Year: 2018

Facebook’s Groups are one of the social network’s most popular products, with more than 1.4 billion monthly users across tens of millions of active groups. Today, the company is rolling out a series of new features aimed at those who create and manage these groups, including customer support with answers and help provided by a real person, not a machine or automated responses. Admins are also getting a dedicated online education portal and more tools to manage their groups’ posts.

Unfortunately, the customer support service is not available to all groups at this time.

Facebook instead is beginning a pilot program for admin support that’s only available to a limited number of group admins on iOS and Android at this time, initially in English and Spanish.

“We spend a lot of time speaking with admins, and we listen to their feedback quite a lot,” explains Alex Deve, Product Management Director for Groups. “And the first thing we heard from them – very loud and clear – is that they want to be able to reach out to us and get a very quick response,” he says.

The free service will allow admins to send any issues they have to Facebook, and the company will respond within one business day. This is made possible by the additional hires the company made to expand its moderation team, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg had previously announced, Deve notes.

The idea with the admin support isn’t just about helping admins out directly – it’s also about figuring out what their needs are, what troubles they have, and what features they want. This will help Facebook roll out new features for admins that they’ll find useful, but it also ties into another new product being announced today: an online educational center for admins.

At facebook.com/community, Facebook has collected best practices, tutorials, product demos, and case studies based on the experiences and expertise from the admin community, and is sharing it with others in the form of audio and video content. There are tips on things like growing groups, setting the rules, building a team, using group tools, managing conflicts, and more.

“Going forward, the support work is going to feed into this. [Facebook will learn] what other themes are very common that people want to hear about from other admins. So we’ll create more videos in the future,” says Deve.

Additionally, Facebook is rolling out two new admins tools today, created in response to user feedback.

The first will allow admins and moderators to notify a member whose post gets pulled down which group rule they broke that caused its removal. They’ll also be able to collaborate with other admins and moderators by adding notes in an activity log when they remove a post.

The other new feature, “pre-approved members,” will allow admins and moderators to select members whose content will automatically be approved whenever they post. This will save admins time by not having to moderate content from trusted people.

Groups have been a particular interest for Facebook in recent months, especially as the trend towards private networking and sharing continues to grow. At the company’s F8 Developer Conference in May, Facebook announced other features that will make Groups a more prominent part of the Facebook experience, as a result. This includes a new tab for Groups, where your groups are better organized and you can find others to join – similar to Facebook’s now-defunct standalone Groups app. And it introduced a new Groups plugin that admins could use on their websites or emails to solicit people to join their group.

All the new Groups features are rolling out starting today to about 20 percent of supported users, and will continue to roll out to the rest of the world in the weeks ahead. The online educational portal is live now in English, but will launch in Spanish in June.

Over the last few years, Google and Coursera have regularly teamed up to launch a number of online courses for developers and IT pros. Among those was the Machine Learning Crash course, which provides developers with an introduction to machine learning. Now, building on that, the two companies are launching a machine learning specialization on Coursera. This new specialization, which consists of five courses, has an even more practical focus.

The new specialization, called  “Machine Learning with TensorFlow on Google Cloud Platform,” has students build real-world machine learning models. It takes them from setting up their environment to learning how to create and sanitize datasets to writing distributed models in TensorFlow, improving the accuracy of those models and tuning them to find the right parameters.

As Google’s Big Data and Machine Learning Tech Lead Lak Lakshmanan told me, his team heard that students and companies really liked the original machine learning course but wanted an option to dig deeper into the material. Students wanted to know not just how to build a basic model but also how to then use it in production in the cloud, for example, or how to build the data pipeline for it and figure out how to tune the parameters to get better results.

Leah Belsky, Coursera’s VP of enterprise development, echoed this and noted that this kind of specialization with a focus on practical models will make the credential more meaningful for employers.

The target audience for the specialization is somebody who wants to build new skills — and that’s pretty much every developers, especially now that machine learning is making inroads in virtually every area of tech. And since it’s almost impossible to hire machine learning experts, this course will surely be attractive to many employers who want their existing workforce to gain these skills.

As Lakshmanan noted, there are plenty of use cases for leading-edge kind of machine learning models, but what these courses focus on are more of the “day-to-day models” that can bring additional value to many existing products. Because of the focus on real-world problems, Lakshmanan also noted that the course should be useful for newly minted graduates who may be more familiar with the theories of machine learning than building products.

He also noted that only a few years ago, getting started with a course like this would have been rather cumbersome, not in the least because you need relatively powerful hardware with a dedicated GPU to work productively. Now, however, thanks to the various cloud platforms that offer GPU access or even specialized hardware like Google Cloud’s TPUs, the barrier of entry has dropped significantly.

It’s worth noting that these courses expect that you are already a somewhat competent programmer. While it has gotten much easier to start with machine learning thanks to new frameworks like TensorFlow, this is still an advanced skill. It’ll surely still be a while before we see a “get started with programming in Python by building a machine learning model” course.

Looking ahead, Lakshmanan also noted that the team is looking at a next course that would build upon the existing one, but with a focus on working with unstructured data. That’s a different class of problem with its own skill set and one that’ll allow the graduates of the first course to apply their knowledge to a whole different set of data.

Seems Disney might not be able to waltz into a 21st Century Fox acquisition, after all. Comcast this morning announced plans to launch its own bid from the movie studio, offering a vague outline for a planned bid.

In a statement, Comcast says it’s in the “advanced stages of preparing” an offer for the bits Fox has agreed to sell to Disney.

“Any offer for Fox would be all-cash and at a premium to the value of the current all-share offer from Disney,” Comcast writes. “The structure and terms of any offer by Comcast, including with respect to both the spin-off of ‘New Fox’ and the regulatory risk provisions and the related termination fee, would be at least as favorable to Fox shareholders as the Disney offer.”

The announcement of a potential bid follows a $52.4 billion all-stock offer posted by Disney back in December. The acquisition would not include some key Fox assets, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business Network and the Fox Broadcasting Company.

CNBC notes that, while Comcast plans to outbid Disney, Fox’s owners may ultimately side with the latter, due to an offer for a tax-free spin off of the company. Disney’s bid arrived as the company is planning its own streaming services to compete with the likes of Netflix and Hulu — the latter of which all three companies currently own a partial stake in.

Further complicating things here is the fact that Comcast is currently in a bidding war for Sky. The company is close to getting UK government approval on its $31 billion bid to buy the British broadcaster. Its chief competitors? Disney and Fox, naturally.

Chatbot startup Hugging Face has raised a $4 million seed round led by Ronny Conway from a_capital. Existing investors Betaworks, SV Angel and Kevin Durant are also participating.

I already reviewed Hugging Face so I won’t write the same thing again. But the startup has been building a chatbot app with a strong personality for bored teenagers. Instead of focusing on customer support or convenience, Hugging Face is focusing on emotions and entertainment.

It’s been available in the App Store as a standalone app and on Kik. Today, the company is also launching Hugging Face on Messenger. It should help bring new users.

Even without Messenger, Hugging Face now handles 1 million messages per day. In total, Hugging Face has received over 100 million messages.

It’s also worth noting that Hugging Face accepts text messages, photos, emojis, everything. So you can take a selfie, send a sad emoji, and the chatbot will know how you feel.

And it’s clear that Hugging Face is betting on surprise and enjoyment. The app doesn’t have to be perfect to be entertaining.

Beyond the consumer app, the team behind Hugging Face has written a couple of research papers about artificial intelligence. It’s clear that the startup plans on building a great team of engineers when it comes to natural language conversations. The team will double over the coming months.

Apple is the latest tech giant to make changes to comply with GDPR, the EU’s privacy data rules, after it introduced a new website that shows customers exactly what personal data it holds on them.

Accessible via an ‘Apple ID Data & Privacy’ website — which was first spotted by 9to5Mac — Apple customers can request access to the full gamut of personal data, which includes sign-in history, contacts, calendar, notes, photos and documents, as well as services such as Apple Music, the App Store, iTunes, and Apple Care.

Dependent on the data records selected, Apple may take as long as two weeks to assemble the information while the company said the data will be deleted after two weeks.

Apple allows users to select the size of their data download — which goes as high as 25GB or can be split into smaller chunks — while it will also apparently be made available in standard data formats, meaning it can be stored and easily accessed.

The data site also gives users the option to correct data, deactivate their account and delete all information held by Apple in compliance with GDPR.

Deleting data is exactly as the term suggests, while deactivation means an account is made unavailable temporarily. In the latter case, all data and services associated with the account — for example, phone book contacts, FaceTime or purchase made in iTunes — will be inaccessible whilst it is deactivated.

The data service is initially available in EU countries, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland, but Apple said it plans to expand the options across the rest of the world later this year.

Verifly, which was launched in 2016 as an insurance provider for drone pilots, is expanding its services to include pretty much every type of part-time or contract work for the on-demand economy.

Founded by Jay Bregman, who had just sold his ride-sharing company, Hailo to Daimler Mercedes-Benz in 2016, and Eugene Hertz, the co-founder of Quidsi, which was the e-commerce company behind diapers.com and soap.com, Verifly is a simple solution for part-timers who need business insurance. And nearly everyone should have business insurance if they’re doing any kind of service job given how litigious America is.

In fact, according to a study from the Institute for Legal Reform over 34% of qualified small businesses have had a lawsuit filed against them in the past 10 years and around 40% of all sole proprietor businesses aren’t insured.

When it launched Verifly offered coverage starting at $1 million for a price of $10 per-hour, per-flight. That may be a great deal for a casual operator, but it’s worth noting that pilot’s insurance for drones typically runs between $600 and $800 per year, according to the website UAV Coach.

The company is taking the same approach with gig work., Anyone from photographers and DJs to magicians and clowns — along with the legions of part-time handymen and and women out there — can get insured for at least $1 million for just $5 per-hour, per-job.

Verifly says per-hour prices decrease if a customer buys a longer policy or extends their policy and costs can change depending on what work a customer does, the limit that customer sets, and whether there are any additional coverage terms that are added. Using a customer’s zip code, Verifly places potential policy holders in a risk territory which then adjusts the price of the insurance based on historical loss data. The company offers policies from just one hour and up to one month without an annual contract or commitment.

To apply for a policy, users simply open the company’s app and select the type of work that they do. Users then set the duration of their coverage, from an hour up to one month. Once that’s done, the app will provide a certificate of insurance that customers can refer to.

Again, price is important here. While Verifly will insure someone in minutes for $5 per hour, a quick search online shows business insurance prices beginning at $21 per month, with others offering quotes at $30. So, if a “gig” runs over an hour and is less of a part-time thing and more of a job, the Verifly coverage may not be the best bet. 

New York-based Verifly doesn’t provide the insurance itself, that’s done by the massive insurance holding company, Markel, but through its apps available on iOS and Android and through its website, the company is a gateway to insurance.

So far, the company has raised $7 million in venture funding from investors including Slow Ventures and individuals like Sam Shank, the co-founder and chief executive of HotelsTonight.

“The meteoric rise of independent work as both a normal way of earning a living and an aspirational lifestyle represents a fundamental shift in the way we think about operating a business and earning a living,” said Will Quist, Partner, Slow Ventures, in a statement. “To address this, a new model of insurance will rise. It will be delivered on-demand and charged in the same way these workers are paid — by the job. We are thrilled to back Verifly in their quest to professionalize and elevate independent workers.”

 

 

It’s the sounds. The wisps and growls and gargles. Hit the red Start Engine button on the steering wheel and the world wakes up to the sounds of rumbling V10.

The Audi R8 Spyder is a marvelous cup of coffee and a great way to start the day. What’s more, after a week as treating this red R8 as my daily driver, I can plainly state the supercar is surprisingly easy to live with as long as some concessions are made. Sometimes, when slogging through a daily routine, it’s easy to forget you’re driving a mid-engine supercar. And then you put your foot down and the sun explodes.

Review

Spring arrived in Michigan just in time for some cruising with the Audi R8 Spyder. The snow is gone and the trees are budding. The sun is bright and warm and perfect for a bit of driving with the top down on this mid-engine machine.

This R8 packs a 10 cylinder engine paired to a fantastic 7 speed, dual-clutch automatic transmission that converts the engine’s raw power into speed. It’s all-wheel drive and capable of hitting 60 mph in a few ticks over three seconds. And the top folds down, too. To say the previous and then state the R8 Spyder is comfortable is to say the car is special.

This 2018 Audi R8 Spyder is lovely. It’s not audacious or extravagant. The R8 is effortless. After a week of driving this R8, I find it closer to pedestrian than exotic and I’m okay with that. It’s a testament to the engineering that went into developing this vehicle. Instead of just stuffing the biggest engine possible into the smallest body, Audi developed a platform that’s manageable yet capable of producing intense excitement. It’s a pleasant blend of Audi refinement and mid-engine driving dynamics. Simply put: The R8 Spyder is an everyday supercar.

Most drivers should be able to jump in an R8 and feel confident. The car doesn’t require extraordinary skill to tap the extraordinary potential. The steering is precise and the ride firm yet not backbreaking. It handled Michigan’s dilapidated roads with the same amount of confidence as an ordinary sedan. Visibility is good with the top up and spectacular when it’s down. A person can feel like a skilled driver after just a few minutes in an R8.

I took the R8 on a several hundred mile road trip from Michigan’s Detroit region to Traverse City. It was a lovely Spring weekend and I spent most of it finding deserted back roads winding around the cherry farms and wineries in Northern Michigan.

This is a car of two minds and they’re controlled by a button on the wheel. The drive mode button on the steering wheel allows the driver to select comfort or dynamic modes. The difference between the two modes is profound. When on comfort mode, the R8 is smooth, quiet and capable of a mindless ride in stop and go traffic. Use this mode around town between stop lights and your passenger will forget they’re in a $200,000 car. Click on dynamic and they’ll immediately be reminded by the roar of the engine.

The dynamic mode is where the R8 comes alive. When clicked on, the engine growls and spits, shaking as it awaits instructions. Gear shifts are held longer than when in comfort mode and the ride is stiffened. The steering tightens up and feels as if it could bend time and space. Turn off the traction control to activate the launch control and the car gets even meaner.

Piloting the R8 Spyder in dynamic mode is akin to making the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs. It turns you into a time traveler.

The car eagerly dives into corners and breathes fire as it exits at full throttle while the AWD system keeps all four tires planted. Body roll is nonexistent and the brakes feel like they could stop a speeding bullet. When in dynamic mode, the engine screams when the throttle is planted on the floor. The transmission rockets to the red-line of 8.5k and clicks through the seven gears with determined precision.

When the launch mode is activated, the car’s computer takes over, and only takes two gears to hit 60 mph in around three seconds; the R8 hits 100 mph in third and still has four more gears available for use. Launching the car is as easy as drag racing a car on a PlayStation game.

Through it all, the crazy acceleration and hard breaking and stop-and-go traffic of I-75, I managed an average of 19.6 mpg during my week with the car.

The Audi R8 is appointed in a similar manner as other Audis. A large LCD screen is situated behind the steering wheel and is the main screen in the car. To save weight and because space is limited, there is not a second screen in the center infotainment stack. The only screen in the car is behind the steering wheel. Passengers have to look at the instrument cluster to see what song is playing. It’s slightly odd, but in character for most cars of this caliber.

The car’s software is impressive considering its age. Audi rolled out this version several years ago and it still holds up as one of the best available.

The familiar interior is what sets the R8 Spyder apart from me. Audi has some of the best interiors of any automaker and the company has wisely equipped most models in a similar manner. The R8 is no different. Besides some extra carbon fiber, the inside of the R8 looks similar to the inside of a $65k Audi TT RS.

[gallery ids="1641974,1641971,1641975,1641972,1641973,1641970"]

This is car that a person could drive on most days. As long as they don’t have a family. Or a golf buddy. Or a passenger with more luggage than a carry-on suitcase. Storage space is limited and the car cannot hold more than two people.

The R8 sits on the ground. There’s just a few inches between the bottom and the road and I avoided aggressive speed bumps during my time with the car. Getting in the car is easy enough. The doors open like on a normal car and there is plenty of room even with the top down to fall into the car. Unlike in other supercars, getting out of the car does not require one to fold in half and roll out with the door open. Just stand up and get out.

The seats are supportive because of course they are. This is a nearly $200,000 race car that a person can drive to the farmer’s market. The seats are firm yet giving and feature as many adjustment options as any other Audi sports car. Reclining is not an option though. It’s limited by the firewall located between the passenger compartment and the massive engine.

There is very little storage in the R8. The passenger seat is the only place to store a golf bag. The trunk is in the front as the engine takes up the rear of the car. During my overnight trip with the R8, I took a duffel bag, computer bag, and extra shoes. I filled the front trunk. Inside the cabin is a glove box and a small, lockable compartment on the wall between the two seats. This compartment can hold a cell phone or sunglasses and nothing else.

I have one request for Audi. It’s not too much to ask for the sun visor to rotate to the left of the driver and to the right of the passenger. You know, like on any other car.

Bottom line

The Audi R8 Spyder feels alive. It feels like a sentient being capable of making decisions quicker than the driver and I’m okay with that as long as I get to go along for the ride.

To say this is an everyday supercar is to, by definition, say a person could drive this car everyday. I think it’s true. For the right person, living in the right area with lovely weather and smooth roads, this could be a car that’s driven daily. For most others, though, other cars like a Porsche 911 Turbo S or Tesla Model S offer similar speed and excitement while having more storage space than a carry-on suitcase.

There is no denying Audi made a fantastic machine in the R8. Careful balancing was used to craft the vehicle that resulted in a wonderful droptop perfectly suited for most drivers. Respect.

Okta just launched a free browser extension for Google Chrome today. After installing PassProtect, your browser will compare the passwords you type with Troy Hunt’s Have I Been Pwned.

This extension isn’t necessarily for you, tech savvy readers of TechCrunch. But it could be a great way to warn your neighbor who doesn’t know anything about computers. Maybe their Gmail password has been part of a data breach.

Have I Been Pwned is a big database with all the passwords that have leaked over the years. There have been security breaches at Dropbox, LinkedIn, Tumblr or Adobe services. So chances are you’ve been pwned in the past.

That’s why you should be using a password manager, a different password for each online service and two-factor authentication when it’s possible. And that’s also why many companies rely on Okta to secure your authentication to a company’s intranet.

But the vast majority of users don’t do that.

So the next time you visit your relatives, you could install this extension for basic security checks. The extension uses k-Anonimity to check your password against Hunt’s database securely. Your passwords are never shared with Okta or Have I Been Pwned. The extension is also open source.

A U.K.-based startup has come up with a new design for high-end, direct-to-consumer sunglasses that are original, modular, and virtually indestructible. But to get their eyewear in the hands of consumers, they’ll have to compete with some industry giants, including Luxottica Group of Italy, whose brands include Ray-Ban and Oakley among others.

Their company, Wires Glasses, isn’t competing on price. At $380 per pair, its sunglasses cost as much as other designer eyewear. If Wires succeeds, it will largely owe instead to its unusual single-wire design, patented invisible hinge, and, perhaps most important, the narrative it tells about design and sustainability. Indeed, in a day and age where new brands are launched every day, storytelling can mean the difference between barely surviving and thriving, something this team seems to understand.

A new, albeit undisclosed, amount of seed funding from the early-stage venture firm True Ventures should also help. True has helped grow a number of consumer companies, including Blue Bottle Coffee, the doorbell startup Ring, and the wearables company FitBit. Presumably, its team has lessons from those varied experiences to share.

We talked with Wires cofounder Yair Neuman last week to learn more about how Wires came to be and how they work. Our chat has been edited for length.

TC: You’re a London-based designer. You’ve created visuals for big artists, and ceramic speakers, and projects for Samsung. How did you wind up starting Wires?

YN: It  started with me needing a pair of glasses when I went on Spanish holiday. I took a piece of soft wire and created a frame and 3D printed lenses in my studio. That only happened because I didn’t want to take Ray-Bans with me. This was a design-y holiday with other designers. But the glasses started to get a lot of attention. I thought it was maybe something I should develop, so when I got back to my studio, I started working on it.

Soon after I met and connected with a guy who was born in Zimbamwe, where they often make what they don’t have. They’ll take wires from electrical products and create toys or products or art. And he put together a team in Harare to produce designs for me. We’d send money and clothes and tools, and they’d ship back these frames that we’d combine with 3D printed parts, and suddenly we had these glasses that people liked and we started selling them.

TC: But they are now made in Italy.

YN: We eventually needed more precision and know-how, and we get that in Italy. Cadore, Italy, was long said to be the center of eyewear production. In the ’80s, there were more than 3,000 factories there. But at the end of the ’90s, Luxottica took over [other brands] and moved all the production to China and the area collapsed economically. Still, the workshops and machinery and people with knowledge are all there. So we found a small, family-run business and we make our frames with them, though they had to really rethink the process because our frames are very different.

TC: How so, exactly?

YN: The first version of the glasses functioned more as a fashion accessory. They didn’t fold. But it was important to me to build a functional product that they could fold and put away.

I didn’t want to include hinges as we know them — these mechanisms on the sides of our eyes. I wanted to keep the consistency of the wire, to journey from one ear to the other without obstacles. I took a few months to focus only on that, and came up with our protected [intellectual property], which is the invisible hinge. There’s basically a wire and a mechanism inside [the hinge] that allows [the wire] to fold.

TC: Would you potentially license that hinge “technology” to Luxottica?

YN: It depends on the offer. If there was the potential to create something interesting while also focusing on the environment, then it might be interesting to explore. But I don’t want to create another object that no one really needs but we’re going to mass produce anyway.

TC: Tell us more about your products, which are modular. What does that mean?

YN: Our system is based on the fact that we have one stainless steel wire, and you can assemble a few different designs around it. This first collection has seven different lense shapes in two [wire] colors — black and white, so if you want to change your look, you don’t need to buy another frame, just a pair of lenses that you pop on the same wire. We have classic round [lenses] but also avante-garde [options] and [lenses that are] easy on the eye — that people don’t really need to show off with.

TC: Do extra lenses come with each pair of glasses?

YN: If you add another pair of [lenses], they cost $70.

TC: How did you decide on pricing?

YN: It wasn’t a decision so much as the reality of production, plus profits, plus expenses. It costs us the same to make them, so we didn’t go down the route of should we charge more for this or that.

TC: The glasses go on sale today. Can you accommodate a lot of interest from a production standpoint?

YN: Normally in this market, you’d have lead time of three to four months. For us, because we 3D print them, we just need three weeks. So we can react very quickly.

TC: How will you keep the lenses “fresh” from a fashion perspective?

YN: Before we introduce new Wires, we think there’s a lot we can do, not just with the shapes but with the types of lenses we make. If you’re a cyclist, for example, and you want to pop in your water-repellent lenses, of you’re skiing and want to pop in lenses that filters the light from the snow . . .

TC: Aren’t the frames a bit delicate for sportswear?

YN: They look delicate, but they aren’t at all. Even if you sit on these, the worse thing that happens is we have to disassemble the lenses from the wire; there are no screws or parts to lose. The arms are also highly adjustable so that you can fit them to your head as snugly as you like.

TC: You talk about sustainability in your marketing materials, but you’re shipping glasses from overseas.

YN: We’re a direct-to-consumer business, but we’re still in fashion, and as much as we like the digital world, that’s not just where it’s at, so we’ll have a pop-up stores in Paris as soon as next month. We’re also planning permanent boutiques in New York and San Francisco to give people the opportunity to go to a shop and see the real thing and not send anything back to us, because it is a lot of carbon.

Also, when we make our glasses, we’re only printing what we need, which is new. Glasses are typically cut from a much bigger sheet of material, with a lot of negative spaces that just become waste. For us, we make sure not to create waste and to use the lowest amount of energy. And when the end comes? The metal is all stainless steel. You pop out the lenses. You recycle these with your normal recyclables, so that’s easy as well.

Pictured above: model-turned-entrepreneur and advisor to Neuman, Lily Cole. 

Earlier this year, Pandora announced its plans to challenge Spotify by taking aim at one of its rival’s top features: personalized playlists. Pandora in March began rolling out dozens of variations of personalized playlists, including those spanning moods, activities, and genres – all powered by its music database, the Music Genome. Today, Pandora says the rollout has completed and all its Premium users will now have access to these new playlists.

The feature is meant to offer Pandora’s free users a reason to upgrade to its top-tier paid offering, Pandora Premium. This $9.99 per month service offers on-demand listening, playlist creation, downloads for offline listening, unlimited skips and replays, higher-quality audio and no advertisements.

Premium users can share their personalized playlists with friends, even if they’re on the free tier, by sending a link.

The free user can temporarily access Premium by watching a video ad as a way to test drive the Premium experience, and listen to their friend’s playlist. This option, called “Access,” launched in December and has been used by millions.

The company declined to comment on how well this “test drive” strategy has been working to convert free users to paid, saying that it’s not sharing metrics and engagement numbers around personalized playlists as the feature hadn’t yet been broadly rolled out. (Only a “select” number had access to the playlists ahead of today).

The playlists themselves are created by a combination of data from Pandora’s Music Genome and machine learning models that understand what sort of music you like. But Pandora also employs human curators to perfect the lists and update them, as needed.

At launch, the service was capable of offering over 60 personalized playlists, like those for “focus,” “energy,” “rainy days” or genre-based ones, like “pop” or “hip hop.” But users won’t necessarily get all 60 – they’ll only get those that Pandora thinks makes sense for the individual based on the user’s listening habits.

Pandora says that, during this staged rollout phase, it was creating up to four new playlists for each user per week, and this process would continue until it “maxed out” each user’s playlist categories. This “max” is not a flat number, but varies by user. For example, someone who listens to a lot of different types of music may continue getting new playlists for weeks.

Now that the feature is live, Pandora plans to release more categories, including new soundtrack themes, in the months ahead.

“This is the beginning of a whole suite of themed playlists that we will automatically build and tailor to each Premium user. In the coming months, we’ll be rolling out more even more themes for you to unlock,” writes Chris Phillips, Pandora CPO, in a blog post announcing the news.

To find the new playlists, visit the “Featured Playlists” section of “Browse” in the Pandora mobile app.