Facebook’s Regina Dugan, who led the company’s secretive Building 8 hardware lab, is leaving the company after just 18 months in the role. Dugan detailed in a Facebook post that she would be leaving to focus on “building and leading a new endeavor.” She will be staying in her position until “early next year” to

SelfMade brings professional photo editing to your phone — yes, literally. The startup, which is announcing that it has raised $11 million in funding, was founded by CEO Brian Schechter and CTO Zach Lloyd. Schechter was previously co-founder at IAC-acquired dating startup HowAboutWe, and he points to HowAboutWe as the starting point for his interest in photo

While there’s a larger debate swirling around Twitter’s problems with abuse and harassment, the business side of the business is still chugging along. Today, the company is unveiling a new ad format called the Video Website Card, which it describes as “a creative format that combines the power of video with the ability to drive

Snapchat parent co. Snap is working with NBCUniversal on its first scripted series, with an initial effort led by the Duplass Brothers – Mark and Jay, to those in the know. The duo will create scripted programming for Snapchat through Donut, their own creative production venture. It’s maybe a weird choice for Snap and their

As LinkedIn ads in video and other features to look a little more like Facebook, Facebook continues to take on LinkedIn in the world of social recruitment services. In the latest development, Facebook is testing a feature to let users create resumes — which Facebook calls a “work histories” feature — and share them privately on

There’s a fundamental incongruency between being inflexibly pro ‘free speech’ and operating a global social network for civil public discussion. Twitter is struggling with it. Facebook is struggling with it, too. And it can’t be solved by a little more transparency or by hoping average citizens will do the right thing. The principle of free

I have a new habit. It quenches a thirst. It soothes a weakened, battered piece of my psyche. It repairs my wounds and unleashes me, more powerful, into my day. It fulfills the saddest, most regrettable pieces of myself. It may also be a habit that you want to pick up. You too may find

Having just returned from an overseas vacation where I “partied with” a number of locals met spontaneously while out at concerts, bars and other events, I can’t quite wrap my head around the need for a dedicated app for travelers wanting to meet locals to hang out with — doesn’t this just happen naturally? But

A number of Twitter users are joining in a 24 hour boycott of the platform today, organized around the hashtag #WomenBoycottTwitter, to draw attention to online harassment on social media, including how women’s voices are silenced by bullying and abuse. The boycott follows the temporary suspension of actress Rose McGowan’s Twitter account earlier this week

Facebook today formally announced its new feature that allows users to order food from local restaurants using its app. Instead of competing directly with other food ordering services, Facebook is partnering with several industry players on this effort, including EatStreet, Delivery.com, DoorDash, ChowNow, Olo, Zuppler and Slice. It’s also working with restaurant chains directly, like Jack

Official census forms are an invaluable source for demographic data throughout the country, but for trends that occur on the scale of weeks or months rather than years, they’re a bit lacking. But a new study shows that similar data used by Facebook to target ads could help fill in that blind spot. Sociologist Emilio

“I make money from Facebook for my fake content in order to pay Facebook to promote my fake stories,” said Professor Chaos in one of the most brutal and succinct criticisms of the social network to date. The latest episode of South Park pulled no punches in its take-down of the Facebook fake news scandal.

Twitter has abruptly broken its own policy of not commenting on individual accounts to explain why it temporarily suspended the account of actress Rose McGowan late yesterday, after she had been tweeting about allegations of sexual abuse and harassment which have been surfacing against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. Earlier today we asked Twitter why it had

John Attanasio, CEO of Toonstar, said his goal is to create “a new Cartoon Network.” Attanasio and his co-founder Luisa Huang were both executives at Warner Brothers, so they both worked under the same corporate umbrella as the Cartoon Network. Attanasio said the key to Toonstar’s approach is to create animated content that’s “mobile, snackable,

If the Russian-bought election interference ads hadn’t been bought by fraudulent accounts, “Most of them would be allowed to run” Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said this morning. “The responsibility of an open platform is to allow people to express themselves” she said during the first of an Axios interview series with Facebook execs. “The thing

Twitter has blundered into yet another moderation crisis after it temporarily suspended the account of actress Rose McGowan as she was using its platform to speak out against sexual harassment of women in the wake of sexual abuse allegations now coming out against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. It appears that Twitter’s anti-abuse algorithms might have

Today, Facebook’s VR ambitions looked inwards. The newly announced $199 Oculus Go headset and upcoming high-end “Santa Cruz” standalone will come with something past headsets haven’t: power buttons. By controlling the end-to-end experience, Facebook gets to tackle VR with a Cupertino-like approach to hardware that lets them avoid the headaches of Windows/Android and the OEMs

Oculus Rift has a whole new user interface that lets you customize your VR Home space and replace your traditional computer monitor with nearly unlimited VR screenspace. Oculus Core 2.0 is rolling out in beta in December. Oculus Dash Dash is reminiscent of a Minority Report-style interface, where windows dangle in the air and can

They say porn adopts new technologies first and PornHub [NSFW], a site that is as NSFW as it sounds, is proving that old adage true. The site – which receives 80 million visitors a day – found that its old, antiquated methods of tagging videos by hand was not sufficient. Rather than hire someone to

A YouTube channel that had been implicated in Russia disinformation operations to target the U.S. 2016 election has been taken down by Google. Earlier this week The Daily Beast claimed the channel, run by two black video bloggers calling themselves Williams and Kalvin Johnson, was part of Russian disinformation operations — saying this had been

For the second time in less than three weeks, Twitter has said it will look at its policies following controversy over tweets by a politician. On Tuesday, Twitter reversed a decision it made the day before to block a campaign video from Rep. Marsha Blackburn, a Republican representative from Tennessee, for breaking its ad policies.

It’s hard to build something secret in LA or SF without anyone finding out. So Snap Inc. is building a new R&D office in the remote location of Lehi, Utah — 30 miles south of Salt Lake City. The distance from Facebook and other tech companies could allow Snapchat to develop new app features or

Snapchat is introducing a new feature that will transform the experience of using the apps at a fundamental level. They’re called ‘Context Cards,’ and they’re new ways to find out more info about any Snap shared by users, providing access to things like restaurant reviews, reservations, Uber and Lyft ride hailing, contact information and more.

Twitter confirmed it’s planning to launch a bookmarking feature to save tweets for later reading. The addition will help users keep a separate list of items they want to refer back to, instead of using the heart (aka “favorite”) button, which can indicate more of a “like” – similar to the “thumbs up” button on

Google has uncovered evidence that Russian operatives exploited its platforms in an attempt to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election, according to the Washington Post. It says tens of thousands of dollars were spent on ads by Russian agents who were aiming to spread disinformation across Google’s products — including its video content platform YouTube but

I used to build bombs in my basement. My friend, a guy who called himself Damage Inc. on the BBSes, built pipe bombs and made a rocket launcher that shot small Estes rockets tipped with razors. We set them off in abandoned fields and fired rockets into trees. We lived in Columbus, Ohio, where there

“I am seeing a ton of coverage of our recent issues driven by stereotypes of our employees and attacks against fantasy, strawman tech cos” wrote Facebook Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos on Saturday in a reeling tweetstorm. He claims journalists misunderstand the complexity of attacking fake news, deride Facebook for thinking algorithms are neutral when

The pioneering chat app that taught us to text is pulling the plug. On December 15th, AOL Instant Messenger will shut down after running since 1997. AIM dominated online chat in North America at the turn of the century. But with SMS and social apps like Facebook and WhatsApp having conquered chat, AOL is giving

In an update on the progress of its investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, the Senate Intelligence Committee weighed in on recent revelations that have implicated major tech companies. The committee plans to hear open public testimony from Facebook, Twitter and Google on November 1 pertaining to their role in selling political

The UK government has once again bared its anti-technology teeth in public, leaning especially heavily on messaging platform WhatsApp for its use of end-to-end encryption security tech, and calling it out for enabling criminals to communicate in secret. Reuters reported yesterday that UK Home Secretary Amber Rudd had called out end-to-end encryption services “like WhatsApp”,