performance reasons, but also because Chrome’s Safe Browsing features provide additional security.

“While WebView is a flexible and powerful component for rendering web content, Custom Tabs are more modern and full-featured, allowing identity providers to gather device trust signals, improve employee security and enable single-sign-on across apps and the web,” explains Rajeev Pathak, a senior product manager at Google, in today’s announcement.

Google is also extending its Android Management API to make it easier for companies that use Enterprise Mobility Solutions from the likes of Microsoft, Citrix or Google itself to ensure that users “receive the fastest delivery of all of our enterprise features, with best practices and Android Enterprise Recommended requirements set by default.”