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An effort by TikTok users to troll President Trump’s official campaign app with thousands of 1-star reviews appears to have had an impact — if not the impact the pranksters had wanted. In July, Bloomberg reported TikTok activists were flocking to the Official Trump 2020 app on the U.S. App Store to fill it with negative reviews. The prank’s goal was to get the app removed from the App Store by lowering its star rating. The plan was misguided, however, as it’s a common misconception that an app will be pulled from the App Store for having bad reviews. But the trolling has now led the Trump campaign to reset the app’s rating using the infrequently-used “reset rating” feature Apple offers app developers.

The prank against the app had begun in retaliation to the Trump Administration’s threat to ban TikTok from the U.S. market. Bloomberg reported a TikTok user, Juan Booker, posted a video for his 750,000 followers asking them to go leave 1-star ratings on the Trump app to get it booted from the App Store. That post, and then many others like it, began to circulate on TikTok.

But the TikTok users were mistaken. The idea that you can downrate an app to get it removed from the App Store has become a popular urban myth. Apple confirmed to TechCrunch this is not how the App Store works, in reality. It said will not pull down a 1-star app because of its rating.

That doesn’t seem to deter the kids, though. In China, Wuhan schoolkids downrated a remote learning app on the App Store by leaving bad reviews, hoping to avoid virtual school during coronavirus lockdowns. U.S. schoolkids tried the same more recently with Google Classroom, also thanks to a TikTok meme.

In the case of the Trump app, the pranksters left reviews saying the app was glitchy and buggy or stole their personal information. They sometimes shouted out to TikTok in their reviews, as well.

At the time of Bloomberg’s report, the Trump Campaign said the TikTok users’ trolling effort hadn’t had any impact on the Trump app. “TikTok users don’t affect anything we do. What we do know is that the Chinese use TikTok to spy on its users,” a Trump Campaign director, Tim Murtaugh, told the news outlet.

In reality, the extent of the trolling lowered the Trump app’s rating to the point where the Trump Campaign made the decision to wipe out its rating history and start fresh.

Just before Bloomberg’s news report was published, data from app store intelligence firm Sensor Tower shows that the number of ratings for the app had jumped sharply from July 7 to July 9, 2020.

The app had about 20,500 1-star ratings on July 7 which spiked to 216,500 1-star ratings on July 9. The timing of that seems to coincide with Pompeo’s initial comments around potentially blocking TikTok.

The Trump app’s bad reviews peaked during the week of July 13 when it received  5,383 1-star reviews compared with 896 5-star reviews. The app saw its lowest star rating on July 11, at 1.2-stars.

It appears the trolling picked up again in August, as news of Trump’s executive order to ban TikTok made headlines. On August 10 and 11, the app received 490 1-star reviews versus 59 5-star reviews, for example.

The firm says the Trump app had never before wiped out its rating history. But it did so on August 14, 2020 on the U.S. App Store when it updated to its latest version.

The day before the ratings reset, the app was rated approximately 1.5 stars.

The ratings reset hasn’t seemed to stop the trolling. But as a result of the reset, the trolling no longer has as significant an impact now that all the older negative reviews aren’t being factored into the app’s summary rating.

On August 15 and 16, the app received 172 1-star reviews and 130 5-star reviews. Then on August 17 and 18, it received 161 1-star reviews and 162 5-star reviews.

As of the time of writing, the app has pulled itself up to a 3.9 rating, across 3,330+ reviews.

Typically, app publishers don’t want to reset their app’s summary rating because it means having to remove their app’s lifelong rating history and starting over from scratch. It means even the app’s prior good reviews can no longer contribute the summary rating the app displays on the App Store. The move is considered something of a last resort. It’s what a developer would use if it, for example, had released a buggy update and got slammed with 1-star reviews for having a broken app and wanted a second chance with users after the bug was fixed.

Even Apple warns against using the feature unnecessarily. On the Apple Developer website, Apple explains how an app’s summary rating can be reset and when to use it.

“…We recommend using this feature sparingly,” Apple writes. “While resetting the summary rating can ensure that it reflects the most current version of your app — useful if an update addresses users’ previous concerns — having few ratings may discourage potential users from downloading your app. In addition, keep in mind that resetting your summary rating does not reset your app’s written reviews. Past reviews will continue to display on your product page,” Apple website says.

Of course, the Trump Campaign isn’t likely concerned its official app won’t have enough ratings to confer legitimacy. It doesn’t have other apps also pretending to be the “real” version — a problem some other App Store publishers face. App publishers who are typically concerned with retaining their rating history are those aiming to give potential users an assurance that their app has been around for a long time and that it has a large user base, based on the number of reviews.

When the rating is reset, the ratings count starts at zero. This can sometimes be seen as a popularity metric, however, so Trump’s Campaign probably didn’t pull the kill switch without some consideration.

This isn’t the first time TikTok users have tried to prank the Trump Campaign. Thousands of TikTok users, along with K-pop fans, registered for tickets to Trump’s Tulsa rally in an effort to take away seats from Trump supporters. When it appeared the rally was under-attended, TikTok users and other online activists claimed credit. The Trump Campaign disputed this, saying it had already weeded out tens of thousands of bogus phone numbers that were used for fake registrations.

While the results of these online pranks may not have the effect they intend, it’s worth noting what TikTok users are capable of achieving when their ideas go viral in the very app Trump is looking to ban. One wonders, though, if the TikTok pranksters of age will take their activism to the polls later this year.

The Trump Campaign didn’t reply to requests for comment.

During the COVID-19 pandemic supply chains have suddenly become hot. Who knew that would ever happen? The race to secure PPE, ventilators, minor things like food, was and still is, an enormous issue. But perhaps, predictably, the world of ‘supply chain software’ could use some updating. Most of the platforms are deployed ‘empty’ and require the client to populate them with their own data or ‘bring their own data’. The UIs can be outdated and still have to be juggled with manual and offline workflows. So startups working in this space are now attracting some timely attention.

Thus, Craft, the enterprise intelligence company, today announces that it has closed a $10 million Series A financing to build what it characterizes as a ‘supply chain intelligence platform’. With the new funding, Craft will expand its offices in San Francisco, London, and Minsk, and grow remote teams across engineering, sales, marketing and operations in North America and Europe.

It competes with some large incumbents such as Dun & Bradstreet, Bureau van Dijk, Thomson Reuters . These are traditional data providers focused primarily on providing financial data about public companies, rather than real-time data from data sources such as operating metrics, human capital, and risk metrics.

The idea is to allow companies to monitor and optimize their supply chain and enterprise systems. The financing was led by High Alpha Capital, alongside Greycroft. Craft also has some high-flying Angel investors including Sam Palmisano, chairman of the Center for Global Enterprise and former CEO and chairman of IBM; Jim Moffatt, former CEO of Deloitte Consulting; Frederic Kerrest, executive vice-chairman, COO and co-founder of Okta; and Uncork Capital which previously led Craft’s Seed financing. High Alpha Partner, Kristian Andersen, is joining Craft’s Board of Directors.

The problem Craft is attacking is a lack of visibility into complex global supply chains. For obvious reasons, COVID-19 disrupted global supply chains which tended to reveal a lot of risks, structural weaknesses across industries and a lack of intelligence about how it’s all holding together. Craft’s solution is a proprietary data platform, API, and portal that integrates into existing enterprise workflows.

While many business intelligence products require clients to bring their own data, Craft’s data platform comes pre-deployed with data from thousands of financial and alternative sources, such as 300+ data points that are refreshed using both Machine Learning and human validation. It’s open-to-the-web company profiles appear in 50 million search results, for instance.

Ilya Levtov, co-founder and CEO of Craft said in a statement: “Today, we are focused on providing powerful tracking and visibility to enterprise supply chains, while our ultimate vision is to build the intelligence layer of the enterprise technology stack.”

Kristian Andersen, partner with High Alpha commented: “We have a deep conviction that supply chain management remains an underinvested and under-innovated category in enterprise software.”

In the first half of 2020, Craft claims its revenues have grown nearly threefold, with Fortune 100 companies, government and military agencies, and SMEs among its clients.

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

What happens when the entire podcast crew is a bit tired from, you know, everything, and does its very best? This episode, apparently. A big thanks to Chris Gates for helping us trim the fat and make something good for you.

Before we get into the topics of the week, don’t forget that Equity is not back on YouTube most weeks, so if you wanted to see us do the talking with some fun extra from the production team, you can do so here. More to come once I get my new external camera to work.

That done, here’s what Natasha and Danny and I got into this week:

• The public markets are afire these days with Apple reaching $2 trillion in market cap, and Tesla’s stock doing all sorts of odd things. In short, stocks have only gone up for a while and that means that there’s warm, nigh-stuffy temperatures around assets of all types.
• This is leading to a surge in liquidity, unsurprisingly, as asset managers of all types look to take advantage of the times. So, Asana is prepping a direct listing, Airbnb has filed privately, And ThredUp is eyeing an early-2021 IPO. Around the same time as Coinbase, we’d reckon.
• Airbnb banned parties as well, which wound up being the title of the show.
• And SPACs are still happening in rapid-fire fashion. The Equity crew is not super impressed about the whole affair, but I’ll say that with Paul “Fucking” Ryan involved, it’s probably a sign of the top.
• And capping the liquidity chat, Natasha ran us through what Chamath is up to now, and Danny rabbited on about Kabbage.
• Funding rounds! Welcome raised a $1.4 million check that I covered, Labster raised $9 million that Natasha wrote about, Carrot Fertility picked up $24 million that we all thought was pretty smart, and our friends at Crunchbase News wrote about PadSplit, which is honestly neat but we ran low on time after spending too much time on SPACs. Check them out here.

Whew! We’re doing a lot over at TechCrunch.com, so, stay tuned and know that if we were a bit frazzled this week it’s because we’re working our backends off to bring you neat things. You will dig ’em.

Ok, chat Monday, a show that we’re already planning. Stay cool!

In the world of technology, online learning has been one of the bigger beneficiaries of the last several months, with people staying home and away from their normal routines because of the coronavirus pandemic and using that time to expand their knowledge, or more critically, figure out what to do next if they want to change careers, or have found themselves without a job.

Now, one of the startups building a business around virtual computer science education — teaching people sitting at home before it became a mandate — is announcing a large round of funding to capitalise on that demand.

Lambda School, which runs virtual nine- and 18-month (part time) computer science courses for $30,000 — currently covering data science and full-stack web development — with payments for the course based on a sliding scale that only kicks in after you land a job that makes at least $50,000, has raised $74 million in equity in a Series C round.

The investment is largely coming from Gigafund, the VC started by ex-Founders Fund partners in 2017 originally to put more money into SpaceX, with Tandem Fund and Y Combinator (where Lambda School was incubated) also participating. Its list of other backers include GV, GGV, and Stripe. (Tommy Collison, the head of business development at Lambda, is the younger brother of the two Collison brothers who co-founded Stripe.)

Lambda School is not disclosing its valuation but CEO Austen Allred (who co-founded the company with Ben Nelson) confirmed that it is higher than the $150 million that Lambda had reached in its $30 million Series B in January 2019. He also said that he hopes that this will be the last funding that Lambda raises, not because it’s planning an IPO but because it’s aiming to become profitable. Allred confirmed that is not the case yet.

Allred added that the plan will be to use the funds to help the startup meet a surge in demand for its courses.

“There is more demand than we can handle right now, even with the fundraise,” he said. “I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing.” Currently there are about 3,000 students enrolled, all taking live (not on-demand) classes according to timetables programmed for different timezones.

The money will specifically be used to continue expanding the range of what Lambda School offers, both in terms of content but potentially also in terms of developing its business model.

Case in point: just yesterday, the startup got approved by California’s Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education, after a prolonged period of difficulties with the bureau that saw Lambda cease teaching in the state and get fined.

But part of the deal for approval involved Lambda no longer offering Income Share Agreements to students, for the moment at least. With ISAs a cornerstone of how the company presents its deferred-payment model, Allred said Lambda is still working on making ISAs available but is also looking at “student-friendly substitutes” in the interim.

To be clear, getting approved by that board is not the same as accreditation: Lambda School doesn’t offer official degrees but certificates when students complete the courses. Currently there is no plan to get accreditation to offer degrees, Allred said.

“From a regulatory standpoint we could receive accreditation and grant degrees but [boards] require you to submit changes to curriculum a year in advance and our students can’t afford that. Things like that are a nonstarter until the accrediting bodies change their requirements,” he said, and added that schools that have accreditation are not always better than this.

“There are thousands of schools fully accredited that have a 20% graduation rate,” he said. “It doesn’t make you good. We have to prove our worth to students in other ways, usually through outcomes.”

Lambda School’s funding may be coming amid a surge of demand for its courses, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t also been a tricky time for the startup.

In April, Lambda cut 19 staff and executives took a 15% pay cut amid market uncertainty due to the coronavirus pandemic (and maybe also to sharpen up its accounts, something that regularly happens when startups are in the process of raising money). The company currently has a team of around 150, which includes both operational and support staff as well as course teachers and team leads (which are essentially teaching assistants). All of them are working remotely at the moment, Allred said.

But even before April, Lambda has faced a lot of negative opinion around how it applies the deferred payment business model. Critics have described the process of paying back fees based on your income as indentured servitude and predatory. And they claim the business model is impractical because of how Lambda itself has to the risk when students don’t make their expected salaries, since the ISA model gives paybacks on a sliding scale based not just on salary, but also on a limit of 24 months to pay back the fees, which means that some students will pay back the full $30,000 and some will not:

Allred didn’t disclose how many default on payments but said that about 15% of students drop out before the end of the first month, which means they pay nothing at all.

These may be sticking points for some people, but not enough to curtail the startup’s growth, or interest among investors.

“We were attracted to Austen as a CEO,” said Stephen Oskoui, a Gigafund partner who is joining Lambda School’s board, in an interview. “Gigafund is very focused on the strength of those that we think will build for multiple decades, and the model for how Lambda School is operating has the potential for tremendous impact.”

Facebook is considering expanding the types of data its users are able to port directly to alternative platforms.

In comments on portability sent to US regulators ahead of an FTC hearing on the topic next month, Facebook says it intends to expand the scope of its data portability offerings “in the coming months”.

It also offers some “possible examples” of how it could build on the photo portability tool it began rolling out last year — suggesting it could in future allow users to transfer media they’ve produced or shared on Facebook to a rival platform or take a copy of their “most meaningful posts” elsewhere.

Allowing Facebook-based events to be shared to third party cloud-based calendar services is another example cited in Facebook’s paper.

It suggests expanding portability in such ways could help content creators build their brands on other platforms or help event organizers by enabling them to track Facebook events using calendar based tools.

However there are no firm commitments from Facebook to any specific portability product launches or expansions of what it offers currently.

For now the tech giant only lets Facebook users directly send copies of their photos to Google’s eponymous photo storage service — a transfer tool it switched on for all users this June.

“We remain committed to ensuring the current product remains stable and performant for people and we are also exploring how we might extend this tool, mindful of the need to preserve the privacy of our users and the integrity of our services,” Facebook writes of its photo transfer tool.

On whether it will expand support for porting photos to other rival services (i.e. not just Google Photos) Facebook has this non-committal line to offer regulators: “Supporting these additional use cases will mean finding more destinations to which people can transfer their data. In the short term, we’ll pursue these destination partnerships through bilateral agreements informed by user interest and expressions of interest from potential partners.”

Beyond allowing photo porting to Google Photos, Facebook users have long been able to download a copy of some of the information it holds on them.

But the kind of portability regulators are increasingly interested in is about going much further than that — meaning offering mechanisms that enable easy and secure data transfers to other services in a way that could encourage and support fast-moving competition to attention-monopolizing tech giants.

The Federal Trade Commission is due to host a public workshop on September 22, 2020, which it says will  “examine the potential benefits and challenges to consumers and competition raised by data portability”.

The regulator notes that the topic has gained interest following the implementation of major privacy laws that include data portability requirements — such as the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).

It asked for comment submissions by August 21, which is what Facebook’s paper is responding to.

In comments to the Reuters news agency, Facebook’s privacy and public policy manager, Bijan Madhani, said the company wants to see “dedicated portability legislation” coming out of any post-workshop recommendations.

It reports that Facebook supports a portability bill that’s doing the rounds in Congress — called the Access Act, which is sponsored by Democratic Senators Richard Blumenthal and Mark Warner, and Republican senator Josh Hawley — which would require large tech platforms to let their users easily move their data to other services.

Albeit Madhani dubs it a good first step, adding that the company will continue to engage with the lawmakers on shaping its contents.

“Although some laws already guarantee the right to portability, our experience suggests that companies and people would benefit from additional guidance about what it means to put those rules into practice,” Facebook also writes in its comments to the FTC .

Ahead of dipping its toe into portability via the photo transfer tool, Facebook released a white paper on portability last year, seeking to shape the debate and influence regulatory thinking around any tighter or more narrowly defined portability requirements.

In recent months Mark Zuckerberg has also put in facetime to lobby EU lawmakers on the topic, as they work on updating regulations around digital services.

The Facebook founder pushed the European Commission to narrow the types of data that should fall under portability rules. In the public discussion with commissioner Thierry Breton, in May, he raised the example of the Cambridge Analytica Facebook data misuse scandal, claiming the episode illustrated the risks of too much platform “openness” — and arguing that there are “direct trade-offs about openness and privacy”.

Zuckerberg went on to press for regulation that helps industry “balance these two important values around openness and privacy”. So it’s clear the company is hoping to shape the conversation about what portability should mean in practice.

Or, to put it another way, Facebook wants to be able to define which data can flow to rivals and which can’t.

“Our position is that portability obligations should not mandate the inclusion of observed and inferred data types,” Facebook writes in further comments to the FTC — lobbying to put broad limits on how much insight rivals would be able to gain into Facebook users who wish to take their data elsewhere.

Both its white paper and comments to the FTC plough this preferred furrow of making portability into a ‘hard problem’ for regulators, by digging up downsides and fleshing out conundrums — such as how to tackle social graph data.

On portability requests that wrap up data on what Facebook refers to as “non-requesting users”, its comments to the FTC work to sew doubt about the use of consent mechanisms to allow people to grant each other permission to have their data exported from a particular service — with the company questioning whether services “could offer meaningful choice and control to non-requesting users”.

“Would requiring consent inappropriately restrict portability? If not, how could consent be obtained? Should, for example, non-requesting users have the ability to choose whether their data is exported each time one of their friends wants to share it with an app? Could an approach offering this level of granularity or frequency of notice could lead to notice fatigue?” Facebook writes, skipping lightly over the irony given the levels of fatigue its own apps’ default notifications can generate for users.

Facebook also appears to be advocating for an independent body or regulator to focus on policy questions and liability issues tied to portability, writing in a blog post announcing its FTC submission: “In our comments, we encourage the FTC to examine portability in practice. We also ask it to recommend dedicated federal portability legislation and provide advice to industry on the policy and regulatory tensions we highlight, so that companies implementing data portability have the clear rules and certainty necessary to build privacy-protective products that enhance people’s choice and control online.”

In its FTC submission the company goes on to suggest that “an independent mechanism or body” could “collaboratively set privacy and security standards to ensure data portability partnerships or participation in a portability ecosystem that are transparent and consistent with the broader goals of data portability”.

Facebook then further floats the idea of an accreditation model under which recipients of user data “could demonstrate, through certification to an independent body, that they meet the data protection and processing standards found in a particular regulation, such as the [EU’s] GDPR or associated code of conduct”.

“Accredited entities could then be identified with a seal and would be eligible to receive data from transferring service providers. The independent body (potentially in consultation with relevant regulators) could work to assess compliance of certifying entities, revoking accreditation where appropriate,” it further suggests.

However its paper also notes the risk that requiring accreditation might present a barrier to entry for the small businesses and startups that might otherwise be best positioned to benefit from portability.

The technological decoupling between the U.S. and China has been a boon to Chinese firms from chipmakers for smartphones and electric vehicles through to software that are the backbones of millions of businesses’ daily operations.

Chinese companies might have established a firm grip on internet services for consumers, but many fundamental technologies undergirding hardware and enterprise software remain in the hands of Western companies. As tech businesses become increasingly entangled in broader geopolitical disputes, their users and clients are feeling the heat. Huawei’s plan to unshackle imported chips is just one oft-cited example of the vulnerability of Chinese firms dependent on foreign tech.

Another area that has made the tech community restless is source code hosting. Chinese developers rely heavily on GitHub, as evident from an apparent government ban of the site in 2013 that prompted former Google China head Kaifu Lee to speak out. Now the China is wary that political conflict may inflict GitHub.

The scenario is not without precedent. Last July, Microsoft-owned GitHub cut off certain services from users in U.S.-sanctioned countries including Iran, Syria and Crimea, causing outrage and panic in the global developer community.

Seven-year-old Gitee is at the center of China’s push to localize businesses’ source codes. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), one of China’s top tech policymakers, recently picked (in Chinese) Gitee to construct an “independent, open-source code hosting platform for China.”

The project will be carried out by a consortium led by Open Source China, the Shenzhen-based firm behind its namesake open-source community and Gitee. The hosting service appears to be a government-led effort with support from research universities and participation from the private sector — a group of 10 organizations including Huawei,  who is itself suffering from supply chain disruption amid the political storm.

“If China does not have its own open-source community to maintain and manage source codes, our domestic software industry will be very vulnerable to uncontrollable factors,” said Huawei executive Wang Chenglu at an event last August, shortly after GitHub acted to comply with U.S. sanctions laws.

Gitee claims to have hosted over 10 million open-source repositories and provided services to over 5 million developers so far. For comparison, GitHub reported having 100 million repositories and around 31 million developers worldwide last November.

The question is whether Gitee’s platform can convince Chinese developers to migrate from GitHub — or its Tencent-backed local rival Coding.net — now that industry titans are onboard to help. It’s also unclear whether GitHub will act to preempt export restrictions, as it hinted at the possibility when its executive told the Financial Times that it’s ‘keen’ to open a subsidiary in China.

Gitee is clearly confident that there is space for a ‘Chinese alternative’ to GitHub.

“The world should be one where a hundred flowers bloom. The foreign market has GitHub and other kinds of foundations. In China, there are various organizations dedicated to evangelizing open source software, as well as Gitee,” wrote (in Chinese) Open Source China founder who goes by the nickname ‘Hongshu’, or ‘Sweet Potato’.

“An open-source ecosystem can’t be built overnight. It’s a process of building a tower with sand. We have faith in the innovative power of Chinese developers. We also believe in our perseverance and strength to strive.”

More than 150 e-commerce and delivery companies globally use an Indian logistics startup’s service to work out the optimum way to ship items to their customers.

That startup, Noida-based FarEye, said today it has raised an additional $13 million to close its Series D financing round at $37.5 million.

FarEye first unveiled its Series D round in April this year when it raised from Microsoft’s venture fund M12, Eight Roads Ventures, Honeywell Ventures, and SAIF Partners.

The startup said today industry veterans Nandan Nilekani and Sanjeev Aggarwal’s Fundamentum Partnership led the extended round, with participation from KB Global Platform Fund.

FarEye helps companies orchestrate, track, and optimize their logistics operations. Say you order a pizza from Domino’s, the eatery uses FarEye’s service, which integrates into the system it is using, to quickly inform the customer how long they need to wait for the food to reach them.

Behind the scenes, FarEye is helping Domino’s evaluate a plethora of moving pieces. How many delivery people are in the vicinity? Can it bundle a few orders? What’s the maximum number of items one can carry? How experienced is the delivery person? What’s the best route to reach the customer? And, would the restaurant need the same number of delivery people the following day?, explained Kushal Nahata, co-founder and chief executive of FarEye.

Logistics firms have made minimal investment in digitisation. So, “the amount of visibility they have over their own delivery network is minimal. Forget what a customer should expect,” said Nahata, explaining the challenges the industry faces.

 

More to follow…

Exo, a developer of new diagnostic hardware for the medical industry, has raised $40 million in a new round of funding as investors continue to back new companies that are reducing the cost and complexity of medical devices.

Cost, portability, image quality and the inability to image dense body compositions have all limited the impact that diagnostic tools like ultrasounds can have on patient care around the world, according to a statement from the company.

Exo solves that problem by building on a patented piezoelectric micromachined ultrasound transducer, the company said.

Its device improves image quality, while an accompanying software toolkit boosts the diagnostic capabilities of the device.

Exo predicts that the worldwide point of care ultrasound market will reach $1.5 billion in 2024 and grow at nearly 10 percent a year.

“Emergency room phyisicians around the world are often tasked with solving some of the most urgent healthcare problems — COVID-19 diagnosis and complications, cardiac emergencies, internal bleeding — without being able to see clearly into a patient they only have minutes to diagnose and treat,” said Exo chief executive Sandeep Akkaraju, in a statement.

The new $40 million round to back the company’s technology follows a $35 million investment in 2019 and brings the company’s total capital raised to nearly $100 million, according to a statement. The funding was led by Fiscus Ventures, Reimagined Ventures (both affiliates of Magnetar Capital) and Action Potential Ventures, with additional participation from TDK Ventures, Solasta Ventures and all previous investors, including Intel Capital and Applied Ventures.

Exo’s team comes from consumer tech giants like Apple and Google and leading medical device companies like GE, Johnson & Johnson, Maxim, Medtronic, and Siemens.

“As both an emergency room phyisician and a venture capitalist, I know firsthand the transformative potential of the products that Exo is bringing to market,” said Dr. Ted Koutouzis of Fiscus and Reimagined Ventures, in a statement. “The Exo team is focused on a building a device that works seamlessly within the often chaotic and urgent environment of a hospital, and delivers the image quality, clean interface, and diagnostic tool sthat doctors have dreamed about having in the palm of our hands.”

The Exo hardware comes with a suite of software tools that have been designed to integrate with existing workflows. And the company has plans to use its initial foray into medical imaging as a way to land and expand into a broader suite of tools for the hospital or urgent care environment. The company envisions a multi-functional device that can perform a number of different diagnoses.

“Exo is creating a platform technology that can drive true adoption of point of care imaging in emergency rooms and critical care units, can facilitate advanced surgical robotics and endoscopic procedures, and could enable therapeutic modalities in non-invasive neuromodulation and drug-delivery,” said Juan Pablo Mas, of Action Potential Venture Capital (the corporate venture arm of GlaxoSmithKline focused on bioelectronic technologies).

 

A new report disputing the validity of Triller’s recently announced download figures led Triller to respond with the threat of a lawsuit. Triller, a newly litigious TikTok rival that could potentially benefit from a TikTok ban in the U.S., has been pushing to capitalize on the recent turn of events regarding its chief competitor. Earlier this month, Triller issued a press release claiming it saw surge of new downloads following the news of a possible TikTok ban, bringing Triller’s app to a total of 250 million global downloads across iOS and Android. The company also separately reported 65 million monthly active users. Estimates from third-party mobile data and analytics firms call these figures into question, however.

Initially, the app store intelligence firm Apptopia crunched the numbers around Triller’s downloads and found the claim of 250 million downloads to be inflated. According to its analysis, Apptopia had estimated Triller’s app has been downloaded 52 million times since launch across both iOS and Google Play worldwide, not 250 million times, as Triller had said.

TechCrunch reached out to Triller comment on Apptopia’s findings. Triller and Apptopia then ended up independently getting in touch with one another, through a shared investor. After some back-and-forth between the two, Apptopia decided to pull its report.

During this time, Triller also threatened to sue Apptopia for providing false information, in a comment provided to TechCrunch.

Triller CEO Mike Lu told TechCrunch, via an emailed statement, that Apptopia “clearly have allowed themselves to become a pawn of these giant conglomerates, especially those like TikTok who we are in active litigation with for stealing our patents.” (Lu was referring to the recent lawsuit Triller filed against TikTok over patent infringement.)

“We would have welcomed Apptopia with open arms had they just reached out to us and helped them understand our numbers, and now they have just made themselves part of our TikTok litigation,” Lu threatened. “We will be pursuing a claim against them for spreading harmful, false and knowingly damaging information,” he said.

This is a fairly aggressive response over a dispute about app store downloads. Industry insiders understand that none of the app store analytics firms have perfectly accurate figures. Meanwhile, regular consumers can get a sense of how popular an app is just by looking at the app store’s top charts, which are public.

For further context around the now heavily disputed download number, we asked mobile data and analytics firm App Annie and app store intelligence firm Sensor Tower for their own Triller data. App Annie declined to share downloads, but shared ranking data. Sensor Tower’s data, meanwhile, indicated Triller had reached 45.6 million total global installs across iOS and Android since its launch. That’s even lower than the 52 million figure Triller had vehemently disputed.

Sensor Tower suggested the discrepancies between third-party estimates and Triller’s own numbers could have to do with how Triller counted its installs. Some publishers count other forms of installs, like re-installs, updates, and direct installs of Android APKs (meaning, installs outside of Google Play). Third-party firms don’t see these figures. Third-party firms also don’t count things like re-installs because that’s effectively counting the same user twice. Sensor Tower, of course, doesn’t know how Triller was counting installs internally.

Though Apptopia is no longer standing behind its original report and estimate of 52 million installs, its report contained some other interesting insights that are still worth looking at, as they don’t rely on its forecasting technology.

For instance, Triller recently told CNBC it had 65 million monthly active users (MAUs). Counting an app’s MAUs is a way to measure its current usage and popularity. This tends to be much smaller figure than an app’s total downloads as not everyone who tries out an app sticks with it as a regular user.

Using Triller’s own download figure of 250 million and its own 65 million MAU figure, it’s claiming a lifetime retention rate of 26%. (The lifetime retention rate is determining the percentage of the app’s total downloads the current MAU number represents.) Triller’s rate is well above what the best apps in the industry are able to achieve.

Snapchat has a lifetime retention rate of 20%, for example. TikTok has an 11% lifetime retention rate. Triller’s is higher, based on its own figures.

Triller’s response to this part of the claim is that its app has changed a lot since its 2015 launch. It didn’t become a social media platform, for example, until 2018. It says if you look at the 90-120 day retention figures for TikTok or Snap, they would be above 30%, which is how its numbers should be compared.

Apptopia’s report also pointed to Triller’s App Store and Google Play chart rankings as another data point in questioning Triller’s download claims.

For those unfamiliar, the app store chart rankings are driven by downloads combined with other factors, like velocity of downloads, ratings, user retention and more.

To analyze Triller’s claim in the context of its chart rankings, Apptopia examined several other popular U.S. apps for comparison’s sake, including Twitter, Pinterest, Gmail and Twitch.

These apps were selected because they had a similar number of U.S. downloads to Triller for the time period Apptopia used to analyze Triller’s claim: July 23, 2015-August 2, 2020. The former is the date of Triller’s launch and the latter is when it issued a press release stating its 250 million download figure.

Simply put, if Triller’s 250 million figure was correct, then the app would seemingly appear much higher on the U.S. App Store and Google Play charts than it does.

On iOS, the average overall ranking for Gmail during this time period was No. 17, Twitter was No. 35, Pinterest was No. 33, and Twitch was No. 233. Triller, meanwhile, was No. 353. (Twitch is lower than the others because its a less-used app, because chart rankings aren’t entirely download-dependent, and because many Twitch users stream on the desktop, not mobile. But even it ranks higher than Triller.)

You can see that Triller consistently trends well below the others in the U.S. charts. This trend is even clearer when zoomed into the last 90 days. (See below).

Apptopia’s estimate here is also in line with App Annie’s data. Though App Annie couldn’t pull a lifetime average rank, as Apptopia did, it was able to pull Triller’s average U.S. iPhone App Store Overall rank for the past 90 days, which was No. 303.

A similar trend can be seen on Google Play, where Triller doesn’t even rank in the Overall category enough days during the given time frame to be statistically relevant. (Gmail didn’t either but that’s because the app is preinstalled on many Android phones, so users don’t need to download it.)

Triller’s response to this claim is that it, again, it was a different app before 2018 and it has hit No. 1 in many non-U.S. markets, including Korea where it’s currently No. 1. In the last 10 days, it has been No. 1 in Pakistan, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, Italy, France, and in the last 30 days India, US, South Africa, Nigeria and dozens of others.

“Our growth and numbers are very fresh and very new so taking anything long term or just the U.S. is neither relevant nor applicable to us,” said Triller CEO Mike Lu.

The timing of Triller’s claim of 250 million downloads follows reports that said the startup is raising hundreds of millions in new funding. Fox Business recently reported Triller has “commitments from investors of $200 million to $300 million.” Pegasus Tech Ventures, a Triller investor, emailed journalists in early August to pitch Triller coverage, saying the app was “now raising around $250m at a $1B valuation.”

Triller also recently made news for suing TikTok over patent infringement, verified in court filings TechCrunch pulled from PACER. 

None of this is coincidental. Triller has been angling to become the TikTok alternative that wins the U.S. market in the event TikTok can’t get a deal done in time allotted by Trump’s executive order requiring TikTok to sell its U.S. operations or be banned in the country.

Mr. Lu disputed claims made by third-party mobile data firms, when reached for comment. The company stands by its numbers.

“No app intelligence firm has been provided our data,” Lu said. “Any numbers they provide have no relevance or accuracy to our numbers. We are able to validate each and every one of our users. They should also disclose which of our competitors are paying them hundreds of thousands of dollars such as TikTok,” he added.

Lu also openly wondered if a Triller competitor was feeding false information. His full statement is below.

The biggest app intelligence firms have less than 1M total users/customers and less than a few hundred large companies actually providing them real data, any numbers they present are based solely on guessing based on a very small sample group and are far from accurate. The terms of service of all app intelligence firms state that any numbers they provide come from their own guesstimates. While certain companies pay upwards of a few hundred thousand dollars to these firms and give them access to their numbers, we have not provided such access. Any numbers provided by them are wholly inaccurate and they themselves state they have no actual way of validating without us providing them access. These is clearly just a transparent attack by one of our competitors who pays them handsomely to disseminate this false information. It’s sad to see firms that are supposed to be neutral and claim to be pro entrepreneurial and pro American allow themselves to become a pawn of these giant conglomerates, especially those like TikTok who we are in active litigation with for them stealing our patents.”

Following their conversation with Triller, Apptopia tells us it will soon have access to more accurate figures for Triller and will release those at a later time. The companies seem to be working things out.

Apptopia says:

We are working closely with Triller who has been very transparent and is opening up all of their analytics accounts to Apptopia. We are working on internal reports and working with Triller to create the most accurate and up to date data over the short term. Between their tremendous success in emerging mobile markets, which are typically hard to model, (i.e. India, Africa, etc.) and the fact that Triller’s growth is very recent, it is especially hard to compare to peers who have years of growth and history. We feel strongly about publishing the most accurate estimates, and the best way for us to do that is to work hand in hand with Triller and authenticate their real data. We plan to do this over the coming weeks and do our best to be the source of truth on the matter.

There was a mixed reaction among the TechCrunch staff when Sony’s WH-1000XM4 were announced the other week. There was excitement among those looking for new headphones and disappointment for those who’d recently purchased a different pair. The product’s predecessor are pretty universally regarded as some of the best over-ear headphones you can get for the price point, so the biggest question, really, was what the new ones bring to the table.

So let me just say this off the bat. If you own the WH-1000XM3, congrats. You purchased a very good pair of headphones — ones that rightfully helped unmoor Bose from its long-standing position as the default frequent traveler purchase. And no, you don’t need to rush out and upgrade if yours are still hanging in there.

The original headphones entered the world pretty fully formed, and after two years, this refresh is more of a refinement of an excellent product. But the additions do go a long ways toward maintaining Sony’s spot as the reigning champion of noise-canceling, over-ear Bluetooth headphones. The 1000XM4 are hard to beat.

The new headphones more or less look exactly the same as their predecessors. They’re not the most striking pair of over-ear headphones for your money (that award may well go to Sennheiser or Bang & Olufsen). I appreciate the relative simplicity versus the comparable Bose Quiet Comfort model. Honestly, when it comes to things like long-haul flights, the less flashy, the better.

The headphones are surprisingly light — something I noticed the first time I had the opportunity to try the M3 during a meeting in some board room with Sony execs a couple of years back. The new units have a bit more padding and are extremely comfortable. I say that as someone who has a tough time with over-ear headphones for whatever reason. As I write this, I’ve been wearing the headphones for the better part of four days.

There have been breaks in the marathon, of course. The nature of the form factor means they’re not really ideal for, say, going for a walk or falling asleep. The former is especially the case of late here in New York, where it has routinely hit temperatures in the 90s. For noise canceling all of the annoyances of home, however, they’re terrific. And when we all start flying in planes again, they’ll be excellent for that, too (thanks in no small part to the inclusion of a 3.5mm headphone jack for that seat-back entertainment).

The other element that has allowed for nearly uninterrupted usage is the ability to pair the system with two devices simultaneously. This has, frankly, been a big pain point for a number of headphones I’ve been using of late, requiring the user to get into the device settings and manually select the headphones. Using the iOS app, I paired the M4 to my phone and desktop top, and I’m able to switch seamlessly between sources. You’d be surprised by how liberating that feels. Just make sure your sound level is comparable on each device or you’ll be in for an unfortunate blast.

Like the M3, the sound quality is excellent, offering a full audio picture, regardless of genre. The sound is honestly pretty comparable to the previous model, and that’s perfectly fine. Nura’s truly excellent sound profile technology retains the top spot for me, but these new Sonys offer excellent audio for a pair of everyday headphones.

Once again, the real centerpiece, however, is Sony’s truly excellent noise canceling. The feature was the M3’s real secret weapon against Bose dominance in the category. The new models take things up a notch by detecting ambient sound some 700 times per second via the system-on-a-chip and actively adapting to counteract this. The system also features the addition of Noise Canceling Optimizer. On the face of it, the feature works similarly to noise optimization on other systems. Hold the button down and it sends an audio signal into your ear, meowing things like seal quality and atmospheric pressure (for planes, primarily) to offer up a more customized found profile. It adds up to some truly excellent noise canceling and an overall great audio experience.

There are a bunch of other nice features throughout that may or may not be helpful in your specific scenario. For instance, I found myself  immediately disabling Speak to Chat, which pauses playback when you speak. A nice feature in theory, but I live alone, so the only time it would trigger is if I coughed, laughed or unconsciously found myself singing along to the music. More useful for my own needs however is a feature that lets in ambient sound when you cover the right ear cup with your hand. Ambient sound fed into headphones through a mic still sounds a bit unnatural, but it does the trick.

I also found myself turning off location tracking, because, quite frankly, enough of my gadgets already know where I am. Also, the addition of noise that adapts based on familiar locations is nice, but not really worth the trouble for me — especially these days when I’m leaving my apartment significantly less than I’d care to admit. And besides, I just really don’t like seeing that location tracking icon in the corner of iOS 11.

Google Assistant and Alexa are built in, as well, but again, not features I tend to use much in a pair of headphones. I’d say I shut them off to save battery, too, but with a stated life of 30 hours, I’ve honestly been fine on that front. Charging via USB-C, meanwhile, will get you an impressive five hours of playback in around 10 minutes.

At $350, they’re priced the same as their predecessors — which is to say, they’re not cheap. But you’d be hard pressed to find a better pair of wireless over-ear headphones in their class.