iOS 12 is finally here. And the update is packed with many improvements. In particular, Apple has tucked away many little features that you won’t see right away.
If you want to impress all your friends with your mad iOS skills, here is a list of some of these features. I also wrote a review of iOS 12 if you want to learn more about all the changes coming with iOS 12.
#1: Is it a phone? Is it a trackpad?
Many people don’t know about this superpower, but you can move around an email or text message by turning your phone into a trackpad. On previous versions of iOS, you had to use 3D Touch.
It is now much easier to access as you just needs to tap and hold on the space bar of the keyboard. Goodbye, Gboard!
#2: Second Face ID
RIP, Touch ID. But Face ID is just getting started. Apple knows that you want to let your spouse or friend unlock your phone. Sure, you can always share your passcode. But it’s less secure and people always forget passcodes.
Head over to Settings > Face ID & Passcode > Set Up an Alternate Appearance. Ta-da, second face acquired.
#3: Do Not Disturb a bit, a lot or forever
If you don’t use Do Not Disturb because you always forget to turn it off, this is a thing of the past. You can now use 3D Touch in Control Center to turn on Do Not Disturb for an hour, until this evening (or the next morning), until the end of an event or until you leave a location.
Don’t forget, it’s one of the most powerful tools when it comes to using your phone less.
#4: Quiet please
Even when you don’t have Do Not Disturb on, chances are you receive way too many notifications. On the lock screen, swipe on a notification to turn on “Deliver Quietly”. Notifications won’t make your phone buzz and will skip the lock screen altogether. The only way to view them is by manually pulling up the Notification Center. I already use it for most news apps as I don’t need to see the headlines right away. And everything feels quieter.
#5: AirPods as super ears
If you want to be more like Jack Dorsey, go to Settings > Control Center > Customize and add “Hearing”. This feature called Live Listen lets you turn your AirPods into hearing aid devices.
If you have a hard time listening to conversations in some crowded environment, this is an important feature.
Apple has improved how password managers work on iOS 12. If you’re already using a third-party password manager, such as 1Password, LastPass or Secrets, your life is about to become so much easier.
Head over to to Settings > Passwords & Accounts > AutoFill Passwords. You’ll be able to log into websites and accounts using your data from your third-party password manager without having to open it.
As for one-time codes, if you still rely on text messages (and you shouldn’t), iOS will scan your incoming text messages to automatically copy and paste your one-time codes. Neat!
#8: Drag and drop that Memoji
Yay, Memojis are here! Sure, you can record voice messages and send them in Messages. But don’t forget to take selfies with your Memoji.
You can also drag and drop your Memoji on top of a photo or a message. Emojis are so 2017.
#9: Favicons in Safari
On your iPad, you can finally turn on favicons for browser tabs — those tiny little icons in the tab bar. This way, you’ll be able to find what you’re looking for much more easily. Head over to Settings > Safari.
#10: Is it too late to say sorry?
It’s so annoying when you keep hearing a song in your head but you can’t remember the name of the song. Maybe you just know that one line of the lyrics.
You can now type those lyrics in Apple Music. The service now lets you search by lyrics.
#11: Those sweet, sweet Shortcuts
The most powerful feature of iOS 12 is clearly Siri Shortcuts. Combined with Apple’s Shortcuts app, you can trigger chains of actions with a simple phrase.
The Shortcuts app is available for free in the App Store. Time to think about your own morning routine!
I’ve been busy building some advanced examples for the Shortcuts app in iOS 12.
My Morning Routine shortcut, plus many others, will be coming Monday alongside my iOS 12 review.
Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund is investing $1 billion into Lucid Motors, capital that will finance the commercial launch of the startup’s first electric vehicle.
The agreement comes just six weeks after Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted that he was considering taking Tesla private at $420 a share and had secured the proper funding to make the leap. Musk suggested that Saudi’s wealth fund, which already owns almost 5% of Tesla stock, would xyz.
The investment came at a crucial moment for Lucid Motors, which has struggled recently to raise the funds needed to produce its luxury EV, the Lucid Air. The funding will be used to complete engineering development and testing of the Lucid Air, construct its factory in Casa Grande, Arizona, begin the global rollout of its retail strategy starting in North America, and enter production, the company said.
Lucid Motors was founded 10 years ago with a different name and mission. The company, called Atieva at the time, was focused on developing electric car battery technology. It then shifted to producing electric cars and changed its name in 2016.
The company seemed to have momentum at the time. Lucid Motors had successfully raised money, unveiled the Air, announced plans to build a $700 million factory in Arizona, signed a deal with Samsung SDI to supply it with lithium-ion batteries and moved into spacious new digs. But building a factory is expensive and the company fell silent for nearly a year as it sought out funding to produce the Air.
It’s also a notable investment for the Saudi kingdom, which under its Vision 2030 plan is seeking to diversify its economy away from fossil fuels. In the past year, the Saudi Public Investment Fund has invested in renewable energy, established and developed recycling companies and energy efficiency services, the kingdom noted in a release.
iOS 12 could be summed up in one feature: speed. The rest is just a footnote, especially when you compare iOS 12 to iOS 11.
You may remember that iOS 11 was filled with many new features, especially on the iPad. But it was also the buggiest release to date. Even the Calculator app wasn’t working properly. And let’s not forget about messages arriving out of order or your keyboard replacing the letter “it” with “I.T”.
Like many of you, I’ve been using a beta version of iOS 12 for the past few weeks. Even though it was just a beta, iOS 12 is by far the fastest version of iOS of all time. And Apple just released iOS 12.0 today. Here’s a quick rundown of what’s new in iOS 12.
Low level
If you are reading this article on an iPhone or iPad, chances are you’re using iOS 11. Many devices support iOS 11 — the iPhone 5s, the iPad mini 2, the last iPod touch, and everything that Apple released since then.
And the good news is that Apple hasn’t dropped support for a single device with iOS 12. While this might seem anecdotal, it reveals Apple’s mindset with iOS 12.
In the past, Apple usually added new intensive tasks for your CPU, GPU and RAM. And at the end of the development process, those features would be vaguely optimized for older devices. That’s why older phones never got some features. Or some features were simply too demanding. In some cases, your battery life took a hit.
This time, when it comes to performance, Apple started from the bottom of the iPhone chain. For instance, if you optimize app launches and typing on the iPhone 6, newer devices will also benefit from those optimizations. Even after updating my iPhone X from iOS 11 to iOS 12, everything feels much smoother.
Apple didn’t stop at raw performance. The company worked on some much needed refinements for notifications, Do Not Disturb and the way you use your phone.
Android users will laugh at this feature, but iOS 12 finally groups notifications together. Most of the time, your notifications are grouped by apps. For instance, if you receive multiple New York Times and CNN notifications, you will get two stacks of notifications that you can expand or dismiss altogether.
More interestingly, your notifications are now grouped by threads. For instance, you may have some very active groups in WhatsApp. iOS doesn’t just group all WhatsApp notifications together. You can see all the notifications from a specific group in one stack. This way, you can ignore the noise and concentrate on the rest.
While you could already silence notifications in iOS 11, iOS 12 makes this incredibly easier. You can now swipe on a notification and hit “Deliver Quietly”. This option is the combination of multiple notification settings.
If you select that, notifications won’t make your phone buzz and will skip the lock screen. The only way to view them is by manually pulling up the Notification Center. I already use it for most news apps as I don’t need to see the headlines right away.
And if you keep getting spammed from a free-to-play game and never tap on those notifications, you get a suggestion on your lock screen to silence notifications from this app.
Do Not Disturb is also receiving some minor but important improvements. You can now use 3D Touch to turn on Do Not Disturb for an hour, until this evening (or the next morning), until the end of an event or until you leave a location.
Many people never use Do Not Disturb because they forget to turn it off. And yet, it’s one of the most powerful tools when it comes to using your phone less.
Talking about digital wellbeing, Apple is going all in with a bunch of new features. Screen Time sends you a notification every week to help you understand how you use your phone. You may know that you spend too much time on Instagram, but seeing that you spend an hour or two every day in the app might be an eye-opening moment.
In the Settings, you can now configure Downtime and App Limits so that only the most essential apps remain accessible at night, such as Messages and Phone. You’ll have to bypass the restriction screen to keep using other apps. It’s pretty smart as it works across your devices and also recognizes if you’re trying to access a social network in Safari for instance.
Medium level
A new version of iOS also means new features. Competition with Android means that Apple needs to keep pushing forward on the feature front.
If you have an iPhone X or later, the big new thing is Memoji. In Messages, you can now create your own Bitmoji-style avatar. You can then use your digital face in selfies, use it as a sticker and record audio messages. There are also new Animojis.
The Photos app is getting a new “For You” tab and an improved search experience. There’s not much to say about this except that it works better than before. It’s easier to look for a specific location, events and more. Photos already had some smart albums, but the “For You” tab make them more prominent.
The Stocks app has been redesigned with better looking charts and business news headlines. Apple News has also been slightly redesigned, especially on the iPad. And Voice Memos now works with iCloud. You can record a memo on your iPhone and find it on your iPad or Mac.
Apple Music now supports lyrics and features new artist pages that look more like Spotify. And Apple Books (the new name of iBooks) is getting a visual redesign similar to the App Store redesign from last year. It looks great.
Finally, if your car supports CarPlay, Google Maps and Waze are working on navigation apps for your car. You won’t be limited to Apple Maps anymore.
Apple was supposed to add group conversations in FaceTime, but it isn’t available just yet. Apple says it will be available later this fall.
Top level
Now that the most straightforward features are out of the way, I’d like to talk about Siri, Shortcuts and Siri Shortcuts. While those three names sound similar, those are three different things in iOS 12.
Siri is the voice assistant of iOS 11 that you know and (rarely) use. It can do some basic things reasonably well, such as weather reports and setting timers. And it has also become quite good at understanding your voice and turning it into a text query.
In many cases, Siri understands what you say but can’t answer your question. That’s why many people now rely on an Amazon Echo or Google Home for voice queries.
Apple found a clever way to solve that by leveraging its developer community and acquisition of Workflow. Developers can now add new features to Siri through their apps. Those extensions to Siri’s brain are called Siri Shortcuts.
For instance, you can configure Carrot Weather and ask for hyperlocal weather forecast using Siri. You can start a playlist in Overcast and listen to your latest podcasts on your HomePod. You can open a specific note in Ulysses much more quickly. All you have to do is set up customized phrases to run the Siri Shortcuts.
But expert TechCrunch readers like you can also go one step further and create scripts in the Shortcuts app. It looks and works just like the existing Workflow app.
For instance, you can create a “Going to Bed” shortcut that turns on Do Not Disturb, turns down the brightness and ringtone levels, turns off Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and your Philips Hue lights, and sets Low Power Mode on.
Shortcuts also work with many third-party apps. The ability to chain actions together has changed the way I use my iPhone and iPad. This is not new if you were already using Workflow. But many more users will use Shortcuts now that it is deeply integrated in the operating system and with HomeKit.
Conclusion
iOS has grown immensely over the years. At first, it was a mobile operating system with no support for third-party apps. I’m sure the first release of iOS (iPhone OS 1.0) was much faster than iOS 12. But systems on a chip are also an order of magnitude faster.
That’s why the combination of hardware improvements with software optimizations make iOS 12 a great release when it comes to user experience. For this reason alone, there’s no reason not to install the update.
Apple has just released the final version of iOS 12. This update is all about making your phone work better — and there are also a bunch of new features. The update is currently rolling out and is available both over-the-air in the Settings app, and by plugging your device into iTunes for a wired update.
Many people try to download these major updates at the same time. Apple usually implements a queue system to ensure speedy downloads once you’re at the front of the queue.
iOS 12 is compatible with any device that can run iOS 11 — the iPhone 5s and later, the iPad mini 2 and later, the iPad Air and later as well as the most recent iPod touch.
But first, backup your device. Make sure your iCloud backup is up to date by opening the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad and tapping on your account information at the top and then on your device name. Additionally, you can also plug your iOS device to your computer to do a manual backup in iTunes (or do both, really).
Don’t forget to encrypt your backup in iTunes. It is much safer if somebody hacks your computer. And encrypted backups include saved passwords and health data. This way, you don’t have to reconnect to all your online accounts.
Once this is done, you should go to the Settings app as soon as possible to get in the queue. Navigate to ‘Settings,’ then ‘General’ and then ‘Software Update.’ Then you should see ‘Update Requested…” It will then automatically start downloading once the download is available.
The main feature of iOS 12 is a performance improvement, especially for older devices. If you have an iPhone 6 or an iPad Air for instance, you should see a big improvement when it comes to launching apps, triggering the camera and entering text.
The other big theme of the year is new features to help you spend less time using your phone. There’s a new Screen Time feature to see and control how much time you spend using each app. Notifications are now grouped and you can silence them from the lock screen. You also can turn on Do Not Disturb when you’re in a meeting, for a few hours or for longer.
Apple didn’t stop there, and added new power features as well. Developers will be able to take advantage of a new file format for augmented reality and new features in ARKit 2.0. Apple is releasing the Workflow app as a new Siri Shortcuts app. Developers will be able to add information to Siri, as well, so that you can add a boarding pass or a music playlist to Siri.
The Photos, News and Stocks apps have been improved, as well as Apple Books (the app formerly known as iBooks). Apple is introducing Memoji on the iPhone X. It’s a customized avatar that you can use in iMessage and FaceTime to represent you.
Shopify is leaning on phone-based AR to make online purchases look a little more lifelike for users.
The Canadian commerce company announced today that they have added support for AR Quick Look, one of Apple’s new features from ARKit 2 which will be going live with iOS12 later today and will be available for integrations with the 600,000 merchants currently on their platform.
Merchants will be able to use the tools to upload 3D models of their products which users will be able to tap on the goods inside Safari to view in their real-world environments. While viewing goods like this was possible in the past iteration of ARKit, with this integration, users won’t need to download another app, they can check the products out in AR with a lot less friction.
Augmented reality has a lot of potential to change how e-commerce operates as users feel like they can gain better impressions of what the physical goods they’re buying will look and operate like in real life. With phone and tablet-based AR, the challenge is cluing users into the fact that these features exist while also making them more worthwhile than gimmicky.
Given all the scams of the last few years, consumers are increasingly unwilling to spend money on what they see as irrelevant insurance products. That means many business have lost out on revenue.
Setoo is a UK startup which solves this problem, by helping online businesses to build and integrate simple insurance products tailor-made to the customer and automatically embedded into the customer journey.
Today Setoo announces it has closed an €8million ($9.3million) Series A funding round, bringing the total amount raised to date to €10.3million ($12million). The main investor in this and the seed round is Kamet, AXA’s ‘Insurtech’ startup studio.
Co-founder Eyal Gluska says “In French ‘c’est tout’ means ‘that’s it’. My chose the name Setoo to symbolise how simple and quick it is to create effective new protections products using the platform, and the simplicity of the products created for the consumer. This investment from Kamet is key to helping us expand across the EU and build further new products to empower more businesses to take control of insurance for their consumers.”
An example of how it works might be the instance of an OTA selling connecting flights from multiple airlines. Using Setoo, it can provide insurance to cover for missed flight connections if preceding flights are delayed or cancelled. In these situations, Setoo sends an automated SMS to the consumer on behalf of the OTA, explaining that a full refund has been provided and offering alternative flight suggestions. In another scenario, a tour operator selling ski holidays could insure against a lack of snow, fully automating payment and removing the hassle of the claims process for the customer.
Setoo is also licensed by the UK”s FCA to distribute products on behalf of insurers in the EU.
Commenting, Guillaume Borie, Chief Innovation Officer of the Group, AXA said: “Our investment in Setoo supports AXA’s strategy to build more impactful insurance platforms as one of our four key priorities for innovation and to become a partner for the end customer. Setoo’s platform enables digital businesses to create, through automation, new types of insurance that are more relevant to consumers.”
Setoo’s key competitors include ZhongAn, Moonshot and Qover. It differentiates from these competitors by providing its customers with the means to build protection products for themselves, quick and easy set-up, and its focus on exogenous events that could ruin the customer journey.
Facebook announced this morning it’s expanding its bug bounty program – which pays researchers who find security vulnerabilities within its platform – to now include issues found in third-party apps and websites. Specifically, Facebook says it will reward valid reports of vulnerabilities that relate to the improper exposure of Facebook user access tokens.
Typically, when a user logs into another app using their Facebook account information, they’re able to decide what information the token and, therefore, the app can access and what actions it can take.
But if the token becomes compromised, users’ personal information could be misused.
Facebook says it will pay a minimum reward of $500 per vulnerable app or website, if the report is valid. The company also noted it wasn’t aware of any other programs offering rewards of this scope for all eligible third-party apps.
If a vulnerability is determined to be legit, Facebook will then work with the affected app developer or website operator to fix their code. Any apps that don’t comply with Facebook’s request to address the issue will be suspended from the platform until the problem has been solved and undergoes a security review.
In addition, Facebook says it will revoke all the access tokens that could have been compromised in order to prevent potential misuse. If it believes anyone has actually been impacted by the problem, it will notify them, if need be.
The company spells out what sort of information researchers (the white hat hackers) should include in their reports in order to receive the reward. It also says it’s only accepting reports where the bug is discovered by passively viewing data sent to and from a device and the affected app or website – not through any more of manipulation on the researchers’ part.
The news comes at a time when Facebook is still dealing with the fallout from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which compromised the personal data from as many as 87 million Facebook users. This was followed by news this summer that a quiz app had been leaking data on 120 million users for years.
Since then, the company has been tightening its API platform, reviewing all apps, suspending hundreds of apps deemed suspicious, rolling out tools to help people better manage their apps, and more.
As a part of those changes, Facebook said earlier this year that its bug bounty program would be expanded.
Separately from this new program, the company now also runs a Data Abuse Bounty program which rewards first-hand knowledge of third-parties that collect user data in order to pass it off to malicious parties.
“We would like to emphasize that our bug bounty program does not replace the obligations on app developers to maintain appropriate technical and organizational measures to protect personal data — either regulatory obligations (for example, if the app developer is a data controller for the purposes of GDPR) or the rigorous controls we require through our terms of service and policies that apply to all developers on the Facebook platform,” wrote Dan Gurfinkel, Facebook Security Engineering Manager, in an announcement.
Blippar, the AR startup that launched in 2011, has today announced the close of a $37 million financing led by Candy Ventures and Qualcomm Ventures.
The company started out by offering AR experiences for brand marketers through publishers and other real-world products, letting users unlock AR content by scanning a tag called a “Blipp”.
Blippar then transitioned to a number of different AR products, but took a particular focus on computer vision, launching a consumer-facing visual search engine that would let users identify cars, plants, and other real-world objects.
Most recently, Blippar has introduced an indoor positioning system that lets commercial real estate owners implement AR mapping and other content from within their buildings.
The AR industry has been in a state of evolution for the past few years, and Blippar has constantly reshifted and re-positioned to try and take advantage of the blossoming market. Unfortunately, several pivots have put the company in a tough spot financially.
BI reports that Blippar posted revenue of £8.5 million ($11.2 million) in the 16-month period up to March 31 2016, with losses of £24 million ($31.5 million). These latest rounds have essentially let Blippar keep the lights on while trying to pick up the pace on revenues.
The company says that this latest round is meant to fuel the company’s race to reach profitability in the next 12 months. Blippar has raised more than $137 million to date.
E-commerce in the US is synonymous with using credit or other payment cards to pay for goods, but the story outside the US is very different. A fragmented mix of different options — such as cash on delivery, bank transfers, mobile phone accounts and more — are used in different combinations, depending on the country where an online sale is being made. Today, PayPal — the payments business with 250 million global active customer accounts — is making a move to try to address that problem, with the global launch of Checkout with Smart Payment Buttons, which let merchants in different countries customise payment options and create instant buying buttons and OneTouch checkout, without having to integrate with a number of different payment services.
As has fast become the norm with payment solutions in today’s market, the feature can be added into a checkout process with a few lines of code, rather than a lengthy integration.
PayPal has already been offering the product for the last three months — ironically, in the US (where cards rule the day) — a period that helped the company lay the groundwork for the wider and more complex rollout that it’s undertaking now.
The options that it’s offering now include the range of PayPal’s own services — PayPal, Venmo (US only), PayPal Credit (UK and US only subject to approval) — plus iDEAL for customers in the Netherlands, Bancontact for people in Belgium, MyBank for customers in Italy, Giropay for customers in Germany and EPS for customers in Austria (PayPal previously already taken SEPA Direct Debit in Germany).
The company will be adding more country-specific payment methods in the future. Earlier this year, PayPal led a $50 million investment in a startup called PPRO that specialises in cross-border payments, and that strategic investment is now coming into its own. While the Smart Payment technology is built by PayPal, “we do work with multiple providers to enable the many various local payment methods,” said Bill Ready, PayPal’s EVP and COO.
Merchants already using the quicker checkout include Beyond Proper by Boston Proper, Guess?, Inc., and Zumiez. Magento and WooCommerce have also enabled the new checkout experience for customers.
“We are seeing significant adoption of our Smart Payment Buttons since we first announced them, from small business to some of the largest retailers in the world,” said Ready. “We’ve gotten positive feedback about the ability to dynamically enable all the various payment methods, and many businesses — including many large retailers — have been using Smart Payment Buttons to enable Venmo as a checkout option.”
One of the key problems with e-commerce is that it turns out there is a lot of window shoppers out there — or at least people who are more likely to look but often jump elsewhere or lose interest when it comes to going through the process of buying. One of the reasons for that is oftentimes there are too many hoops that people need to jump through to make a purchase. PayPal is one of many “wallets” on the market that makes the pitch to merchants (and customers) to use it as a way around that issue: PayPal keeps your main payment details on file, and requires a basic login to work. PayPal claims that merchants that use PayPal Checkout see 88.7 percent conversions (purchases), some 82 percent higher than those not using PayPal.
Alongside the new localised payment options, PayPal is also expanding its marketing solutions globally, too: PayPal has been gradually expanding the services that it offers to merchants on its platform, to give them a more end-to-end suite of services. This has included making acquisitions like Swift Financial in 2017 for financial services; and today, adding in more marketing solutions such as sales analytics and sales incentives to help persuade prospective customers to buy during and after browsing.
On May 11 Netflix released the teen dramedy “The Kissing Booth” just as the school year was wrapping up for teens across the country.
By June, the company had a smash hit among the tweenage set, and Wattpad, the company which owned the rights to the The Kissing Booth, had its first true breakout vehicle. The story, written on Wattpad’s publishing platform by Beth Reekles, was a proof point for the company’s thesis pitching a new twist on the old model of discovering stories and creative talent for the entertainment industry.
Behind the success of the film is a nascent movement among startup companies that are trying to open the doors of Hollywood’s dream factory to a broader group of creative professionals by riding the wave of fan fiction and user generated content all the way to the Paramount lot (or the Disney lot, or Sony Studios).
“In this obvious period of disruption in the entertainment industry how we’re finding stories is evolving,” said Wattpad Studios chief Aron Levitz.
YouTube, the short-lived Vine app, and Instagram have all created new platforms for discovering potential on-camera talent, and Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Instagram (again), Netflix, and YouTube (again) have smashed the distribution system for television and movies. But these platforms and the traditional studios they’d like to supplant have a voracious appetite for stories to tell and (many) are reluctant to risk millions of dollars behind something unproven.
Hollywood has always borrowed (or stolen) from other media to entertain the masses, but it seems like the fields it’s foraging in for new stories have narrowed to a few serialized playgrounds (comic books, old television shows and movies, and wildly successful young adult genre fiction).
While there are thousands of flowers to be found there, new tech-enabled companies are suggesting there might be other patches where new talent can be discovered, harvested and leveraged for corporate gain and viewer delight.
Startups like Wattpad and Tongal (for directors and cinematographers), and new financing platforms like Legion M (for producing features) are aiming to elevate new talent and provide what the companies hope will be built-in audiences for successful new programming on platforms like Netflix, Apple, and others — and the hundreds of networks that are vying for attention in an increasingly fragmented media landscape.
It wasn’t always this way. When Tongal was created, roughly a decade ago. the entertainment industry looked much, much differently than it does now.
Ten years ago that Netflix announced it would let its DVD subscribers watch streaming video as well — mostly old movies and syndicated shows that had already made their millions for the big networks and studios. That was the starting gun of what would become a race to roll up talent and gain audience in a creative landscape that was becoming increasingly competitive. With new entrants joining at every new lap.
At the time, Tongal was a discovery mechanism for new talent and a way for brands to pay for user generated content they liked. The company raised $15 million from Insight Venture Partners to harness the growing popularity of social media reach to create potentially viral videos for brands.
Tongal is still working under the thesis of user generated content, but the difference now is the millions of dollars these videos and their creators can bring in — and the ability o energize and inspire a fan base to connect more directly and engage more frequently with new titles. All the while Tongal gives studios a window into a wider world of talent.
One creator on the platform, Tucker Barrie, has gone from making short videos for social media for IAMS to a career as an animator on projects like Isle of Dogs. “Tongal is a good spot for people who don’t have a lot of experience to gain a lot of experience and make a name for themselves,” Barrie said.
In the past year the company has inked a deal with National Geographic to produce a series called WILD After Dark. The first late-night series from National Geographic WILD, the new episodes will feature shorts from members of the Tongal platform on animal-related subjects. It launched with an open call for submissions in February.
More recently Tongal has linked up with Wattpad to call on its network of creators to pitch a treatment for Wattpad’s wildly successful science fiction thriller Expiration Date. In July, Tongal issued its call to filmmakers for submissions from which the partners will pick three finalists. Those finalists will receive funding to produce a “proof-of-concept” series trailer.
Then, Wattpad, Tongal and their distribution partner SYFY will award a grand prize winner additional funding to create a digital pilot episode with the potential to go on to develop the entire series for SYFY.com as part of its fan creators program.
“The partnership between Tongal and Wattpad flips the script on Hollywood by changing the how and who of content creation through our open platforms for talent,” said James DeJulio, Tongal’s co-founder and President, in a statement at the time. “These new global communities are made up of diverse and passionate creators, and now they’re actually developing the shows they want to watch. I’m thrilled that SYFY.com has opened the door for this innovative, by the fans, for the fans shift.”
This marks the second collaboration between Tongal and Wattpad on project development for a network. The two companies, which have a natural affinity as creative platforms focused on the visual and storytelling elements of a production (respectively), had worked on a similar competition for the CW Seed, and its production of Cupid’s Match, another popular Wattpad story (spoiler: it’s not very good).
“It’s one of those great proof points for Wattpad and Wattpad studios,” said Levitz, the head of Wattpad Studios in a February interview. “I think it’s the first public one that we’re talking about in a strong way.”
On Wattpad, Cupid’s Match had 32 million reads, and it was that kind of viral popularity that piqued the interest of the CW Network. “We can use the strength of an audience and get someone like CW interested in the output,” Levitz said. “We have 400 million stories on the platform. We’re able to look at the data we have the audience we have and the story we have and use data to choose the right stories for the right partner.”
Like Tongal, Wattpad also took a circuitous path to becoming a player in Hollywoodland. The company initially started as an e-book community operator sharing fan fiction and classic works. Over time, the fan fiction side of the content marketplace won out and the Toronto-based company went from raising capital from a consortium of angel investors to raising $51 million from a consortium of investors including the Chinese internet giant, Tencent, earlier this year. It’s likely that Tencent (and the studios it’s partnering with) were drawn to Wattpad’s 60 million monthly users.
The foundation for the belief that fan fiction could be leveraged into hundreds of millions for the movie industry was laid by the success of the Fifty Shades franchise. The best-selling books, derived from Twilight fan fiction, were optioned into a series of three films and made for a cool $150 million.
For the past decade Hollywood has been relying on big franchises and fan-driven stories to create big numbers at the box office or online, said DeJulio.
“Fans are the lifeblood of these franchises,” DeJulio said. “We’re in this weird time right now… where marketing is very expensive and it is in a lot of ways hamstringing entertainment.”
DeJulio sees Tongal as a platform where one can influence and support the other.
“The studios, once they do get a hit… They realize that through fan communities and engaging them they can not only market it but they can actually get the work done too [of creating new content],” DeJulio said.
Mount Lee, Hollywood Hills, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA.
If Wattpad and Tongal are using their network of users to find and promote talent, Legion M is hoping to use the network of fans for genre content to finance new productions.
The startup production studio has raised $3 million in equity crowdfunding over two rounds and has managed to grab a stake in well reviewed indie-projects like Colossal (starring Anne Hathaway and Jason Sudeikis) and Mandy a new Nicolas Cage vehicle already being touted as cult-classic gold. What that means as far as returns go for the shareholders that back the company’s funding campaigns is unclear, especially since the company’s Bad Samaritan project (starring David Tenant, everyone’s favorite of the new Dr. Who) was critically panned.
Founded by two serial internet entrepreneurs Paul Scanlan and Jeff Annison, and backed by partnerships with folks like the Austin-based theater chain Alamo Drafthouse, LegionM’s goal is to bring in 1 million fans as investors to back projects.
The idea is to harness fan support for sales and marketing help and to surface projects that have enough of a built-in audience to generate profits for the company.
“We believe an entertainment company owned by fans is better than one owned by Wall Street,” said Paul Scanlan, Legion M’s cofounder and CEO, in a statement announcing the company’s new crowd funding campaign.
Some of the projects Legion M affiliated itself with are based more around fan engagement than an actual dollar investment. In fact, the company isn’t a producer of the marquee Colossal film, and instead came on to provide marketing support through its network of fans, according to an interview with the director.
Scanlan and Annison launched MobiTV, which was an early developer of technology to stream digital media on mobile devices. The two went on to launch New York Rock Exchange, a company that allows fans to buy illiquid shares in songs they love. It’s like a coin offering, without the upside, and without any legal ramifications because there’s actually nothing of value that acquirers are buying.
Unlike the Rock Exchange, average investors are buying real shares in the crowd funding offerings the two co-founders are selling via the Securities and Exchange Commission’s new crowdfunding regulations. And they’re tapping into the thesis that fans and consumers are driving the creation of commercially viable content now more than ever.
Wattpad, Tongal, and Legion M aren’t alone in their efforts. Companies like Seed&Spark, Coverfly, and The Black List, are also doing their best to uncover new artists and creators for the entertainment industry to develop. While on the financing side, new cryptocurrencies like MovieCoin (which just launched a pre-sale of its tokenized financing offering for producing new movies) and TaTaTu are angling to give the moviegoing public another (ideally more transparent) way to finance movies.
“Hollywood is a notoriously difficult place to traverse in the entertainment business. What we find in content creation, and the investment process as well, is that every project is seeking an audience,” Annison said in an interview with The Niner Times(the local university paper for the University of North Carolina, Charlotte). “Among Hollywood, which is such a massive world to step into, there are limitations along with those huge companies. In essence, it’s a ‘hit-driven’ enterprise, where the lines are drawn between the artistic side of filmmaking and the business side of entertainment. That can be a complicated street to walk down.”
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