Month: September 2020

Facebook’s video destination, Facebook Watch, is introducing a new feature called “Your Topics” that will allow you to tailor its feed to include more of the content you want to see. Currently, Facebook leverages its existing understanding of each viewer’s interests to personalize the Watch Feed. Topics, however, will allow users to more explicitly tell Facebook what sort of things they like by exploring and subscribing to various content categories.

The feature has been quietly rolling out to Facebook users in recent days, and now some portion of the user base already has the feature in their own Facebook app.

Among the first to notice the new addition was Twitter user @whimchic, who regularly spots updates and changes to mobile applications before they’re made public.

They were alerted to the feature through a pop-up within Watch on the Facebook mobile app, we’re told. Here, a message explained that Facebook will now focus on showing more of the videos related to the #Topics you follow.

“Due to the many different ways your Watch feed is determined and how videos get categorized, you may see videos in your Watch feed that you aren’t interested in,” the message also warned. “Some videos related to the #Topics or Pages you follow may not appear in your Watch feed,” it noted.

Image Credits: Facebook app, screenshot via @whimchic

If you have the feature, you can access it for yourself by clicking on the Profile icon in the Facebook Watch tab on mobile, then clicking on the link to “Your Topics” to browse the available categories.

The subcategories which you can actually follow or unfollow are grouped underneath broader category pages, like Animals, Art & Design, Books, Business, Education, Fashion & Style, Food, Games, History & Philosophy, Home & Garden, Music, Performing Arts, Science & Tech, Sports, Travel & Leisure, TV & Movies, and Transportation.

Image Credits: Facebook app, screenshot via TechCrunch

However, you can’t follow these high-level categories themselves — you have to click inside them to follow the individual topics. These can be very specific. For example, within Animals, you could follow #EndangeredSpecies or #GoldenRetrievers. Within Travel & Leisure, you could follow #TravelOceania or #WinterActivities. And so on.

But the subcategory listings are not comprehensive. Upon testing the feature within the Facebook app on my iPhone, a search for many other possible topics yielded no results. (What, no #Corgi videos?!) This, of course, could change in time as the feature is expanded.

Image Credits: Facebook app, screenshot via TechCrunch

Once you follow a topic, a message will confirm your choice and then the topic will appear under “Topics You Follow” in the Your Topics section of Facebook Watch.

From here, you can choose to unfollow the topic later on if you decide you want to see less of it in your feed. And if you want to watch only videos from a given topic, you can tap the topic to delve into a customized feed.

The feature is now one of several ways users can personalize and filter their broader Facebook Watch feed.

You can also filter the feed by Live, Music, Following, Shows, Gaming and more, by tapping on the buttons at the top of the screen or from the What’s on Watch category picker that shows up as you scroll further down the Watch Feed.

Facebook also adds groupings like its editorially curated “Get Caught Up” section with videos from paid partners, or those groupings that are more algorithmically sorted, like the one with videos that got the most “HaHa’s” or “Loves” this week, or those that are popular with friends.

Image Credits: Facebook app, screenshot via TechCrunch

The new feature could make Facebook Watch more competitive with YouTube, where there’s historically been a heavier focus on connecting users with individual channels to subscribe to. But YouTube has also embraced Topics in its own way, with broad categories like “Gaming” and “Fashion & Beauty” that are now a part of its main navigation. And it puts personalized topics at the top of the home page directing signed-in users to categories of videos they tend to watch.

Twitter, of course, has its own Topics feature, too, which showcases top tweets that match a particular interest. These may or may contain videos, however.

Reached for comment, a Facebook spokesperson confirmed the addition of Topics, saying “we’re working on more ways to connect people with videos that match their interests.” No further details were provided.

Yesterday’s overflow Galaxy Unpacked event was about one thing and one thing alone: the Galaxy Z Fold 2. Honestly, it was a bit anticlimactic after its predecessor found Samsung unveiling five new devices. But the singular focus wasn’t for lack of new stuff to show off. In fact, the company just unleashed a whole slew of new products across a wide range of categories, including a gaming monitor, charging pad, refrigerator and washing machine.

There are two in particular I’d like to break out here, however: the new Galaxy Fit 2 band and A42 5G handset. The latter in particular is worth highlighting, given the company’s huge push into 5G this year. Samsung is betting big on pushing early and hard on the next-generation wireless tech.

Early this year, the company announced that it would be standardizing 5G across its flagship products. The company has also made a major push toward embracing the tech on its budget devices, including the A7 and now the A42. 5G hasn’t quite turned out to be the market correction the industry was banking on, due in no small part to a slowdown in sales from the pandemic. Certainly few banked on that. But while Apple has yet to announce a 5G iPhone (give it a month or two, mind), Samsung’s already loaded up.

And importantly, the A42 looks like it may be Samsung’s cheapest 5G offering (though we’re still waiting on exact pricing). Honestly, Samsung wasn’t particularly chatty about the device during an IFA-tied event. Though we do know there’s a quad-camera system and a 6.6-inch display. Honestly, one of the most remarkable things about 5G is how quickly affordable devices have hit the market, thanks in part to the efforts of component makers like Qualcomm.

Image Credits: Samsung

The Galaxy Fit 2 is notable mostly for the inclusion of a 15-day battery (per Samsung). It can autodetect five different kinds of workouts and monitors sleep. It’s nice to see Samsung still offering something up to the dwindling tracker market, even as its (and the world’s) focus has clearly shifted over to smartwatches.

Yesterday’s overflow Galaxy Unpacked event was about one thing and one thing alone: the Galaxy Z Fold 2. Honestly, it was a bit anticlimactic after its predecessor found Samsung unveiling five new devices. But the singular focus wasn’t for lack of new stuff to show off. In fact, the company just unleashed a whole slew of new products across a wide range of categories, including a gaming monitor, charging pad, refrigerator and washing machine.

There are two in particular I’d like to break out here, however: the new Galaxy Fit 2 band and A42 5G handset. The latter in particular is worth highlighting, given the company’s huge push into 5G this year. Samsung is betting big on pushing early and hard on the next-generation wireless tech.

Early this year, the company announced that it would be standardizing 5G across its flagship products. The company has also made a major push toward embracing the tech on its budget devices, including the A7 and now the A42. 5G hasn’t quite turned out to be the market correction the industry was banking on, due in no small part to a slowdown in sales from the pandemic. Certainly few banked on that. But while Apple has yet to announce a 5G iPhone (give it a month or two, mind), Samsung’s already loaded up.

And importantly, the A42 looks like it may be Samsung’s cheapest 5G offering (though we’re still waiting on exact pricing). Honestly, Samsung wasn’t particularly chatty about the device during an IFA-tied event. Though we do know there’s a quad-camera system and a 6.6-inch display. Honestly, one of the most remarkable things about 5G is how quickly affordable devices have hit the market, thanks in part to the efforts of component makers like Qualcomm.

Image Credits: Samsung

The Galaxy Fit 2 is notable mostly for the inclusion of a 15-day battery (per Samsung). It can autodetect five different kinds of workouts and monitors sleep. It’s nice to see Samsung still offering something up to the dwindling tracker market, even as its (and the world’s) focus has clearly shifted over to smartwatches.

The FCC was deeply embarrassed last year when it was found that its rosy broadband deployment report was off by millions, owing to a single, extremely suspect filing that conjured 62 million customers out of thin air. The company responsible is being assessed a $163,912 fine, but the underlying problems that let it happen haven’t been fixed — as Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel assesses it: “What a mess.”

The issue, as critics and the Commission itself have pointed out for years, is that the broadband industry reports its own numbers on what amounts to the honor system. There’s no other explanation for how BarrierFree, which no one outside of one county could know of, could — after failing to file its paperwork properly 26 times — suddenly claim to serve a quarter of the country, and that information made it all the way to a national report and public statement by the Chairman.

“This should have set off alarm bells at the FCC,” said Rosenworcel in a statement accompanying the agency’s announcement of the fine. “In fact, agency staff reached out to the company nearly a dozen times over multiple years, including after this suspect data was filed. Despite these efforts behind the scenes, on February 19, 2019, the FCC used the erroneous data filed by BarrierFree in a press release, claiming great progress in closing the nation’s digital divide. When an outside party pointed out this was based on fraudulent information, the FCC was forced to revise its claim.”

The outside party in question, Free Press, has consistently provided a valuable counterpoint to the FCC’s narrative on various efforts, from this report to long-running issues like net neutrality.

Since (and really, before) then, there have been calls to revise the way the FCC measures and reports the progress of broadband deployment across the country. Considering this is one of the agency’s primary responsibilities, it’s worth updating a process that has proven over and over to be error-ridden and inaccurate.

There are better tools in the works, but they didn’t arrive fast enough to save the credibility of the 2020 broadband deployment report. In fact, the FCC should have a formal proposal for how to improve its information gathering process by the end of the month.

Meanwhile, BarrierFree gets away with what Rosenworcel and her fellow Commissioner evaluate as little more than a slap on the wrist, even though it’s the maximum penalty allowed by law.

“That limitation means that the forfeiture proposed here cannot be, in my opinion, severe enough to adequately address the harm BarrierFree caused and deter future violations,” said Starks in a statement.

“This hardly feels like the vigorous enforcement our data-gathering efforts need,” said Rosenworcel. “At a minimum, we should have admonished the carrier before us to send a clear message that failing to file essential data with the agency and filing false data both result in penalty.”

“I worry about the signals this enforcement action sends today. Giving a carrier a pass for failing to file information with the FCC 26 times is not a vigorous response to the deficiencies that plague our broadband data.”

The continual uncertainty around TikTok’s future may have provided a big boost to Snapchat in August. Or maybe it was just the Disney eyes filter that went viral. In any event, preliminary estimates from app store intelligence firm Sensor Tower indicate that Snapchat’s mobile app across both iOS and Android saw approximately 28.5 million new installs last month — its single largest month for first-time downloads since May 2019, when it had then seen 41.2 million new installs.

May 2019, however, was an outlier in Snapchat’s history. The only other month, besides May 2019, where Snapchat had seen more monthly downloads than it did in August was December 2016, Sensor Tower data indicates.

Based on the firm’s findings, Snapchat downloads were up 29% year-over-year in August 2020 compared with 9% growth in July.

It’s unclear what combination of trends or changes may have shaped Snapchat’s download data over the past month.

But one significant area of interest in the social apps space has been the ongoing news around a possible TikTok ban in the U.S. News coverage of the ban already had a notable impact on the app stores’ top charts in recent weeks. Earlier in August, a number of direct TikTok competitors — including Likee, Byte, Dubsmash, Triller and others — saw sizable increases in weekly active users in the U.S. But none have grown to the point where they’re an obvious shoo-in to take TikTok’s place if the Chinese-owned video app is banned from the U.S., per Trump’s executive order.

It’s been more difficult, however, to pinpoint how larger TikTok competitors — like Snapchat and Instagram –were impacted by the news of a TikTok ban. These broader social apps tend to continually grow on a month-over-month basis and they regularly add new features which could impact downloads and usage. For example, Instagram in recent weeks has been expanding features around live streaming, shopping and debuted its own TikTok alternative, Reels.

Though not a direct TikTok rival, Snapchat has also been working to attract the same young demographic that now favors the short-form video app.

This month, Snapchat announced its plans to launch a new music-powered feature that would appeal to TikTok users. The feature, due to arrive this fall, will allow users to set their Snaps to music, similar to TikTok. Snap also confirmed it has deals in place with top music industry partners, including Warner Music Group, Warner Chappell, Universal Music Publishing Group, NMPA publisher members, Merlin and others, who have licensed their content for use in the Snapchat app.

Image Credits: App Store, screenshot by TechCrunch

In addition, Snapchat in late July turned on a new feature called “Minis,” which are basically lightweight, simplified versions of apps that live within Snapchat’s chat section. The apps, built using HTML, allow users to engage with a range of tasks — like buying tickets, meditating with Headspace, collaborating with friends, and more — without having to leave the app.

Snapchat has been benefitting, too, from a prominent position on the App Store. Apple currently has it featured in an editorially curated list of app suggestions called “New to iPhone?” which is on the App Store’s “App” homepage. The collection, which you don’t even have to scroll down to find, recommends apps that first-time iPhone users will want to download.

Other bumps in downloads could be attributed to increased marketing spend, as is common among larger app publishers. Snapchat, however, isn’t commenting on what, specifically, may have changed in August.

And maybe it was just those 66.4 million TikTok videos tagged #disneyfilter that gave Snapchat a bump this past month!

Sensor Tower’s new Snapchat data is considered preliminary because it’s only been finalized through August 26th. When the remaining days of August are also finalized, there may be some changes to the resulting numbers. But those changes will likely be minor, at best.

These figures were also initially reported by one of Sensor Tower’s financial services customers in an analyst note. They were not publicized by Sensor Tower’s data reporting team. But the company confirmed the data’s accuracy with TechCrunch.

Snapchat, as of its Q2 earnings in July, reported its daily active users had grown to 238 million, up nearly 4% from the 229 million the company reported in April. The company won’t comment on the new download data.

In the last few months, we’ve seen much of Silicon Valley finally start to acknowledge generations of systemic racial inequity and take actionable steps to empower and support underrepresented people in tech. Funds are looking to invest capital more equitably and have started to take concrete steps to achieve this goal.

For example, Eniac Ventures and Hustle Fund have started to meet with more Black founders via consultations and encouraging cold inbound pitches. Initiatives like venture capital fellowships run by Susa Ventures and Unshackled Ventures will allow for increased representation in investment teams. While these initiatives are exciting, it’s important to explore how we can enable sustainable change and solve the diversity problem at the root.

It’s as simple as this: Investing in diverse perspectives makes for a far more efficient economy. The data also confirms this, given that homogeneous investing teams had a success rate for M&A and IPOs that was 26.4%-32.2% lower. Data since 1990 shows that approximately only 8% of VCs identify as women, with 2% of VCs identifying as Latinx and less than 1% identifying as Black.

It’s clear that the inequitable deployment of capital that results from homogenous investment teams at VC funds has translated into missed opportunity for outsized financial returns. Since this really comes down to how venture funds operate at their core, an entity that can greatly influence this and reinvent the status quo are VC funds’ limited partners.

Limited partners are the often unheard of backers of venture capital funds. Institutional venture capital funds raise money from sources such as high-net-worth individuals (HNWs), endowments, foundations, fund of funds, banks, insurance/pension funds and sovereign wealth funds that they will in turn use to invest money into high-growth, category-defining startups (the part that you do hear about).

LPs hold a lot of power in the venture financing life cycle as institutional venture capital firms can’t write checks at the scale they do without the external financing that LPs provide. Since LPs are the source of capital, they can control who they invest in (GPs) and how they invest and manage their capital. What if LPs are the missing link who can control the flow of capital to GPs who empower, find and fund more underrepresented entrepreneurs and keep them accountable?

That sounds great, but why does this matter?

School district technology budgets are tight. But Kami CEO and founder Hengjie Wang wanted to make his company’s digital classroom product a go-to tool anyway.

He landed on trying to disrupt the printers.

Wang found that school districts spend an average of $150,000 every year on printed materials. Kami helps teachers digitize worksheets so students can digitally annotate them. Doing the math, Wang says Kami can save districts an estimated $80,000 by getting rid of the need to print handouts every day.

“Districts are apprehensive on paying for tools unless you can also save them money at the same time,” Wang said. With this tactic, the number of school districts using Kami doubled between March and July, going from from 9,987 districts to 17,915 districts. Sales for the startup, which was founded in 2013, grew over 2,000%. Today, Kami is a cash-flow positive business that sells to schools and parents.

When it comes to wide-scale and equitable adoption for edtech startups, success can often hinge on landing contracts that extend to an entire school network. However, budget cuts and red tape have often limited a company’s ability to grow. During the pandemic, consumer edtech startups such as live tutoring or question and answer services have soared now that more kids are learning from home.

However, a second surge in edtech might be upon us. As schools seek to reopen with a hybrid learning solution, Kami and other startups are finding opportunity in one of the hardest institutions to sell to: K-12 school districts.

Process automation startup Hypatos has raised a €10 million (~$11.8M) seed round of funding from investors including Blackfin Tech, Grazia Equity, UVC Partners and Plug & Play Ventures.

The Germany- and Poland-based company was spun out of AI for accounting startup, Smacc, at the back end of 2018 to apply deep learning tech to power a wider range of back-office automation, with a focus on industries with heavy financial document processing needs, such as the financial and insurance sectors.

Hypatos is applying language processing AI and computer vision tech to speed up financial document processing for business use-cases such as invoices, travel and expense management, loan application validation and insurance claims handling via — touting a training dataset of more than 10M annotated data entities.

It says the new seed funding will go on R&D to expand its portfolio of AI models so it can automate business processing for more types of documents, as well as for fuelling growth in Europe, North American and Asia. Its customer base at this point includes Fortune 500 companies, major accounting firms and more than 300 software companies.

While there are plenty of business process automation plays, Hypatos says its use of deep learning tech supports an “in-depth understanding” of document content — which in turn allows it to offer customers a ‘soup to nuts’ automation menu that covers document classification, information capturing, content validation, and data enrichment.

It dubs its approach “cognitive process automation” (CPA) vs more basic applications of business process automation with software robots (RPA) which it argues aren’t so contextually savvy — thereby claiming an edge.

As well as document processing solutions, it has developed machine learning modules for enhancing customers’ existing systems (e.g. ECM, ERP, CRM, RPA); and offers APIs for software providers to draw on its machine learning tech for their own applications.

“All offerings include machine learning pipeline software for continuous model training in the cloud or in on-premise deployments,” it notes in a press release.

“We have deep knowledge of how financial documents are processed and millions of data entities in our training data,” says chief commercial officer, Cem Dilmegani, discussing where Hypatos fits in the business process automation landscape. “We get compared to RPA companies like UiPath, enterprise content management (ECM) companies like Kofax Readsoft as well as generalist ML document automation companies like Hyperscience. However, we are quite different.

“We focus on end-to-end automation, we don’t only help companies capture data, we help them process it using our deep domain understanding, enabling higher rates of automation. For example, to automate incoming invoice processing (A/P automation) we apply our document understanding AI to capture all data, classify the document, identify the specific goods and services, validate for internal/external compliance and assign financial accounts, cost centers, cost categories etc. to automate all processing tasks.”

“Finally, we offer this technology as components easily accessible via APIs. This allows RPA or ECM users to leverage our technology and increase their level of automation,” he adds.

Hypatos claims it’s seeing uplift as a result of the coronavirus pandemic — noting it’s providing a service to more than a dozen Fortune 500 companies to help with in-shoring efforts which it says are accelerating as a result of COVID-19 putting pressure on the traditional business process outsourcing model as offshore workforce productivity in lower wage regions is affected by coronavirus lockdowns.

“We believe that we are in a pivotal moment of machine learning adoption in large organizations,” adds Andreas Unseld, partner at UVC Partners, in a supporting statement. “Hypatos’ technology provides ample opportunity to transform many core business processes. We’re impressed by the Hypatos machine learning technology and see the team in a perfect position to take a leading role in the machine learning revolution to come.”

A government watchdog has criticized U.S. border authorities for failing to properly disclose the agency’s use of facial recognition at airports, which included instructions on how Americans can opt out.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), tasked with protecting the border and screening immigrants, has deployed its face-scanning technology in 27 U.S. airports as part of its Biometric Entry-Exit Program.

The program was set up to catch visitors who overstay their visas.

Foreign nationals must complete a facial recognition check before they are allowed to enter and leave the United States, but U.S. citizens are allowed to opt out.

But the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a new report out Wednesday that CBP did “not consistently” provide notices that informed Americans that they would be scanned as they depart the United States.

A notice warning passengers of CBP’s use of facial recognition at U.S. airports. The GAO said these notices were not always clear that U..S. citizens can opt out. (Image: Twitter/Juli Lyskawa)

“These notices are intended to provide travelers with information about CBP’s use of facial recognition technology at locations where this technology has been deployed, and how data collected will be used. The notices should also provide information on procedures for opting out, if applicable, among other things,” according to the watchdog. “However, we found that CBP’s notices were not always current or complete, provided limited information on how to request to opt out of facial recognition, and were not always available.”

Some of the notices were outdated and contained wrong or inconsistent information, the watchdog said. But CBP officials told the GAO that printing new signs is “costly” and “not practical” after each policy change.

CBP uses the airlines to collect biometric scans of a traveler’s face before boarding a plane. The data is fed into a database run by CBP, where face scans are held for two weeks for U.S. citizens and up to 75 years for nonimmigrant visitors.

As part of this cooperation, CBP is required to conduct audits to ensure that airlines are compliant with the agency’s data collection and privacy practices. But the watchdog found that CBP had only audited one airline, and as of May had “not yet audited the majority of its airline business partners to ensure they are adhering to CBP’s privacy requirements.”

The watchdog took issue with this following the 2019 data breach involving CBP subcontractor Perceptics, a license plate recognition company, which CBP accused of transferring travelers’ license plate data to its network without permission.

Hackers stole about 100,000 traveler images and license plate records in the breach, which were later posted on the dark web.

CBP said it concurred with the watchdog’s five overall recommendations.

Disrupt 2020 is a few weeks away and we’re looking for founders to submit their pitch decks. In the Pitch Deck Teardown, top venture capitalists and entrepreneurs will evaluate and suggest fixes for Disrupt 2020 attendees’ pitch decks.

First impressions are everything, and pitch decks are often the first glimpse of companies by investors and business partners. It’s critical that these decks accurately present and illustrate the company’s goals and potential, concisely and effectively.

We’ve enlisted the help of some of the best venture capitalists. During these sessions, VCs will step through each slide, talking about what works, what doesn’t work and what needs to be changed to make the most impact. Along the way, expect to hear valuable insight on how investors evaluate pitch decks and the red flags that can shut down a potential investment.

What’s more, we’re looking for pitch decks to feature in these sessions. We want to showcase real pitch decks from actual companies. Anyone can submit their deck, though we’re looking for decks from early-stage companies. Submit your pitch deck here.

Some guidelines:

• When submitting, please use the email you used when you registered for Disrupt 2020
• Only pitch decks of registered Disrupt attendees will be selected
• Early-stage companies are more likely to be selected for this session
• If selected, you’ll be notified and told in which session your deck will be featured

Here are the investors signed up for the Pitch Deck Teardown:

• Aileen Lee (Cowboy Ventures)
• Charles Hudson (Venture Forward)
• Niko Bonatsos (General Catalyst)
• Megan Quinn (Spark Capital)
• Cyan Banister (Long Journey Ventures)
• Roelof Botha (Sequoia)
• Susan Lyne (BBG)

Pitch Deck Teardown is part of a much larger event focused on all aspects of building technology companies. For the first time, TechCrunch’s big yearly event, Disrupt, is going fully virtual in 2020, allowing more people to attend and interact with speakers, investors and founders. And Disrupt will stretch over five days — September 14-18 — in order to make it easier for everyone to take in all the amazing programming. Prices increase soon, so get your pass now and then submit your pitch deck for invaluable feedback from our panel of VCs.