Month: February 2021

Will the Clubhouse model work in China?

On Friday just past midnight, I stumbled across a Clubhouse room hosted by a well-known figure in the Chinese startup community, Feng Dahui. At half-past midnight, the room still had nearly 500 listeners, many of whom were engineers, product managers, and entrepreneurs from China. The discussion centered around whether Clubhouse,…

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5 creator economy VCs see startup opportunities in monetization, discovery and much more

Everyone knows YouTubers and other creators are popular with internet users of all ages. But today, these influencers also have real businesses powered by a range of software tools and service providers who help weave videos, pictures, clips, memes and other types of content into sustainable success. The pandemic added…

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This Week in Apps: Warnings over privacy changes, Parler CEO fired, Clubhouse goes mainstream

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry is as hot as ever, with a record 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020. Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes…

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Myanmar orders internet providers to block Twitter and Instagram in the country

Not long after it blocked Facebook, Myanmar has now ordered mobile networks and internet service providers to block Twitter and Instagram in the country as well. The southeast Asian country’s military seized power in a coup earlier this week, detaining its civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi along with other…

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Why the FDA is taking 22 days to look over J&J’s data

A billion years ago last summer, people were getting antsy about vaccines. They wanted things to move faster, maybe skip a few steps in clinical trials to speed things up. This was, at the time, generally considered a bad idea that would result in less accurate data and cause people…

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Final Fantasy XIV is coming to PlayStation 5

Final Fantasy XIV is coming to PlayStation 5, developer Square-Enix announced Friday. An open beta will start April 13th. A teaser trailer shows the game running in 4K resolution, and the company says it will have significantly improved frame rates and faster load times. If you’re registered in the PS4…

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