Twitter to revamp Spaces, tests themed stations and a daily digest

Twitter is developing an updated version of its audio chat rooms product known as Spaces, TechCrunch learned and Twitter confirmed. The company said it’s currently working a new experiment for the Twitter Spaces tab in its app but declined to discuss the specifics of that change. However, screenshots of one of the earlier versions of this test include what appear to be thematic audio stations as well as a personalized audio digest.

The test shows a revamped look-and-feel for Spaces that organizes the audio rooms into topics, like Music or Sports, for instance. These are represented with colorful cards and imagery from the programs. (Oddly, the images appear to represent traditional podcasts in some cases.) There’s also a feature dubbed “Your daily digest,” which includes a selection of programs that can be played with a click of a button. The tab also shows you who’s listening, much as it does now.

The company said an official announcement would be further down the road after concepts are finalized but didn’t offer a time frame.

Image Credits: Twitter screenshot via Watchful

Twitter also stressed these images — which hail from competitive intelligence firm Watchful — are inaccurate and outdated. We’re told they represent only “an initial version” of the new experience it has in the works. (The company asked us to withhold publication for that reason, but we declined. TechCrunch often covers new products in their early stages — and it’s interesting to see what sort of direction Twitter may be taking with Spaces in the future, even if the final product looks remarkably different when it goes to launch. We think our readers agree.)

Image Credits: Twitter screenshot via Watchful

From our best guesses, the updated version of Spaces appears to be building upon Spaces’ support for Topics, launched last year. This allowed creators to tag their audio programs with up to three topics from a general list. This spring, Twitter also made it easier for users to see more about the Spaces when they tapped into the Space tab by placing a Space bar at the top of the screen that displayed who’s hosting, the Topics, and other information. Now, it could be experimenting with using Topics to better group different Spaces together.

In any event, it’s clear that the company is thinking about how to better introduce Spaces of interest to listeners — and one way to do this could be through a better organizational system and user interface improvements.

Today, the Spaces tab makes discovery difficult as it offers a couple of suggestions at the top, followed by Spaces from people you follow, then other live Spaces that are happening now, and below that, a selection of trending Spaces. The programs themselves often now have long, unwieldy titles as creators stuff searchable keywords, …read more

https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/03/twitter-to-revamp-spaces-tests-themed-stations-and-a-daily-digest/

Enter our student video competition and pitch your way to TechCrunch Disrupt

TechCrunch Disrupt is back, in person on October 18–20 in San Francisco, and we want to remind university and college students that one minute can change the trajectory of your startup dreams. How?

The possibility begins when you apply to the TechCrunch Student Pitch Competition (powered by Blackstone LaunchPad).

Here’s how it works:

  • Record a 60-second video of your pitch.
  • Fill out this application and answer a few quick questions about your startup company or idea.
  • Submit your application and video before September 9.
  • TechCrunch will select 20 finalists and notify them on September 18.
  • Note: This is a video-only competition — no one will pitch at Disrupt.

What’s a competition without prizes? Here’s what’s at stake.

All 20 finalists walk away with free passes to Disrupt, two free tickets to any TechCrunch event in 2023, and Blackstone LaunchPad swag. The top six finalists will also receive:

  • A free, three-night stay in a San Francisco hotel during Disrupt 2022
  • Feature coverage in a TechCrunch article
  • A mentor session with Blackstone LaunchPad and Techstars staff

The competition is 100% free and industry-agnostic — we encourage students building in any vertical to apply. And, while we’re excited to review the applications from students with a functioning MVP, the ultimate winners will be a mix of student-led startups at the ideation stage, with product/market fit and those at growth stage.

Take a look at just some of the universities whose student-led startups have already submitted applications. We already pretty impressed with the caliber of ideas and products that have come across our table from students around the world.

  • London School of Economics
  • Morehouse College
  • University of California, Los Angeles
  • University of California, Berkeley
  • Columbia Business School

Fall semester begins in a few weeks, so we encourage students to apply now before college starts to, you know, college.

TechCrunch Disrupt 2022 takes place on October 18–20 in San Francisco with an online day on October 21. Don’t miss your chance to win free Disrupt passes and a three-night stay in San Francisco. Apply to the TechCrunch Student Pitch Competition by September 9. A one-minute pitch could jumpstart your startup dreams.

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at TechCrunch Disrupt 2022? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

…read more

https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/03/enter-our-student-video-competition-and-pitch-your-way-to-techcrunch-disrupt/

How to approach building your first employee benefits package

I have been the first human resources leader at two successful startups. In both instances, I’ve built the human resources function and people teams from the ground up.

Doing this from scratch means you have to consider everything, from compliance to compensation. Often, processes and procedures just fell into place before I joined, so it was my job to evaluate whether they made sense.

One of the most complex and interesting topics I tackle is employee benefits packages. It’s a subject that comes up often at startups that want to ensure they have a competitive edge when it comes to hiring and retaining talent.

However, it’s also been known to get out of hand, and with startups tightening their budgets, I believe we’ll start to see benefits changing drastically in the coming months.

Founders need to ask themselves what really matters to their business, and which benefits best align with their cultural values.

Virtually every company will have its own take on what should be offered to employees, so founders inevitably struggle with what makes the cut (and what doesn’t). There’s no “one size fits all” benefits package, and nor should there be, as each company has its own objectives and goals.

Here are four aspects for founders should consider when building benefits packages:

Focus on what matters most to your people

It’s imperative that startups should not try to match what other technology companies are offering. It’ll be impossible to offer every flashy new perk that you come across, or provide extravagant packages like Google or Facebook.

For example, Netflix offers unlimited parental leave, which is incredible, but for an early startup, offering this would be daunting and difficult.

…read more

https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/03/how-to-approach-building-your-first-employee-benefits-package/

A touch-up for Glambook’s bank balance, as it aims to be Airbnb for beauty professionals

In the world of beauty, independent professionals often end up renting a chair in a salon. Glambook reckons that market is ripe for some tech-forward disruption, not dissimilar from renting a chair in someone’s car (Uber) a desk in someone’s office (WeWork), or a room with a view in someone’s house (Airbnb). The company raised $2.5 million at a $12 million valuation.

The new investment will be used to grow the company’s existing customer base and support the nascent infrastructure. The company is opening beauty co-working spaces across London for starters, and is eyeing international expansion. In addition to its own real estate, the company is already hosting 20,000 freelance professionals across 50 European cities, for at-home, at-office, or in-salon appointments.

“A new generation of consumers view beauty brands as entities they can access through a variety of points of intersection, including physical and digital. They expect the same quality of service in-store, on the website, and on social media, so Glambook becomes a bridge between beauty makers and customers,” says Alex Tomchenko, CEO of Glambook.

Glambook is headquartered in Berlin, Germany.

…read more

https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/03/glambook/

How a Romanian MedTech startup helped US doctors treat refugee Ukrainian cancer patients

An innovative new medical startup in Romania helped doctors from three countries collaborate to treat Ukrainian cancer patients made refugees after Russia’s brutal invasion.

The “Tumor Board” project was initiated by doctors from the US, Romania and Moldova to provide life saving treatments for displaced Ukrainians with cancer.

A collaboration of Heal 21 Association and Blue Heron Foundation, the Board used a platform provided by Romanian startup Medicai to connect doctors, share medical files, and provide a platform to discuss treatment plans, as well as allow the patients to track their own progress.

Starting in April, imaging of the cancer patients from Ukraine was uploaded (those who had it) and the new imaging from Moldava were translated from Ukrainian to Romanian/English, and reports were prepared for each patient.

Medicai, which has raised €1.2M in venture funding to date, says its web based HIPAA-compliant platform hopes to become a sort of “Miro for health”, allowing healthcare professionals to collaborate over patient documents and records.

The problem Medicai is solving sounds familiar. For example, to this day, patients go into a $1 million MRI machine and – generally speaking – walk out with a CD disk with an image of their knee or some other part of their body. It’s just one example of how data can be siloed and how patients are usually locked into large, centralized systems. This means medical professionals can’t easily collaborate with specialists outside of their hospitals.

Established corporates selling these centralized systems include BoxDICOM, Ambra Health and amongst the startups there is EnvoyAI and Collective Minds Radiology (raised $6.7M), among others.

Medicai founder Mircea Popa’s journey in healthcare started in 2011 when, with a friend of his, he co-founded a company that is now called SkinVision, a skin cancer screening app that detects melanoma (skin cancer) through ML algorithms applied on images taken with smartphones. SkinVision reached 1.2 million downloads and raised a total of $15 million in total. Medicai Co-founder Alexandru Artimon (CTO) previously co-founded software company Atta Systems.

Popa told me via email: “One lesson we’ve learned lately about healthcare is that we desperately need flexibility. With the Tumor Board project we’ve shown that Medicai can set up infrastructure in a matter of days to provide access to expertise across 2 continents: US & Canada to Romania and Moldavia – and this was done in less than ideal conditions.”

“Through the Tumor Board project we were able to touch the lives of oncological patients that would have had no other option in seeking treatment and we’re really proud to be a part of that,” he added.

So far Medicai says it has reached 29 paying clinics/hospitals, with 2,434 doctors accounts and 1400 patients accounts. It’s also claimed a strategic partnership with Microsoft and pharmaceutical companies.

Investors to date include D Moonshots, Cleverage Venture Capital, Roca X and Gapminder VC.

Meanwhile the Tumor Board project continues. If there are the predicted four million Ukrainian refugees arriving in the coming months, there could be between 13,000 and 16,000 new patients with cancer per …read more

https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/03/how-a-romanian-medtech-startup-helped-us-doctors-treat-refugee-ukrainian-cancer-patients/

Salesforce shutters Hong Kong office, leans on Alibaba in China

Salesforce is repositioning itself in China as it looks to expand the reach of its customer relationship management software in the country.

The company is “accelerating” its strategic partnership with Alibaba, a Salesforce spokesperson told TechCrunch. In 2019, Alibaba became the exclusive provider of the American giant’s software across Greater China.

As a result of its tightened partnership with Alibaba, Salesforce is “optimizing our business structure to better serve the Greater China Region” and “opening new roles while eliminating some others,” the spokesperson said.

The company’s career page shows it’s currently hiring a product management director and a senior software engineer in the southern Chinese city Guangzhou, where it placed its tech team.

It’s unclear what positions Salesforce is cutting in China, but the spokesperson confirmed that the firm is closing its office space in Hong Kong, which has historically been a springboard for multinationals to enter China. Many roles at Salesforce’s Hong Kong office are in sales and account management, LinkedIn profiles show.

It’s also unclear how exactly its relationship with Alibaba is evolving. Alibaba did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Salesforce’s interest in China lies in serving international businesses localizing in China, but it can’t do it alone due to the country’s intricate regulatory restrictions.

As China introduced new rules to control data handling across borders over the past few years, international tech giants have scaled back their presence in China or exited the market completelyLinkedIn, Yahoo, and Airbnb, to name a few.

Last year, Salesforce and Alibaba launched a joint product to help brands scale up their social commerce presence in China. The use of social networks such as WeChat to drive e-commerce sales, dubbed social commerce, has become a norm in China.

“Salesforce Social Commerce is intended to be built and hosted in China on Alibaba Cloud, one of the world’s top three cloud providers and the largest in APAC, to help support the level of scalability needed for China’s ever-growing commerce ecosystem and to help customers address local data residency regulations and compliance concerns,” Salesforce said at the time.

Salesforce could also potentially woo China’s e-commerce exporters who are fleeing centralized marketplaces like Amazon for self-hosted stores. But it has not shown visible effort to attract this crowd, while its competitor Oracle offers a one-stop shop for export-led sellers to handle data analytics, digital payments, and more. That said, Shopify is an affordable go-to solution for most sellers seeking independence from Amazon.

A report by Chinese business publication Ebrun reported on Wednesday that Salesforce has “disbanded” its China unit, which oversees the firm’s business in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Alibaba will be taking over the firm’s sales in mainland China and Hong Kong, while Taiwan will fall under the management of its Singapore office, the report said.

When asked to verify these claims, Salesforce’s spokesperson pointed to the statement provided to …read more

https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/03/salesforce-china-alibaba-cloud/

German semiconductor giant Semikron says hackers encrypted its network

Semikron, a German manufacturer that produces semiconductors for electric vehicles and industrial automation systems, has confirmed it has fallen victim to a cyberattack that has resulted in data encryption.

“Semikron is already in the process of dealing with the situation so that workflows and all related processes can continue without disruption for both employees and customers as soon as possible,” a Semikron spokesperson told TechCrunch.

Semikron declined to disclose the nature of the cyberattack, but all signs point to ransomware. The semiconductor maker said in a statement that hackers claim to have “exfiltrated data from our system,” adding that the incident has led to a “partial encryption of our IT systems and files.” This suggests the malicious actor behind the attack has used the double extortion ransomware tactic, whereby cybercriminals exfiltrate a victim’s sensitive data in addition to encrypting it.

The Nuremberg-based group company, which claims to power 35% of the wind turbines installed globally each year, declined to say who was behind the attack nor whether it received a ransom demand. However, Bleeping Computer reports that Semikron was the victim of the LV ransomware, with the hackers apparently stealing 2 terabytes of documents.

LV ransomware has been in operation since at least 2020 and uses a modified variant of REvil ransomware, according to cybersecurity company Secureworks. According to the group’s dark web blog, which doesn’t yet list Semikron as a victim, the gang targets companies that allegedly do not meet data protection obligations.

“They rejected to fix their mistakes, they rejected to protect this data in the case when they could and had to protect it,” its dark web blog states. “These companies preferred to sell their private information, their employees’ and customers’ personal data.”

It’s unclear what data was exfiltrated from Semikron’s systems, and the company declined to say how many customers and employees are potentially impacted. Semikron has over 3,000 employees in 24 offices and 8 production sites worldwide across Germany, Brazil, China, France, India, Italy, Slovakia, and the United States.

“With the support of external cyber security and forensic experts, we are investigating the incident,” Semikron added. “At the same time, we are working to restore the ability to work in order to minimize the disruption to our employees, customers and partners and to ensure the security of our IT systems as best as possible.”

…read more

https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/03/semikron-hackers-encrypted-electric-vehicles/

Aisera lands $90M to automate customer service requests with AI

“In some ways, Aisera competes with ServiceNow and Zendesk, but it’s also complementary to those solutions as we partner with them as well as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Salesforce, Atlassian, and Cisco,” Sudhakar said. “Aisera is unique and differentiated with ontology and taxonomy for each domain and vertical industry … [We also do] AI learning and training on customer data sets to capture specific intents, phrases, utterances required for

Aisera, a startup developing what it describes as an “AI-driven” support ticketing system, today announced that it raised $90 million in Series D funding led by Goldman Sachs with participation from True Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, Icon Ventures, Khosla Ventures, First Round Capital and others. CEO Muddu Sudhakar said the new cash will be put toward market expansion and supporting Aisera’s go-to-market strategy, in addition to investing in the company’s product development, R&D, sales and marketing initiatives.

Sudhakar says he built Aisera after perceiving the need for “predictive AI” solutions that could auto-resolve customer service, IT, sales and operations problems. Leveraging AI, the platform plugs into existing systems of record, including help desk portals, to respond to incoming inquiries and requests.

Sudhakar founded Aisera in 2017 alongside Christos Tryfonas, a longtime colleague. Sudhakar most recently led teams at ServiceNow and EMC, previously founding startups (Caspida, Cetas, Kazeon and Sanera Systems) that were acquired by VMware and Splunk. Tryfonas, a former AT&T Bell Labs researcher, worked with Sudhakar at several of his ventures before joining Aisera.

“We thought [the pandemic] would be a problem, but Aisera’s technology does very well in remote environments. Customers wanted AI and automation to drive user engagement and adoption,” Sudhakar told TechCrunch in an email interview. “Now in the current market downturn, we’re seeing the need for cost reduction on licenses and people. This is driving demand for Aisera as we’re able to help organizations reduce costs for IT and business services.”

The way Sudhakar explains it, Aisera’s platform learns to resolve issues through a combination of language-analyzing AI and robotic process automation, or RPA. RPA technology attempts to mimic the way people interact with software to accomplish basic, repeatable tasks at scale. It’s not a particularly novel idea — RPA vendors, including Automation Anywhere and UiPath, claim to be able to do this to some extent. But Sudhakar asserts that Aisera’s brand of RPA is custom-built for customer/employee service use cases.

Image Credits: Aisera

“In some ways, Aisera competes with ServiceNow and Zendesk, but it’s also complementary to those solutions as we partner with them as well as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Salesforce, Atlassian, and Cisco,” Sudhakar said. “Aisera is unique and differentiated with ontology and taxonomy for each domain and vertical industry … [We also do] AI learning and training on customer data sets to capture specific intents, phrases, utterances required for natural language processing and natural language understanding.”

When a request comes in via email, voice, a ticket or a chatroom, Aisera attempts to understand it by analyzing it with an algorithm trained to understand language. The platform then cross-references sources like ServiceNow, Salesforce, Oracle, Confluence and SharePoint for customer data to personalize its replies to the request. After that step, Aisera creates a list of actions that need to be completed to fulfill the request, which it submits to a “workflow management” engine.

Aisera can return articles or snippets of articles from a company’s knowledge base that most …read more

https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/03/aisera-lands-90m-to-automate-customer-service-requests-with-ai/

Playstudios launches blockchain gaming division and $10M web3-focused fund

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, which owns popular mobile apps like Tetris, is now launching a new blockchain-focused sector, which will use “rewarded play” to leverage blockchain technology and deliver more rewarding experiences to users across its portfolio of games. It’s also announced a $10 million investment, Future Fund, to back companies building rewarded play options.

In the past, the gaming studio accumulated a massive portfolio of free-to-play games – like MGM Slots Live, myVEGAS Slots, and others – that provide players the ability to earn real-world rewards through its loyalty program. To date, its community has used its in-app loyalty points to purchase over 10 million rewards, the company said.

“As we enter into the web3 space, we’ve kind of been doing play-to-earn for 10 years so I’d argue we’re the pioneers in the world of play,” Andrew Pascal, founder and CEO of Playstudios, said to TechCrunch. “We’ve spent a lot of our energy thinking about how to reward players in our games.

The new division will be built upon the acquisition of blockchain-based loyalty platform for games WonderBlocks, as well as a strategic alliance with blockchain infrastructure gaming developer Forte.

“A lot has been made in the promise of web3 games,” Pascal said. “The fact that people can acquire assets that are no longer specific to one game, it’s really massive that it can enrich over time as that asset can be incorporated and leveraged across games. Interoperability is one of the more exciting dimensions of what web3 gaming can unlock.”

Its fund has already made investments in blockchain gaming technology like Forte and will be used to grow its strategic innovation through blockchain loyalty and reward models, Pascal said.

Last month, industry players said that the web3 gaming industry is one of the few sectors seemingly less affected by current crypto market conditions due to gamers seeking out entertainment regardless of volatility, though overall sales volumes in the sector are still broadly slumping. The blockchain gaming space has continued to court attention over the past year as developers and funds alike continue to bank on the industry through new capital and innovations.

“It’s our intention to continue growing, adopting and diversifying our games and audiences and the things we offer our players,” Pascal said. “With the emergence of blockchain models and web3 space, we certainly have watched how it has evolved in all its different forms. We think we’ll have a unique take in the way we approach tokenizing our loyalty programs to continue to enrich the benefits for players.”

…read more

https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/03/playstudios-launches-blockchain-gaming-division-and-10m-web3-focused-fund/

U.K provisionally approves $8.1B NortonLifeLock-Avast merger, citing competition from Microsoft

The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has provisionally greenlighted the proposed $8.1 billion merger of cybersecurity companies NortonLifeLock and Avast, with Microsoft emerging as an unlikely ally as the two companies seek to push the deal over the line.

The merger has been hanging in the balance since the two companies first announced their plans in August last year, with the CMA revealing in March that it was opening an investigation as the coming together of two cyber security giants raised competition concerns. Indeed, the two companies offer a range of security software products, spanning antivirus, identity protection, and VPNs, with the CMA noting at the time that the due are “close competitors” with “few other significant rivals.”

“We are living more of our lives online and it is vital that people have access to competitive cyber safety software when seeking to protect themselves and their families,” David Stewart, CMA executive director, said at the time.

No concerns

Fast-forward to today, and the CMA said that it has now concluded that the merger “does not raise competition concerns in the U.K.,” and that there are various alternative free and premium cyber security software products on the market. These include the likes of McAfee, which in fact was recently acquired by an investor consortium for $14 billion, and the mighty Microsoft, which the CMA said “holds a unique position in the market as the owner of the Windows operating system.”

Microsoft has indeed bolstered its omnipresent operating system with its own built-in Defender-branded antivirus software — back in June, the company launched Microsoft Defender for Individuals, an online security application for Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscribers across Windows, MacOS, Android, and iOS. And it also launched a standalone version of Microsoft Defender for Business. Collectively, these various products have meant that consumers and businesses have become less reliant on security software from third-party providers such as NortonLifeLock or Avast.

“Applications recently launched by Microsoft for its customers bring its cyber safety offering closer to those of the merging businesses and are likely to further strengthen Microsoft as a competitor going forward,” the CMA said in its statement.

From a U.K. regulatory perspective, the merger isn’t over the line quite yet. The provisional approval has now been put back out for further feedback, with “interested parties” invited to respond by August 24 — the final decision is expected by September 8, 2022.

…read more

https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/03/u-k-provisionally-approves-8-1b-nortonlifelock-avast-merger-citing-competition-from-microsoft/