Month: October 2023

African mobile video network StarNews Mobile has secured $3 million in pre-Series A funding. StarNews offers African content creators a platform for monetizing their work through a subscription model. Currently, the service is available in six African countries, including Cameroon (where it started), Nigeria, Ghana, Congo, Benin and Ivory Coast. Founder and CEO Guy Kamgaing

Web Summit has named a new CEO: Katherine Maher — previously CEO and executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation (between 2019 and 2021). Maher is also chair of the board of the foundation behind the private messaging app, Signal; and holds various other board and fellowship positions — including on the Atlantic Council and the Truman

Agora, the company that develops “real-time engagement” APIs, is making its livestream shopping technology widely available to help more brands build live commerce experiences, including shoppable shows, live auctions, personal shopper livestreams, and more. The solution has been in beta since 2022. With Agora’s live shopping API, any company can embed interactive livestreams into their

As generative AI becomes embedded in the platforms we use every day, debates are swirling around who should get credit — and compensation — for AI-generated works. YouTube is in the process of hashing out licensing agreements with record labels to use musicians’ voices to create new music in their styles. Meanwhile, some art-generating AI

Reliance is nearing a deal to acquire Disney’s India business, according to a report, as Mukesh Ambani’s oil-to-telecom empire eyes broadening digital and television assets. Disney values its India business at about $10 billion, whereas Reliance views the assets at between $7 billion to $8 billion, the Monday Bloomberg News report said. A deal could

When Tucker Carlson was fired from Fox News in April, no one thought the host, known for his shows that frequently advance racist ideals and conspiracy theories, would be off the air for long. He wasn’t, using X (formerly Twitter) as his platform of choice for distributing his videos — until Fox sent him a

In a recent New Yorker essay, Kyle Chayka poses a dread-inducing question: When was the last time you had fun on the internet? For his example of pure online fun, he points to a retro Flash gaming site, but I have a more recent answer: The last time I had fun on the internet was

Netflix reported its third quarter earnings and things are going great right now for the streaming giant. The company added nearly 9 million subscribers globally, which means that revenue is up. And yet, it also means that Netflix is using this opportunity to raise the prices of some of its plans in the U.S., the

Only weeks after TikTok Shop’s entry into the U.S. market, YouTube today is making it easier for consumers to shop products presented by its own creator community. The company is introducing new creator-focused features that will allow them to add timestamps to videos for their tagged products and tag their affiliate products in bulk across

Nearly a year ago, developers Seth Forsgren and Hayk Martiros released a hobby project called Riffusion that could generate music using not audio but images of audio. It sounds counterintuitive (no pun intended), but it worked — my colleague Devin Coldewey got the rundown here. While their approach had its limitations, Riffusion netted Forsgren and

YouTube is rolling out a new set of features for better mobile-based playback, song search, and creator-friendly tools, including a feature that will highlight the “like and subscribe” buttons when a creator utters those words. The company is making it easier for users to increase playback speed. With the new update, users can just tap

Bandcamp has officially changed hands from its old new owner, Epic, to its new new owner, Songtradr, and lost half its employees in the process. Songtradr confirmed that “50% of employees received offers” to continue on under the new ownership — and naturally the other 50% didn’t. The venerable digital music marketplace was acquired by

YouTube is putting Google AI to use for advertisers, the company announced this morning with the introduction of a new advertising package called “Spotlight Moments.” The idea here is to leverage AI to automatically identify the most popular YouTube videos related to a specific cultural moment — like Halloween, a major awards show, such as

TikTok has landed Disney as its latest big-name publishing partner for its premium ad product, Pulse Premiere, announced earlier this year. The company will join other large publishers, including NBCU, Condé Nast, DotDash Meredith, BuzzFeed, and more, who offer brand-safe videos for marketers to place their ads around. The new deal will also see TikTok