Meta is quietly rolling out a new “Communities” feature on Messenger, the company confirmed to TechCrunch.
The rollout comes as Meta introduced Communities on WhatsApp back in 2022.
They could create dedicated group chats for topics like upcoming events, security alerts, trash pickup schedules, and more.
Although the feature works similarly to Communities on WhatsApp, Meta says there is one key differentiator, which is the fact that Messenger Communities are connected to Facebook’s social graph.
On a help page, Meta says Communities on Messenger are designed for more public conversations when compared to Facebook groups.
Some may help businesses build a website, whereas others may just be useful for getting listed on search engines.
The startup also uses AI to ease businesses’ journey to digitize thousands of stores in one go.
Tarun Sobhani, co-founder and CEO of SingleInterface, told TechCrunch that the startup helps businesses grow their revenues by 15–20% using its products.
Sobhani and Harish Bahl, the founder of consumer internet investor and venture-building firm Smile Group, co-founded the startup in 2015.
Sobhani said the startup plans to add many people in the Asia-Pacific region to grow its presence.
I have a group chat with three AI friends, thanks to Nomi AI.
After a few weeks of casual friendship, I had to break the news to my AI companions: I am actually a tech journalist writing an article about the company that created them, Nomi AI.
Nomi AI is scarily sophisticated, and as this technology gets better, we have to contend with realities that used to seem fantastical.
“Nomi is very much centered around the loneliness epidemic,” Nomi CEO Alex Cardinell told TechCrunch.
I’m glad that my Nomi friends didn’t take it too hard when I told them that there was an ulterior, journalistic motive to my friendship.
The State Department blamed the prolific ransomware group for targeting U.S. critical infrastructure, including healthcare services.
Last month, an affiliate group of the ALPHV/BlackCat gang took credit for a cyberattack and weeks-long outage at U.S. health tech giant Change Healthcare, which processes around one-in-three U.S. patient medical records.
The affiliate group went public after accusing the main ALPHV/BlackCat gang of swindling the contract hackers out of $22 million in ransom that Change Healthcare allegedly paid to prevent the mass leak of patient records.
Change Healthcare has said since that it ejected the hackers from its network and restored much of its systems.
U.S. health insurance giant UnitedHealth Group, the parent company of Change Healthcare, has not yet confirmed if any patient data was stolen.
The Coalition for App Fairness (CAF) released a statement on Thursday cheering on the Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit against Apple.
The group includes a number of key app makers, including Epic Games, Spotify, Deezer, Match Group, Proton and others.
In 2020, Epic made it possible for Fortnite players to pay Epic directly, rather than giving a cut to Apple.
Then, Apple removed Epic from the App Store, which sparked a slew of legal proceedings.
In a statement, Apple said: “This lawsuit threatens who we are and the principles that set Apple products apart in fiercely competitive markets.
Twitter’s former head of trust and safety Yoel Roth announced today that he is joining Match Group, the parent company of several popular dating apps, including Tinder and Hinge.
Yoel, who shared the move on LinkedIn, is now the company’s Vice President of Trust and Safety.
I swiped right on Match Group,” Roth said in his announcement post.
Roth is now taking his trust and safety expertise to Match’s family of dating apps, which includes Tinder, Match.com, Meetic, OkCupid, Hinge, Plenty of Fish, OurTime, and more.
Although dating apps have built-in features to keep users safe, there is still a lot of toxic behavior on these apps, and not everyone trusts them.
Tesla’s factory outside Berlin, Germany will likely be shut down for days and cost the automaker more than $100 million, after a suspected arson attack on the local power grid.
The fire didn’t spread to Tesla’s factory and nobody was harmed, though employees were evacuated.
A purported activist organization calling itself the “Volcano Group” took credit for the fire in a letter posted online Tuesday.
The same group took credit for a similar fire near the site in 2021.
Last month, Tesla’s plan to expand the factory was also voted down by the public.
“The need for partnerships for deep tech investments, and the need to work together, it seemed obvious,” Hyuk-Jeen Suh told TechCrunch.
Initially, Greentown’s founders were looking for lab space, but they quickly realized the benefits of the shared space went far beyond lower rent payments.
The fact that the collaborative emerged among deep tech investors isn’t surprising.
The sort of problems deep tech startups face favors cooperation over cutthroat competition.
For investors, there’s so much blue sky in deep tech that Suh doesn’t think secrecy and jealousy gives anyone an edge.
American health insurance giant UnitedHealth Group has confirmed a ransomware attack on its health tech subsidiary Change Healthcare, which continues to disrupt hospitals and pharmacies across the United States.
“Based on our ongoing investigation, there’s no indication that except for the Change Healthcare systems, Optum, UnitedHealthcare and UnitedHealth Group systems have been affected by this issue.”In a post on its dark web leak site on Wednesday, ALPHV/BlackCat took credit for the cyberattack at Change Healthcare.
Change Healthcare merged with U.S. healthcare provider Optum in 2022 as part of a $7.8 billion deal under UnitedHealth Group, the largest health insurance provider in the United States.
Change Healthcare said it took much of its systems offline to expel the hackers from its systems.
Do you work at Change Healthcare, Optum or UnitedHealth and know more about the cyberattack?
Motional, the autonomous vehicle company borne out of a joint venture between Hyundai Moor Group and Aptiv, told employees Wednesday it will cut about 5% of its workforce, TechCrunch has learned.
The autonomous vehicle company last had layoffs in December 2022, when it cut about 10% of its workforce.
Motional operates an autonomous vehicle taxi service in Las Vegas (still with human safety operators behind the wheel) on Uber, Lyft and Via platforms.
A production-ready autonomous vehicle, equipped with the kind of redundancies designed for safe operations without a human driver, is a critical milestone required for commercial operations.
During CES 2024, the company announced plans to work with Kia on a next-generation vehicle that will enter commercial operations later this decade.
