Category: StartUps

Facebook wants a cut of the 3+ hours per week that young adult video gamers spend watching other people play. So today it’s launch Fb.gg – as in the post-competition courtesy of saying “good game” — a destination where viewers can find a collection of all the video game streaming on Facebook. Fb.gg will show video based on the games and streaming celebrities they follow, their Liked Pages and Groups, plus it will display featured creators, esports competitions, and gaming conference events.

Aggregating gaming content could make sure it doesn’t get lost in the fast-moving News Feed. It could be especially helpful for people whose Facebook friends aren’t into the gaming niche. The personalized recommendations based on Facebook activity could help the social network out-curate video-only sites like YouTube and Twitch. And if game streamers feel like they can build a big audience on Facebook, they’ll share there.

Meanwhile, Facebook is opening up its new monetization option to more gaming broadcasters. Facebook is launching the Level Up Program for emerging gaming content creators. Available in the next few months, those with access will be able to take monetary tips from their stream viewers in the form of the Facebook Stars virtual currency that they can redeem for cash. They’ll also get early access to new Facebook livestreaming features and tips on how to build their fan base. Facebook is also rolling out its monthly subscription fan patronage feature test to more gamers in the coming weeks. Gamers can check out the eligibility requirements for these programs here.

Gamers have plenty of options to earn money from YouTube ad revenue shares and Twitch’s tipping options. Facebook needs to ramp these monetization efforts up quickly if it wants to capitalize in the sudden surge in game streaming.

Source: Tech Crunch

While electric scooter startups are at a standstill in San Francisco, Lime is taking its scooter service to Santa Monica, Calif. — competitor Bird’s home turf. Lime was planning to launch its new model of scooter that it built in partnership with Segway in San Francisco last month, it’s now debuting them in the Los Angeles area first.

These Segway-powered Lime scooters are designed to be safer, longer-lasting via battery power and more durable for what the sharing economy requires, Lime CEO Toby Sun told TechCrunch in May. Now, instead of a maximum distance of 23 miles or so, Lime scooters can go up to 35 miles.

“A lot of the features in the past on scooters were made for the consumer market,” Sun said. “Not for the shared, heavy-duty markets.”

On the safety side, Lime enhanced its night-light on both the front and back of the scooter, and has added a light to flash below the deck. Lime has also added an additional brake, to have one on both the front and rear wheels.

Lime, which also has its pedal-assist electric bikes out and about in the LA area, says this is the first multimodal transportation service in LA. This news comes following reports of Lime raising a $250 million round led by GV.

Source: Tech Crunch

Facebook has another privacy screwup on its hands. A bug in May accidentally changed the suggested privacy setting for status updates to public from whatever users had set it to last, potentially causing them to post sensitive friends-only content to the whole world. Facebook is now notifying 14 million people around the world who were potentially impacted by the bug to review their status updates and lock them down tighter if need be.

Facebook’s Chief Privacy Officer Erin Egan wrote to TechCrunch in a statement:

“We recently found a bug that automatically suggested posting publicly when some people were creating their Facebook posts. We have fixed this issue and starting today we are letting everyone affected know and asking them to review any posts they made during that time. To be clear, this bug did not impact anything people had posted before – and they could still choose their audience just as they always have. We’d like to apologize for this mistake”.

The bug was active from May 18th to May 27th, with Facebook able start rolling out a fix on May 22nd. It happened because Facebook was building a ‘featured items’ option on your profile that highlights photos and other content. These featured items are publicly visible, but Facebook inadvertently extended that setting to all new posts from those users.

The issue has now been fixed, and everyone’s status composer has been changed back to default to the privacy setting they had before the bug. The notifications about the bug leads to a page of info about the issue, with a link to review affected posts.

Facebook tells TechCrunch that it hears loud and clear that it must be more transparent about its product and privacy settings, especially when it messes up. And it plans to show more of these types of alerts to be forthcoming about any other privacy issues it discovers in the future.

Facebook depends on trust in its privacy features to keep people sharing. If users are worried their personal photos, sensitive status updates, or other content could leak out to the public and embarrass them or damage their reputation, they’ll stay silent.

With all the other issues swirling after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, this bug shows that Facebook’s privacy issues span both poorly thought-out policies and technical oversights. It moved too fast, and it broke something.

Source: Tech Crunch

M17 Entertainment, a Taipei-based live streaming and dating app group, priced its IPO this morning on the NYSE and was expected to open trading today according to their final press release. But with just a little more than two hours to go before market closing, it’s still not trading, and no one seems to know why.

An interview I had scheduled with the CEO earlier this afternoon was canceled at the last minute, with the company’s representative saying that M17 couldn’t comment since its shares were not yet actively trading, and thus the company remains under an SEC-mandated quiet period.

M17 has had a rocky non-debut so far. Originally targeting a fundraise of $115 million of American Depository Receipts (shares of foreign companies listed domestically on the NYSE), the company concluded its roadshow raising less than half of its target, for a final investment of $60.1 million. The company priced its ADR shares at $8 each, with each ADR representing 8 shares of the stock’s Class A security.

My colleague Jon Russell has covered the company’s rapid growth over the past three years. It was formed from the merger of dating app company Paktor and live-streaming business 17 Media. Joseph Phua, who was CEO of Paktor, became CEO of the joint M17 company following the merger. Together, the two halves have raised tens of millions in venture capital.

The company’s main product is a live-streaming product where creators can build their fan bases and brands. Fans can purchase virtual gifts to send to their favorite artists, and those points are proving to be extraordinarily lucrative for the company. The company, according to its amended F-1 statement, has seen tremendous revenue growth, netting $37.9 million of revenue in the first three months of this year. The company has also been able to attract more live-streaming talent, increasing its contracted artists from 999 at the end of December 2016 to 7,719 at the end of March this year.

That’s where the good news ends for the company. Despite that revenue growth, operating losses are torrential, with the company losing $24.8 million in the first three months of this year. The company in its statement says that it has $31.4 million in cash and cash equivalents, giving it limited runway to continue operations without a strong IPO debut.

User growth has been mostly stagnant. Active monthly users has increased from 1.5 million to 1.7 million between March 31 of 2017 and 2018. What the company has succeeded in doing is monetizing those users much better. The percentage of users paying on the platform has more than doubled over the same time period, and the value of those users has increased more than 40 percent to $355 per user per month.

The big challenge for M17 is revenue quality. Live streaming represents 91.4 percent of the company’s revenues, but those revenues are concentrated on a handful of “whales” who buy a freakishly high number of virtual gifts. The company’s top 10 users represent 11.8 percent of all revenues (that’s $447,220 per user in the first three months this year!), and its top 500 users accounted for almost a majority of total revenues. That concentration on the demand side is just as heavy on the supply side. M17’s top 100 artists accounted for more than a third of the company’s revenue.

That concentration has improved over the past few months, according to the company’s filing. But Wall Street investors have learned after Zynga and other whale-based revenue models that the sustainability of these businesses can be tough.

Finally, one complication for many investors wary of the increasing use of dual-class stock issues is the governance of the company. Phua, the CEO, will have 56.3 percent of the voting rights of the company, and M17 will be a controlled company under NYSE rules according to the company’s amended filing. Class B shares vote at a 20:1 ratio with Class A share voting rights.

All of this is to say that while the company has had some dizzying growth in its revenue numbers over the past 24 months, that success is moderated by some significant challenges in revenue concentration that will have to be a top priority for M17 going forward. Why the company priced and hasn’t traded remains a mystery, and we have reached out for more comments.

Source: Tech Crunch

The cybersecurity firm Synack will offer its penetration testing services to states for free in an effort to secure election systems for the 2018 midterms.

Synack, founded by two former NSA analysts, is best known for its bug bounty program that allows its carefully curated stable of researchers to probe a client’s systems for vulnerabilities. The researchers then disclose those soft spots through Synack’s platform.

The company’s offerings are already tuned to the needs of sensitive government clients, and Synack has worked with IRS and the Department of Defense through its “Hack the Pentagon” bug bounty program. States wary of bug bounties should have some peace of mind knowing that Synack emphasizes the intense vetting and low acceptance rate of its research team.

From now until November 6, Synack will offer free penetration testing for voter registration sites and voter databases through its “Secure the Election” initiative.

The offer’s fine print:

“Each eligible recipient will be limited to one (1) free 14-day Synack Crowdsourced Vulnerability Discovery Test of an online voter registration website or remotely-accessible database that is expected to be used in the November 2018 mid-term election.”

It’s possible that states wary of the federal government’s involvement in state and local elections will be less skittish of help coming from the private sector. The Department of Homeland security has stepped up its role in securing elections, but federal resources, including cybersecurity audits, remain opt-in.

Synack isn’t the only security company talking to states about securing elections. In late 2017, Cloudflare announced that it would extend it DDoS protection for free to states for their voter databases, voter registration sites and election result sites through what it calls “the Athenian Project.”  In April, enterprise security firm Centrify offered states its services at a discount in a similar “Secure the Vote” program.

“Synack’s pro bono service looks for vulnerabilities in remotely-accessible voter registration databases and online voter registration websites from a hacker’s perspective,” the company said in a press release.

“Synack’s crowd of researchers discovers vulnerabilities left undetected by other solutions and then helps to remediate them before an adversary can exploit them on election day.”

Source: Tech Crunch

Calling all creative hackers, coders and programmers around the world. We’ve cooked up a special Virtual Hackathon to celebrate TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco 2018 — our biggest Disrupt event ever. Think of it as a Hackathon without borders. Teams from across the globe can submit their most impressive hacks. Sign up for the Hackathon right now, and start creating today.

In previous Disrupt Hackathons, teams had only 24 hours to work their magic. But when you call for thousands of worldwide competitors to join the fun, well, you gotta give them a bit more time. That’s why we’re launching today — plenty of time to form your team, come up with an idea and get your hack on in the run-up to Disrupt SF 2018, which takes place on September 5-7.

Here’s how the virtual Disrupt SF Hackathon works. Our expert judges will review, evaluate and score every eligible submitted hack. The 70 highest-scoring teams will receive 5 Innovator passes to TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2018.

From that group, the top 30 teams will exhibit their hacks in our Hackathon Demo area at Disrupt SF to over 10,000 attendees and a separate panel of judges who will determine the 10 teams that get to demo their creation on The Next Stage. Out of those 10, the judges will choose one winner to be our very first Virtual Hackathon Champion. Oh, yeah — the winner gets the $10,000 cash prize.

Now a Disrupt Hackathon, virtual or otherwise, wouldn’t be a Hackathon without lots of very real sponsored prizes, cash and swag. You won’t be disappointed on that front, trust us. We have some great prizes from TomTom, BYTON and Viond on tap so far, and many more to be announced in the coming weeks.

Need more inspiration? Disrupt Hackathons have resulted in some pretty sweet hacks. Just take a look at the range of products the grand-prize winners of Hackathons-past created:

• Disrupt London 2016: The Emotion Journal — a voice journaling app that performs real-time analysis to assess and track the user’s emotional state over time
• Disrupt NY 2017: reVIVE — a VR product that provides diagnostic and treatment mechanisms for ADHD
• Disrupt SF 2017: Alexa Shop Assist — lets you ask Alexa to locate products in a store
• Disrupt Berlin 2017: Quick Insurance — a simple way to purchase insurance for all your valuable stuff

They created these awesome hacks in a mere 24 hours. Now just imagine what thousands of tech coders, creators, hackers and programmers from around the world can create between now and when Disrupt SF ’18 kicks off on September 5. The mind boggles.

Disrupt San Francisco 2018 takes place September 5-7. The Virtual Hackathon starts now. Do you have the raw tech talent and creativity to win it all? There’s only one way to find out. Sign up for the Hackathon today.

Source: Tech Crunch

Welcome back to CTRL+T, the TechCrunch podcast where Megan Rose Dickey and I talk about the stories we want to talk about and figure out what they mean in relation to life.

This week is Apple’s big developer conference, creatively called Worldwide Developers Conference (or WWDC), and TechCrunch was there. Each year the company showcases the things developers will be able to do in upcoming versions of Apple’s various operating systems (iOS, macOS, tvOS and watchOS). While there were a bunch of features that didn’t really elicit much excitement from either of us, there was one in particular that we are quite looking forward to: Memoji. We talk about it all and what messaging in general means out there in that big bad world of ours.

Also this week, Kanye West made his latest album, ye, available on platforms other than Tidal, which is a departure from what he did for the release of his 2016 release, Pablo. We talked about that for a second. Because these days you can’t have a conversation about the rapper without getting into his recent comments about American slavery having been a choice. So we did that.

Click play on the little player below or, better yet, subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Overcast, CastBox or whatever other podcast platform you can find.

Source: Tech Crunch