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.

Global app spending reached $65 billion in the first half of 2022, up only slightly from the $64.4 billion during the same period in 2021, as hypergrowth fueled by the pandemic has decreased. But overall, the app economy is continuing to grow, having produced 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. Global spending across iOS and Google Play last year was $133 billion, and consumers downloaded 143.6 billion apps.

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.

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Top Stories

It’s time to BeReal…on TikTok

Image Credits: TikTok

We expect to see this sort of copy-and-pasting from Meta — or even Snap and YouTube these days — as the major tech companies try to figure out how to compete with TikTok’s short-form video. But typically, it’s TikTok that’s being copied from, not the one doing the copying. That changed this week, however, when the company announced it was launching a fairly shameless BeReal clone in its app, which it calls “TikTok Now.”

Similar to the hot Gen Z app BeReal, TikTok Now will prompt its U.S. users to take a front and back camera photo or 10-second video at a random time every day, which is then shared with friends in a new section labeled “Now” in the app’s main navigation — quite a prominent position for an unoriginal feature.

The addition initially seems like an odd one for TikTok, given its primary focus is on video entertainment, not friendship-focused social networking, which is what BeReal’s all about. But we have seen some signs in recent months that TikTok’s ambitions are aimed at taking on both areas. The company has been pushing more features designed to connect its users with their real-life friends on its app, for example by asking for access to users’ address books, and even swapping out its Discover tab for a Friends tab. Plus, as you browse your For You feed, you’ll also see recommendations of people to follow. Some users report that people they know have been finding their TikTok accounts thanks to what appears to be based on address book-based phone number matching, as well. (And they’re not all happy about it.)

Meanwhile, TikTok hasn’t been entirely transparent about what it’s up to here, but this BeReal clone makes it a lot more obvious: it wants users’ friend graphs. It wants to be a social network, too.

This reason is simple. Younger, Gen Z users are adopting new online behaviors when it comes to social networking. They’re moving away from older social networks, like Facebook, and have even begun to find Instagram increasingly crowded and annoying with its Reels focus. Gen Z instead is using video networking on apps like Yubo, and checking in on close friends through apps like BeReal. If TikTok doesn’t move into these areas, too, then this in-demand demographic will continue to take part in these new networking experiences in other apps, potentially impacting the time they have to spend on TikTok — which hurts its own business. It would also prevent TikTok from developing features that cater to real-world friends in the future, which could make its app more comprehensive than the video timewaster it is today.

More

iOS 16 adoption is faster than iOS 15

Image Credits: Mixpanel

According to data from Mixpanel (via iMore), there’s greater consumer demand for iOS 16 compared with the release of iOS 15 last year. After the first 24 hours, iOS 16 had been downloaded by 6.71% of users, versus 6.48% of users who downloaded iOS 15. However, both updates had trailed iOS 14, which reached 9.22% of users its first day. However, iOS 14 was a major consumer update, as it introduced Home Screen widgets for the first time. While iOS 16 brings another widget format — Lock Screen widgets — other features, like Live Activities, are still to come.

As of Friday, Mixpanel notes iOS 16 has 16.76% adoption, but 72.98% of users are still on iOS 15 at this time; 10.26% of users are on an even older OS.

Social media cos get grilled by the Senate

Image Credits: Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images / Getty Images

The social app makers were hauled into Congress for another hearing this week. After having to answer for their lack of minor protections in their apps last year, this time around the companies were testifying before the Senate Homeland Security Committee about what risks they may pose to national security. For Meta, the hearing was a much-needed reprieve as many of the senators had their eyes on TikTok instead — especially after reports that TikTok U.S. user data was accessed by employees in China.

The companies were asked to disclose the number of full-time employees they have on their trust and safety teams, but all except Twitter refused to answer. Twitter, however, said it it has 2,200 people working on trust and safety across its platform, though it wasn’t clear if some did other work. Meta was asked how many of the 40,000 people it reportedly had on trust and safety were focused on non-U.S. users and non-English language issue, and the company didn’t answer.

TikTok, meanwhile, was pressed hard on its relationship with the Chinese government. COO Vanessa Pappas denied the reporting from BuzzFeed about employee access to user data and dodged other questions — including one about how many of its employees were members of the Chinese Communist Party. She also said TikTok was not collecting U.S. users’ biometric data, even though the company had quietly updated its privacy policy last year to allow it to do so.

Adobe’s big bet on Figma

Adobe’s stunning $20 billion acquisition of digital design company Figma this week was a big bet that takes out one of its biggest rivals, even if it meant paying twice as much as Figma’s most recent private valuation. What does this mean for the company going forward, and what other design startups could be next? TechCrunch+ has the answers.

This Week in Apps readers can take 15% off an annual pass to TechCrunch+ with the code “TWIA.” 

• Adobe makes a $20B bet on a collaborative future with Figma acquisition
• After the Figma-Adobe deal, which design startups are acquisition targets?

Weekly Updates

Platforms: Apple

Image Credits: Apple

• iOS 16 debuted. The latest version of Apple’s new mobile operating system arrived right on time, allowing users to take advantage of upgrades like Lock Screen widgets, Focus filters, the ability to edit and unsend iMessage text, background cutout for photos, security and privacy improvements, updates to Apple’s first-party apps and more.

• Apple also updated its other OSes, including the release of watchOS 9, which brings new watch faces, an improved Workout app, sleep stages, an AFib History feature, redesigned Compass app and new Medications app.
• Apple’s tvOS 16, meanwhile, brought more under-the-hood improvements, like support for Nintendo Switch controllers, HDR10+ and the ability for TV apps to leverage data from other Apple devices (e.g. Apple Fitness+ will show your workout metrics on-screen).
• iPadOS 15.7, macOS Monterey 12.6 and macOS Big Sur 11.7, were released as well.
• WeatherKit subscriptions launched alongside iOS 16. The service is meant to replace the weather service from Apple-acquired Dark Sky, which is shutting down. WeatherKit delivers up to 500,000 API calls per month for weather and forecast data to registered Apple Developer Program members before pricing kicks in.
• Apple told developers this week they would soon be able to buy new Search Ad spots on the App Store. The company invited developers to a session to learn more about the ad slots, which should be live by the holiday season.

Platforms: Google

• Google began rolling out Play Store reviews tailored to your device — a feature it first announced in August 2021.
• Google said it would make the newly approved emojis available to Android users by the end of the year, after the Unicode Consortium published the Unicode 15.0 standard on Tuesday with 31 new emojis. The additions include a pushing hand, a shaking face (or I’m SHOOK), a moose, a goose, the long-awaited pink heart and a Wi-Fi/wireless sign.

Commerce

• Supermarket chain Wegmans said it will shut down its in-store scan-and-go app on Sunday, September 18, 2022, stating that it experienced too many losses from the SCAN program to continue making the mobile app available.
• Walmart introduced new virtual try-on technology, which uses customers’ own photos to model the clothing across a range of brands. The new feature, “Be Your Own Model,” expands on the existing option to choose from one of more than 100 existing models of different heights, sizes and skin tones. Initially, users will be able to take their photos with the Walmart iOS app to virtually try on clothes from Walmart.com.

Image Credits: Walmart

Fintech

• Coinbase updated its app to allow U.S. users to see a scorecard that evaluates members of Congress on crypto policy issues and pushes them to register to vote and locate political events.
• It was also merge week for Ethereum! Here’s what comes next.

Social

Image Credits: Meta

• Facebook introduced Community Chats, a new feature that connects Facebook Groups in Messenger via text, audio and video chats. The feature also offers categories and admin-only chats, as well.
• Internal Meta research, reported by The WSJ, indicated that Instagram users are spending 17.6 million hours per day on Reels, far short of the 197.8 million hours per day spent on TikTok. In addition, one-third of Reels were found to be recycled from other platforms.
• Twitter shareholders voted to approve Elon Musk’s proposed $44 billion buyout of the platform, even as Musk tries to cancel the deal. The vote was held on the same day that former Twitter security lead Peiter Zatko testified before Congress about his whistleblower report documenting the security and privacy lapses at the company.
• Instagram began internally testing a tipping feature, “Gifts,” that gives creators a new way to make money through Reels.
• French social app Yubo said it will begin to verify all users’ ages using facial recognition technology. The startup is using Yoti’s age estimation technology, which uses the phone camera to take a photo and a short video of the user’s face, verifying ages with 98.9% accuracy. The company has 60 million users and had initially started verifying ages of those who said they were younger, like 13 or 14 years old.

Image Credits: Yubo

• Discord launched a new Forum Channels feature to help server owners better organize conversations. The feature involves sub-channels that can be used to branch off conversations about particular topics or to avoid having to create another channel for focused conversations.
• Snapchat for Web began to roll out to all users worldwide, after initial tests as a Snapchat+ feature. The web version allows users to send messages and snaps, chat via video and voice, and access the mobile app’s messaging features, like chat reactions. It also includes more than 10 Lenses for video calls.

Photos

Image Credits: Google

• Google Photos redesigned its Memories feature with vertical swiping, more video and other creative tools. The service will automatically select and trim the best snippets from your longer videos using machine learning as part of its enhancements to Memories and will add a new collage-making tool, the ability to share Memories with friends and more.
• Apple updated its iOS 16 web page to note that the iCloud Shared Photo Library feature is not coming until “later this year,” instead of launching with iOS 16 on Monday, September 12.

Messaging

• WhatsApp is making movies, Variety reported. The messaging app owned by Meta is introducing its first original film this month, a project featuring NBA All-Star MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo’s life story. WhatsApp plans to release the film on September 21 across its social media channels, YouTube and Amazon Prime Video. The story is actually branded content as it will communicate how WhatsApp brings people together.
• Communications startup Sendbird announced it would now allow customers to add livestreaming combined with chat in their apps with a couple of lines of code, via a new product called Sendbird Live.

Streaming & Entertainment

• Twitter began rolling out podcasts in its redesigned Spaces tab to all its Twitter Blue subscribers, after initially testing it with a subset of Twitter users. The feature adds personalized hubs called “Stations” that group together content by topic, like news, music, sports and more.
• TikTok competitor YouTube Shorts launched a new feature that more closely integrates the feature with YouTube Music. Now, users can save songs they discover in Shorts to listen to later in YouTube Music, via a custom playlist, “Sounds on Shorts.”
• Spotify and Wattpad struck a deal to launch a series of exclusive podcasts in Indonesia and the Philippines to bring popular web novels to life, including “My Ice Girl,” which has 22 million reads on Wattpad; “The Four Bad Boys and Me,” which has 321 million reads; and “For Hire: A Damn Good Kisser,” which has 42.1 million reads.
• Spotify’s Live streaming platform is not going well. The company this week had to cancel a performance by Ghost, claiming the demand for the event had caused technical difficulties. (One Twitter user noted that may not have actually been the case, but rather the access password had leaked causing other users to pop up rooms with people who hadn’t been invited, they said.)
• YouTube’s video platform, Shorts, may soon offer creators to earn payments and place ads in their videos, The NYT learned. It expects to announce the changes on Tuesday.
• YouTube also this week introduced a new feature that would allow creators to make new Shorts directly from their video’s comments. The feature very much duplicates similar functionality on TikTok, where creators can turn comments into new videos allowing them to continue the conversation or respond to users’ comments with a rebuttal or further explanation of their own.

Image Credits: YouTube

• Amazon announced its live radio app Amp, a sort of Spotify Live or Clubhouse competitor, would gain a new creator fund that will help reward creators who build engaging shows and attract a loyal audience. The company said it allocated “millions of dollars” for this fund, but declined to provide an exact figure. It said payouts to creators would vary.

Dating

• Grindr appointed George Arison as CEO, starting on October 19, ahead of its planned SPAC merger. Arison had previously helped the auto marketplace Shift go public via a SPAC in 2020.

Gaming

Image Credits: Netflix

• Snowman, the maker of popular mobile games like Alto’s Adventure, Alto’s Odyssey, and Skate City, launched its latest new game exclusively with Netflix. The studio’s new vertical scrolling platformer, Lucky Luna, comes to iOS and Android devices through Netflix Games.
• Tencent pulled in $2.6 billion in its video game segment during the first half of 2022, accounting for nearly 10% of the U.S.’s $27 billion gaming app market. ByteDance was in second place at $1.3 billion.
• Chinese regulators approved paid games from Tencent and NetEase for the first time since July 2021, when it began a crackdown on the tech sector. Among the 73 new publishing licenses that were approved, 69 were for mobile games. Other developers also received licenses, including Zhong Qing Bao, Leiting, XD Inc. and CMGE Technology Group.

Health & Fitness

• Following the overturn of Roe v Wade, the period-tracking app Flo launched a new “anonymous mode” feature on iOS which gives users the option to use the app without their name, email address or technical identifiers associated with their health data. The feature will come to Android next month.

Utilities

Image Credits: Opal

• Opal, a “digital well-being assistant,” rolled out a rebuilt version of its app designed to help individuals better monitor and manage their screen time usage. While most screen time apps are focused on helping parents manage their children’s screen time, Opal is aimed at anyone who wants to create better digital habits. The older version relied on a VPN to manage access to certain apps, but the new Opal now uses Apple’s Screen Time API to provide reports on screen time usage and temporarily block users from their distracting apps.

Government & Policy

• An EU court backed the European Commission’s decision to fine Google over Android antitrust breaches, but lessened the fine from €4.34 billion to €4.1 billion.
• South Korea’s privacy regulator fined Google around $50 million and Meta $22 million for failing to obtain user consent when collecting behavioral data for showing tailored ads.
• California passed a new law on Thursday, the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, that will make it the first state to introduce legislation aimed at protecting the well-being, data and privacy of children using online platforms. The law requires online platforms to “consider the best interest of child users” and to default to privacy and safety settings that “protect children’s mental and physical health and wellbeing,” a press release noted. It also prohibits companies from using a child’s personal information, profiling children by default, encouraging them to disclose personal information or collecting, retaining or selling their geolocation data, among other things.

Security & Privacy

• Apple released a round of security updates to patch zero-day flaws in iOS and macOS.
• TechCrunch’s Zack Whittaker took a dive into iOS 16’s new security and privacy features, including Lockdown Mode, Rapid Security Response, Safety Check, Passkeys and changes to copy and paste permissions.
• Uber is facing a cybersecurity incident involving a hacker who breached its internal network after using social engineering techniques to compromise an employee’s Slack account. Uber says there’s no evidence sensitive info, like trip histories, was accessed.

• A messaging app for parents and teachers, Seesaw, was compromised by hackers using a credential stuffing technique to send out an explicit image. The app has 10 million users.
• A new warning about fake App Store pages is going around. The pages are designed to look very much like an App Store page but have slight differences that savvy users might notice like a green download button, for instance. If clicked, the page may take users to download malware.

Funding and M&A

In a massive deal, Adobe announced plans to acquire UI design and prototyping tool Figma for around $20 billion, half in cash and half in stock. Figma CEO Dylan Field will continue to lead the company following the deal close. The deal also includes 6 million additional restricted stock units granted to Figma’s CEO and employees that will vest over four years following the closing. Figma has around 4 million users and had grown to become a competitor to Adobe’s creative tools.

Nigerian financial management app for merchants, Kippa, raised $8.4 million in seed funding from a number of investors, including Goodwater Capital, TEN13 VC, Rocketship VC, Saison Capital, Crestone VC, VentureSouq, Horizon Partners and Vibe Capital. The bookkeeping app helps small and medium businesses in sub-Saharan Africa and counts more than 500,000 merchants on its platform.

Denmark-based podcast subscription service Podimo raised €58.6 million (~$58.4 million) led by 83North, Highland and Saban, bringing its total raise to date to €162 million. The app offers personalized recommendations, full-length videos, a skip intro feature and more to users in Denmark, Germany, Spain, Norway, the Netherlands, Finland and Latin America.

A mobile bank for migrants, Majority, closed on $37.5 million in Series B funding, $30 million of which is in equity financing led by Valar Ventures and others. This is the third venture round for the startup in just over a year.

General Atlantic is buying out SoftBank’s entire 15% stake in the Norwegian edtech game platform, Kahoot. SoftBank, which had invested $215 million into the company, is exiting at a loss as 15% of Kahoot’s current market cap (10.415 billion Norwegian Krone) is around $152 million (1,562,250,000 NOK).

Downloads

iOS 16 Lock Screen widgets

Image Credits: Google

This week, everyone was rolling out their iOS 16-optimized apps. TechCrunch took a look at a number of these new releases, including those from major tech companies and indie developers.

The big winner of the Lock Screen widget race was Top Widgets, the generically named widget from a Chinese tech company that offers a variety of widget styles, including informational dashboards and even animations for the Lock Screen, appealing to a younger, Gen Z crowd. Following the release of iOS 16, Top Widgets gained 1.3 million downloads in just two days’ time.

Get started with widgets

• TechCrunch shared a round-up of over 25 apps that have added Lock Screen widgets across categories like personalization, travel, work, cooking, weather and more. If you’re looking to try a variety of widgets to figure out which you like best, this is a good place to start.

A few more favs

TechCrunch also highlighted a few widget makers individually, as they released, from smaller companies outside of Big Tech. These included:

Image Credits: ScreenKit

• Apollo’s iOS 16-optimized app brings Reddit to your Lock Screen with widgets for Trending posts, quick access to a favorite subreddit and updates on things like upvotes, comments, karma and more. It also included fun little features, like a widget that shows how far you’ve scrolled Reddit by feet, miles or km, and little animal characters that play across the top of the notch area that will become the Dynamic Island.
• Two apps, ShortFlow and LockFlow, allow users to turn their Apple Shortcuts into Lock Screen widgets.
• Flighty’s travel app added a handful of new widgets, including a Trip Countdown widget to use ahead of your travels, as well as a Live Flight Status widget and an In-Flight Progress Bar.
• ScreenKit’s app, meanwhile, is a good example of how personalization utilities are embracing the Lock Screen, as it added over 100 Lock Screen widget variations and over 200 pre-made Lock Screen themes that users can coordinate with its existing themes, wallpapers, icons, Home Screen widgets and more.

Big companies release their widgets, too

Image Credits: Snap

• Snapchat rolled out two Lock Screen Widgets with its iOS 16 update. One is a small square widget that opens directly to the Snapchat camera. The second is a rectangular widget that opens to a conversation with a friend or group.
• Facebook introduced a set of iOS 16 Lock Screen widgets, offering two to choose from: “Birthdays at a Glance” and “Top Updates.”
• Google introduced its set of iOS 16 Lock Screen widgets, but didn’t have them ready for launch day, unfortunately. The coming widgets include those for Search, Maps, Gmail, Chrome, Drive and News. We still need Google Calendar!

Tweets

This Week in Apps: iOS 16 takes off, TikTok clones BeReal, social cos go to Congress by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch

It’s not the crime, it’s the cover up… The scandal-hit company formerly known as Facebook has fought for over four years to keep a lid on the gory details of a third party app audit that its founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg personally pledged would be carried out, back in 2018, as he sought to buy time to purge the spreading reputational stain after revelations about data misuse went viral at the peak of the Cambridge Analytica privacy crisis.

But some details are emerging nonetheless — extracted like blood from a stone via a tortuous, multi-year process of litigation-triggered legal discovery.

A couple of documents filed by plaintiffs in privacy user profiling litigation in California, which were unsealed yesterday, offer details on a handful of apps Facebook audited and internal reports on what it found.

The revelations provide a glimpse into the privacy-free zone Facebook was presiding over when a “sketchy” data company helped itself to millions of users’ data, the vast majority of whom did not know their info had been harvested for voter-targeting experiments.

Two well-known companies identified in the documents as having had apps audited by Facebook as part of its third party sweep — which is referred to in the documents as ADI, aka “App Developer Investigation” — are Zynga (a games maker); and Yahoo (a media and tech firm which is also the parent entity of TechCrunch).

Both firms produced apps for Facebook’s platform which, per the filings, appeared to have extensive access to users’ friends’ data, suggesting they would have been able to acquire data on far more Facebook users than had downloaded the apps themselves — including some potentially sensitive information.

Scraping Facebook friends data — via a ‘friends permissions’ data access route that Facebook’s developer platform provided — was also of course the route through which the disgraced data company Cambridge Analytica acquired information on tens of millions of Facebook users without the vast majority knowing or consenting vs the hundreds of thousands who downloaded the personality quiz app which was used as the route of entry into Facebook’s people farm.

“One ADI document reveals that the top 500 apps developed by Zynga — which had developed at least 44,000 apps on Facebook — could have accessed the ‘photos, videos, about me, activities, education history, events, groups, interests, likes, notes, relationship details, religion/politics, status, work history, and all content from user-administered groups’ for the friends of 200 million users,” the plaintiffs write. “A separate ADI memorandum discloses that ‘Zynga shares social network ID and other personal information with third parties, including advertisers’.”

“An ADI memo concerning Yahoo, impacting up to 123 million users and specifically noting its whitelisted status, revealed that Yahoo was acquiring information ‘deem[ed] sensitive due to the potential for providing insights into preferences and behavior’,” they write in another filing. “It was also ‘possible that the [Yahoo] App accessed more sensitive user or friends’ data than can be detected.'”

Other examples cited in the documents include a number of apps created by developer called AppBank, which made quiz apps, virtual-gifting apps, and social gaming apps — and which Facebook’s audit found to have access to permissions (including friends permissions) that it said “likely” fall outside the use case of the app and/or with there being “no apparent use case” for the app to have such permissions.

Another app called Sync.Me, which operated from before 2010 until at least 2018, was reported to have had access to more than 9M users’ friends’ locations, photos, websites, and work histories; and more than 8M users’ read_stream information (meaning they could access the users’ entire newsfeed regardless of privacy settings applied to to different newsfeed entries) per the audit — also with such permissions reported to be out of scope for the use case of the app.

While an app called Social Video Downloader, which was on Facebook’s platform from around 2011 through at least 2018, was reported to be able to access more than 8M users’ “friends’ likes, photos, videos, and profile information” — data collection which Facebook’s internal investigation suggested “may speak to an ulterior motive by the developer”. The company also concluded the app likely “committed serious violations of privacy” — further observing that “the potential affected population and the amount of sensitive data at risk are both very high”.

Apps made by a developer called Microstrategy were also found to have collected “vast quantities of highly sensitive user and friends permissions”.

As the plaintiffs argue for sanctions to be imposed on Facebook, they attempt to calculate a theoretical maximum for the number of people whose data could have been exposed by just four of the aforementioned apps via the friends permission route — using 322 friends per user as a measure for their exercise and ending up with a figure of 74 billion people (i.e. many multiples greater than the human population of the entire planet) — an exercise they say is intended “simply to show that that number is huge”.

“And because it is huge, it is highly likely that most everyone who used Facebook at the same time as just these few apps had their information exposed without a use case,” they go on to argue — further noting that the ADI “came to similar conclusions about hundreds of other apps and developers”.

Let that sink in.

(The plaintiffs also note they still can’t be sure whether Facebook has provided all the information they’ve asked for re: the app audit — with their filing attacking the company’s statements on this as “consistently proven false”, and further noting “it remains unclear whether Facebook has yet complied with the orders”. So a full picture still does not appear to have surfaced.)

App audit? What app audit?

The full findings of Facebook’s internal app audit have never been made public by the tech giant — which rebooted its corporate identity as Meta last year in a bid to pivot beyond years of accumulated brand toxicity.

In the early days of its crisis PR response to the unfolding data horrors, Facebook claimed to have suspended around 200 apps pending further probes. But after that early bit of news, voluntary updates on Zuckerberg’s March 2018 pledge to audit “all” third party apps with access to “large amounts of user info” before a change to permissions on its platform in 2014 — and a parallel commitment to “conduct a full audit of any app with suspicious activity — dried up.

Facebook comms simply went dark on the audit — ignoring journalist questions about how the process was going and when it would be publishing results.

While there was high level interest from lawmakers when the scandal broke, Zuckerberg only had to field relatively basic questions — leaning heavily on his pledge of a fulsome audit and telling an April 2018 hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee that the company was auditing “tens of thousands” of apps, for example, which sure made the audit sound like a big deal.

The announcement of the app audit helped Facebook sidestep discussion and closer scrutiny of what kind of data flows it was looking at and why it had allowed all this sensitive access to people’s information to be going on under its nose for years while simultaneously telling users their privacy was safe on its platform, ‘locked down’ by a policy claim that stated (wrongly) that their data could not be accessed without their permission.

The tech giant even secured the silence of the UK’s data protection watchdog — which, via its investigation of Cambridge Analytica’s UK base, hit Facebook with a £500k sanction in October 2018 for breaching local data protection laws — but after appealing the penalty and, as part of a 2019 settlement in which it agreed to pay up but did not admit liability, Facebook got the Information Commission’s Office to sign a gag order which the sitting commissioner told parliamentarians, in 2021, prevented it from responding to questions about the app audit in a public committee hearing.

So Facebook has succeeded in keeping democratic scrutiny of its app audit closed down. 

Also in 2019, the tech giant paid the FTC $5BN to buy its leadership team what one dissenting commissioner referred to as “blanket immunity” for their role in Cambridge Analytics.

While, only last month, it moved to settle the California privacy litigation which has unearthed these ADI revelations (how much it’s paying to settle isn’t clear).

After years of the suit being bogged down by Facebook’s “foot-dragging” over discovery, as the plaintiffs tell it, Zuckerberg, and former COO Sheryl Sandberg, were finally due to give 11 hours of testimony this month — following a deposition. But then the settlement intervened.

So Facebook’s determination to shield senior execs from probing questions linked to Cambridge Analytica remains undimmed.

The tech giant’s May 2018 newsroom update about the app audit — which appears to contain the sole official ‘progress’ report in four+ years — has just one piece of “related news” in a widget at the bottom of the post. This links to an unrelated report in which Meta attempts to justify shutting down independent research into political ads and misinformation on its platform which was being undertaken by academics at New York University last year — claiming it’s acting out of concern for user privacy.

It’s a brazen attempt by Meta to repurpose and extend the blame-shifting tactics it’s successfully deployed around the Cambridge Analytica scandal — by claiming the data misuse was the fault of a single ‘rogue actor’ breaching its platform policies — hence it’s trying to reposition itself as a user privacy champion (lol!) and weaponizing that self-appointed guardianship as an excuse to banish independent scrutiny of its ads platform by closing down academic research. How convenient!

That specific self-serving, anti-transparency move against NYU earned Meta a(nother) rebuke from lawmakers.

More rebukes may be coming. And — potentially more privacy sanctions, as the unsealed documents provide some other eyebrow-raising details that should be of interest to privacy regulators in Europe and the US.

Questions about data retention and access

Notably, the unsealed documents offer some details related to how Facebook stores user data — or rather pools it into a giant data lake — which raises questions about how or even whether it is able to correctly map and apply controls once people’s information is ingested so that it can, for example, properly reflect individuals’ privacy choices (as may be legally required under laws like the EU’s GDPR or California’s CCPA). 

We’ve had a glimpse of these revelations before — via a leaked internal document obtained by Motherboard/Vice earlier this year. But the unsealed documents offer a slightly different view as it appears that Facebook, via the multi-year legal discovery wrangling linked to this privacy suit, was actually able to fish some data linked to named individuals out of its vast storage lake.

The internal data warehousing infrastructure is referred to in the documents as “Hive” — an infrastructure which is said “maintains and facilitates the querying of data about users, apps, advertisers, and near-countless other types of information, in tables and partitions”.

The backstory here is the plaintiffs sought data on named individuals stored in Hive during discovery. But they write that Facebook spent years claiming there was no way for it “to run a centralized search for” data that could be associated with individuals (aka Named Plaintiffs) “across millions of data sets” — additionally claiming at one point that “compiling the remaining information would take more than one year of work and would require coordination across dozens of Facebook teams and hundreds of Facebook employees” — and generally arguing that information Facebook provided by the user-accessible ‘Download Your Information’ tool was the only data the company could provide vis-a-vis individual users (or, in this case, in response to discovery requests for information on Named Plaintiffs).

Yet the plaintiffs subsequently learned — via a deposition in June — that Facebook had data from 137 Hive tables preserved under a litigation hold for the case, at least some of which contained Named Plaintiffs data. Additionally they discovered that 66 of the 137 tables that had been preserved contained what Facebook referred to as “user identifiers”.

So the implication here is that Facebook failed to provide information it should have provided in response to a legal discovery request for data on Named Plaintiffs.

Plus of course other implications flow from that… about all the data Facebook is holding (on to) vs what it may legally be able to hold.

“For two years before that deposition, Facebook stonewalled all efforts to discuss the existence of Named Plaintiffs’ data beyond the information disclosed in the Download Your Information (DYI) tool, insisting that to even search for Named Plaintiffs’ data would be impossibly burdensome,” the plaintiffs write, citing a number of examples where the company claimed it would require unreasonably large feats of engineering to identify all the information they sought — and going on to note that it was not until they were able to take “the long-delayed sworn testimony of a corporate designee that the truth came out” (i.e. that Facebook had identified Hive data linked to the Named Plaintiffs but had just kept it quiet for as long as possible).

“Whether Facebook will be required to produce the data it preserved from 137 Hive tables is presently being discussed,” they further observe. “Over the last two days, the parties each identified 250 Hive tables to be searched for data that can be associated with the Named Plaintiffs. The issue of what specific data from those (or other) tables will be produced remains unresolved.”

They also write that “even now, Facebook has not explained how it identified these tables in particular and its designee was unable to testify on the issue” — so the question of how exactly Facebook retrieved this data, and the extent of its ability to retrieve user-specific data from its Hive lake more generally, is not clear.

A footnote in the filing expands on Facebook’s argument against provided Hive data to the plaintiffs — saying the company “consistently took the position that Hive did not contain any relevant material because third parties are not given access to it”.

Yet the same note records that Facebook’s corporate deponent recently (and repeatedly) testified “that Hive contain logs that show every ad a user has seen” — data which the plaintiffs confirm Facebook has still not produced.

Every ad a user has seen sure sounds like user-linked data. It would also certainly be, at least under EU law, classed as personal data. So if Facebook is holding such data on European users it would need a legal basis for the processing and would also need to be able to provide data if users ask to review it, or request it deleted (and so on, under GDPR data access rights).

But it’s not clear whether Facebook has ever provided users with such access to everything about them that washes up in its lake.

Given how hard Facebook fought to deny legal discovery on the Hive data-set for this ligation it suggests it’s unlikely to have made any such disclosures to user data access requests elsewhere.

Gaps in the narrative

There’s more too! An internal Facebook tool — called “Switchboard” — is also referenced in the documents.

This is said to be able to take snapshots of information which, the plaintiffs also eventually discovered, contained Named Plaintiffs’ data that was not contained in data surfaced via the (basic) DYI tool.

Plus, per Facebook’s designee’s deposition testimony, Facebook “regularly produces Switchboard snapshots, not DYI files, in response to law enforcement subpoenas for information about specific Facebook users”.

So, er, the gap between what Facebook tells users it knows about them (via DYI) and the much vaster volumes of profiling data it acquires and stores in Hive — which can, at least some of the time per these filings, be linked to individuals (and some of which Facebook may provide in response to law enforcement requests on users) — keeps getting bigger.

Facebook’s DYI tool, meanwhile, has long been criticized as providing only a trivial slice of the data it processes on and about users — with the company electing to evade wider data access requirements by applying an overly narrow definition of user data (i.e. as stuff users themselves actively uploaded). And those making so-called Subject Access Requests (SARs), under EU data law, have — for years — found Facebook frustrating expectations as the data they get back is far more limited than what they’ve been asking for. (Yet EU law is clear that personal data is a broad church concept that absolutely includes inferences.) 

If Hive contains every ad a user has seen, why not every link they ever clicked on? Every profile they’ve ever searched for? Every IP they’ve logged on from? Every third party website containing they’ve ever visited that contains a Facebook pixel or cookie or social plug, and so on, and on… (At this point it also pays to recall the data minimization principle baked into EU law — a fundamental principle of the GDPR that states you should only collect and process personal that is “necessary” for the purpose it’s being processed for. And ‘every ad you’ve ever viewed’ sure sounds like a textbook definition of unnecessary data collection to this reporter.)

The unsealed documents in the California lawsuit relate to motions seeking sanctions against Meta’s conduct — including towards legal discovery itself, as the plaintiffs accuse the company of making numerous misrepresentations, reckless or knowing, in order to delay/thwart full discovery related to the app audit — arguing its actions amount to “bad-faith litigation conduct”.

They also press for Facebook to be found to have breached a contractual clause in the Data Use Policy it presented to users between 2011 and 2015 — which stated that: “If an application asks permission from someone else to access your information, the application will be allowed to use that information only in connection with the person that gave the permission and no one else” — arguing they have established a presumption that Facebook breached that contractual provision “as to all Facebook users”.

“This sanction is justified by what ADI-related documents demonstrate,” the plaintiffs argue in one of the filings. “Facebook did not limit applications’ use of friend data accessed through the users of the apps. Instead, Facebook permitted apps to access friend information without any ‘use case’ — i.e., without a realistic use of ‘that information only in connection with’ the app user.”

“In some cases, the app developers were suspected of selling user information collected via friend permissions, which obviously is not a use of data ‘only in connection with the person that gave the permission and no one else’,” they go on. “Moreover, the documents demonstrate that the violations of the contractual term were so pervasive that it is near certain they affected every single Facebook user.”

This is important because, as mentioned before, a core plank of Facebook’s defence against the Cambridge Analytica scandal when it broke was to claim it was the work of a rogue actor — a lone developer on its platform who had, unbeknownst to the company, violated policies it claimed protected people’s data and safeguarded their privacy.

Yet the glimpse into the results of Facebook’s app audit suggests many more apps were similarly helping themselves to user data via the friends permissions route Facebook provided — and, in at least some of these cases, these were whitelisted apps which the company itself must have approved so those at least were data flows Facebook should absolutely have been fully aware of.

The man Facebook sought to paint as the rogue actor on its platform — professor Aleksandr Kogan, who signed a contract with Cambridge Analytica to extract Facebook user data on its behalf by leveraging his existing developer account on its platform — essentially pointed all this out in 2018, when he accused Facebook of not having valid developer policy because it simply did not apply the policy it claimed to have. (Or: “The reality is Facebook’s policy is unlikely to be their policy,” as he put it to a UK parliamentary committee at the time.)

Facebook’s own app audit appears to have reached much the same conclusion — judging by the glimpse we can spy in these unsealed documents. Is it any wonder we haven’t seen a full report from Facebook itself?

The reference to “some cases” where app developers were suspected of selling user information collected via friend permissions is another highly awkward reveal for Facebook — which has been known to roll out a boilerplate line that it ‘never sells user information’ — spreading a little distractingly reassuring gloss to imply its business has strong privacy hygiene.

Of course it’s pure deflection — since Meta monetizes its products by selling access to its users’ attention via its ad targeting tools it can claim disinterest in selling their data — but the revelation in these documents that some of the app developers that Facebook had allowed on its platform back in the day might have been doing exactly that (selling user data), after they’d made use of Facebook’s developer tools and data access permissions to extract intel on millions (or even billions) of Facebook users, cuts very close to the bone.

It suggests senior leadership at Facebook was — at best — just a few steps removed from actual trading of Facebook user data, having encouraged a data free-for-all that was made possible exactly because the platform they built to be systematically hostile to user privacy internally was also structured as a vast data takeout opportunity for the thousands of outside developers Zuckerberg invited in soon after he’d pronounced privacy over — as he rolled up his sleeves for growth.

The same CEO is still at the helm of Meta — inside a rebranded corporate mask which was prefigured, in 2019, by a roadmap swerve that saw him claim to be ‘pivoting to privacy‘. But if Facebook already went so all in on opening access to user data, as the plaintiffs’ suit contends, where else was left for Zuckerberg to truck to to prepare his next trick?

Unsealed docs in Facebook privacy suit offer glimpse of missing app audit by Natasha Lomas originally published on TechCrunch

Prior to announcing its intent to buy Figma for $20 billion on Thursday, Adobe’s largest deal was its $4.75 billion Marketo acquisition in 2018.

Why go so far outside of its pricing comfort zone and pay twice as much as Figma’s most recent private valuation? The easy answer is that it’s about taking a potential rival off the market. Yes, Adobe XD is a similar product, but there could be more to this deal than simply playing defense.

It could be that — like IBM buying Red Hat for $34 billion in 2018 or Salesforce acquiring Slack for almost $28 billion in 2020 — Adobe’s executive team saw a company that could fundamentally alter their organization.

For IBM, the Red Hat acquisition was about the hybrid cloud. For Salesforce and Slack, it was the digital workplace, but both saw a shift coming in their markets and made a huge offer for a key company to get ahead of it. Both also kept those pieces independent with the existing CEO in place (more on this later).

Perhaps Adobe saw the Figma deal as its organization-altering moment as it watched the creative market making a key change from one centered on creating assets with tools like Photoshop and Illustrator to one firmly focused on the creators themselves and the collaborative nature of the design process.

The former is where Adobe has built the bulk of its business. The latter is represented by Figma, a startup with visionary founders who wanted to change the way people thought about design in a digital context, a change so important that the old-guard company was willing to overspend to grab the young upstart and bring the two ways of thinking together.

We spoke to folks from the companies involved, Figma investors and industry analysts to get a sense of why this deal went down. The bottom line is that there were lots of reasons, but perhaps the best one was that Figma and Adobe think they’ll be better together.

Adobe makes $20B bet on a collaborative future with Figma acquisition by Ron Miller originally published on TechCrunch

As iOS 16 Lock Screen customization takes off, an iPhone personalization app called Top Widgets has soared to the No. 1 spot on the U.S. App Store’s top free apps list, displacing BeReal. The Sichuan, China-based app maker first introduced Top Widgets in August 2020 to capitalize on the introduction of Home Screen widgets with the release of iOS 14. With its newly added support for iOS 16’s Lock Screen widgets, the app has gained approximately 1.3 million downloads in the two days following Monday’s iOS 16 launch.

That’s up 1,812% from the two days prior to iOS 16’s release, when the app saw approximately 68,000 installs, according to data from mobile intelligence firm Sensor Tower.

To date, Top Widgets has topped 30 million worldwide installs, the firm says. The majority are from the company’s home country of China, which accounts for around 25.8 million lifetime downloads, or 86% of the total. The U.S., by comparison, is a smaller market for this app, with some 730,000 installs to date, or 2% of the total.

In addition to ranking in the No. 1 position on the U.S. App Store as of Thursday, the app is also No. 1 in 58 other global markets. It’s the No. 1 app in the Utilities category in 80 markets.

Top Widgets is similar in some ways to other popular widget designers, like Widgetsmith — one of the more successful apps to emerge from the original iPhone customization craze, thanks to its DIY tools for creating custom widgets that match your overall iPhone theme, wallpaper and icons. (In fact, Top Widgets even stuffs the keyword “widgetsmith” into its App Store description!)

Image Credits: Top Widgets

Like other widget markers, Top Widgets’ tools allow users to select from a range of common Home Screen widget types, like photos, clocks, calendars, weather, reminders, and more.

But it also includes a few features that differentiate it from other widget apps on the market, including a transparent widget type that doesn’t block your iPhone’s background wallpaper as well as a variety of “quick launcher” widget styles that let you put tappable access to favorite apps in a widget format — which offers more customization possibilities compared with the use of app icons.

@itshibazia a tutorial on how to actually get your apps like this… you don’t need ios 16 #topwidgets #topwidgetstutorial #ChewTheVibes #fyp #iphonetutorial #applewatch #iphoneorganization #iphoneapps #tech #apple #ios16 #iphonehacks #iphonetutorials ♬ original sound – Hiba Zia

In addition, the app includes an interesting widget type it calls “x-panel,” which puts a variety of informational blocks — like battery percentage, storage space used, Wi-Fi toggles and more — into a single dashboard-like widget that can be pinned to your Home Screen.

With its iOS 16 release, this x-panel style widget has now been ported to the Lock Screen, providing a tiny dashboard of information about your phone you can view without having to unlock your device. This could be useful for those who want more at-a-glance information available, since the current Lock Screen design limits the number of widgets that can be added. (But you’ll need good eyesight to read it!)

The iOS 16 version of the Top Widgets app also offers a number of other Lock Screen widget types — like animations and cartoons that cleverly use the Lock Screen’s rectangular widget designs to create an image stretched across two widgets placed side-by-side.

For example, you can add two Lock Screen widgets with a cupid shooting his arrow through a beating heart or watch as a bunny inflates a balloon. Or, if you prefer to use square widgets, the app offers a set of smaller emoji-like widgets that could to be added together in a row, including things like a smiley, heart, and little chick.

These sorts of widgets have an obvious appeal to a younger, Gen Z crowd, who may be more interested in personalizing their Lock Screen with cute characters, designs and animations, rather than the sort of “boring” information an adult would want to see — like their next calendar appointment, emails, or reminders, for instance.

Naturally, this found the app featured in a variety of TikTok videos this week, including one top viral video that’s now pulled in over 514,000 views and has been bookmarked 87.4K times.

@tinylittleangel.77 I’m in love &lt3 APPS USED: TOP WIDGETS #ios16 #ios16features #iosupdate #ios14homescreen #ios16new #iphone #iphone11 #topwidgets #widgetsmith #fyp #fypage #xyzbca ♬ there is a light and it never goes out spedup – posh

While the App Store’s Top Charts algorithm has historically relied on factors like the number of installs and the velocity of those installs, among other factors, it’s now being regularly manipulated by TikTok-based marketing efforts. It’s likely this viral video and others featuring the widget are behind many of Top Widgets’ new U.S. installs these past few days.

The app itself is published under the developer name of Chengdu Guluoying Technology Co. and points to the website xiaozujian.com. No developer names or contact information, beyond a postal mailing address, is provided on its site. TechCrunch attempted to reach the company through various standard email addresses ahead of publication. We did not hear back.

‘Top Widgets’ soars to No 1 on the App Store, displacing BeReal, as iOS 16 customization takes off by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch

Opal, a “digital well-being assistant,” is updating its app today to help individuals better monitor and manage their screen time usage. While most screen time apps are focused on helping parents manage their children’s screen time, Opal’s goal has been to help anyone — yes, even adults — develop their own healthier habits around their use of distracting websites and apps. With its latest release, the company has rebuilt the service to now leverage Apple’s new Screen Time API to remove apps from the phone when you’re trying to focus, and to display your Screen Time data in a more readable and actionable fashion.

Launched in 2020, the app’s free service has allowed users to block distractions and schedule screen time breaks throughout the day. Its paid subscription offers more granular controls — like scheduling “time off” from specific apps and establishing recurring downtime schedules for things like work or study hours, family dinners or anything else that demands your full attention, including sleeping. Opal also offered an extreme lockdown mode called “Deep Focus” which would entirely lock you out of those apps you just can’t resist. (TikTok addictions, anyone?)

To date, over 200,000 users have downloaded Opal, the company says, and have now spent over 20 million hours “focusing” using the app’s tools.

Following the launch of iOS 16, the new version of Opal is now among the first to take advantage of Apple’s new Screen Time API, announced at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference last year.

The API provides a way for third-party developers to create interfaces in their own apps that work with Apple’s built-in screen time tools. Its arrival follows Apple’s crackdown on the screen time app industry that had drawn questions from lawmakers in a 2020 antitrust hearing. Apple was being called out as it waited years after debuting its own built-in screen time controls in iOS before giving third-party developers access to interoperate with its services. In the meantime, it began rejecting apps that competed with its own tools claiming they were security risks, despite having previously approved them.

Image Credits: Opal

While other third-party apps have also now begun to integrate this new API — like the screen time app Grace recently did — most companies in this space tend to focus on kids’ screen time and app usage, not on adults who want to set their own individual limits, as Opal does.

With the update, Opal will introduce a free “focus report” based on your screen time data, as provided through iOS’s data. You can also keep an eye on your focus level with a feature called Focus Score, which tracks your screen time use and measures your progress in real-time.

The report is meant to be easier than having to dig pages deep into iOS Settings for similar information, as it puts actionable data front-and-center in a clear, concise Story-like format. On the report, you can quickly view metrics like your total screen time hours, the number of pickups, how focused you are during work hours, how you compare with other people like you, and more.

Image Credits: Opal Focus Report screen

One of the app’s more shocking metrics is how it turns Apple’s Screen Time data into an estimation of how much of your life you’ll spend looking at your phone’s screen. (We expect to see this one popping up on social media as users lament their app addictions.)

Image Credits: Opal

“People spend around 4 hours per day on their phone, starting age 12. To put this into perspective, this means that they will spend 17 years of their life staring down at a phone,” noted Kenneth Schlenker, Opal Founder and CEO, in a statement about the release. “The new Opal makes it incredibly easy to manage your screen time, be less distracted and focus on what really matters,” he said.

An updated Focus progress report hits every week, Opal says.

Image Credits: Opal

The new app will also allow users to temporarily block apps from their phone and desktop (via its Chrome app) while engaged in focus sessions. For instance, you could block your use of Instagram or other distractions, while you’re at work. The app will be removed from the Home Screen and won’t even come up if you do a search for the app in Spotlight Search during this time.

Where before, the app relied on a VPN to make this work, it’s now using a new technology in iOS16 called ManagedSettings, which is part of Apple’s Screen Time API.

The iOS 16-ready version of Opal launched on App Store today and is additionally available for desktop users on the Chrome Store.

Opal revamps its screen time app to help anyone, not just parents with kids, focus and avoid distractions by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch

Bloomberg reported this morning that Adobe was getting close to buying Figma, a former startup and private-market unicorn in the design space, for around $20 billion. The Photoshop-maker then confirmed the deal with a release and a short investor presentation. TechCrunch’s coverage of the announcement is here.

Shares of Adobe were off more than 15% following the news.

The transaction is massive in dollar terms, making it worth our while to unpack. Below we’ve collected information on the size of Figma in revenue terms, considered its cash flow position and chatted through what the transaction could mean for other companies of similar size that are waiting out the current IPO drought.

Before we do all that real work, however, can I just say that I am oddly bummed by the deal?

The Exchange explores startups, markets and money.

Read it every morning on TechCrunch+ or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday.

Figma is somewhat of a classic startup and venture capital success story. Following a seed round back in 2013, Figma attracted regular external investments through a mid-2021 Series E worth $200 million that valued the software upstart at around $10 billion, per Crunchbase data. At one point, selling for a mere double of a final venture round would be a smaller exit price than what investors would have hoped when they executed the investment. But! A doubling of a 2021-era valuation in 2022 is a massive win, given how far the valuation bands for technology companies have shifted in the last year.

How about that $20B Figma-Adobe deal? by Alex Wilhelm originally published on TechCrunch

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Selling APIs with Orum and Amex Ventures on TechCrunch Live by Matt Burns originally published on TechCrunch

Sendbird, a communications startup, has been around since 2013 helping customers incorporate communications capabilities into their applications via an API. Today, the company announced that moving forward, you can also add livestreaming combined with chat to your application with a couple of lines of code.

This new capability is called Sendbird Live.

“Now we want to give businesses the super power to host livestreaming, plus community chat as part of your user experience, all branded within their native application. So users don’t have to bounce off and go to some third-party media. And also brands can keep their users on their platform, while providing novel experiences,” Sendbird CEO and co-founder John Kim told TechCrunch.

Kim says that this allows developers to mix and match chat, livestreaming and content moderation in different ways to create safe and engaging experiences from a single tool.

“Before introducing Sendbird Live we saw a lot of our customers pick a streaming vendor, but they would always come to us for adding chat and moderation capabilities. What they really want is a single one-stop solution that they can just drop in and have all these capabilities go live instantaneously and that’s why we decided to build Sendbird Live,” he said.

Kim says the livestreaming piece fits when you want to present something in a live context, while having a chat with your audience. This could be a sporting event, a concert, a fitness class or a business town hall meeting, as some examples.

Sid Suri, head of marketing at Sendbird, says this has the potential to increase interactions around an online streaming event. “What’s interesting about our product too is if you think about a watch party use case, you might have a live session, but you can also quickly set up breakout rooms with a group of friends or colleagues,” Suri said.

“So it’s very easy to create these multiple sessions where there’s the main session of computers streaming whatever you’re watching, but also creating these sub-channels with your private groups, where you can also have a private chat, and also share video cameras and video screens among those small groups too,” he said.

Sendbird launched in 2013 and has raised over $220 million including a $100 million round in April, 2021 when the startup was valued at over $1 billion.

At the time of the funding, the company had more than 150 million users. Today, Kim says that has increased to around 270 million users with over 1,000 companies using Sendbird tools.

Sendbird adds livestreaming from any app to communications platform by Ron Miller originally published on TechCrunch

Salesforce is the best selling CRM in the world, and Snowflake is one the top cloud data lakes. The latter lets customers store and manage massive amounts of unstructured data. When you mix the two services, it has the potential to be a powerful combination.

The two companies have been working together for some time, but ahead of the Dreamforce customer conference in San Francisco next week, they announced an enhancement to that partnership where data can flow freely between the Snowflake data repository and the Salesforce customer data platform (CDP).

The idea, says David Schmaier, president and chief product Officer at Salesforce is to provide, to the extent possible, a single, up-to-date customer record in real time with the ultimate goal of optimizing the customer experience based on what the company knows about you.

He says that Salesforce starts with the core belief that companies with the best data can build the smartest machine learning models. “If we can enrich and unify and deepen the data, then your AI can do more, and if your AI can do more, then your customer interactions are that much more tailored and personalized,” Schmaier explained.

But to get to that point requires a CDP, a tool that collects all the data about a customer’s interactions with a company in one central repository. The CDP operates best with real-time data, and Snowflake can be the source of that data. It helps that Schmaier says the company’s CDP customers tend to use both tools, making the partnership even more valuable for both companies.

Christian Kleinerman, SVP of product at Snowflake, says that while the relationship goes back long before this year, this level of integration is new. “[We talked about] how we could bring Salesforce CRM system data onto the Snowflake data cloud, then let customers create interesting solutions, interesting outcomes, but also feed that data back into Salesforce itself – and that is at the heart of the integration,” Kleinerman said.

The reality of integrating data across systems is rather daunting. Schmaier points out that customers often have hundreds or even thousands of data sources connected to the CDP, and when you think about the amount of data moving through Snowflake on top of that, it’s a tremendous amount of information they have to process to make this work.

While creating the best customer experience is the goal, the two companies realize this is the ideal, and as companies work to understand and process the data, it brings them closer to building personalized customer experiences at scale, which remains the holy grail of online sales.

One of the advantages of working with Snowflake is the notion of “zero copies,” which means with all this data floating around, they don’t have to make copies of it to make this work. Instead, Kleinerman says the technology takes advantage of references to point to the data.

“So instead of copying CDP data onto our mutual customers’ Snowflake account, what Salesforce does is it leverages that data sharing technology to make the CDP data available for querying on the Snowflake side of our mutual customers. So now they can join it, enrich it or run it through machine learning. But if the data changes in Salesforce in the CDP, it is reflected in Snowflake in real time,” Kleinerman said.

Like many things being announced at (or ahead of) Dreamforce, this is not yet available, but will be in closed pilot starting this Fall.

Salesforce, Snowflake partnership moves customer data in real time across systems by Ron Miller originally published on TechCrunch

Long-time visitors to the Detroit auto show will be disappointed. The glitz and glamor are gone. In 2022 the show is much, much smaller than in the past. Ford, General Motors, and Stallantis are exhibiting, and Toyota has a simple booth. That’s about it: No Volkswagen, BMW, Honda or other industry giants. And that’s great news for startups.

Startups are the main attraction at the reimagined North American International Auto Show (NAIAS). Attendees can’t miss them, unlike in past years when they were literally housed in the basement. Now with most automakers absent, startups are given equal footing among the big three and are found everywhere throughout the main show floor.

The show is different this year. It’s the first auto show since Covid and the first since organizers moved the show from days after CES in January to September — no one enjoys Detroit in the Winter anyway. The show features attractions now, with monster trucks, dinosaurs, and a weekend of DJs and cover bands.

The auto world is changing. Not long ago, this auto show was the premier platform for launching a new vehicle. In 1992 Jeep famously drove the brand new Grand Cherokee from the factory, up the exhibition hall’s stairs, and through a glass window. Chevy introduced several new Corvettes at the show. In 1994 Volkswagen used the show to announce and preview the reimagined VW Bug. The show was always a circus, with dozens of new vehicles announced at various press conferences and more concept cars than one could stomach. This year the only big launch was the new Ford Mustang, and there were only a handful of concept cars.

For 2022 the North American International Auto show featured startups and vehicles mostly from American makers. Most startups are in a dedicated exhibition area next to the TK. Called AutoMobili-D, this is a large portion of the auto show. A quick walk through the site shows why: These companies exhibit more innovations per square foot than the big guys.

“We are thrilled to showcase these important technology advancements in the mobility sector,” Rod Alberts, executive director of the Detroit Auto Show, said to DBusiness. “The entire AutoMobili-D area is sold out, illustrating the key role these companies are playing in the new world of mobility.”

Among the packed area is WiTricity exhibiting its wireless EV charging solution on a Mustang Mach-E. Detroit-based Plug Zen announced it partnered with a local manufacturer to produce its charging stations destined for underserved areas. Stanadyne unveiled a new hydrogen fuel injector at the show. Students from Detroit’s College for Creative Studios (CCS) partnered with Meta to create an auto show in the metaverse.

Harbinger was perhaps the most exciting automaker startup at the North American International Auto Show. This week, the company emerged from stealth, aiming to bring a medium-duty EV platform to market. Founded by veterans of QuantumScape and Canoo and financed by Tiger Global, the company says its platform is on track to start mass production by 2024.

The company’s booth was part of the main show floor and stuck out among the sleek Lincolns sitting a few feet away. Harbinger’s chief product is a chassis that fits a panel truck. It’s just four wheels and a frame filled side-to-side with batteries. Think about what’s underneath large walk-in vans, box trucks, and other nondescript commercial applications. Harbinger says the chassis is built to support all the popular medium-duty body types currently on the market.

Philip Weicker, Harbinger’s co-founder, and CMO, tells me the goal is to produce vehicles that are “priced for zero acquisition premium.” The actual MSRP is unclear, but the company feels it can offer its platform at competitive prices.

Other startups are mixed in among the big automakers, mainly eVTOLs. Companies such as ASX, Aerwin Technologies, Gravity Industries, and Icon Aircraft exhibited their wild prototype aircraft, with some companies promising live demonstrations later this week.

Startups would be wise to take advantage of the new trade show reality. As industry giants reduce their presence, startups should fill the void. Big players, like General Motors at this show or Samsung at CES, are increasingly turning to private events to control the messaging and appeal better.

The media and general public still pay attention to trade shows. They’re spectacles and celebrations of industries and progress. And progress rarely starts with the industry leaders but rather the startups exhibiting in the shadows.

Mobility startups are filling the void in the much, much smaller Detroit auto show by Matt Burns originally published on TechCrunch

European Union lawmakers have proposed a new set of product rules to apply to smart devices that’s intended to compel makers of Internet-connected hardware — such as ‘smart’ washing machines or connected toys — to pay fulsome attention to device security.

The proposed EU Cyber Resilience Act will introduce mandatory cybersecurity requirements for products that have “digital elements” sold in across the bloc, with requirements applying throughout their lifecycle — meaning gadget makers will need to provide ongoing security support and updates to patch emerging vulnerabilities — the Commission said today.

The draft regulation also has a focus on smart device makers communicating to consumers “sufficient and accurate information” — to ensure buyers able to grasp security considerations at the point of purchase and set up devices securely after purchase.

Penalties proposed by the Commission for non-compliance for “essential” cybersecurity requirements scale up to the higher of €15M or 2.5% of worldwide annual turnover, with other regulation obligation breaches having a maximum sanction of €10M or 2% of turnover.

The EU’s executive said the proposed regulation will apply to all products that are connected “either directly or indirectly to another device or network” — with some exceptions for products for which cybersecurity requirements are already set out in existing EU rules, such as medical devices, aviation and cars.

Pan-EU rules for smart device security

In a summary of the proposed measures, which are based on an Legislative Framework for EU product legislation which was updated in 2008, the Commission said they will lay down:

(a) rules for the placing on the market of products with digital elements to ensure their cybersecurity;

(b) essential requirements for the design, development and production of products with digital elements, and obligations for economic operators in relation to these products;

(c) essential requirements for the vulnerability handling processes put in place by manufacturers to ensure the cybersecurity of products with digital elements during the whole life cycle, and obligations for economic operators in relation to these processes. Manufacturers will also have to report actively exploited vulnerabilities and incidents;

(d) rules on market surveillance and enforcement.

“The new rules will rebalance responsibility towards manufacturers, who must ensure conformity with security requirements of products with digital elements that are made available on the EU market,” it wrote in a press release. “As a result, they will benefit consumers and citizens, as well as businesses using digital products, by enhancing the transparency of the security properties and promoting trust in products with digital elements, as well as by ensuring better protection of their fundamental rights, such as privacy and data protection.”

A Commission Q&A on the initiative further stipulates that manufacturers would undergo “a process of conformity assessment to demonstrate whether the specified requirements relating to a product have been fulfilled”. It notes that this might be done via self-assessment or by a third-party conformity assessment “depending on the criticality of the product in question”.

Where compliance with the applicable requirements has been demonstrated, device makers would be able to affix the EU’s CE mark — indicating conformity of digital elements with the product security regulation.

Non-compliance would be handled by market surveillance authorities appointed by Member States which would be responsible for enforcement — with proposed powers to not only order a stop to non-compliance but “eliminate the risk” by prohibiting a product from being sold or otherwise restricting its market availability. Competent authorities could also order infringing products to be withdrawn or recalled. While supplying incorrect, incomplete or misleading info to regulators and surveillance authorities would risk a fine of up to €5M or 1% of turnover.

Commenting in a statement, Margrethe Vestager, Commission EVP for digital strategy, added: “We deserve to feel safe with the products we buy in the single market. Just as we can trust a toy or a fridge with a CE marking, the Cyber Resilience Act will ensure the connected objects and software we buy comply with strong cybersecurity safeguards. It will put the responsibility where it belongs, with those that place the products on the market.”

Smart devices have been a hot bed of security horror stories for years. Although there have been earlier legislative moves to plug glaring security gaps — such as a 2018 California law banning makers from setting easily guessable default passwords in devices.

The UK has also been working on a ‘security by design’ law for connected gadgets for a number of years — airing a draft back in 2019 (though this product security bill, which bundles telecoms infrastructure security provisions, is still making its way through the British parliament).

Despite not being first to the punch on smart device security, the EU is hoping its nascent approach will become an international point of reference, with the Commission’s press release suggesting: “EU standards based on the Cyber Resilience Act will facilitate its implementation and will be an asset for the EU cybersecurity industry in global markets.”

However there is still a fairly long road for the proposal to travel before it can become EU law, as the European Parliament and Council will need to examine the draft — and may seek to amend it.

The Commission has also proposed a two year timeframe once the regulation is adopted for device makers and EU Member States to adapt to the full sweep of the new rules. So the regulation likely won’t be biting much before 2025.

That said, there is a shorter timeframe for the reporting obligation on manufacturers for “actively exploited vulnerabilities and incidents” — which would apply one year from the date of entry into force of the regulation, as the Commission expects that piece to be easier to implement.

The EU unboxes its plan for smart device security by Natasha Lomas originally published on TechCrunch

Big news in the world of digital creative technology: Adobe today announced that it would acquire Figma for $20 billion, taking out one of its biggest rivals in the realm of digital design.

Both the WSJ and Bloomberg reported earlier this morning that Adobe was close to announcing the deal to acquire Figma. In the end, Adobe confirmed the news to coincide with its quarterly earnings.

Those Q3 earnings saw the company post revenues of $4.43 billion and non-GAAP earnings per share of $3.40, which respectively met and exceeded analysts’ expectations. Nevertheless, the company said that it might need to finance this deal with a loan, and it provided a lukewarm outlook for the next quarter, with revenues expected to be $4.52 billion and EPS of $3.50, citing “the overall macroeconomic environment” and “FX headwinds”. Its stock is trading down nearly 10% pre-market open — one sign of how Adobe likely hoped the news of consolidating and taking out a rival could give it a boost.

The acquisition is coming in the form of deal half cash and half stock, Adobe said, and it will also include “6 million additional restricted stock units” granted to Figma’s CEO and employees that will vest over four years subsequent to closing. It is expected to close in 2023, “subject to the receipt of required regulatory clearances and approvals and the satisfaction of other closing conditions, including the approval of Figma’s stockholders.”

Design and prototyping, for individuals and teams, executed in a very streamlined and modern, cloud-based environment, are Figma’s product strengths, and it’s amassed some 4 million users to date. Adobe meanwhile has been building and acquiring a number of businesses in the wider world of digital creation, which includes design but also marketing and other links along that design and creation chain. Its DNA is in design, though, and it has built out iconic products in areas like imaging (such as Photoshop), fonts, illustration, video and 3D and more.

The idea now will be to create a seamless connection between these and Figma, essentially building it out as the native platform to bring them all together. Adobe, of course, already had something like this, in the form of AdobeXD. It’s not clear what happens with that.

Whether all this will raise the attention of antitrust authorities will be worth watching, since Adobe is already dominant in so many of the tools that are used, and now will be the dominant platform player as well.

“Adobe’s greatness has been rooted in our ability to create new categories and deliver cutting-edge technologies through organic innovation and inorganic acquisitions,” said Shantanu Narayen, chairman and CEO, Adobe, in a statement. “The combination of Adobe and Figma is transformational and will accelerate our vision for collaborative creativity.”

“With Adobe’s amazing innovation and expertise, especially in 3D, video, vector, imaging and fonts, we can further reimagine end-to-end product design in the browser, while building new tools and spaces to empower customers to design products faster and more easily,” added Dylan Field, co-founder and CEO, Figma. He will stay on and continue to lead the company, said Adobe.

$20 billion is a sizable jump for Figma, which was last valued at $10 billion in June 2021, when it raised $200 million, but Adobe is doing more than just taking out a big competitor. It’s picking up a fast-scaling business: it notes that Figma’s total addressable market is $16.5 billion by 2025.

“The company is expected to add approximately $200 million in net new ARR this year, surpassing $400 million in total ARR exiting 2022, with best-in-class net dollar retention of greater than 150 percent. With gross margins of approximately 90 percent and positive operating cash flows, Figma has built an efficient, high-growth business,” it said.

The deal definitely lays down the gauntlet for other big names in the world of digital design. Specifically it will be interesting to see what comes next for companies like Canva and Sketch.

Field is due to speak at our Disrupt event this year: hopefully (!) he still makes it — it will be a hell of a session if he does.

The companies are holding a conference call later today and we’ll listen in and add in interesting details as and when they come up.

More to come.

Adobe snaps up Figma for $20B, taking out one of its biggest rivals in digital design by Ingrid Lunden originally published on TechCrunch