Twitter has been expanding the customer service side of its product, with recent additions including a Customer Service settings page for businesses. Today it’s adding a couple more features — namely, an automated welcome message that shows up whenever a customer starts a Direct Message conversation with a business’ account, and “quick replies” that ask the… Read More
Digital advertising spend increased to $32.7 billion during the first six months of 2016, according to the latest Internet Advertising Revenue Report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (a trade group for digital publishers and advertisers). That’s up 19 percent from the same period last year, and it represents an all-time high. David Doty, the IAB’s executive vice president… Read More
AirPR is announcing that it has raised $5 million in Series B funding. The company started out as a marketplace that matched up startups with public relations professionals, but is focus has since shifted to building analytic tools that measure the impact of PR — in fact, it sold the marketplace side of the business last year. AirPR has now raised a total of $10 million. The Series B… Read More
ProPublica pointed to some potentially problematic Facebook ad capabilities today — specifically, the ability to include or exclude users from a given ad campaign based on their “ethnic affinity.” These capabilities have existed for a while (Facebook told ProPublica’s Julia Angwin and Terry Parris Jr. it began offering them within the past two years as part of its… Read More
Verizon is buying Vessel, the subscription video service founded by Jason Kilar (Hulu’s former CEO) and Richard Tom (its former CTO). Vessel enlisted YouTube stars and other video creators, offering early access to their videos for $2.99 a month. It raised more than $130 million from investors including Benchmark, Greylock, Bezos Expeditions and Institutional Venture Partners. Tom… Read More
New York City startup IrisVR is announcing that it has raised $8 million in Series A funding. The company has built virtual reality tools for the architecture and design industries. Iris Prospect allows customers to take their 3D plans and blueprints and turn them into VR experiences viewable on devices like Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, GearVR and Cardboard. Iris Scope, meanwhile, converts… Read More
The New York Times just announced that it has acquired The Wirecutter and its sister publication The Sweethome. The sites were founded by former Gizmodo editor Brian Lam, who The Times says will stay involved in an advisory role. Ben French of The Times’ Beta development team will serve as interim general manager, while Jacqui Cheng and Christopher Mascari will remain on-board as editor… Read More
