Browsing Tag: Mobile Smart Phones

    Tech News

    Netflix begins streaming in AV1 on Android

    February 6, 2020

    Netflix announced this week that it has started to stream titles in AV1 on Android in what could significantly help the two-year-old media codec gain wider adoption.

    The world’s biggest streaming giant said on Wednesday that by switching from Google’s VP9 — which it previously used on Android — to AV1, its compression efficiency has gone up by 20%.

    At the moment, only “select titles” are available to stream in AV1 for subscribers “who wish to reduce their cellular data usage by enabling the ‘Save Data’ feature,” the American firm said.

    Netflix hasn’t shared much about the benefit AV1 will provide to customers, but the new media codec’s acceptance nonetheless sends a message by itself.

    Tech giants, including Google, have spent years developing and improving media codecs as consumption of data skyrocketed and low-cost devices began to sell like hotcakes. But they just can’t seem to settle on one media codec and universally support it.

    Think of Safari and YouTube, for instance. You can’t stream YouTube videos in 4K resolution on Safari, because Apple’s browser does not support Google’s VP9. And Google does not support HEVC for 4K videos on YouTube.

    AV1 is supposed to be the savior media codec that gets universal support. It’s royalty-free and it works atop of open-source dav1d decoder that has been built by VideoLAN, best known for its widely popular media player VLC and FFmpeg communities. It is sponsored by the Alliance for Open Media.

    Who are the members of Alliance for Open Media? Nearly all the big guys: Apple, Google, Amazon, Netflix, Nvidia, ARM, Facebook, Microsoft, Mozilla, Samsung and Tencent, among others.

    But that’s not to say there aren’t roadblocks in the adoption of AV1. Compared to HEVC — the format that AV1 is supposed to replace in popularity — encoding in AV1 was noticeably slower a year ago, as per some benchmark tests.

    Adoption of AV1 by various browsers, according to analytics firm StatCounter. Safari is yet to support it.

    Netflix’s announcement suggests that things have improved. The streaming giant said its goal is to support AV1 on all of its platforms. “In the spirit of making AV1 widely available, we are sponsoring an open-source effort to optimize 10-bit performance further and make these gains available to all,” it said in a blog post.

    Source: Tech Crunch Mobiles | Netflix begins streaming in AV1 on Android

    Tech News

    Instagram gives unfollow suggestions in new ‘following categories’

    February 6, 2020

    Instagram will now show you who you interact with least frequently in case you want to unfollow them. In an effort to help you keep your feed clean and relevant, today Instagram is launching “following categories” that divides the list of who you follow into batches, including “most seen in feed” and “least interacted with.” That way if someone annoying or boring is overwhelming your feed, or there’s someone whose content you’ve proven to not be interested in, you can easily remove them. Time to axe those courtesy and pity follows.

    “Instagram is really about bringing you closer to the people and things you care about — but we know that over time, your interests and relationships can evolve and change,” a spokesperson tells me. “Whether you graduate, move to a new city, or become obsessed with a new interest and find a community, we want to make it easier to manage the accounts you follow on Instagram so that they best represent your current connections and interests.”

    To access the feature, go to your profile, then “following,” then you’ll see the categories you can explore. You’re also able to sort who you follow by earliest to latest and vice versa, in case you want to clear out your earliest adds or make sure you actually care about the latest people you followed.

    By increasing the density of high-quality posts in your feed and Stories by getting you to unfollow irrelevant accounts, Instagram could boost ad views. You’ll come across fewer lame posts that might make you close the app so you instead keep scrolling and fast-forwarding while racking up ad impressions. Instagram reportedly hit $20 billion in 2019 revenue according to Bloomberg, and soon it may start running ads in IGTV while splitting revenue with creators.

    I’ve been asking Twitter to build unfollow suggestions since 2013, but Instagram beat them to it. Even with filtered feeds, the algorithms can get things wrong and show too much of people you don’t care about.

    Following back or adding someone who asks has become part of the modern-day social contract. It can be rude and cause drama to refuse, so people just bloat their following list. Manually sorting through, trying to remember who people are and if you see them too often or constantly ignore them can be a slow and emotionally draining chore. With Instagram now 10 years old, Twitter 14 and Facebook 16, we’ve had a long time to accidentally screw up our social graph.

    Perhaps unfollow suggestions took this long because no app wants to overtly shame specific people. But Instagram’s approach via clear, quantifiable categories is just vague enough that you probably won’t screenshot them and show the friends it said to nix. With that sensitivity, Instagram has pulled off the rare feat of improving the user experience while simultaneously benefiting its revenue engine.

    Source: Tech Crunch Mobiles | Instagram gives unfollow suggestions in new ‘following categories’

    Tech News

    What to expect from Samsung’s S20 event

    February 6, 2020

    Next Tuesday, Samsung kicks off smartphone season with its Unpacked event in San Francisco. One of two tentpole events for the company, the big show brings with it the latest edition of the company’s primary flagship line, the Galaxy S.

    Samsung played a fun little trick, holding the event on February 11th at 11AM PT, all while skipping the Galaxy S11 entirely. Granted, this is still firmly in the realm of rumors here, but evidence is mounting that the company is actually skipping nine full model numbers and going straight to the Galaxy S20.

    Why? Well, reasons. It’s 2020, for one. Also, Apple skipped the iPhone 9 a while back, so Samsung can now do it nine better — and perhaps adopt a numbering system more akin to Huawei’s 10-at-a-time updates. Honestly, though, the most likely answer is the simplest: Smartphone sales have slowed for many manufacturers and this is a sneaky way to generate a little interest.

    But what’s in a name, really? One thing that’s certainly in line with previous Galaxy releases is the veritable deluge of leaks leaving little to the imagination in the lead-up to the event. We’ve been seeing fairly consistent renders for weeks and months, and earlier this week, what appears to be marketing images have surfaced.

    Along with the S20 name, the shots showcase a design scheme featuring a hole punch camera up front (the “Infinity O”) and a long, prominent camera array on the rear. The also-rumored Galaxy S20 Ultra appears to add an even more intense camera array to the mix, including a “Space Zoom 100x,” which would bring a pretty crazy level of zooming capabilities to the smart phone — through, one assumes, a hybrid of digital and optical.

    There’s already a lot of camera literature to crawl through here, including the patenting of the term “nonacell.” That, understandably sounds like nonasense, but appears to use pixel binning to create 12-megapixel images from the 108-megapixel sensor. That seems likely to be reserved for the Ultra — one of the versions of the handset, which include the S20 and S20+. All are believed to have a 5G option — logical, given that Samsung was among the first to bring the technology to market.

    We have less information about the Galaxy Z Flip, but Samsung’s second foldable appears destined to get some stage time at the show. The device could well be far more accessible than the original Fold. First, there’s the clamshell design that has more in common with the new Motorola Razr than the original Fold. It’s also believed to be a little more rugged — owing to…issues with the original version of the Fold.

    Pricewise, the Flip is expected to be, well, pricey — but considerably less so than the Fold. Rumored at around $1,500, it’s $500 less than Samsung’s original foldable.

    New versions of Samsung’s quite good Galaxy Buds are expected, as well. The Galaxy Buds+ reportedly offer a large bump in battery, up to a total of 22 hours. Also expected is multi-device connectivity and a $20 price bump.

    Source: Tech Crunch Mobiles | What to expect from Samsung’s S20 event

    Tech News

    Google Maps adds more crowdsourced transit data and gets a new navigation bar

    February 6, 2020

    Google is updating Google Maps on Android and iOS with a revamped tab bar at the bottom, a new icon and a couple of new features. In particular, the company is putting more emphasis on user-generated content and recommendations.

    At the bottom of the app, you now get five icons — Explore, Commute, Saved, Contribute and Updates. You could already save places and add more information to a Google Maps listing, but those features are now more visible. They’re no longer hidden in a side menu.

    The Saved tab lets you easily access your saved places, lists and maps. You can also access the creepy timeline of all your past activity from the same menu now — you can disable location history in your Google account settings.

    With the Contribute tab, you can see all your past contributions (reviews, photos, etc.) but also add content directly from that menu. In addition to reviews and photos, you can now directly suggest an edit and add a place from that menu instead of searching for a place and then adding or editing a place.

    Finally, the Updates tab combines two existing features in a single view — a feed of recommendation (“For You”) as well messages from businesses. Google added the ability to message businesses in November 2018, but the inbox was a bit buried.

    As for crowdsourced transit data, Google is expanding transit data beyond crowdedness reports. Google Maps prompts users to give more information about your bus or train ride at the end of the trip.

    Users will now get prompts about the temperature, accessibility features and the presence of security cameras or security guards. In some regions, you’ll be able to say if there’s a women’s section. In Japan, Google Maps will offer you to pick a route with more carriages. Those features will roll out in March.

    The company is also announcing some improvements to Live View, the feature that lets you see your route using augmented reality. For instance, you’ll be able to see a pin with your destination so that you get a better sense of where you should be headed.

    Finally, Google is updating the Google Maps logo. It’s a more minimalistic Google-colored pin.

    Source: Tech Crunch Mobiles | Google Maps adds more crowdsourced transit data and gets a new navigation bar

    Tech News

    Qualcomm faces fresh competition scrutiny in Europe over RFFE chips for 5G

    February 6, 2020

    Qualcomm is facing fresh antitrust scrutiny from the European Commission, with the regulator raising questions about radio frequency front-end (RFFE) chips which can be used in 5G devices.

    The chipmaker has been expanding into selling RFFE chips for 5G devices, per Reuters, It is encouraging buyers of its 5G modems to also buy its radio frequency front-end chips rather than buying from other vendors and integrating their hardware with its 5G modem chips.

    A European Commission spokeswomen confirmed the action, telling us: “We can confirm that the Commission has sent out questionnaires, as part of a preliminary investigation into the market for radio frequency front end.”

    We’ve reached out to Qualcomm for comment.

    The chipmaker disclosed the activity in its 10Q investor filing. Qualcomm wrote that the regulator requested information in early December, “notifying us that it is investigating whether we engaged in anti-competitive behavior in the European Union (EU)/European Economic Area (EEA) by leveraging our market position in 5G baseband processors in the RFFE space.”

    Qualcomm says it’s in the process of responding to the request for information.

    It’s not yet clear whether the investigation will move to a formal footing in future. “Our preliminary investigation is ongoing. We cannot comment on or predict its timing or outcome,” the EC spokeswoman told us.

    “It is difficult to predict the outcome of this matter or what remedies, if any, may be imposed by the EC,” Qualcomm also wrote in the investor filing, adding: “We believe that our business practices do not violate the EU competition rules.”

    If a violation is found it also warns investors that the EC has the power to impose a fine of up to 10 percent of its annual revenues, and it could also issue injunctive relief that prohibits or restricts certain business practices.

    The preliminary probe of Qualcomm’s 5G modem business is by no means the first antitrust action the chip giant has faced in Europe.

    Last summer, Europe’s competition commission fined Qualcomm close to $270M following a long-running antitrust investigation into whether it used predatory pricing when selling UMTS baseband chips, with the regulator concluding Qualcomm had used predatory pricing to force a competitor out of the market.

    Two years ago the Commission also fined the chipmaker a full $1.23 billion in another antitrust case related to its dominance in LTE chipsets for smartphones, specifically related to its relationship with Apple and its iPhone.

    In both cases Qualcomm is appealing the decisions.

    It is also battling a major competition case on its home turf. In 2017, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed charges against Qualcomm, accusing it of using anticompetitive tactics in an attempt to maintain a monopoly in its chip business.

    Last year, a U.S. court sided with the FTC, agreeing the chip giant had violated antitrust law and it warned that such behavior would likely continue given Qualcomm’s key role in making modems for next-gen 5G cellular tech. But, again, Qualcomm has appealed, with a decision on the appeal possible this year.

    In August, the chipmaker won a partial stay against an earlier court decision that had required it to grant patent licenses to rivals and end its practice of requiring its chip customers sign a patent license before purchasing chips.

    “We will continue to vigorously defend ourself in the foregoing matters. However, litigation and investigations are inherently uncertain, and we face difficulties in evaluating or estimating likely outcomes or ranges of possible loss in antitrust and trade regulation investigations in particular,” Qualcomm adds.

    Source: Tech Crunch Mobiles | Qualcomm faces fresh competition scrutiny in Europe over RFFE chips for 5G

    Tech News

    Huawei files patent infringement lawsuits against Verizon Communications

    February 6, 2020

    Huawei has filed two patent infringement lawsuits against Verizon Communications in U.S. District Court.

    The Chinese telecommunications equipment giant wants Verizon to compensate it for the use of technology it says are covered by 12 Huawei patents, including ones related to networking, security and video communications. Before the lawsuits were filed, Huawei claims it negotiated with Verizon in a series of meetings from February 2019 to January 21, but was unable to reach a license agreement.

    (Disclosure: TechCrunch is owned by Verizon Media, a division of Verizon Communications).

    Huawei technology is used by telecommunication companies around the world. In a press release about the lawsuits, it says it puts about 10% to 15% of its revenue into research and development each year, and has spent about $70 billion on R&D over the last decade, including about $15 billion in 2018 alone.

    This resulted in Huawei receiving more than 80,000 patents around the world, including 10,000 in the U.S.

    In its filings, Huawei claims Verizon has “profited greatly” from infringing on its patents, noting that Verizon Communication’s total revenue for its wireline division in 2018 was $29.8 billion.

    Huawei maintains a close relationship with many other tech companies, including some competitors, through licenses. It says that it has received more than $1.4 billion in patent license fees since 2015 and in addition to providing access to its own technology, has also paid over $6 billion for licensing patents from other companies, with more than 100 license agreements signed with vendors in the U.S., Europe, Japan and South Korea.

    In its press release, Huawei’s chief legal officer Song Liuping said “Verizon’s products and services have benefitted from patented technology that Huawei developed over many years of research and development.”

    “For years now we have successfully negotiated patent license agreements with many companies. Unfortunately, when no agreement can be reached, we have no choice but to see a legal remedy,” Song added. “This is a common practice in the industry. Huawei is simply asking that Verizon respect Huawei’s investment in research and development by either paying for the use of our patents, or refraining from using them in its products and services.”

    TechCrunch has contacted Verizon Communications for comment.

    The patent infringement lawsuit is taking place against the backdrop of Huawei’s legal entanglements with the U.S. government, which claims it is a national security threat, a charge Huawei denies.

    Huawei has been on a U.S. trade blacklist since the last May and is suing the government over what it says is an unconstitutional ban on the use of its products by federal agencies and contractors. Huawei’s technology is used by many telecom companies around the world, however, and its close ties with U.S. supply chains were underscored last month when the Defense and Treasury Departments reportedly put pressure on the Commerce Department over the ban.

    Source: Tech Crunch Mobiles | Huawei files patent infringement lawsuits against Verizon Communications

    Tech News

    How Hoop hit #2 with its Tinder for Snapchat

    February 5, 2020

    Snapchat’s developer platform is blowing up as a gateway to teen social app users. Hoop is the latest Snap Kit blockbuster, rocketing to No. 2 on the overall App Store charts this month with its Tinder -esque swiping interface for discovering people and asking to message with them over Snapchat. Within a week of going viral, unfunded French startup Dazz saw Hoop score 2.5 million downloads.

    The fact that such a dumbfoundingly simple and already ubiquitous style of app was able to climb the charts so fast demonstrates the potential of Snap Kit to drive user lock-in for Snapchat. Because the developer platform lets other apps piggyback on its login system and Bitmoji avatars, it creates new reasons for users to set up a Snapchat account and keep using it. It’s the same strategy that made Facebook an entrenched part of the internet, but this time it’s for a younger crowd.

    In the first-ever interview about Hoop, Dazz’s 26-year-old co-founders Lucas Gervais and Alexi Pourret reveal that the idea came from watching user patterns in their previous experiment on the Snap Kit platform. They built an app called Dazz in 2018 that let users create polls and get anonymous answers from friends, but they noticed their 250,000 users “always ended up adding each other on Snap. So we decided to create Hoop, the app to make new Snap friends,” Gervais tells me.

    Gervais and Pourret have been friends since age two, growing up in small town in France. They met their two developers in high school, and are now marketing students at university. With Hoop, they say the goal was to “meet everyone’s needs, from connecting people from different cultures to helping lonely people to feel better to simply growing your Snapchat community.”

    The Dazz / Hoop team (from left): Developers Julien Maire & Teddy Vallar, co-founders Alexi Pourret & Lucas Gervais

    At first, Hoop for iOS or Android looks just like Tinder. You create an account with some photos and bio information, and start swiping through profiles. If you like someone, you tap a Snapchat button to request their Snap username so you can message them.

    But then Hoop reveals its savvy virality and monetization strategy. Rather than being able to endlessly “swipe right” and approach people, Hoop limits your asks by making you spend its in-app “diamonds” currency to reach out. After about 10 requests to chat, you’ll have to earn more diamonds. You do that by sharing and getting friends to open your invite link to the app, adding people on Snapchat that you meet on Hoop, logging in each day, taking a survey, watching a video ad and completing offers by signing up for streaming services or car insurance providers. It also trades diamonds for rating Hoop in the App Store, though that might run afoul of Apple’s rules.

    Those tactics helped Hoop climb as high as No. 2 on the overall iOS chart and No. #1 on the Social Apps chart on January 24th. It’s now at No. 83 overall and No. 7 in social, putting it above apps like Discord, LinkedIn, Skype and new Vine successor Byte. Hoop had more than 3 million installs as of a week ago.

    There are certainly some concerns, though. Gervais claims that “We are not a meeting or dating app. We simply offer an easy way to make new Snap friends.” But because Tinder isn’t available for people under 18, they might be looking to Hoop instead. Thankfully, adults can’t see profiles of users under 18, and vice versa, and users only see potential matches in their age group. However, users can edit their age at any time.

    Snap Kit keeps startups lean

    Tools like Amazon’s AWS have made building a startup with a lean team and little money increasingly easy. Snap Kit’s ability to let developers skip the account creation and management process is another step in that direction. But the power to imbue overnight virality is something even Facebook never accomplished, though it helped build empires for developers like Zynga.

    Another Snap Kit app called Yolo for receiving anonymous responses to questions shot up to No. 1 in May. Seven months later, it’s still at No. 51. That shows Snap Kit can offer longevity, not just flash-in-the-pan download spikes. Gervais calls the platform “a very powerful tool for developers.”

    Three years ago I wrote that Snapchat’s anti-developer attitude was a liability. It needed to become a platform with a cadre of allies that could strengthen its role as an identity platform for teens, and insulate it against copycats like Facebook. That’s exactly what it did. By letting other apps launch themselves using its accounts, Stories and Bitmoji, they wouldn’t need to copy its social graph, sharing format or avatars, and instead would drive attention to the originals.

    If Snap can keep building useful developer tools, perhaps by adding to its platform real-world object scanning, augmented reality filters and video calling, a Snapchat account could become a must-have for anyone who wants to use the next generation of apps. Then could come the crown jewel of a platform: discovery and virality. By building a section for promoting Snap Kit apps into Snapchat Discover, developers looking for shortcuts in both engineering and growth might join Evan Spiegel’s army.

    Source: Tech Crunch Mobiles | How Hoop hit #2 with its Tinder for Snapchat

    Tech News

    [Updated] LG withdraws from MWC due to coronavirus-related concerns

    February 5, 2020

    This story has been edited to reflect a new statement by ZTE that it will attend MWC as planned.

    LG Electronics has cancelled its plan to participate in MWC later this month in Barcelona, Spain, because of coronavirus-related concerns, while a Xiaomi has cancelled its trip for Chinese media, but will still attend the event.

    In a statement on its site, LG said it will skip MWC, the world’s largest mobile trade show, and launch this year’s releases at separate events “in the near future” instead.

    “With the safety of its employees, partners and customers foremost in mind, LG has decided to withdraw from exhibiting and participating in MWC 2020 later this month in Barcelona, Spain,” the statement from LG, headquartered in Seoul, South Korea, read. “This decision removes the risk of exposing hundreds of LG employees to international travel which has already become more restrictive as the virus continues to spread across borders.”

    A Xiaomi spokesperson told TechCrunch that the company is “paying close attention to the situation. Xiaomi is still attending this year’s event and will make necessary adjustment accordingly.”

    Earlier the Verge reported that a ZTE had cancelled its press conference because of travel and visa delays, according to a company spokesperson, but also because “[we] tend to be an overly courteous company, and simply don’t want to make people uncomfortable.” But the company later tweeted that it plans to attend MWC as planned.

    The coronavirus outbreak has disrupted travel and supply chains around the world. While the vast majority of cases reported have been inside China, the outbreak has also led to a wave of open racism and xenophobia targeted at people of Asian descent around the world.

    In a statement posted on its site today, MWC organizers GSMA said it “continues to monitor and assess the potential impact of the coronavirus on its MWC20 events held annually in Barcelona, Shanghai and Los Angeles and as well as the Mobile 360 Series of regional conferences. The GSMA confirms that there is minimal impact on the event thus far.”

    All Barcelona events taking place February 24 to 27 will go on as scheduled. GSMA previously announced the measures it is taking to prevent the spread of the virus, including increased cleaning and disinfection of high-traffic areas, including catering areas, handrails, bathrooms, entrances and exits and touchscreens and more onsite medical support. It also said it will have a “mic change protocol” for speakers, and advise all attendees to “adopt a ‘no-handshake policy.”

    Source: Tech Crunch Mobiles | [Updated] LG withdraws from MWC due to coronavirus-related concerns

    Tech News

    Snapchat hits 218M users but big Q4 losses sink share price

    February 4, 2020

    Snapchat still isn’t profitable nearly two years after its IPO. In Q4 2019, Snap lost $241 million on 560.8 million in revenue that’s up 44% year-over-year and an EPS of $0.03. That comes from adding 8 million daily users to reach a total of 218, up 3.8% this quarter from 210 million and 17% year-over-year.

    The big problem was a one-time $100 million legal settlement that pushed it to lose $49 million more in Q4 2019 than Q4 2018. That comes from a shareholders lawsuit claiming Snap didn’t adequately disclose the impact of competition from Facebook on its business. The IPO was soured by weak user growth as people shifted from Snapchat Stories to Instagram Stories.

    A rough Q4

    Snapchat had a mixed quarter compared to estimates, exceeding the EPS predicitions but falling short on revenue. FactSet’s consensus predicted $563 million in revenue and a loss of $0.12 EPS. Estimize’s consensus came in at $568 million in revenue and an EPS gain of $0.02.

    Snapchat shares plunged over 10% in after-hours trading following the announcement. Shares had closed up 4.17% at $18.99 today. That’s up from a low of $4.99 in December 2018 when its user count was shrinking under competition from Instagram Stories. It’s now hovering around its $17 IPO price but it’s still under its post-IPO pop to $27.09.

    Snap gave stronger than expected revenue guidance for Q1 2020 of $450 million to $470 million, and 224 million to 225 million users. The company’s CFO Derek Anderson says that “Q4 marked our first quarter of Adjusted EBITDA profitability at $42 million for the quarter, an improvement of $93 million over the prior year.” Still, he predicts an Adjusted EBITDA in Q1 of negative $90 million to negative $70 million. That’s manageable for Snap without raising more money, since it now has $2.1 billion in cash and marketable securities, down $148 million quarter-after-quarter.

    Snapchat 2020

    “Throughout the course of 2019, we added 31 million daily active users, largely driven by investments in our core product and improvements to our Android application “said Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel . “We’ve recently completed our 2020 strategic planning process and have aligned our teams and resources around our goals of supporting real friendships on Snapchat, expanding our service to a broader global community, investing in our AR and content platforms, and scaling revenue while achieving profitability in order to self-fund our investments in the future.”

    Some other highlights:

    • 1.3 trillion Snaps were created in 2019
    • The average Snapchat user engages for 30 minutes per day,
    • Snapchat reaches 90% of US 13 to 24 year-olds and over 75% of 13 to 34 year-olds
    • Total daily time spent by Snapchatters watching Discover increased by 35% year-over-year, and its up 60% for users over the age of 25
    • Over 50 Snapchat shows reached a monthly audience of 10 million viewers or more
    • 75% of users engage with augmented reality per day
    • 20% of Snaps sent with an AR lens were made with commununity-developed lenses
    • 5X more users open the Lens Explorer now versus a year ago, and 10% of users open it every day

    Snapchat’s user growth has been on tear thanks to international penetration, especially in India, after it re-engineered its Android app for developing markets. It gained users in all markets. Crucially, it raised its average revenue per user 23% from $2.09 in Q4 2018 to $2.58, though only from $1.24 to $1.35 in the Rest Of World region where it’s growing user count the fastest. Snap will need to figure out how to squeeze more cash out of the international market to offset the costs of streaming tons of video to these users.

    Q4 saw Snapchat readying several new products that could help boost engagement and therefore ad views. Cameos, first reported by TechCrunch, lets users graft their face onto an actor in an animated GIF like a lightweight Deepfake. Bitmoji TV, which won’t run ads initially but could drive attention to Snapchat Discover, offers zany four-minute cartoons that star your Bitmoji avatar. We could see a bump to engagement from these starting in Q1 2020.

    To retain its augmented reality filter creators, Snapchat has pledged $750,000 in payouts in 2020. It’s also expanded the use of product catalog ads, and now lets advertisers buy longer skippable ads.

    Outside of the legal settlement, Snapchat is inching closer to profitability but still has a ways to go. It’s managed to develop a strong synergy between its popular chat feature that’s tougher to monetize, and the Stories and Discover content where it can inject ads. The big question is whether Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp will get more serious about ephemeral messaging that’s at the core of Snapchat. If it can hold onto the market and maintain its place as where teens talk, it could ride out its costs and build revenue until it’s sustainable for the long-term.

    Source: Tech Crunch Mobiles | Snapchat hits 218M users but big Q4 losses sink share price

    Tech News

    Messenger Kids adds expanded parental controls, details how much kids’ data Facebook collects

    February 4, 2020

    Facebook’s messaging app for families with children, Messenger Kids, is being updated today with new tools and features to give parents more oversight and control over their kids’ chats. Now, parents will be able to see who a child is chatting with and how often, view recent photos and videos sent through chat, access the child’s reported and block list, remotely log out of the app on other devices and download the child’s chats, images and videos, both sent and received. The company is also introducing a new blocking mechanism and has updated the app’s Privacy Policy to include additional information about data collection, use and deletion practices.

    The Messenger Kids app was first introduced in late 2017 as a way to give kids a way to message friends and family with parental oversight. It arrived at a time when kids were already embracing messaging — but were often doing so on less controlled platforms, like Kik, which attracted predators. Messenger Kids instead allows the child’s parents to determine who the child can chat with and when, through built-in parental controls.

    In our household, for example, it became a convenient tool for chatting with relatives, like grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, as well as a few trusted friends, whose parents I knew well.

    But when it came time to review the chats, a lot of scrolling back was involved.

    The new Messenger Kids features will help with the oversight aspects for those parents who allow their kids to online chat. That decision, of course, is a personal one. Some parents don’t want their kids to have smartphones and outright ban apps, particularly ones that allow interactions. Others, myself included, believe that teaching kids to navigate the online world is part of your parental responsibility. And despite Facebook’s reputation, there aren’t other chat apps offering these sort of parental controls — or the convenience of being able to add everyone in your family to a child’s chat list with ease. (After all, grandma and grandpa are already on Facebook and Messenger, but getting them to download new apps remains difficult.)

    In the updated app, parents will be able to see who a child has been chatting with, and whether that’s text or video chat, over the past 30 days. This can save parents’ time, as they may not feel the need to review chat with trusted family members, for instance, so can redirect their focus and energy on reviewing the chats with friends. A log of images will help parents to see if all images and videos being sent and received are appropriate, and remove them or block them if not.

    Parents also can now see if a child has blocked or reported a user in the app, or if they’ve unblocked them. This could be useful for identifying those problematic friends — the kind who sometimes cause trouble, but are later forgiven, then unblocked. (Anyone who’s dealt with tween-age drama can attest to the fact that there’s one in every group!) By gaining access to this information, parents can sit down with the child to talk about when to take that step and block someone, and when a disagreement with a friend can instead be worked out. These are decisions that a child will have to make on their own one day, so being able to use this as a teaching moment is useful.

    With the update, unblocking is supported and parents are still able to review chats with blocked contacts. However, blocked contacts will remain visible to one another and will stay in shared group chats. They just aren’t able to message one-on-one. Kids are warned if they return to or are added to chats with blocked contacts. (If parents want a full block, they can just remove the blocked contact from the child’s contact list, as before.)

    Remote device logout lets you make sure the child is logged out of Messenger Kids on devices you can’t physically access and control — like a misplaced phone. And the option to download the child’s information, similar to Facebook’s feature, lets you download a copy of everything — messages, images and videos. This could be a way to preserve their chat history when the child outgrows the app.

    The Messenger Kids’ privacy policy was updated, as well, to better detail the information being collected. The app also attempts to explain this in plain language to the kids, using cute photos. In reality, parents should read the policy for themselves and make a decision, accordingly.

    The app collects a lot of information — including names, profile photos, demographic details (gender and birthday), a child’s connection to parents, contacts’ information (like most frequent contacts), app usage information, device attributes and unique identifiers, data from device settings (like time zones or access to camera and photos), network information and information provided from things like bug reports or feedback/contact forms.

    To some extent, this information is needed to help the app properly operate or to alert parents about a child’s activities. But the policy includes less transparent language about the collected information being used to “evaluate, troubleshoot, improve, create, and develop our products” or being shared with other Facebook Companies. There’s a lot of wiggle room there for extensive data collection on Facebook’s part. Service providers offering technical infrastructure and support, like a content delivery network or customer service, may also gain access to collected information, but must adhere to “strict data confidentiality and security obligations,” the policy claims, without offering further details on what those are.

    Despite its lengthiness, the policy leaves plenty of room for Facebook to collect private information and share it. If you have a Facebook account, you’ve already agreed to this sort of “deal with the devil” for yourself, in order to benefit from Facebook’s free service. But parents need to strongly consider if they’re comfortable making the same decision for their children.

    The policy also describes things Facebook plans to roll out later, when Messenger Kids is updated to support older kids. As kids enter tween to teen years, parents may want to loosen the reigns a bit. The new policy will cover those changes, as well.

    It’s unfortunate that the easiest tool, and the one with the best parental controls, is coming from Facebook. The market is ripe for a disruptor in the kids’ space, but there’s not enough money in that, apparently. Facebook, of course, sees the potential of getting kids hooked early and can invest in a product that isn’t directly monetized. Few companies can afford to do this, but Apple would be the best to take Facebook on in this area.

    Apple’s iMessage is a large, secure and private platform — but it lacks these advanced parental controls, as well as the other bells and whistles (like built-in AR filters) that make the Messenger Kids app fun. Critically, it doesn’t work across non-Apple devices, which will always be a limiter when it comes to finding an app that the extended family can use together.

    To be clear, there is no way to stop Facebook from vacuuming up the child’s information except to delete the child’s Messenger Kids Account through the Facebook Help Center. So consider your choices wisely.

    Source: Tech Crunch Mobiles | Messenger Kids adds expanded parental controls, details how much kids’ data Facebook collects