-
Feminist dating app Bumble takes Wall Street by storm
Washington (AFP) - US dating app Bumble, where women make the first move, won Wall Street's heart as it went public Friday, with markets valuing the company at $13 billion. Bumble offered 50 million shares at a price of $43 each, allowing it to raise more than $2 billion. The New York Stock Exchange welcomed its new arrival, listed as "BMBL," with open arms: its shares shot up by 63.51 percent to $70.31 dollars in its first trading session, given the company a market capitalization of $13 billion. Dating apps have been hugely successful since the pandemic began and singles found themselves wi...
AFP
-
Clubhouse: the wildly popular audio chat app
San Francisco (AFP) - Clubhouse, the invitation-only audio chat app, exploded in popularity during the coronavirus pandemic when people could not get together in person -- but now the once niche platform has far higher goals. Launched less than a year ago, Clubhouse -- which recently encountered a censorship hiccup in China -- is looking to establish itself as the standard-bearer for digital audio. The concept is simple: once you're invited to join, you can start or listen to conversations in digital "rooms," ranging from a major talk by someone famous to a chat within a small group. No posts...
AFP
-
Trump protest outside Twitter HQ over ban flops
San Francisco (AFP) - A planned protest outside Twitter's San Francisco headquarters against the social media platform's ban of Donald Trump fizzled out Monday when just a handful of the US president's supporters turned up. Messages posted this weekend on popular far-right forum TheDonald.win had called on pro-Trump activists to assemble outside the tech giant's offices, which are largely deserted as staff work from home due to the pandemic. One user even urged participants to bring zip ties to "citizen arrest violent agitators," the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Police deployed dozens of ...
AFP
-
'Can't make a living': DoorDash couriers race to make ends meet
Marina del Rey (United States) (AFP) - Investors gorged on food delivery service DoorDash's US stock market debut Wednesday, but thousands of its couriers struggle to earn minimal wage and juggle working for multiple app services to get by, according to one Los Angeles worker. Driving in wealthy Marina del Rey, Devon Gutekunst scrolled through the DoorDash app and swiftly dismissed a notification offering a job that wouldn't begin to pay the bills. "$5.50 for 4.6 miles... which would be 30 minutes," he told AFP. "$11 an hour, that is an automatic decline. Not enough, right?" California's mini...
AFP
-
TikTok files last-minute petition against Trump order
San Francisco (AFP) - TikTok asked a Washington court Tuesday to stop an order from US President Donald Trump's administration from taking effect this week as the White House seeks to ban the Chinese-owned app in the United States.Chinese company ByteDance is facing a Thursday deadline to restructure ownership of the app in the United States to meet US security concerns.In its court petition, TikTok asked for more time, saying it has not received enough feedback on its proposed solution.The company said in a statement that it had asked the government for a 30-day extension because it was "faci...
AFP
-
#StopTheSteal, Trump supporters' viral offensive to discredit the election
New York (AFP) - All it took was a Facebook page and a hashtag: As election tallies trickled in Donald Trump supporters were busy going viral, accelerating the unsubstantiated claim that Democrats were "stealing" the election under the rallying cry #StopTheSteal.It lived just 48 hours but the page quickly racked up 350,000 members, people subscribing to the conspiracy theory the Republican president too has been touting to his 88 million Twitter followers.Trump's social media "influencers" -- his son Donald Trump Jr, or the spokesperson of the Republican party Elizabeth Harrington -- also play...
AFP
-
With new tools, Facebook aims to avoid election fiasco repeat
San Francisco (AFP) - Facebook is leveraging its vast resources to help protect the 2020 election against the kind of massive manipulation and disinformation efforts that the platform failed to act on in 2016.The moves come with Facebook taking intense criticism from the Cambridge Analytica scandal in which the British consultancy hijacked personal data from tens of millions of Americans to help Donald Trump's campaign, and for enabling foreign influence campaigns including from Russia four years ago.Here are some of the measures Facebook has taken to avoid a repeat of the 2016 fiasco and to d...
AFP
-
Zoom opens platform for paid events, following Facebook
New York (AFP) - The fast-growing online video app Zoom said Wednesday it would open its platform to paid events to help performers, teachers and others monetize their activity.The announcement of the new service called OnZoom comes after a similar initiative by Facebook to help people and groups unable to hold in-person events because of pandemic restrictions."The difficult period we are going through has taught us that it's possible to work remotely," said Zoom founder and chief executive Eric Yuan, who announced the new service at the company's Zoomtopia conference."The future of communicat...
AFP
-
Prince William, in global TED event, urges climate solution by 2030
San Francisco (AFP) - Prince William issued an urgent plea Saturday for a global effort to resolve the climate crisis by the end of this decade so that "we won't have to sacrifice everything we enjoy."The prince was speaking as part of a free streamed TED event aimed at unifying people to face the threats of climate change. Speakers range from Pope Francis to actor Chris Hemsworth and former US vice president Al Gore.The remarks from William, the duke of Cambridge, came in a prerecorded 18-minute video, part of which was released early on YouTube."The shared goals of our generation are clear -...
AFP
-
US TikTok users prepare for a possible exit from platform
New York (AFP) - American TikTok users reacted with a collective shrug Friday to the US move to ban new downloads of the video-sharing app -- but many are already planning an exit to other platforms should the clampdown lead to an outright ban."Oh my God! Ok! It's happening! Everybody stay calm!" TikToker Nick Foster told his 577,000 followers, dubbing a video of himself with audio of actor Steve Carell's character on the series "The Office" panicking during a fire alarm.Although young users on the platform, who make up its primary base, don't seem to have paid much attention to the government...
AFP