Category: TECHNOLOGY
TikTok Music’s trademarks spotted in multiple countries, hinting toward global launch plans
ByteDance may be preparing for a global launch of TikTok Music service, according to trademarks filed in several countries found by TechCrunch. The China-based conglomerate has filed TikTok Music trademark in countries like the U.K., Singapore, New Zealand, Mexico, Malaysia and Costa Rica.
This comes after a Business Insider report last week, which pointed toward a “TikTok Music” trademark filing in the U.S. ByteDance had also filed another trademark in Australia under a similar name.
All of these trademark filings include similar text about the application’s functionality of listening to music, creating playlists, commenting on songs and participating in karaoke.
The trademark application says it would allow “users to purchase, play, share, download music, songs, albums, lyrics, quotes, create, recommend, share his/her playlists, lyrics, quotes, take, edit and upload photographs as the cover of playlists, comment on music, songs and albums.”
ByteDance already operates a music streaming service called Resso in India, Brazil and Indonesia, and a former ByteDance employee told us it had previously considered bringing this service to more markets under a “TikTok Music” title. Specifically, it had been considering launches in mature markets like the U.K. and Australia, the source said.
Resso has identical features to the ones described above, with TikTok-like vertical scrolling to go through songs, the ability to change cover photos for playlists, lyrics displayed on the lock screen, and comments on songs and albums.
Since its launch in 2020, Resso has seen solid progress in its existing markets, mobile data indicates. According to analytics firm Sensor Tower, the company saw 42.3 million downloads from the App Store and Google Play from January to May this year — growth of 19% year over year for the same period. The music streaming app has had 184 million overall lifetime downloads, as well.
TikTok, meanwhile, has had a major impact on the music industry with many hits being driven by different viral videos on the platform. A report released by the company last year suggested that 175 songs that trended on the short-video platform ended up on the Billboard 100 chart. In addition, a recent report published by a U.K.-based music investor noted that songs that are popular on TikTok drive additional views on YouTube and streams on other music streaming platforms, like Spotify. Record labels are also benefitting from TikTok’s success in the music sector. Reports estimate that TikTok paid $179 million to recorded music right owners in 2021.
ByteDance would want to grab all that traffic and streaming money from its own music service, and its recently launched music marketing and distribution platform SoundOn. Last week the company launched a pre-release feature so the artists can “leak” their songs to the TikTok audience before the official release.
The launch of TikTok Music would mean an additional revenue stream for ByteDance and a complete music solution service that can …read more
This startup just raised $320M to make long-term care inside hospitals obsolete
Cera, a U.K. provider of healthcare inside people’s homes augmented by a platform that allows carers to monitor a patient’s health and potentially flag problems, has raised $320 million (£260 million) in an equity and debt financing round, split roughly 50/50.
The equity side of the funding round was led by Cera’s existing investor Kairos HQ, alongside the Vanderbilt University Endowment, Schroders Capital, Jane Street Capital, Yabeo Capital, Squarepoint Capital, Guinness Asset Management, Oltre Impact, 8090 Partners, technology investor Robin Klein (of LocalGlobe fame) and others. Cera declined to name it’s debt partner.
The company now plans to expand from servicing 15,000 patients to up 100,000 each day. Ironically, 15,000 patients is the bed capacity roughly equivalent to the 40 NHS hospitals promised more than two years ago by Britain’s ruling Conservative Party, which have yet to be delivered.
The statistic is indicative of how in-home patient care is being radicalized by tech startups that either use remote monitoring, or employ carers to manually enter patient data into apps. Eventually it is likely to make long-term care inside hospitals obsolete, as the home can be just as efficient a place to deliver care.
More than 88% of hospitals and health orgs in the U.S. are estimated to be investing in remote patient monitoring technologies. U.S.-based startups in the sector include GYANT, which has raised $23 million, Neteera ($8.5 million) and Binah.ai ($13.5 million).
Cera’s proprietary system is less tech-heavy, but all the same is clearly on the path toward greater automation, in the same way that Uber and Lyft drivers may one day be replaced by driverless taxis.
The company, which also operates in Germany, delivers care, nursing, telehealth and prescription delivery services in the home, and claims it is 10-times cheaper than servicing a patient in hospital. Staff collect patient symptoms and health data in the home, which is then used to predict deteriorations in conditions before they occur, triggering medical interventions. The company claims this can reduce hospitalization rates by over 50%, and has other benefits, such as reducing patient falls, infections and improving medication and prescription compliance.
With hospitals under strain after the worst of the pandemic, and staff at a premium, it’s likely that these technology-augmented services will take off amongst healthcare providers.
Dr Ben Maruthappu MBE, who launched the startup in 2016, told me: “What we are doing is just mirroring what has happened in other industries, such as ride-hailing or other services that come straight to your door. Most healthcare tech is now graduating to healthcare in the home. We have started with older people as they have a high frequency of care visitors.”
He said that Brexit had a negative impact on healthcare in the U.K., given that as much as 7% of NHS staff are from the EU, but claimed that Cera is able to retrain people from other industries fairly rapidly into healthcare roles. “Over 60% of people we are hiring are from outside healthcare. It’s like when ride-sharing had …read more
Facebook is shutting down its live shopping feature on October 1
Facebook is shutting down its live shopping feature on October 1 to shift its focus to Reels, the company announced in a blog post. After this date, you will no longer be able to host any new or scheduled live shopping events on Facebook, the company says. The social media network notes that you will still be able to use Facebook Live to broadcast live events, but you won’t be able to create product playlists or tag products in your Facebook Live videos.
Livestream video shopping became publicly available on Facebook two years ago, following a series of smaller trials and beta tests. The feature was designed to give creators and brands an interactive way to sell items, connect with viewers and potentially gain new customers. However, Facebook says it’s now shifting away from live video shopping to focus on Reels.
“As consumers’ viewing behaviors are shifting to short-form video, we are shifting our focus to Reels on Facebook and Instagram, Meta’s short-form video product,” the company said in the blog post. “If you want to reach and engage people through video, try experimenting with Reels and Reels ads on Facebook and Instagram. You can also tag products in Reels on Instagram to enable deeper discovery and consideration. If you have a shop with checkout and want to to host Live Shopping events on Instagram, you can set up Live Shopping on Instagram.”
Facebook first debuted live shopping in 2018 and has tested ways to make the feature more seamless and popular over the past couple of years. Last November, the company began testing “Live Shopping for Creators.” The launch allowed creators and brands to cross-stream on both of their pages, as opposed to having to direct users to a single page. In addition, the company launched “Live Shopping Fridays” last summer in order to encourage larger brands to try out live shopping as a medium and raise awareness about live shopping on Facebook. The program featured brands like Abercrombie and Fitch, Bobbi Brown, Clinique and Sephora.
A live shopping platform could have ultimately served as a significant revenue stream for Facebook, thanks to selling fees applied at checkout. However, given today’s announcement, it’s clear that Facebook is rethinking its stance on live shopping.
Facebook isn’t the only digital giant looking to scale back its live shopping plans, as it was recently revealed that TikTok has reportedly dropped plans to expand its live e-commerce “TikTok Shop” initiative to the U.S. and additional parts of Europe. The company launched TikTok Shop in the U.K. last year, its first market outside Asia, allowing companies and influencers to sell products through QVC-style livestreams. However, the venture struggled to gain traction with consumers and suffered from internal problems. The Financial Times reported that the expansion plans were abandoned after influencers dropped out of the project in the U.K.
Livestream shopping is becoming increasingly more popular in Asia, and particularly in China. However, since both Facebook and TikTok are walking …read more
https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/03/facebook-shutting-down-live-shopping-feature-october/
YC and a16z back virtual reality basketball app Gym Class
Despite Zuckerberg & Co. spending billions of dollars on virtual reality tech every fiscal quarter, the wider VR startup ecosystem has been having a tough few years coming down from the highs of 2016, when investors dumped money into the sector expecting Oculus-sized returns only to see most of their investments slowly wilt away.
This makes it fairly notable news whenever a big institutional investor makes a bet in a VR startup these days — even just a seed round. Earlier this week I sat down with the folks at basketball virtual reality app Gym Class, which just closed an $8 million seed round from Andreessen Horowitz. Other backers include Founders, Inc., Todd and Rahul’s Angul Fund and Balaji Srinivasan.
Gym Class is what they call a VR pure-play — the experience relies on the hardware, and the mechanics only make sense in VR. So, in theory, a bet in the company isn’t just a bet on the ability of the team, but the near-term viability of the space they’re operating in. It’s a safer bet in a world where Meta and Apple are investing heavily in the sector, but still risky given uncertainty around the timing of further headset adoption.
Even among other VR titles, the game itself is early — Gym Class isn’t even available in Meta’s Quest Store yet. To date, the nearly 1 million downloads of the free app have taken place on Meta’s App Lab storefront, a hub for games that show early promise but may have a good deal of development ahead of them before they’re ready for prime time. So far, Gym Class has gotten quite a bit of attention before even landing on the official Quest store largely due to TikTok shares of gameplay footage.
Image Credits: Gym Class
Gym Class’s product head Paul Katsen tells TechCrunch that the startup is thinking about the experience as more of a social hub than a simple game, one that allows people to hop into a virtual space and bond over the sport and culture around basketball. Gym Class is tightly focused on basketball for the time being, the company says, and doesn’t have any near-term plans to build out a wider offering of sports experiences.
The company’s upcoming official Quest Store launch is a big moment for the company, but cements just how critical Meta’s platform remains for any and all virtual reality developers. Late last month, Meta made a stir by announcing a price increase of their long-available Quest 2 headset, citing a need to recoup investment in the low-margin device.
“If you become reliant on these platforms for distribution, you don’t build your own distribution platform,” Katsen says, “When we see prices are going up by $100, yeah that’s a bummer, but still — the trajectory at which it’s growing — it’s outselling consoles.”
https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/03/yc-and-a16z-back-virtual-reality-basketball-app-gym-class/
Upstream’s new vault could help NFT holders sleep at night
Before we get into how a Vault DAO works, it’s worth examining why Taub might have felt the need to build out a new solution altogether. Security isn’t a new issue in crypto by any means, but the existing solutions, especially for individuals, are limited.
Imagine paying millions of dollars for a JPEG of a monkey just to have it stolen from your digital wallet. That’s exactly what happened to actor Seth Green, who ended up pleading with the hacker (and likely paying them over $100,000) to return the NFT back to him.
Green’s predicament is more common than one would think, and it raises the question of how NFT platforms should handle helping its customers get recourse when this happens, if at all. Cracking down on thieves and enforcing ownership rights is particularly difficult in an industry that values decentralization and self-sovereignty as core tenets. Still, NFT holders need to feel safe holding the digital assets they purchase, Upstream founder and CEO Alex Taub told TechCrunch in an interview.
“Security is really rough with crypto. People lose their seed phrase, their export keys, they click on a bad thing, they sign — that person could take a lot of stuff out … Sometimes, you’re doomscrolling when you’re half asleep, and you click on a bad link, and it’s over,” Taub said.
Upstream, which most recently raised a $12.5 million Series A round in March, refers to itself as a no-code, full-stack platform to build DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations). Now, the startup has leveraged its DAO tooling know-how to roll out a new product Taub says will improve security for NFT holders called the “Vault DAO.”
A screenshot of the homepage interface of the Upstream Vault DAO. Image Credits: Upstream
Before we get into how a Vault DAO works, it’s worth examining why Taub might have felt the need to build out a new solution altogether. Security isn’t a new issue in crypto by any means, but the existing solutions, especially for individuals, are limited.
Hardware wallets, for example, provide a secure option for people to store the private keys to their wallet on what’s essentially a hard drive, but these “cold” wallets aren’t exactly known for being user-friendly. What’s more, Taub noted, one could just as easily misplace a hardware wallet as they could lose the seed phrase that enables them to access their crypto. “Hot” wallets, which are connected to the internet, are another solution, but Taub said he wouldn’t deposit any valuable assets into one because most solutions for NFTs are custodial or operated by a centralized entity. Additionally, Taub said he worries about the possibility that assets in a hot wallet could get lost in the shuffle of connectivity issues.
The Vault DAO, Upstream’s solution, operates as a multisignature wallet that can be configured to require sign-off from multiple discrete accounts to authorize a transaction on behalf of a user. A user can set up multiple accounts directly through Upstream and can choose a threshold for the number of signatories needed to execute any given type of proposal, Taub explained.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/03/upstreams-new-vault-could-help-nft-holders-sleep-at-night/
Starbucks to unveil its web3-based rewards program next month
Starbucks will unveil its web3 initiative, which includes coffee-themed NFTs, at next month’s Investor Day event. The company earlier this year announced its plans to enter the web3 space, noting its NFTs wouldn’t just serve as digital collectibles, but would provide their owners with access to exclusive content and other perks.
At the time, Starbucks was light on details as to what its debut set of NFTs would look like, specific features they’d provide or even what blockchain it was building on. It said the plan was likely to be multichain or chain-agnostic, hinting at plans that weren’t yet finalized.
Overall, the coffee retailer kept its web3 news fairly high level, explaining simply that it believed digital collectibles could create an accretive business adjust to its stores and that more would be revealed later in 2022.
While some companies jumped on the NFT bandwagon without much thought as to how their investments would fit in with their larger business goals, Starbucks seems to be attempting a different approach. It sees the collectibles as an extension of customer loyalty. In fact, the company even brought in Adam Brotman, the architect of its Mobile Order & Pay system and the Starbucks app, to help serve as a special advisor on the project.
Mobile Order & Pay has been one of Starbucks’ biggest successes, in terms of tech innovations. The company was one of the first to introduce the concept of a digital wallet, even before Apple Pay became ubiquitous. And as broader mobile payment adoption has grown, Starbucks mobile ordering has, too. In the past quarter — Starbucks’ fiscal Q3 — mobile orders, delivery and drive-through combined drove 72% of Starbucks’ U.S. revenue. In addition, the mobile ordering sales mix grew to a record high of 47%, up 13% year-over-year, following COVID-driven changes in consumer behavior, the company said.
Starbucks founder and interim CEO Howard Schultz, who returned to the company in April, teased its forthcoming web3 initiative during this week’s earnings call with investors.
“We have been working on a very exciting new digital initiative that builds on our existing industry-leading digital platform in innovative new ways all centered around coffee and most importantly, loyalty, that we will reveal at Investor Day,” Schultz said.
The company had previously announced its plans to host its 2022 Investor Day in Seattle on September 13, 2022.
Schultz continued, “we believe this new digital web3-enabled initiative will allow us to build on the current Starbucks Rewards engagement model with its powerful spend to earn stars approach while also introducing new methods of emotionally engaging customers, expanding our digital third place community, and offering a broader set of rewards, including one-of-a-kind experiences that you can’t get anywhere else, integrating our digital Starbucks Rewards ecosystem with Starbucks-branded digital collectibles as both a reward and a community building element.
“This will create an entirely new set of digital network effects that will …read more
https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/03/starbucks-to-unveil-its-web3-based-rewards-program-next-month/
Thousands of Solana Wallets Hacked in Crypto Cyberattack
An attacker targeting the currency’s ecosystem exploited a flaw to drain cryptocurrencies from 8,000 wallets. …read more
Alex Jones and Infowars finally face the music for sowing Sandy Hook conspiracies
Infowars founder Alex Jones took the stand today in a trial that will determine what he owes to the parents of a child killed in the Sandy Hook mass shooting. Last year, Jones was found liable in a series of defamation cases brought by the parents of Sandy Hook victims.
For years, Jones and Infowars spread outlandish and disturbing conspiracy theories purporting that the 2012 tragedy, which claimed 28 lives — most of them children — was staged.
The first trial to determine the damages Jones may owe is underway in Texas, with Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, parents of six-year-old Sandy Hook victim Jesse Lewis, seeking at least $150 million. Late last month, Infowars’ parent company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, likely a pre-emptive effort to dodge financial culpability before the outcome of the trial.
In a surprise twist Wednesday, the lawyer representing the Sandy Hook victim’s parents revealed that he recently received a trove of Jones’ phone data, apparently shared to the opposing legal team by mistake.
Jones lost four separate defamation cases relating to Sandy Hook by default after refusing to cooperate with Texas and Connecticut courts and provide requested documents. Jones also failed to produce any messages related to Sandy Hook in the discovery process for the damages trial — a discrepancy that the family’s lawyer Mark Bankston highlighted on Wednesday.
“You know what perjury is, right?” Bankston asked.
The plaintiff’s lawyer also cited emails that showed Infowars making $800,000 a day — a mind-boggling figure that Jones did not dispute in spite of his previous contradictory claims about the company’s revenue. Jones claimed that any punishment above $2 million would “sink” his company.
Whether any damages awarded would destroy his business or not, the trial could prove to be a cautionary tale for the countless businesses peddling conspiracies that, like Infowars, rake in revenue around dangerous and politically divisive misinformation.
Shortly after the reveal, Rolling Stone reported that the January 6 committee plans to request those messages and emails in its ongoing investigation into the Capitol insurrection.
Jones is in court after infamously claiming that the Sandy Hook school shooting was a fake event staged by “crisis actors” to advance a covert ideological agenda. The false claims spread online like wildfire in conspiracist echo chambers over the last decade, inspiring believers to stalk and harass the parents of Sandy Hook victims, some of whom even moved or went into hiding to escape the abuse.
Heslin described the situation as a “living hell” in testimony this week. “What was said about me and Sandy Hook itself resonates around the world,” he said. “As time went on, I truly realized how dangerous it was… My life has been threatened. I fear for my life, I fear for my safety.”
Alex Jones has cashed in on the Infowars conspiracy empire for years, promoting repeated claims of government coverups and false flag operations while pushing branded products like nootropic supplements promising to enhance “male vitality.” While skirting the …read more
https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/03/alex-jones-infowars-trial-text-messages/
Pelosi Trip Delays Tesla Supplier’s Plant Announcement
China’s leading electric-vehicle battery maker put on hold plans to announce its first North American plant in the wake of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. …read more
Daily Crunch: Unknown hacker drains millions of dollars from thousands of Solana hot wallets
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The TechCrunch Top 3
- Where there was once sunshine has now faded to darkness: Thousands of Solana users found their wallets were drained of collectively around $8 million, Rita and Carly write. The hack is only affecting “hot” wallets, the pair report. Industry experts say this may have been a privacy key compromise. We’re sure there will be more on this later.
- Ping finds itself in familiar territory: Ping Identity, a public enterprise identity management firm, has agreed to be acquired by the private equity firm Thoma Bravo, Ingrid reports. This is not Ping’s first exposure to PE involvement. It was majority-owned by Vista Equity, which retains a minority stake in the company. Thoma Bravo has been on a buying streak lately, also picking up both SailPoint and Anaplan this year.
- Trading places: We go back to Rita, who writes about Salesforce taking a look at its presence in China. Among the changes are the closing of its Hong Kong office and the acceleration of Salesforce’s relationship with Alibaba, which includes helping companies establish a social commerce presence.
Startups and VC
L’Attitude Ventures announced today that it has closed on its first institutional fund, raising more than $100 million from several financial services heavyweights, including a “strategic anchor investment” from JPMorgan Chase, Mary Ann reports.
Playstudios, a publicly traded mobile gaming platform and developer, is venturing into the web3 world with a new blockchain division and investment fund. The gaming entity announced a $10 million investment vehicle, Future Fund, to back companies building rewarded play options, Jacquelyn reports.
Keepin’ the startup train rollin’:
- Computer says maybeKyle reports that customer service tech company Aisera lands $90 million to automate customer service requests with the power of machine learning.
- A vault for your digital trinkets: Imagine paying millions of dollars for a JPEG of a monkey just to have it stolen from your digital wallet. Upstream’s new vault could help keep your digital treasures a bit safer, Anita reports.
- From straps to treadmill: In today’s episode of the Equity podcast, Natasha M and Alex ponder if it is time to jump on the venture treadmill for companies that have been bootstrapping so far.
- Pay $5, get paidKyle reports that startup ZayZoon charges employees $5 to get paid sooner.
- Y minimator: Citing downturns and funding climate, …read more