For obvious reasons, Trump doesn’t have a TikTok account. But the President’s speeches that helped incite the mob who yesterday stormed the U.S. Capitol will have no home on TikTok’s platform. The company confirmed to TechCrunch its content policy around the Capitol riots will see it removing videos of Trump’s speeches to supporters. It will also redirect specific hashtags used by rioters, like #stormthecapitol and #patriotparty, to reduce their content’s visibility in the app.

TikTok says that Trump’s speeches, where the President again reiterated claims of a fraudulent election, are being removed on the grounds that they violate the company’s misinformation policy. That policy defines misinformation as content that is inaccurate or false. And it explains that while TikTok encourages people to have respectful conversations on subjects that matter to them, it doesn’t permit misinformation that can cause harm to individuals, their community or the larger public.

A rioting mob intent on stopping democratic processes in the United States seems to fit squarely under that policy.

However, TikTok says it will allow what it calls “counter speech” against the Trump videos. This is a form of speech that’s often used to fight misinformation, where the creator presents the factual information or disputes the claims being made in another video. TikTok in November had allowed counter speech in response to claims from Trump supporters that the election was “rigged,” even while it blocked top hashtags that were used to promote these ideas.

In the case of Trump’s speeches, TikTok will allow a user to, for example, use the green screen effect to comment on the speech — unless those comments support the riots.

In addition, TikTok is allowing some videos of the violence that took place at the Capitol to remain. For example, if the video condemns the violence or originates from a news organization, it may be allowed. TikTok is also applying its recently launched opt-in viewing screens on “newsworthy” content that may depict graphic violence.

These screens, announced in December, appear on top of videos some viewers may find graphic or distressing. Videos with the screens applied are already eligible for TikTok’s main “For You” feed, but may not be prohibited. When viewer encounters a screen, they can just tap a button to skip the video or they can choose to “watch anyway.” (It could not provide any example of the screens in use, however.)

Anecdotally, we saw videos that showed the woman who was shot and killed yesterday appear on TikTok and then quickly disappear. But those we came across were from individual users, not news organizations. They were also not really condemning the riot — they were just direct video footage. It’s unclear if the specific videos we saw were those that TikTok itself censored or if the user chose to remove them instead.

Separately from graphic content, TikTok says it will remove videos that seek to incite, glorify, or promote violence, as those also violate its Community Guidelines. In these cases, the videos will be removed as TikTok identifies them — either via automation or user reporting.

And, as it did in November, TikTok is proactively blocking hashtags to reduce content’s visibility. It’s now blocking tags like #stormthecapitol and #patriotparty among others, and redirects those queries to its Community Guidelines. There are currently redirections across dozens of variations of those hashtags and others. The company doesn’t share its full list in order to protect its safeguards, it says.

TikTok had previously blocked tags like #stopthesteal and #QAnon, in a similar proactive manner.

We should point out that for all Twitter’s posturing about safety and moderation, it allowed Trump to return to its app, after a few key tweets were deleted. And it has yet to block hashtags associated with false claims, like #stopthesteal, which continues to work today. Facebook, on the other hand, banned Trump from Facebook and Instagram for at least two weeks. Like TikTok, it had previously blocked the #stopthesteal and #sharpiegate hashtags with a messages about its Community Standards. (Today those searches are erroring out with messages that say “This Page Isn’t Available Right Now,” we noticed.)

TikTok’s content moderation efforts have been fairly stringent in comparison with other social networks, as it regularly hides, downranks, and removes users’ posts. But it’s also been accused of engaging in “censorship” by those who believe it’s being too aggressive about newsworthy content.

That’s led to users finding more creative ways to keep their videos from being banned — like using misspellings, coded language or clever editing to route around TikTok policies. Other times, creators will simply give up and direct viewers to their Instagram where their content is backed up and less policed.

“Hateful behavior and violence have no place on TikTok,” a TikTok spokesperson told TechCrunch, when we asked for a statement on the Capitol events. “Content or accounts that seek to incite, glorify, or promote violence violate our Community Guidelines and will be removed,” they added.

Sports have been among some of the most popular and lucrative media plays in the world, luring broadcasters, advertisers and consumers to fork out huge sums to secure the chance to watch (and sponsor) their favorite teams and athletes.

That content, unsurprisingly, also typically costs a ton of money to produce, narrowing the production and distribution funnel even more. But today, a startup that’s cracked open that model with an autonomous, AI -based camera that lets any team record, edit and distribute their games, is announcing a round of funding to build out its business targeting the long tail of sporting teams and fixtures.

Veo Technologies, a Copenhagen startup that has designed a video camera and cloud-based subscription service to record and then automatically pick out highlights of games, which it then hosts on a platform for its customers to access and share that video content, has picked up €20 million (around $24.5 million) in a Series B round of funding.

The funding is being led by Danish investor Chr. Augustinus Fabrikker, with participation from US-based Courtside VC, France’s Ventech and Denmark’s SEED Capital. Veo’s CEO and co-founder Henrik Teisbæk said in an interview that the startup is not disclosing its valuation, but a source close to funding tells me that it’s well over $100 million.

Teisbæk said that the plan will be to use to the funds to continue expanding the company’s business on two levels. First, Veo will be digging into expanding its US operations, with an office in Miami.

Second, it plans to continue enhancing the scope of its technology: The company started out optimising its computer vision software to record and track the matches for the most popular team sport in the world, football (soccer to US readers), with customers buying the cameras — which retail for $800 — and the corresponding (mandatory) subscriptions — $1,200 annually — both to record games for spectators, as well as to use the footage for all kinds of practical purposes like training and recruitment videos. The key is that the cameras can be set up and left to run on their own. Once they are in place, they can record using wide-angles the majority of a soccer field (or whatever playing space is being used) and then zoom and edit down based on that.

Now, Veo is building the computer vision algorithms to expand that proposition into a plethora of other team-based sports including rugby, basketball and hockey, and it is ramping up the kinds of analytics that it can provide around the clips that it generates as well as the wider match itself.

Even with the slowdown in a lot of sporting activity this year due to Covid — in the UK for example, we’re in a lockdown again where team sports below professional leagues, excepting teams for disabled people, have been prohibited — Veo has seen a lot of growth.

The startup currently works with some 5,000 clubs globally ranging from professional sports teams through to amateur clubs for children, and it has recorded and tracked 200,000 games since opening for business in 2018, with a large proportion of that volume in the last year and in the US.

For a point of reference, in 2019, when we covered a $6 million round for Veo, the startup had racked up 1,000 clubs and 25,000 games, pointing to customer growth of 400% in that period.

The Covid-19 pandemic has indeed altered the playing field — literally and figuratively — for sports in the past year. Spectators, athletes, and supporting staff need to be just as mindful as anyone else when it comes to spreading the coronavirus.

That’s not just led to a change in how many games are being played, but also for attendance: witness the huge lengths that the NBA went to last year to create an extensive isolation bubble in Orlando, Florida, to play out the season, with no actual fans in physical seats watching games, but all games and fans virtually streamed into the events as they happened.

That NBA effort, needless to say, came at a huge financial cost, one that any lesser league would never be able to carry, and so that predicament has led to an interesting use case for Veo.

Pre-pandemic, the Danish startup was quietly building its business around catering to the long tail of sporting organizations who — even in the best of times — would be hard pressed to find the funds to buy cameras and/or hire videographers to record games, not just an essential part of how people can enjoy a sporting event, but useful for helping with team development.

“There is a perception that football is already being recorded and broadcast, but in the UK (for example) it’s only the Premier League,” Teisbæk said. “If you go down one or two steps from that, nothing is being recorded.” Before Veo, to record a football game, he added, “you need a guy sitting on a scaffold, and time and money to then cut that down to highlights. It’s just too cumbersome. But video is the best tool there is to develop talent. Kids are visual learners. And it’s a great way to get recruited sending videos to colleges.”

Those use cases then expanded with the pandemic, he said. “Under cornavirus rules, parents cannot go out and watch their kids, and so video becomes a tool to follow those matches.”

‘We’re a Shopify, not an Amazon’

The business model for Veo up to now has largely been around what Teisbæk described as “the long tail theory”, which in the case of sports works out, he said, as “There won’t be many viewers for each match, but there are millions of matches out there.” But if you consider how a lot of high school sports will attract locals beyond those currently attached to a school — you have alumni supporters and fans, as well as local businesses and neighborhoods — even that long tail audience might be bigger than one might imagine.

Veo’s long-tail focus has inevitably meant that its target users are in the wide array of amateur or semi-pro clubs and the people associated with them, but interestingly it has also spilled into big names, too.

Veo’s cameras are being used by professional soccer clubs in the Premier League, Spain’s La Liga, Italy’s Serie A and France’s Ligue 1, as well as several clubs in the MLS such as Inter Miami, Austin FC, Atlanta United and FC Cincinnati. Teisbæk noted that while this might never be for primary coverage, it’s there to supplement for training and also be used in the academies attached to those organizations.

The plan longer term, he said, is not to build its own media empire with trove of content that it has amassed, but to be an enabler for creating that content for its customers, who can in turn use it as they wish. It’s a “Shopify, not an Amazon,” said Teisbæk.

“We are not building the next ESPN, but we are helping the clubs unlock these connections that are already in place by way of our technology,” he said. “We want to help help them capture and stream their matches and their play for the audience that is there today.”

That may be how he views the opportunity, but some investors are already eyeing up the bigger picture.

Vasu Kulkarni, a partner at Courtside VC — a firm that has focused (as its name might imply) on backing a lot of different sports-related businesses, with The Athletic, Beam (acquired by Microsoft), and many others in its portfolio — said that he’d been looking to back a company like Veo, building a smart, tech-enabled way to record and parse sports in a more cost-effective way.

“I spent close to four years trying to find a company trying to do that,” he said.

“I’ve always been a believer in sports content captured at the long tail,” he said. Coincidentally, he himself started a company called Krossover in his dorm room to help somewhat with tracking and recording sports training. Krossover eventually was acquired by Hudl, which Veo sees as a competitor.

“You’ll never have the NBA finals recorded on Veo, there is just too much at stake, but when you start to look at all the areas where there isn’t enough mass media value to hire people, to produce and livestream, you get to the point where computer vision and AI are going to be doing the filming to get rid of the cost.”

He said that the economics are important here: the camera needs to be less than $1,000 (which it is) and produce something demonstrably better than “a parent with a Best Buy camcorder that was picked up for $100.”

Kulkarni thinks that longer term there could definitely be an opportunity to consider how to help clubs bring that content to a wider audience, especially using highlights and focusing on the best of the best in amateur games — which of course are the precursors to some of those players one day being world-famous elite athletes. (Think of how exciting it is to see the footage of Michael Jordan playing as a young student for some context here.) “AI will be able to pull out the best 10-15 plays and stitch them together for highlight reels,” he said, something that could feasibly find a market with sports fans wider than just the parents of the actual players.

All of that then feeds a bigger market for what has started to feel like an insatiable appetite for sports, one that, if anything, has found even more audience at a time when many are spending more time at home and watching video overall. “The more video you get from the sport, the better the sport gets, for players and fans,” Teisbæk said.

Online video platform Biteable, a startup that makes it easier to create polished and professional videos using templates and a library of images and animations, has raised $7 million in Series A funding led by Cloud Apps Capital Partners. The service today competes with products from Vimeo, Canva, Adobe and others, but focuses on creating video assets that have more staying power than temporary social videos.

These sort of videos are in more demand than ever, as the pandemic has prompted increased use of video communications — particularly among smaller businesses — which has also helped Biteable to grow, the company says. 

“[The pandemic] accelerated the move toward video that was already happening,” notes Biteable CEO Brent Chudoba, who joined the company at the end of last year. “It helped, obviously, things like Zoom and products like Loom. We saw a benefit, as well. I think, actually, we’ll see an even bigger benefit over time as companies are now used to working and sharing messages remotely, and having to get more creative in how they distribute information,” he says.

The startup itself was originally co-founded in 2015 in Hobart, Australia by CTO Tommy Fotak, Simon Westlake, and James MacGregor. Fotak’s background was in software development, while Westlake had experience in animation and studio production. MacGregor, who has a software, product and marketing background and previously worked at BigCommerce, is Biteable’s Chief Product Officer.

The team had initially been working on freelance projects for people who needed advertising and explainer videos, which led them to realize the opportunity in the video creation market. They believed there was demand for a video builder product that simplified a lot of the decisions that needed to be made when making a video. That is, they wanted to do for video creation what Squarespace, Wix and others have done for website creation.

Chudoba more recently joined the company as a result of Biteable wanting to bring in a CEO with more experience growing freemium software productivity businesses. Prior to Biteable, Chudoba worked in private equity, was an early SurveyMonkey employee (CRO), and also spent time at PicMonkey (COO), Thrive Global (COO and CFO) and Calendly (Head of Business Operations).

While Chudoba admits Biteable is not without its competition, he views that as a positive thing. It means there’s opportunity in the market and it gives Biteable a chance to differentiate itself from others.

On that front, Biteable’s customers tell him the product offers a good balance between the amount of time and skill set they have and the quality of the results.

“They can produce results that they are very proud of and that exceed what they thought they could do with — not necessarily low effort — but without having the training, skills and design background,” says Chudoba.

Above: A Biteable explainer video built with Biteable

The customers also appreciate the sizable content library, which includes a combination of stock photography, stock video footage, and hundreds of animations and scenes. Biteable licenses content from Unsplash and Storyblocks, while its animation library and templates are built in-house by its own professional design team. This allows the company to release hundreds of scenes per month, to keep the library content refreshed and current.

Unlike some of the other products on the market, Biteable’s sweet spot isn’t on “quick hit” social videos, like Instagram Stories, for example. Instead, it focuses on assets that companies use and reuse — like video explainers for a business, online marketing and ads, videos that appear on product pages, and more. Its videos also tend to be between 30 seconds and 3 and half minutes.

Already, Biteable has found individuals from companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Disney, Salesforce, BBC, Shopify and Samsung have used its service, though it doesn’t have any official contracts with these larger businesses.

Above: A Biteable recruiting video template

Today, the startup generates revenue via a freemium business model that includes multiple subscription plans.

A free plan for individual users offers access to the suite of tools for video creation, including the 1.8 million pictures, clips, and animations within the Biteable library. However, free videos are watermarked with Biteable’s branding. A $19 per month plan for single users removes the watermark and allows you to add your own, and offers HD 1080p resolution and other features, like commercial usage rights. Professionals pay $49 per month for shared editing and projects and use by unlimited team members, and more. Custom pricing plans are also available.

Combined, Biteable’s free and paid users total over 6 million. They create around 100,000 unique videos per month, and that number had roughly doubled over the course of 2020.

Image Credits: Biteable

The new $7 million round, announced today, was led by new investor Cloud Apps Capital Partners. Existing investor Tank Stream Ventures also returned for the round and was joined by both new and existing angel investors. In total, Biteable has raised over $9 million (USD) to date.

With the additional funds, Biteable aims to hire and continue to develop the product.

Another shift attributed to the pandemic is that people have warmed up to remote work. Biteable had already been a remote-first operation whose team of 46 is geographically distributed across Australia, the U.S., Canada, and Western Europe. Now, Biteable no longer has to convince people that remote work is the future — and this helps with recruiting talent, too.

Chudoba believes Biteable can grow to become a larger company over time.

“Video is a platform concept and so I think you can build a really big standalone company,” Chudoba says. “We’re a freemium model so that’s a low customer acquisition cost. It’s a high value service and it can be very sticky when you get teams involved,” he notes.

“The power of online video has been incredible, and the events of 2020 have accelerated adoption trends that would have otherwise taken five or more years to evolve,” notes Matt Holleran, General Partner at Cloud Apps Capital Partners, in a statement about his firm’s investment. “As a firm, we look for great businesses in high growth industries with excellent teams that we can help reach the next level. In Biteable, we see all three of those elements and are incredibly excited to partner with Brent and the Biteable team on this next chapter of growth,” he says.

Google is testing a new feature that will surface Instagram and TikTok videos in their own dedicated carousel in the Google app for mobile devices — a move that could help the company retain users in search of social video entertainment from fully leaving Google’s platform. The feature itself expands on a test launched earlier this year, where Google had first introduced a carousel of “Short Videos” within Google Discover  — the personalized feed found in the Google mobile app and to the left of the home screen on some Android devices.

To be clear, this “Short Videos” carousel is different from Google’s “Stories which rolled out in October 2020 to the Google Search app for iOS and Android. Those “Stories” — previously known as “AMP Stories” — consist of short-form video content created by Google’s online publishing partners like Forbes, USA Today, Vice, Now This, Bustle, Thrillist and others.

Meanwhile, the “Short Videos” carousel had been focused on aggregating social video from other platforms, including Google’s own short-form video project Tangi, Indian TikTok competitor Trell, as well as Google’s own video platform, YouTube — the latter which has also been experimenting with short-form content, as of late.

The expansion to include Instagram and TikTok content in this carousel was first spotted by Search Engine Roundtable, which was able to access the feature by searching for “packers” in the Google app then scrolling down the page.

We were able to replicate this, as well. (See below image.)

Image Credits: screenshot of Google search results

We found the Short Videos carousel appears when you scroll past the Google Knowledge Base box for the Green Bay Packers, followed by the the scores, Top Stories, Twitter results, Top Results, Images, Videos and other content, like a listing of the players, standings, and more.

Both Instagram and TikTok videos were available in the Short Videos row. When clicked, you’re taken to the web version of the social platform — not the native mobile app, even if it’s installed on your device. The end result is that Google users are more likely to remain on Google, as all it takes is a tap on the back arrow to return to the search results after watching the video.

Google has been indexing video content for years and partnered with Twitter on 2015 to index search results. It’s not clear to what extent it has any formal relationship with Facebook/Instagram or TikTok, however. (If those companies comment, we’ll update.)

Google declined to formally comment or further detail its plans, but a company spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch the feature was currently being piloted on mobile devices. They clarified that means it’s a limited, early-stage feature. In other words, you won’t find the video carousel on every search query just yet. But over time, as Google scales the product, it could become an interesting tool for indexing and surfacing top video content from social media — unless, of course, the platforms choose to block Google from doing so.

The feature is currently available in a limited way on the Google app for mobile devices and on the mobile web, the company said.

Today we sat on the deck with our daughter Ella and her boyfriend Nick. Knowing of my fascination with all things Beatles, Nick gave me a Japanese 45 of Get Back flipped with Don’t Let Me Down. His gift coincided with a 5 minute cut of material from a newly authorized production of a new version of Get Back, the film. A short history follows.

In the waning days of The Beatles’ partnership, the band decided to return to a more slimmed down production style, minus overdubs and plus a live feel. After original sessions in Twickenham Studios, the group decamped to the basement of their Apple headquarters and a hastily rebuilt studio courtesy of their usual producer, George Martin and loaned equipment from EMI Studios.

In the years since Sgt. Pepper, Beatles records had begun to retreat from their highly produced studio experiments. The most recent double album, The Beatles (commonly known as the White Album) was largely recorded in single takes, driving a wedge between the group and their producer that fostered a two week holiday where Martin turned the production over to his assistant.

The multiple takes also exacerbated growing tensions between the band members, as hundreds of attempts to perfect Paul McCartney songs like Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da drove Lennon further into his heroin experiments with Yoko Ono. Bickering drove Ringo Starr to quit for two weeks before being lured back with flowers draping his drum kit; George Harrison invited Eric Clapton in to a session in a successful attempt to put the rest on their best behavior. This gambit worked again with Billy Preston in the Get Back sessions four months later in January 1969.

It may be hard to understand the context of these tensions in a world beset with a global pandemic and the worst president in the history of the free world, but this was the middle of the Vietnam War and the first term of Richard Nixon. His landslide reelection in 1972 would preclude the voters turning him out of office, and the Watergate scandal that drove him to resign was only just beginning to unfold. Compare the emotional turmoil of four rock musicians to today’s terror at the actions of an unhinged autocrat being removed from office in what seems like an endless thirty days. But it really sucked then as now.

Part of the problem was the disquieting anxiety on the part of the postwar boomer generation that we didn’t really deserve the respect we weren’t getting from straight society. The silent majority of our parents and peers sneered at our experiments of free love and drug-induced “insights.” The counter culture we labeled ourselves was as lonely a place to be as the Deplorables of 2016. We had no power, no real leaders, and nowhere to go but down when Woodstock collapsed into Altamont, assassination, and addiction.

So we didn’t know what we were talking about and yet here we were owning the ceramics we broke. Our heroes in London were on top of the world, and they couldn’t stand each other. What to do? Let’s make a movie of how we really are. On the plus side, there was real alchemy between these four young men. Even though sick of each other, they loved the results of what they found together. Lennon was haughty but funny, McCartney pleasant but coiled like a big cat. Ringo was Everyman, with an actor’s surprise at his luck and proud of his true role of ignition switch.

Harrison is the crucible, where the steel is forged. In interviews after the breakup and narrating during, George seems to be the one who realizes the true value of the partnership even as he explodes it with solo success. The backlog of his material spilled out in his first album, so successful that its chart topping drove McCartney and Lennon to try and keep up for the next 8 years until Lennon’s death.

Yet of all the others, he was the one to recognize the value, the responsibility, of keeping the door open for what they had together. When Lennon recorded his vicious assault on McCartney, How Do You Sleep, George not only played on the record but provided the emotional power with a surging slide guitar lead he’d only developed when the group was done. During the White Album sessions that produced some of Lennon’s best work, he suggested Lennon change the title from Maharishi to Sexy Sadie to lose the personal attack on the guru for what may have turned out to be a jealous setup by another of the group’s coterie.

In the film fragment released for Christmas 2020, Harrison is seen kicking off Get Back, the first time you can really see the role George played in the propulsion of the track. As with many players, you can best understand this when he drops out for a retake or a tempo adjustment led by Paul; the absence of the guitarist shows how central he is to the mix. In the only footage released prior to this new material, Harrison seemed subdued on the roof concert version of the track. He reportedly was opposed to doing a live concert in general, and only agreed to go out on the roof when Lennon finally committed.

It’s this context that is so striking in the new material. The tensions within the group can be seen not only for the inevitability of their collapse but also their courage to be filmed and displayed for all to consume. As a persistent fan of the band and all of its dynamics at the core of the century, the new footage comes across like The Godfather and its sequels. Like Godfather II, the Beatles studio phase once they abandoned live performance in 1966 transcended their initial success in a way that essentially invented the modern Hollywood business of sequels.

The return to live phase that began with the White Album and continued through the Get Back sessions resolved itself with the last Beatles recording of Abbey Road. In this way the Get Back film apparently includes early recordings of material from Abbey Road as well as Harrison and McCartney tracks never finished by the group. Unlike the Let It Be film that emerged as a director’s cut of the breakdown of the group pre-Abbey Road, this new Get Back film will likely serve as a document of the final phase of the group in both defeat and resolution.

The last Beatles recording of all four plus Billy Preston produced I Want You (She’s So Heavy), the long bluesy track that ends side one of Abbey Road. It’s a tantalizing glimpse into the future that never was of the greatest group there ever was. Like Francis Ford Coppola’s reimagining of the the last Godfather sequel, Get Back is a coda to the tragic highs and lows of the time that was the Sixties. At the time, it was impossible to imagine where we could go from there. Today, we share that same feeling of despair, but perhaps, the hope of what the future could bring.

from the Gillmor Gang Newsletter

__________________

The Gillmor Gang — Frank Radice, Michael Markman, Keith Teare, Denis Pombriant, Brent Leary, and Steve Gillmor . Recorded live Friday, December 18, 2020.

Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor

@fradice, @mickeleh, @denispombriant, @kteare, @brentleary, @stevegillmor, @gillmorgang

Subscribe to the Gillmor Gang Newsletter and join the backchannel here on Telegram.

The Gillmor Gang on Facebook … and here’s our sister show G3 on Facebook.

Today we sat on the deck with our daughter Ella and her boyfriend Nick. Knowing of my fascination with all things Beatles, Nick gave me a Japanese 45 of Get Back flipped with Don’t Let Me Down. His gift coincided with a 5 minute cut of material from a newly authorized production of a new version of Get Back, the film. A short history follows.

In the waning days of The Beatles’ partnership, the band decided to return to a more slimmed down production style, minus overdubs and plus a live feel. After original sessions in Twickenham Studios, the group decamped to the basement of their Apple headquarters and a hastily rebuilt studio courtesy of their usual producer, George Martin and loaned equipment from EMI Studios.

In the years since Sgt. Pepper, Beatles records had begun to retreat from their highly produced studio experiments. The most recent double album, The Beatles (commonly known as the White Album) was largely recorded in single takes, driving a wedge between the group and their producer that fostered a two week holiday where Martin turned the production over to his assistant.

The multiple takes also exacerbated growing tensions between the band members, as hundreds of attempts to perfect Paul McCartney songs like Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da drove Lennon further into his heroin experiments with Yoko Ono. Bickering drove Ringo Starr to quit for two weeks before being lured back with flowers draping his drum kit; George Harrison invited Eric Clapton in to a session in a successful attempt to put the rest on their best behavior. This gambit worked again with Billy Preston in the Get Back sessions four months later in January 1969.

It may be hard to understand the context of these tensions in a world beset with a global pandemic and the worst president in the history of the free world, but this was the middle of the Vietnam War and the first term of Richard Nixon. His landslide reelection in 1972 would preclude the voters turning him out of office, and the Watergate scandal that drove him to resign was only just beginning to unfold. Compare the emotional turmoil of four rock musicians to today’s terror at the actions of an unhinged autocrat being removed from office in what seems like an endless thirty days. But it really sucked then as now.

Part of the problem was the disquieting anxiety on the part of the postwar boomer generation that we didn’t really deserve the respect we weren’t getting from straight society. The silent majority of our parents and peers sneered at our experiments of free love and drug-induced “insights.” The counter culture we labeled ourselves was as lonely a place to be as the Deplorables of 2016. We had no power, no real leaders, and nowhere to go but down when Woodstock collapsed into Altamont, assassination, and addiction.

So we didn’t know what we were talking about and yet here we were owning the ceramics we broke. Our heroes in London were on top of the world, and they couldn’t stand each other. What to do? Let’s make a movie of how we really are. On the plus side, there was real alchemy between these four young men. Even though sick of each other, they loved the results of what they found together. Lennon was haughty but funny, McCartney pleasant but coiled like a big cat. Ringo was Everyman, with an actor’s surprise at his luck and proud of his true role of ignition switch.

Harrison is the crucible, where the steel is forged. In interviews after the breakup and narrating during, George seems to be the one who realizes the true value of the partnership even as he explodes it with solo success. The backlog of his material spilled out in his first album, so successful that its chart topping drove McCartney and Lennon to try and keep up for the next 8 years until Lennon’s death.

Yet of all the others, he was the one to recognize the value, the responsibility, of keeping the door open for what they had together. When Lennon recorded his vicious assault on McCartney, How Do You Sleep, George not only played on the record but provided the emotional power with a surging slide guitar lead he’d only developed when the group was done. During the White Album sessions that produced some of Lennon’s best work, he suggested Lennon change the title from Maharishi to Sexy Sadie to lose the personal attack on the guru for what may have turned out to be a jealous setup by another of the group’s coterie.

In the film fragment released for Christmas 2020, Harrison is seen kicking off Get Back, the first time you can really see the role George played in the propulsion of the track. As with many players, you can best understand this when he drops out for a retake or a tempo adjustment led by Paul; the absence of the guitarist shows how central he is to the mix. In the only footage released prior to this new material, Harrison seemed subdued on the roof concert version of the track. He reportedly was opposed to doing a live concert in general, and only agreed to go out on the roof when Lennon finally committed.

It’s this context that is so striking in the new material. The tensions within the group can be seen not only for the inevitability of their collapse but also their courage to be filmed and displayed for all to consume. As a persistent fan of the band and all of its dynamics at the core of the century, the new footage comes across like The Godfather and its sequels. Like Godfather II, the Beatles studio phase once they abandoned live performance in 1966 transcended their initial success in a way that essentially invented the modern Hollywood business of sequels.

The return to live phase that began with the White Album and continued through the Get Back sessions resolved itself with the last Beatles recording of Abbey Road. In this way the Get Back film apparently includes early recordings of material from Abbey Road as well as Harrison and McCartney tracks never finished by the group. Unlike the Let It Be film that emerged as a director’s cut of the breakdown of the group pre-Abbey Road, this new Get Back film will likely serve as a document of the final phase of the group in both defeat and resolution.

The last Beatles recording of all four plus Billy Preston produced I Want You (She’s So Heavy), the long bluesy track that ends side one of Abbey Road. It’s a tantalizing glimpse into the future that never was of the greatest group there ever was. Like Francis Ford Coppola’s reimagining of the the last Godfather sequel, Get Back is a coda to the tragic highs and lows of the time that was the Sixties. At the time, it was impossible to imagine where we could go from there. Today, we share that same feeling of despair, but perhaps, the hope of what the future could bring.

from the Gillmor Gang Newsletter

__________________

The Gillmor Gang — Frank Radice, Michael Markman, Keith Teare, Denis Pombriant, Brent Leary, and Steve Gillmor . Recorded live Friday, December 18, 2020.

Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor

@fradice, @mickeleh, @denispombriant, @kteare, @brentleary, @stevegillmor, @gillmorgang

Subscribe to the Gillmor Gang Newsletter and join the backchannel here on Telegram.

The Gillmor Gang on Facebook … and here’s our sister show G3 on Facebook.

Spotify users have Wrapped and Instagram users have their Top 9. And now TikTok users will have their own year-in-review feature, too. The company today announced the launch of its first personalized annual recap feature with the launch of “Year on TikTok,” a video highlight reel that showcases individual users’ own top TikTok moments. This includes things like how long you’ve been on TikTok, what sort of videos you watched most, your favorite tracks and creative effects, metrics on how often you commented and shared videos, and more.

The feature will also identify your favorite “vibes” — meaning, the sort of videos you like best, such as crafts, cooking, animals, travel, cottagecore, or any of the now numerous communities that have sprung up on the social video platform.

If users haven’t been on TikTok long enough to have developed their own “vibe,” TikTok says their “Year on TikTok” will include other top videos from its “Year on TikTok: Top 100” list instead.

Image Credits: TikTok

The content for the recap is presented in a familiar way. You’ll vertically scroll down through a video that details your 2020 interests and activities. You then have the chance to share that video directly to your own TikTok profile in order to receive a special profile badge that puts a “2020” on top of your profile photo.

The app’s “Year on TikTok” page also includes other TikTok highlights to browse through, including top memes, top creators, top viral videos, most impactful creators, top celebs, top songs, and other year-end trends.

TikTok users can access their “Year on TikTok” by tapping the icon on their For You feed — a prominent placement — or by scrolling to the banner at the top of the app’s Discover page.

The accuracy of TikTok’s recap is debatable. For example, even though every other video in my For You feed is related to politics and news (go figure!), TikTok informed me my top “vibes” were things like home, travel, and animal videos. That’s true too, but it’s an incomplete list and doesn’t match up with the majority of my past “likes.” It seems that TikTok may be curating the experience to focus on more positive “vibes” — and political videos and themes didn’t make the cut.

Regardless of its attempts at spin, social features that offer users a personalized retrospective of how they engaged with an app through the year have proven to be fairly popular — and a good marketing mechanism, as well.

Spotify’s Wrapped, for instance, has been so well-received that people began to complain that people’s Wrapped shares were dominating and overwhelming their social feeds at year-end. Spotify this year partially addressed this problem by offering new customization options for its 2020 Wrapped that let users adjust the color of their Wrapped card before sharing. This way, the flood of Wrapped shares wouldn’t look quite as homogenous as in prior years, and may be perceived as less of an annoyance.

The “Year on TikTok” feature will likely do well, too, though it’s hard to track. The hashtag #YearOnTikTok is up to 5.4 billion views, thanks to users who are adopting the tag in hopes of propelling their videos to a wider audience or getting on the For You page. The real test will be how many creators end up with the 2020 badge stuck on their profile in the days to come.

While TikTok’s feature is fun, if you find it somewhat lacking there are third-party alternatives.

One app, Retroplay, launched its own 2020 TikTok Year in Review this month. The app does more than just round-up your own stats and metrics. Users can also vote for their favorite creators and videos through Retroplay’s “Superlatives” awards, collect cards from favorite creators, and customize their own highlight reel. But the app is brand-new and struggling with bugs — the highlight reel is currently down while it’s being fixed, for instance, and the app couldn’t resolve a username that began with a period instead of a letter, we found.

Image Credits: Retroplay

But the app’s design is catchy and the interactive features are engaging, so hopefully the developer can address the other issues soon — and before year-end!

Spotify users have Wrapped and Instagram users have their Top 9. And now TikTok users will have their own year-in-review feature, too. The company today announced the launch of its first personalized annual recap feature with the launch of “Year on TikTok,” a video highlight reel that showcases individual users’ own top TikTok moments. This includes things like how long you’ve been on TikTok, what sort of videos you watched most, your favorite tracks and creative effects, metrics on how often you commented and shared videos, and more.

The feature will also identify your favorite “vibes” — meaning, the sort of videos you like best, such as crafts, cooking, animals, travel, cottagecore, or any of the now numerous communities that have sprung up on the social video platform.

If users haven’t been on TikTok long enough to have developed their own “vibe,” TikTok says their “Year on TikTok” will include other top videos from its “Year on TikTok: Top 100” list instead.

Image Credits: TikTok

The content for the recap is presented in a familiar way. You’ll vertically scroll down through a video that details your 2020 interests and activities. You then have the chance to share that video directly to your own TikTok profile in order to receive a special profile badge that puts a “2020” on top of your profile photo.

The app’s “Year on TikTok” page also includes other TikTok highlights to browse through, including top memes, top creators, top viral videos, most impactful creators, top celebs, top songs, and other year-end trends.

TikTok users can access their “Year on TikTok” by tapping the icon on their For You feed — a prominent placement — or by scrolling to the banner at the top of the app’s Discover page.

The accuracy of TikTok’s recap is debatable. For example, even though every other video in my For You feed is related to politics and news (go figure!), TikTok informed me my top “vibes” were things like home, travel, and animal videos. That’s true too, but it’s an incomplete list and doesn’t match up with the majority of my past “likes.” It seems that TikTok may be curating the experience to focus on more positive “vibes” — and political videos and themes didn’t make the cut.

Regardless of its attempts at spin, social features that offer users a personalized retrospective of how they engaged with an app through the year have proven to be fairly popular — and a good marketing mechanism, as well.

Spotify’s Wrapped, for instance, has been so well-received that people began to complain that people’s Wrapped shares were dominating and overwhelming their social feeds at year-end. Spotify this year partially addressed this problem by offering new customization options for its 2020 Wrapped that let users adjust the color of their Wrapped card before sharing. This way, the flood of Wrapped shares wouldn’t look quite as homogenous as in prior years, and may be perceived as less of an annoyance.

The “Year on TikTok” feature will likely do well, too, though it’s hard to track. The hashtag #YearOnTikTok is up to 5.4 billion views, thanks to users who are adopting the tag in hopes of propelling their videos to a wider audience or getting on the For You page. The real test will be how many creators end up with the 2020 badge stuck on their profile in the days to come.

While TikTok’s feature is fun, if you find it somewhat lacking there are third-party alternatives.

One app, Retroplay, launched its own 2020 TikTok Year in Review this month. The app does more than just round-up your own stats and metrics. Users can also vote for their favorite creators and videos through Retroplay’s “Superlatives” awards, collect cards from favorite creators, and customize their own highlight reel. But the app is brand-new and struggling with bugs — the highlight reel is currently down while it’s being fixed, for instance, and the app couldn’t resolve a username that began with a period instead of a letter, we found.

Image Credits: Retroplay

But the app’s design is catchy and the interactive features are engaging, so hopefully the developer can address the other issues soon — and before year-end!

Twitter is shutting down Periscope, the video app it acquired several years ago when Facebook Live threatened to lap the field. When we stream the Gillmor Gang sessions, we send them to Facebook, Twitter, and an unlisted embed on YouTube. At one point, we planned to stream the sessions live on TechCrunch, but for now we’re posting the edited version there.

In the weeks leading up to January 20th, the live Telegram feed at https://t.me/Gillmorgang has been dominated by the Trump focus on overturning the election results. Each failed attempt to alter the outcome dilutes Trump’s leverage as his Republican allies struggle with his threats and Twitter rage. In just a few weeks of this, the mechanics of vaccine distribution has overwhelmed the political story as people start calculating the number of days to getting access to the medicine. What Trump does in 2024? Who cares.

Pardons are also losing traction as White House staff jockey for access to the vaccine. With a couple of weeks to the New Year and then a sprint to Biden’s installation, the cable networks are retooling for ratings fodder in the new normal. Tech companies are rejiggering their real estate and tax implications of where the home office is located in a Work from Anywhere environment.

Handicapping the Georgia special elections will fill most of the cable news schedule until January 6th, but no matter what happens in the Senate, the real action shifts to corporate and economic imperatives to control the pandemic through behavior around masks, distancing, real testing, and contact tracing to isolate the pockets of virus resistance to herd immunity. While government mandates are difficult to install at a national level, corporate requirements are more likely to succeed.

Week two of the streaming realignment features some talent lashback from big movie directors. It’s reminiscent of last year’s brief Spielberg attack on Netflix and Oscar politics. This year it’s the Oscars that are losing credibility. It’s still a ways to go before the Best Picture category is all streaming but the audience out there is in no hurry to see Dune on the big screen. As with the election, facts are a trailing indicator. The move to streaming is not if but when.

Less certain is when I upgrade to the next iPhone. Part of the problem is the competition for mindshare with the M1 MacBooks. Instead of one device I don’t need there are two. It’s clearly a one percent mental crisis on the surface, but beneath lurks a serious debate on what we do as the twin viruses recede. The phone is the new MTV, the Star Trek communicator, and the Get SmartShoe rolled into one. The laptop is a different story, a bold harmonizing of the suite of services across the desktop and mobile platforms.

The new phone offers iterative advances — a better camera, 5G support, a bigger battery. M1 jumpstarts a software surge across all Apple devices, pushing professional video editing and post-production tools to a prosumer customer base that seriously threatens Windows and Intel as the dominant platform for a post pandemic economy. Those still amortizing the last generation of the MacBook Pro 16 will hold out, but resistance will fade. The move to Apple Silicon is not if but when.

Still I don’t have a rationale for buying one. I’ll just have to do it anyway.

By the way, I’ll pretend to fund the M1 by cutting back on my newsletter subscriptions. Smart writers like the Ben’s Stratechery and Evans are caught behind the paywall of their shiny new newsletters, which trade reach for revenue. Then the very special long form pieces they used to justify the subscription cost start showing up a few weeks later in the clear. It’s the newsletter version of the Hollywood windowing system that Jason Kilar and WarnerMedia are blowing up with HBO Max.

This piece by Ben Thompson is a hybrid of the form. It’s got plenty of quotes from his Daily pay newsletter mixed with a less methodical but more supple set of semi-ideas that actually make me want to subscribe. Like this:

On the flipside, to the extent that v2 social networking allows people to be themselves in all the different ways they wish to be, the more likely it is they become close to people who see other parts of the world in ways that differ from their own. Critically, though, unlike Facebook or Twitter, that exposure happens in an environment of trust that encourages understanding, not posturing.

This is M1 fodder, I’ll call it. Lost in the social network lockdown miasma but somehow potentially transcendent of the big fish in a small pond quandary where the newsletter eco system derails. 10 bucks a month times 3 or 4 adds up to real money I won’t be funneling to Cupertino, or Disney + or Whatever + for that matter. But a bundle of cooperating newsletters that promote a certain type of work that aggregates useful data about a strategic influential audience — you betcha.

from the Gillmor Gang Newsletter

__________________

The Gillmor Gang — Frank Radice, Michael Markman, Keith Teare, Denis Pombriant, Brent Leary, and Steve Gillmor. Recorded live Friday, December 11, 2020.

Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor

@fradice, @mickeleh, @denispombriant, @kteare, @brentleary, @stevegillmor, @gillmorgang

Subscribe to the Gillmor Gang Newsletter and join the backchannel here on Telegram.

The Gillmor Gang on Facebook … and here’s our sister show G3 on Facebook.

Walmart and TikTok announced this morning they will be partnering on the first pilot test of a new shoppable product experience on TikTok’s social video app. Walmart, as you may recall, had planned to invest in TikTok when the app was being threatened with a ban from the U.S. market unless it sold its U.S. operations to an American company, per a Trump administration executive order —  a ban that’s now on pause after multiple legal challenges. Walmart’s interest in TikTok, however, has not waned. The retailer, though seemingly an odd fit for a social network, had seen the potential to attract a younger online consumer through video and, in particular, live streamed video.

This is what the new test on TikTok will involve, as well.

During a Walmart live stream, TikTok users will be able to shop from Walmart’s fashion items without having to leave the TikTok app, in a pilot of TikTok’s new “shoppable product.” The fashion items themselves will be featured in content from ten TikTok creators, led by host Michael Le, whose TikTok dances have earned him 43+ million fans. Other creators will be more up-and-coming stars, like Devan Anderson, Taylor Hage, and Zahra Hashimee.

All will be participating in a special event hosted on TikTok called the “Holiday Shop-Along Spectacular,” which will take place on Friday, Dec. 18 at 8 PM ET on Walmart’s TikTok profile.

Image Credits: Walmart

During this special, the creators will show off their favorite Walmart fashion finds in their own unique ways. For some, that will mean giving fans a peek inside their closet. Others may do a living room runway or even a fashionable “dance off,” Walmart says.

There are two ways TikTok users can shop for the fashion items featured.

As products are shown on screen, pins will pop-up which users can tap to add the item to their cart. They’re then directed to a mobile checkout experience. Alternately, customers can choose to tap on a shopping cart pin at the end of the event to look through all the items featured and select what they’d like to purchase.

And for anyone who misses the event, they’ll still be able to shop the items from Walmart’s TikTok profile when the Shop-Along event is over.

“We’re constantly looking for ways to innovate the shopping experience for our customers,” said Walmart’s U.S. Chief Marketing Officer, William White, in an announcement. “We’re moving faster than ever to find new and improved ways to better serve our customers and meet them where they are. We created this event for, about, and by our community, reflecting the lives, passions and styles of a diverse set of creators so everyone watching will feel represented, no matter who they are or how they outfit their closet,” he added.

Walmart said the idea to partner on mobile shopping didn’t emerge as a result of the recent deal talks, as it’s been an active brand on the platform for over a year. (In fact, it’s even tasked its employees with making TikTok videos, a recent report from ModernRetail detailed.)

The retailer also told TechCrunch there’s not a revenue share with TikTok on the sales it makes through the app, nor any fees, as this is considered a joint test.

Image Credits: Walmart’s profile on TikTok

This is not TikTok’s first foray into shoppable video.

The company has been exploring this space for some time, including with last year’s launch of the Hashtag Challenge Plus which added a shoppable component to a hashtag, directing video viewers to shop a site from within TikTok. This year, brands like Levi’s leveraged TikTok’s “Shop Now” buttons that allowed consumers to make purchases through links posted on TikTok. And in a significant deal just this fall, TikTok formally partnered with Shopify on social commerce by allowing Shopify merchants to create, run and optimize their TikTok marketing campaigns directly from the Shopify dashboard.

Live-streamed shopping is also a fast-growing and lucrative market, as younger users are turning to influencers and online video to both be entertained and to shop.

All the major tech companies have invested in this space as well, to varying degrees, including not only Facebook (in an aggressive push across Facebook and Instagram), but also Google through its R&D arm, Amazon through its QVC-like Amazon Live, Alibaba through AliExpress, JD.com, Pinduoduo, WeChat, and even TikTok’s Chinese sister app, Douyin.

The trend is also fueling startups, like Bambuser and Popshop Live, which have raised new rounds in 2020 for their own live-streamed shopping products.

For TikTok, however, is more of a natural evolution of its product where influencers are already showing off their favorite items, their fashion and style.

“At TikTok, we’re constantly exploring new ways to inspire creativity, bring joy and add value for our community,” said Blake Chandlee, Vice President, Global Business Solutions at TikTok. “Creators and brands have found a creative outlet to connect with audiences through TikTok Live, and we’re excited to further innovate on this interactive experience to enable our community to discover and engage with the brands they love,” he continued.

“Brands have had an incredible impact on the community throughout this year, and we’re thrilled to see Walmart embrace the creativity of TikTok and this first-of-a-kind experience to meaningfully engage with their community,” Chandlee said.

Reddit announced that it has acquired short video platform Dubsmash. The deal’s terms were undisclosed. Dubsmash will retain its own platform and brand, and Reddit will integrate its video creation tools. Its co-founders, Suchit Dash, Jonas Drüppel and Tim Specht, will join Reddit.

According to Crunchbase data, the app has raised $20.2 million from investors including Lowercase Capital, Index Ventures, Eniac Ventures, Heartcore Capital and Sunstone Life.

Dubsmash is now one of TikTok’s biggest rivals, but struggled for several years after a brief stint of popularity in 2015 during its first incarnation as a lip-sync video app. In 2017 it began transforming itself into a social platform and moved its headquarters from Berlin to Brooklyn. By the beginning of this year, Dubsmash’s share of the United States’ short-form video market was second only to TikTok when counted by app installs, and it reportedly held acquisition talks with Facebook and Snap.

Credit for much of Dubsmash’s success goes to Black and Latinx users. While many of TikTok’s highest-profile stars are white, Dubsmash is known for its large communities of Black and Latinx content creators. The polarization between the two apps began to gain more attention earlier this year, when the New York Times published a piece about how dance moves by Black Dubsmash stars are frequently appropriated without credit by TikTok influencers, which means their creators miss out on opportunities like larger followings, brand deals and industry connections.

Reddit has its own issues with racism, and has been criticized for not doing enough to stop hate speech or giving moderators of subreddits targeted by racist trolls enough support.

Last year, founder and former chief executive officer Alexis Ohanian called for his position on Reddit’s board to be filled with a Black candidate when he stepped down, which current CEO Steve Huffman said the company would honor as part of a larger effort to address hate speech on the platform announced during anti-racism demonstrations after the killing of George Floyd by a police officer. Ohanian’s position was filled by Y Combinator CEO Michael Seibel.

In its announcement today, Reddit linked its acquisition of Dubsmash to its inclusion efforts, acknowledging that the app’s “communities are driven by young, diverse creators—about 25 percent of all Black teens in the U.S. are on Dubsmash, and females represent 70 percent of users.”

It also said the integration of Dubsmash’s video creation tools will enable Reddit’s users to “express themselves in original and authentic ways that are endemic to our communities.”

Since launching native videos in 2017, Reddit said usage has increased sharply, growing 2X in 2020 alone. Much of Reddit’s content is still text-based, however, with video, gifs and images often shared from other sources, so Dubsmash’s integration can help Reddit build out its own video platform.

All over the world startups are piling into the space marked “virtual interaction and collaboration”. What if a startup created a sort of ‘Club Penguin for adults’?

Step forward Cosmos Video, which has a virtual venues platform that allows people to work, hang out and socialize together. It has now raised $2.6m in seed funding LocalGlobe with participation from Entrepreneur First, Andy Chung and Phillip Moehring (AngelList), and Omid Ashtari (former President of Citymapper).

Founders Rahul Goyal and Karan Baweja previously led product teams at Citymapper and TransferWise respectively.

Cosmos allows users to create virtual venues by combining game mechanics with video chat. The idea is to bring back the kinds of serendipitous interactions we used to have in the real world. You choose an avatar, then meet up with their colleagues or friends inside a browser-based game. As you move your avatars closer to one another person you can video chat with them, as you might in real life.

The competition is the incumbent video conferencing platforms such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams, but calls on these platforms have a set agenda, and are timeboxed – they’re rigid and repetitive. On Cosmos you sit on the screen and consume one video call after another as you move around the space, so it is mimicking serendipity, after a fashion.

As well as having a social application, office colleagues can work collaboratively on tools such as whiteboards, Google documents and Figma; play virtual board games or gather around a table to chat.

Cosmos is currently being used in private beta by a select group of companies to host their offices and for social events such as Christmas parties. Others are using it to host events, meetup groups and family gatherings.

Co-founder Rahul Goyal said in a statement: “Once the pandemic hit, we both saw productivity surge in our respective teams but at the same time, people were missing the in-office culture. Video conferencing platforms provide a great service when it comes to meetings, but they lack spontaneity. Cosmos is a way to bring back that human connection we lack when we spend all day online, by providing a virtual world where you can play a game of trivia or pong after work with colleagues or gather round a table to celebrate a friend’s birthday.”

George Henry, partner, LocalGlobe: “We were really impressed with the vision and potential of Cosmos. Scaling live experiences online is one of the big internet frontiers where there are still so many opportunities. Now that the video infrastructure is in place, we believe products like Cosmos will enable new forms of live online experiences.”