Year: 2018

It’s passive zombie feed scrolling, not active communication with friends that hurts our health, according to studies Facebook has been pointing to for the last seven months. Yet it’s treating all our social networking the same with today’s launch of its digital wellbeing screentime management dashboards for Facebook and Instagram in the US before rolling them out to everyone in the coming weeks.

Giving users a raw count of the minutes you’ve spent in their apps each day in the last week plus your average across the week is a good start to making users more mindful. But by burying them largely out of sight, giving them no real way to compel less usage, and not distinguishing between passive and active behavior, they seem destined to be ignored while missing the point the company itself stresses.

TechCrunch scooped the designs of the two separate but identical Instagram and Facebook tools over the past few months thanks to screenshots generated from the apps’ code by Jane Manchun Wong. What’s launching today is what we saw, with the dashboards located in Facebook’s “Settings” -> “Your Time On Facebook” and Instagram’s “Settings” -> “Your Activity”.

Beyond the daily and average minute counts, you can set a daily “limit” in minutes after which either app will send you a reminder that you’ve crossed your self-imposed threshold. But they won’t stop you from browsing and liking, or force you to dig into the settings menu to extend your limit. You’ll need the willpower to cut yourself off. The tools also let you mute push notifications (you’ll still see in-app alerts), but only for as much as 8 hours. If you want anything more permanent, you’ll have to dig into their separate push notification options menu or your phone’s settings.

The announcement follows Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom’s comments about our original scoop, where he tweeted “It’s true . . . We’re building tools that will help the IG community know more about the time they spend on Instagram – any time should be positive and intentional . . . Understanding how time online impacts people is important, and it’s the responsibility of all companies to be honest about this. We want to be part of the solution. I take that responsibility seriously.”

Users got their first taste of Instagram trying to curtail overuse with its “You’re All Caught Up” notices that show when you’ve seen all your feed posts from the past two days. Both apps will now provide callouts to users teaching them about the new activity monitoring tools. Facebook says it has no plans to use whether you open the tools or set daily limits to target ads. It will track how people use the tools to tweak the designs, but it sounds like that’s more about what time increments to show in the Daily Reminder and Mute Notifications options than drastic strengthenings of their muscle. Facebook will quietly keep a tiny fraction of users from getting the features to measure if the launch impacts behavior.

“It’s really important for people who use Instagram and Facebook that the time they spend with us is time well spent” Ameet Ranadive, Instagram’s Product Director of Well-Being, told reporters on a conference call. “There may be some tradeoff with other metrics for the company and that’s a tradeoff we’re willing to live with, because in the longer term we think this is important to the community and we’re willing to invest in it.”

Facebook Needs Stronger Screen Time Tools That Deter Passive Browsing

Facebook has already felt some of the brunt of that tradeoff. It’s been trying to improve digital wellbeing by showing fewer low quality viral videos and clickbait news stories, and more from your friends since a big algorithm change in January. That’s contributed to a flatlining of its growth in North America, and even a temporary drop of 700,000 users early this year while it also lost 1 million users in Europe this past quarter. That led to Facebook’s slowest user growth rates in history, triggering a 20 percent, $120 billion market cap drop in its share price. “The changes to the News Feed back in January were one step . . . giving people a sense of their time so they’re more mindful of it is the second step” says Ranadive.

The fact that Facebook is willing to put its finances on the line for digital wellbeing is a great step. It’s a smart long-term business decision too. If we feel good about our overall usage, we won’t ditch the apps entirely and could keep seeing their ads for another decade. But it’s likely to be changes to the Facebook and Instagram feeds that prioritize content you’ll comment on rather than look at and silently scroll past that will contribute more to healthy social networking than today’s toothless tools.

While iOS 12’s Screen Time and Android’s new Digital Wellbeing features both count your minutes on different apps too, they offer more drastic ways to enforce your own good intentions. iOS will deliver a weekly usage report to remind you the features exist. Android’s is best-in-class because it grays out an app’s icon and requires you to open your settings to unlock an app after you exceed your daily limit.

iOS Screen Time (left) and Android Digital Wellbeing (right)

To live up to the responsibility Systrom promised, Facebook and Instagram will have to do more to actually keep us mindful of the time we spend in their apps and help us help ourselves. Let us actually lock ourselves out of the apps, turn them grayscale, fade their app icons, or persistently show our minute count onscreen once we pass our limit. Anything to make being healthy on their apps something you can’t just ignore like any other push notification.

Or follow the research and have the dashboards actually divide our sharing, commenting, and messaging time from our feed scrolling, Stories tapping, video watching, and photo stalking. The whole point is that social networking isn’t all bad, but there are behaviors that hurt. Most of us aren’t going to give up Facebook and Instagram. Even just trying to spend less time on them is difficult. But by guiding us towards the activities that interconnect us rather than isolate us, Facebook could get us to shift our time in the right direction.

When it comes to measuring your fitness progress, there’s only so much your weight scale can tell you, actually there’s only one thing it can convey. That one metric hardly encapsulates all of the successes that active people are looking to achieve.

Naked Labs believes that body shape is a more important thing to measure and they’ve begun shipping their body-scanning mirror that builds a 3D model of users and alerts them where progress is being made and where there’s potential for more work to be done.

The startup also announced today that it has raised a $14 million Series A led by Founders Fund. Also participating were NEA, Lumia Capital, Venture 51, Seabed VC, among others.

The company began taking pre-orders last year for its $1,395 Naked 3D Fitness Tracker. It’s already started shipping out those orders and by next quarter the startup hopes to have the devices generally available. The device consists of two parts, a scale that houses sensors and a computer and the weight scale which spins you around so that the stationary mirror can grab a body scan of a user in about 15 seconds.

Soon after, you’ll get your body fat percent, lean mass and fat mass, circumferences, as well as side-by-side comparisons with earlier scans and some graphs that showcase historical data.

Part of what makes this device so pricy is that the Naked 3D Fitness Tracker packs some pretty serious internals for a freaking mirror. The device has an Intel x86 processor, RAM, 4GB DDR4 RAM, and a 64GB SSD. All of this is so that the device can stitch the imagery it’s taking into an easy model that it can then beam directly to your phone from the device, meaning that depth data of your body isn’t being uploaded to the cloud and is being handled on-device.

On the privacy front there are certainly some real concerns about having a mirror stocked with sensors that scans your naked body. For its part, Naked Labs seems to have made some significant choices to minimize some of these concerns. For starters the mirror doesn’t even have RGB cameras, relying entirely on Intel RealSense depth sensors instead. As a result, what the app ends up getting looks more like a TSA body scan image rather than a 3D avatar.

“We have to have a certain amount of trust when we look in the mirror,” Founders Fund Partner Cyan Banister said in a statement. “Naked Labs takes what could be a scary body scan image and turns it into an avatar – like Marvel’s Silver Surfer. This creates a different relationship between people and their body – a more objective one because it takes the emotion out of it.”

Ultimately, the company is in the business of 3D body scanning. Peloton has certainly shown that people are willing to invest significantly in exercise hardware for their homes, but there are a lot of applications outside of fitness which I would imagine is where a lot of these investors’ interests really lay. Having an accurate body model has a lot of applications for helping consumers pick out items that fit their body and style more.

At $1,395 this isn’t the most accessible device to the everyday exerciser, but Naked Labs seems to realize that and it hoping to take some of this funding to scale manufacturing, hire new people and continue working on developing new products.

Apple released the fifth beta of iOS 12 a few days ago. 9to5mac discovered strings in configuration files that reference dual SIM devices. You should expect at least one new iPhone model with two SIM trays.

Apple is said to unveil three new iPhone models in September. In addition to an updated iPhone X, the company should announce a bigger second generation “iPhone X Plus”.

Apple also plans to bring the notch to more devices with a replacement to the iPhone 8. This iPhone will feature a 6.1-inch LCD display with a notch as well as a single camera on the back of the device. It should be as expensive as the iPhone 8 today.

There have been rumors in the past that Apple was looking at selling iPhones with two SIM cards. It was unclear if Apple wanted to put a normal SIM tray and a second e-SIM card like on the Apple Watch.

But according to these configuration files, this model will let you add two physical SIM cards — there are references to “second SIM status” and “second SIM tray status”.

Apple could limit dual SIM support to some models in particular. For instance, it could be limited to the rumored iPhone X Plus, or maybe the high-end OLED models.

Many users don’t need two SIM slots. But it’s an essential feature for some countries. For instance, in India, cell carriers are regional companies. If you travel back and forth between Delhi and Mumbai, you need two SIM cards and two plans.

Frequent travelers could also use a second SIM slot to avoid expensive roaming fees. It’s usually cheaper to buy a local SIM card. By using two SIM cards, you get the best of both worlds because you can still receive two-factor text messages, keep your phone number for iMessage and more.

Google’s search service could be poised to make a dramatic return to China next year, according to an explosive report from The Intercept.

Google yanked its search service from China in 2010 in the face of pressure over censorship, but now the publication reports that it has developed a censored version that could launch in the country in six to nine months, according to information supplied by a source with knowledge of the plans. The alleged product would block Western services already outlawed in China, including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and also scrub results for sensitive terms, such as the Tiananmen Square massacre, and international media including the BBC and New York Times.

Google didn’t explicitly deny the report in a statement:

“We provide a number of mobile apps in China, such as Google Translate and Files Go, help Chinese developers, and have made significant investments in Chinese companies like JD.com . But we don’t comment on speculation about future plans,” a spokesperson told TechCrunch.

The insider claims that the search product is codenamed Dragonfly and that knowledge of it is limited to a handful of high-level Google executives, including CEO Sundar Pichai . The company is said to plan to operate a joint venture in China with an unnamed local company.

The Intercept said its source got in touch out of concern that the project “will set a terrible precedent for many other companies who are still trying to do business in China while maintaining the principles of not succumbing to China’s censorship.”

There’s been plenty of speculation over the years that Google will re-enter China with a meaningful product. That has tended to focus on the Play Store, but it looks like the search product has already gained considerable momentum. The Intercept reports that it has been demonstrated to Chinese government officials, with Pichai himself having attended at least one meeting with authorities.

Internal documents seen by The Intercept show that an Android app is the initial focus, but there could be scope for a desktop version and more further down the line. The current concern, according to the publication, is ensuring that the service gains Chinese government approval and is good enough to compete with what is already available to internet users in China.

The Intercept’s report comes less than a week after Facebook briefly received approval to operate a subsidiary on Chinese soil. Its license was, however, revoked as news of the approval broke. The company said it had planned to open an innovation center, but it isn’t clear whether that will be possible now.

Facebook previously built a censorship-friendly tool that could be deployed in China.

While its U.S. peer has struggled to get a read on China, Google has been noticeably increasing its presence in the country over the past year or so.

The company has opened an AI lab in Beijing, been part of investment rounds for Chinese companies, including a $550 million deal with JD.com, and inked a partnership with Tencent. It has also launched products, with a file management service for Android distributed via third-party app stores and, most recently, its first mini program for Tencent’s popular WeChat messaging app.

The Intercept suggests that these dealings are a prelude to introducing Dragonfly in a bid to capture a chunk of the 700 million internet user market that grown quickly since Google’s search business left the country.

Well, Elon Musk sure had a good run at fixing the world’s pressing problems. Stuff like climate change — with those fancy electric sports cars, built in a fancy tent. Or those fancy solar roof tiles. (Fancy rockets aren’t really a ‘fix’ at this point but he’s thinking about the extraterrestrial future of humanity, okay.)

There was also that kid-sized sub he hastily put together this summer to try and save boys trapped in a cave in Thailand (that endeavor didn’t end so great for Musk though).

He’s even offered to fix Flint’s polluted water.

But it appears that even a (very) well-greased God Complex knows its limits. Because the problem that Musk himself has said is too big for Musk himself to fix is, well, cash-strapped MoviePass.

At least that’s what Musk said to BuzzFeed reporter Samir Mezrahi via twitter….

So, sorry movie lovers. Musk and his billions might have been your only hope — i.e. against price rises and being forced to see shit films because there are fewer tickets on movies you actually want to see.

Turns out some things really are just too good to be saved.

Go-Jek, the Indonesia-based ride-sharing company valued at $5 billion, has begun its ambitious plan to increase its rivalry with Grab by expanding into three new markets after it opened shop in Vietnam.

The service — which is known as Go-Viet — covers an initial 12 districts in Ho Chi Minh City with a motorbike on-demand service. Rival Grab is in five cities in Vietnam and its services include motorbikes, taxis, private cars and food delivery.

The August 1 Vietnam launch as TechCrunch reported in June. The plan is to then expand into Thailand in September, and the Philippines before the end of this year. Singapore remains a market that Go-Jek would like to enter — it has held partnership talks with taxi operator ComfortDelGro — but it remains unclear whether, and when, that might happen.

Go-Jek expansion plan will put some heat on Grab, which has occupied a near-dominant position across Southeast Asia since it acquired Uber’s local business back in March.

Unlike Grab, though, Go-Jek is taking a very local approach to each market. Not only will it use a local name in each country — in Thailand it will be called “Get” — it has hired local ‘founder’ teams who will be responsible for service offerings and other local business aspects. It isn’t clear how closely they will work with the core Go-Jek team in Indonesia.

That may mean anyone traveling between countries will need to download local Go-Jek apps, which is in contrast to Grab, which offers a single app for eight countries in Southeast Asia.

Valued at $10 billion, Grab has raised over $5 billion from investors, including its most recent $1 billion investment from Toyota. Go-Jek has pulled in just over $2 billion. Tencent, Google, Meituan and others participated in its most recent (estimated) $1.4 billion raise which closed earlier this year.

Go-Jek, the Indonesia-based ride-sharing company valued at $5 billion, has begun its ambitious plan to increase its rivalry with Grab by expanding into three new markets after it opened shop in Vietnam.

The service — which is known as Go-Viet — covers an initial 12 districts in Ho Chi Minh City with a motorbike on-demand service. Rival Grab is in five cities in Vietnam and its services include motorbikes, taxis, private cars and food delivery.

The August 1 Vietnam launch as TechCrunch reported in June. The plan is to then expand into Thailand in September, and the Philippines before the end of this year. Singapore remains a market that Go-Jek would like to enter — it has held partnership talks with taxi operator ComfortDelGro — but it remains unclear whether, and when, that might happen.

Go-Jek expansion plan will put some heat on Grab, which has occupied a near-dominant position across Southeast Asia since it acquired Uber’s local business back in March.

Unlike Grab, though, Go-Jek is taking a very local approach to each market. Not only will it use a local name in each country — in Thailand it will be called “Get” — it has hired local ‘founder’ teams who will be responsible for service offerings and other local business aspects. It isn’t clear how closely they will work with the core Go-Jek team in Indonesia.

That may mean anyone traveling between countries will need to download local Go-Jek apps, which is in contrast to Grab, which offers a single app for eight countries in Southeast Asia.

Valued at $10 billion, Grab has raised over $5 billion from investors, including its most recent $1 billion investment from Toyota. Go-Jek has pulled in just over $2 billion. Tencent, Google, Meituan and others participated in its most recent (estimated) $1.4 billion raise which closed earlier this year.

We dedicate this post to all the wafflers, the procrastinators, the vacillators and the chronically undecided. You have less than 24 hours to save money on your tickets to Disrupt Berlin 2018 on November 29-30. How much money? Up to €700. The door slams shut on super early-bird savings on Wednesday August 1 at 11:59 p.m. CEST. It’s do or don’t save, folks. Shake the inertia and buy your super early-bird passes now.

Honestly, Disrupt Berlin 2018 is the must-go destination for anyone interested in the European and international startup scene. How international? Last year’s Disrupt Berlin drew people from more than 50 countries, including all the European Union members, Israel, Turkey, Russia, Egypt, India, China and South Korea, to name a few. It’s the EPCOT of the startup world — with better tech.

We expect to host thousands of attendees and present hundreds of exhibitors in Startup Alley, where you’ll see the latest and greatest tech innovation on display. It’s the place to be for high-quality networking of every stripe. And both founders and investors can make the most efficient use of their time by using CrunchMatch, our free, business match-making service that connects founders and investors based on their similar business goals. It’s networking simplified.

Luke Heron, the CEO of TestCard, exhibited in Startup Alley last year and had this to say about his Disrupt Berlin experience.

“We used the CrunchMatch platform to schedule meetings with six or seven VCs on the second day. By and large, they were very positive meetings. If you’re a startup or an entrepreneur, attending Disrupt is a no-brainer.”

And don’t forget Startup Battlefield, our premier startup pitch competition. Since the first Battlefield back in 2007, more than 750 companies have competed and gone on to collectively raise $800 billion in funding — and 100 of them have either gone public or been acquired. Names like Box, Mint, Yammer, Vurb — and many others — might ring a bell.

Last year at Disrupt Berlin 2017, Lia Diagnostics won Startup Battlefield, the Disrupt Cup and the $50,000 grand prize. Could this be your year to win? Why not submit your application and compete?

There’s so much more to experience at Disrupt Berlin: speakers, Q&A sessions, workshops, swag and after parties. The possibilities and opportunities are limitless, but your chance to save money on passes is not.

You have less than 24 hours to take advantage of our super early-bird savings. The price hike goes into effect on Wednesday August 1 at 11:59 p.m. CEST. Don’t waste any more time. Purchase your tickets right now.

We dedicate this post to all the wafflers, the procrastinators, the vacillators and the chronically undecided. You have less than 24 hours to save money on your tickets to Disrupt Berlin 2018 on November 29-30. How much money? Up to €700. The door slams shut on super early-bird savings on Wednesday August 1 at 11:59 p.m. CEST. It’s do or don’t save, folks. Shake the inertia and buy your super early-bird passes now.

Honestly, Disrupt Berlin 2018 is the must-go destination for anyone interested in the European and international startup scene. How international? Last year’s Disrupt Berlin drew people from more than 50 countries, including all the European Union members, Israel, Turkey, Russia, Egypt, India, China and South Korea, to name a few. It’s the EPCOT of the startup world — with better tech.

We expect to host thousands of attendees and present hundreds of exhibitors in Startup Alley, where you’ll see the latest and greatest tech innovation on display. It’s the place to be for high-quality networking of every stripe. And both founders and investors can make the most efficient use of their time by using CrunchMatch, our free, business match-making service that connects founders and investors based on their similar business goals. It’s networking simplified.

Luke Heron, the CEO of TestCard, exhibited in Startup Alley last year and had this to say about his Disrupt Berlin experience.

“We used the CrunchMatch platform to schedule meetings with six or seven VCs on the second day. By and large, they were very positive meetings. If you’re a startup or an entrepreneur, attending Disrupt is a no-brainer.”

And don’t forget Startup Battlefield, our premier startup pitch competition. Since the first Battlefield back in 2007, more than 750 companies have competed and gone on to collectively raise $800 billion in funding — and 100 of them have either gone public or been acquired. Names like Box, Mint, Yammer, Vurb — and many others — might ring a bell.

Last year at Disrupt Berlin 2017, Lia Diagnostics won Startup Battlefield, the Disrupt Cup and the $50,000 grand prize. Could this be your year to win? Why not submit your application and compete?

There’s so much more to experience at Disrupt Berlin: speakers, Q&A sessions, workshops, swag and after parties. The possibilities and opportunities are limitless, but your chance to save money on passes is not.

You have less than 24 hours to take advantage of our super early-bird savings. The price hike goes into effect on Wednesday August 1 at 11:59 p.m. CEST. Don’t waste any more time. Purchase your tickets right now.

Google is adding a third data center to its presence in Singapore in response to continued internet growth in Southeast Asia.

It’s been three years since it added a second center in Singapore, and during that time the company estimates that something in the region of 70 million people across Southeast Asia have come online for the first time. That takes the region to over 330 million internet users, but with a population of over 650 million, there’s plenty more to come.

The local data centers don’t exclusively serve their immediate proximity — Asia data centers can handle U.S. traffic, and likewise — but adding more local capacity does help Google services, and companies that run their business on Google’s cloud, run quicker for internet users in that specific region. So not only is it good for locals, but it’s important for Google’s business, which counts the likes of Singapore Airlines, Ninjavan, Wego, Go-Jek and Carousell as notable cloud customers.

The search giant also operates a data center in Taiwan. The company had planned to augment Taiwan and Singapore with a center in Hong Kong, but that project was canned in 2013 due to challenges in securing real estate.

Google opened its first Singapore data center in 2011, and this newest facility will take it to around $850 million spent in Singapore to date, the company confirmed, and to over $1 billion when including Taiwan.