Author: azeeadmin

When Facebook unveiled Libra, its cryptocurrency project, there were two distinct entities — the Libra Association, a not-for-profit that oversees all things Libra, and Calibra, a Facebook subsidiary that is building a Libra-based wallet with integrations in WhatsApp and Messenger. Today, Facebook announced that Calibra has a new name, Novi.

By rebranding Calibra to Novi, Facebook is trying to make it super clear that the Libra project isn’t a Facebook project per se. Facebook is just a member of the Libra Association with dozens of other members, such as Andreessen Horowitz, Coinbase, Iliad, Lyft, Shopify, Spotify, Uber, etc.

The Libra blockchain is supposed to operate independently from Facebook, while Novi is a pure Facebook project headed by David Marcus. According to the company, Novi comes from the Latin words “novus” (new) and “via” (way).

Novi’s first product will be a cryptocurrency wallet. You’ll be able to download a standalone Novi app on your phone. While you don’t need a Facebook or WhatsApp account to create a Novi account, it will also be accessible directly in Messenger and WhatsApp — you’ll be able to tap on a button to launch a Novi menu to send and receive money through the Novi wallet.

The Facebook subsidiary wants to be reassuring when it comes to money laundering and know-your-customer regulation. When you sign up to Novi, you’ll have to take a photo of a government-issued ID. Novi isn’t a way to send money anonymously.

Instead, Novi promises instant transactions and “no hidden fees” for cross-border money transfers and local payments. It’s unclear whether Novi means there won’t be any fees or there will be fees but the company will be transparent about them.

The Libra Association recently updated its white paper to make important changes to the cryptocurrency protocol. The association is no longer building a global stablecoin tied to a basket of fiat currencies and securities.

When Libra launches, there will be several stablecoins — each of them will be backed by a single fiat currency, such as USD, EUR, GBP or SGD. Novi users as well as people using other Libra-enabled wallets will be able to send and receive LibraUSD, LibraEUR, LibraGBP or LibraSGD. Novi will also act as a ramp to convert fiat money to crypto assets and cash out your cryptocurrencies to traditional fiat currencies.

Novi plans to launch its wallet when the Libra network goes live. Only a limited set of countries will be able to access the service at first.

When Looking Glass Factory showed of its first holographic display way back on August 2018, it felt more like a proof of concept than anything — though it was immediately an impressive concept. In November of last year, the Brooklyn-based startup showed off an 8K display that used its holographic tech.

The feeling wasn’t quite as immersive, but the form factor certainly made more sense. The system has 33.2 million pixels and relies on a 45-element light field to provide a 3D effect. I saw it at some hotel meeting room at CES. It’s really neat. And now it can be yours for some unspecified price.

The system is shipping now, when ordered through Looking Glass’s site. The target markets here are medical imaging, mapping, automotive, architecture and engineering. A press release tied to the announcement features a handful of folks in these categories who are excited at what such a technology could mean, going forward. Here’s Epic Games CTO Kim Libreri,

Having access to a glasses-free holographic display is a massive breakthrough, and presents an exciting prospect for teams working in immersive computer graphics, visualization and content creation. The Looking Glass holographic display provides a stunning level of realism, and we look forward to seeing the innovations that emerge with the support of Unreal Engine generated content.

The company is only offering pricing quotes by request through its site — which means it’s pretty likely to be cost prohibitive for those just looking to augment our remote working set up. As noted in the earlier piece, the company is targeting enterprise users with early applications — organizations that generally have money to spend on state of the art harder. More consumer-focused applications, including gaming, could be coming a ways down the road. 

In the ‘Age of Corona’ – as some like to call it, the roboticization of industry and business has been super-charged by the pandemic. So while companies using messaging platforms to drive customers towards purchases was always on a long term trend, the sheer volume of people staying online 24/7 during global lockdowns has led to this tactic also being boosted.

So it’s therefore understandable that Spectrm, an AI-powered conversational marketing platform that does just this, has raised $3 million in Series A funding from international VC fund Runa Capital.  

Spectrm automates conversations to engage and convert customers online via an AI-driven algorithm. Then marketers use that data to segment the customer base and build stronger customer relationships. The platform is used by companies like eBay, Ford, Groupon, Renault, KLM, and more.

According to Global WebIndex research, social media users are now spending an average of 2 hours and 24 minutes per day across eight social networks and messaging apps. And during Covid-19-driven lockdowns, that would have been much more.

Сonversational marketing is a hot area. Facebook Messenger marketing has 10-80 times better engagement than email, for instance.

Max Koziolek, co-founder and CEO of Spectrm, said in a statement: “Our vision is to combine the power of conversations with the reach of the largest platforms in the world… we believe conversation is a deeply human experience that is more effective and more insightful than any other format in marketing”,

Dmitry Galperin, Partner at Runa Capital said: “Instead of trying to cover all marketing communication channels, it is much more effective to direct efforts to those that generate the most customer insights and highest ROI. Conversational marketing is one of those channels.”

Spectrm’s competitors include LivePerson (Nasdaq listed), ManyChat (raised $19.1M), Snaps.io ($11.3M), Automat.ai ($10.9M), and Chatfuel ($120K).


Spotify announced this morning it’s removing the content cap on the app’s “Your Library,” allowing users to now save an unlimited number of songs, albums, and podcasts to their collection of favorites. The change addresses a top user complaint since 2014 which, to date, had received over 12,500 votes on Spotify’s Community Ideas Exchange forum.

Though an average user may only have a few hundred or a few thousand saved songs, some have preferred a larger library. But before today, Spotify enforced a 10,000-item limit across 3 devices. When you hit that limit, Spotify would display a message that read: “Epic collection my friend. There’s no more room in Your Library. To save more, you’ll need to remove some songs or albums.”

The issue impacted those who liked to play their collection on shuffle, for example, or who liked to see all their favorite music in one interface in order to build custom playlists. Unfortunately, the 10,000-song limit on playlists remains so you aren’t yet able to now turn your entire music collection into a playlist to stream or share with friends.

It also doesn’t impact Spotify’s requirements around offline downloads. Users are still able to only download 10,000 songs across 5 different devices for offline listening. This, however, is less of an issue during the coronavirus outbreak as many people no longer commute to work without Wi-Fi or cellular access –like in trains or subways. And fewer people are traveling by air, where offline access comes in handy.

Instead, the limit’s removal is more about removing the anxiety around whether or not you should “like” a song, album, or podcast. This has become a more pressing issue now that Spotify has expanded into podcasts, which increased the type of items users could “like” and made it possible to fill up libraries faster.

The change to libraries is rolling out now across iOS, Android, desktop and web, Spotify said. You may not see it immediately, but should soon.

Spero Ventures, the venture capital firm backed by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, has gone to Mexico City for its latest investment, backing the identity verification technology developer Mati.

Launched in San Francisco, the two co-founders Filip Victor and Amaury Soviche, decided to relocate to Mexico because of its proximity to big, untapped markets in Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia.

“After developing the technology in San Francisco, we chose to start commercially in Latin America. It has been the perfect petri dish for us: the markets here, especially in Mexico, Brazil and Colombia, are very exciting. These countries have the highest payments fraud rates in the world, which makes their identity issues the most interesting,” said Victor in a statement.

The rise of a new generation of fintech startup across Latin America creates a unique opportunity for Mati in a number of markets — and so does a new generation of financial services regulations, the company said. “We view the fintech regulations sweeping across LatAm as an opportunity to help a lot of promising fintechs and marketplaces get to the next level”, Victor said.

Already working across three countries, with operations in Mexico City, St. Petersburg, and San Francisco, Mati is an example of the global scope that even very early stage companies can now achieve.

Identity verification is at the core of much of the modern gig economy and much of the social networking defining life during a pandemic.

The company said it will use the capital investment — it would not disclose the amount of money it raised — to continue product development and expand its geographic footprint.

The scope of the identity verification problem is what brought Spero to the table to discuss an investment, according to a statement from Shripriya Mahesh, the founding partner at Spero.

“For us, identity is foundational to scaling the vast array of gig economy, fintech, social, and commerce platforms that represent our collective future of work,” Mahesh said. “The ability to have safe and trusted interactions at an unprecedented scale, especially with people in places where national identity infrastructure is limited, will create opportunities and global connections we can’t yet even forecast.”

Apple has now resolved the bug that was plaguing iPhone and iPad apps over the weekend, causing some apps to not launch at all. The issue was related to a bug with Apple’s Family Sharing system, it appears, as users reported error messages which said “This app is no longer shared with you,” and directed them to buy the app from the App Store in order to still use it.

Following this issue, users on Sunday said they were seeing dozens of pending app updates for their iOS devices, some of which even went back to the app’s last update from well over a week ago. Users reported in forums seeing as many as 10, 20, 50 or even 100-plus new updates to install. This indicated a fix was in the works, as these were not brand-new updates — the apps were already up to date. Instead, these reissued updates seem to have been part of the fix for the Family Sharing problem, as afterward the bug was resolved.

Apple confirmed the issue has been now resolved for all affected customers.

Apple-focused news sites including MacRumors, 9to5Mac, Appleinsider, and others previously reported on the news of bug and the following deluge of app updates. 9to5Mac also offered a plausible explanation for what happened, saying it was likely due to a signing issue of some kind. Apps were essentially behaving as if they were paid downloads and the right to use the app had been removed from the iCloud family circle, the site explained.

Some users discovered they could delete the troubled app then re-download it to resolve the problem. That’s what the forced app updates did, too — they overwrote the parts of the apps causing the issue. Had Apple not reissued the app updates, many iOS users would have likely assumed it was the app developer’s fault. And they may have then left unfair complaints and 1-star reviews on the app’s App Store page as a result.

Apple has not shared any additional details about why the problem occurred in the first place, but if you happened to notice a significant increase in app updates on Sunday, that’s why.

India said it will publicly release the source code of its contact tracing app, Aarogya Setu, in a relief to privacy and security experts who have been advocating for this ever since the app launched in early April. 

Ajay Prakash Sawhney, secretary in the ministry of electronics and information technology, made the announcement on Tuesday, slating it as “opening the heart” of Aarogya Setu’s Android app, which has amassed over 115 million users in fewer than 60 days, to allow engineers to inspect and tinker with the code.

The source code will be published on GitHub at midnight Tuesday (local time). Sawhney said the government will also offer cash prize of up to $1,325 for identifying and reporting bugs and vulnerabilities in the code of Aarogya Setu.

Several privacy and security advocates, as well as India’s opposition party, had urged the government to release the code of the app for public auditing after a handful of vulnerabilities were spotted in the app.

Sawhney said today’s move should allay people’s concern with the app, which is designed to help curb the spread of the coronavirus disease.

More to follow…

As the leader of a publicly traded corporation with 135,000 employees, Verizon Communications CEO Hans Vestberg has a unique perspective on the state of the world.

When he appears today on Extra Crunch Live, our virtual speaker series for Extra Crunch members, we’ll ask him about this extraordinary moment in history and his plans for seeing the company through a black swan event that’s reshaping the global economy.

The discussion starts at 2 p.m. EDT/11 a.m. PDT/9 p.m. GMT. You can find the full details below.

Vestberg served as president and CEO at Ericsson for six years and joined Verizon as its CTO and president of Global Networks in 2017 before stepping into the CEO role a little more than a year later. (Disclosure: TechCrunch is owned by Verizon).

We’ll talk to Vestberg about his tactics for managing a company at scale through a crisis and will check in on the company’s 5G rollout, a platform inflection point that should change the landscape for founders and entrepreneurs. Verizon recently acquired BlueJeans, which competes directly with Zoom and WebEx, so we’ll also ask Vestberg about the company’s forward-looking investment strategy.

Extra Crunch members are encouraged to ask their own questions during the Zoom call, so please come prepared. If you’re not already a member, sign up on the cheap right here.

You can also check out the full Extra Crunch Live schedule here.

See you soon!

Baton, an early-stage startup that wants to help customers organize the post-sales implementation process, emerged from stealth today with a $10 million Series A investment.

Activant Capital led the round with help from Global Founders Capital and Hybris founder Carsten Thoma.

Like so many startups, the idea for Baton stemmed from a pain point that founder and CEO Alex Krug experienced first hand. He was co-founder at Behance, which was later sold to Adobe and he saw that there were tools to organize your customers and get you through the sale, but there was something distinctly lacking when it came to implementation post-sale.

Krug said that most companies hacked together a solution consisting of general project management tools, spreadsheets and email, but what was missing was a dedicated platform to help with this part of the process. He put his team to work to build it.

“We reconfigured a lot of the team that I worked with at Behance and Adobe and really started to build a platform around optimizing the implementation, what happens in between your presale and post sale and how customers get on boarded through a platform,” Krug told TechCrunch.

He says where project management tends to be internally focussed, Baton is designed to bring all the parties from vendor to client to systems integrator together in one tool, so everyone knows their responsibilities and targets.

While Krug understands that this may not be an optimal time to launch a startup out of stealth in the middle of a pandemic and corresponding economic crisis, he still sees a real need for a tool like Baton.

“This era of top line growth is gone. Efficient growth is here to stay and Baton really optimizes processes and standardizes a toolset that allows you to grow efficiently from your fifth customer to your thousandth customer, whereas previous iterations of implementation have been these static spreadsheets and chasing people for manual updates.”

He believes his company is offering a reasonable alternative to that, as does his lead investor Peter McCoy at Activant Capital. “The best SaaS companies are built off of product-led growth, that can be network effects, novel go-to-market strategies or some other distribution advantage. The problem I kept seeing was even companies that had one or a couple of these attributes created operational debt, when they bloated up their services teams to keep up with top line growth. The need for a platform like Baton was super clear to me,” McCoy said in a statement.

Beginning today, the company will set forth on its startup journey as it attempts to carve out a market in difficult times, and help customers with this crucial part of the selling cycle.

Good morning and welcome back to TechCrunch’s Equity Monday, a brief jumpstart for your week.

This is a messed-up edition, because we are both hosting Equity Monday on Tuesday (because that makes sense) and our normal host Alex Wilhelm is on vacation, leaving (editor’s note: poor and massively underpaid) managing editor Danny Crichton to wake up early on the first day of the workweek to talk to himself in front of a microphone.

Here’s what we (okay I) talked about this morning:

• We talked about remote work and an article I wrote called “Work From Home is dead, long live Work From Anywhere”
• Remote worker payroll startup Deel’s A16Z funding round
• Facebook’s cost-of-living adjustment controversy and remote workforce initiatives
• An article I wrote on digital nomads a few years back called Digital nomads are hiring and firing their governments
• Run The World’s second fundraise in two months, this time from Founders Fund
• The big court decision for Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou tomorrow, who has been under house arrest in British Columbia since December 2018.
• The UK’s reversal of a decision to include Huawei in its 5G network plans, also referencing Scott Bade’s piece on Huawei and the West.
• And finally, getting ready to chat with Verizon CEO (and TechCrunch’s ultimate head honcho) Hans Vestberg later today at 2pm EDT / 11am PDT since we can’t get enough about telecommunications.

Equity will be back Friday morning with more. Welcome to the week!

Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 AM PT and Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.