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We take an in-depth look at TikTok usage in Russia, Facebook’s Oversight Board looks beyond Facebook and Sesame Workshop backs an edtech fund. This is your Daily Crunch for February 11, 2021.
The big story: TikTok becomes a political battleground in Russia
Russia has a small but fast-growing and vocal group of TikTok users. And while activity has been largely apolitical in the past, a battle appears to be brewing between the government and young activists who support the anti-corruption, anti-Putin politician Alexei Navalny.
“Before Navalny’s return, Russian TikTok was all about dancing, pranks and post-Soviet trash aesthetics,” said food blogger Egor Khodasevich. “All of a sudden, political videos have started to appear across all categories — humor, beauty, sport.”
The tech giants
Facebook Oversight Board says other social networks ‘welcome to join’ if project succeeds — The Facebook Oversight Board has only been operational for a short time, but the nascent project is already looking ahead.
Apple launches a new AR experience tied to ‘For All Mankind’ — Even for those of you who aren’t fans of the Apple TV+ show, the app is still noteworthy as another sign of Apple’s interest in AR.
Startups, funding and venture capital
Robinhood’s pain is Public’s gain as VCs rush to give it more money — The San Francisco-based fintech aims to give people the ability to invest in companies using any amount of money, with a focus on community activity over active trading.
Goldman Sachs and Sesame Workshop pour money into this edtech firm’s newest fund — Reach Capital III is a $165 million investment vehicle.
Reduct.Video raises $4M to simplify video editing — The startup’s technology is already used by customers including Intuit, Autodesk, Facebook, Dell, Spotify, Indeed, Superhuman and IDEO.
Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch
As more insurtech offerings loom, CEO Dan Preston discusses Metromile’s SPAC-led debut — Metromile began trading as a public company yesterday.
Commercializing deep tech startups: A practical guide for founders and investors — Deep tech startups go through a different evolution cycle than a typical B2B or B2C company.
(Extra Crunch is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)
Everything else
Racial disparity in Chicago cops’ use of force laid bare in new data — This rare apples-to-apples comparison supports the idea that improving diversity in law enforcement may also improve the quality of policing.
A webcam app left thousands of user accounts exposed online — The database in question belonged to Adorcam, an app for viewing and controlling several webcam models.
Top 100 subscription apps grew 34% to $13B in 2020, share of total spend remained the same — A growing part of app spend took the form of subscription payments last year, according to a new report from Sensor Tower.
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 3pm Pacific, you can subscribe here.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/11/daily-crunch-tiktok-becomes-a-political-battleground-in-russia/
The Facebook Oversight Board has only been operational for a short time, but the nascent project is already looking ahead.
In a conversation hosted by the Carnegie Endowment Thursday, Oversight Board co-chair and former Prime Minister of Denmark Helle Thorning-Schmidt painted a more expansive vision for the group that could go beyond making policy decisions for Facebook.
The board co-chair said that if the project proves to be a success, “other platforms and other tech companies are more than welcome to join and be part of the oversight that we will be able to provide.”
Thorning-Schmidt emphasized that a broader vision for this kind of moderation body would happen well in the future, but the board’s current mission was to move away from policy decisions getting made in a “closed box” at the company.
“Until now, content moderation was basically done by the last person at Facebook or Twitter as we have seen — either Mark Zuckerberg or the other platform directors,” Thorning-Schmidt said.
“For the first time in history, we actually have content moderation being done outside one of the big social media platforms. That in itself… I don’t hesitate to call it historic.”
Those comments may capture broader aspirations for Facebook’s Oversight Board, which refers to itself only as the “Oversight Board” without an explicit reference to Facebook on its website.
Throughout the panel, those involved with the Oversight Board defended the project. The group has come under criticism from skeptics wary that its origins with Facebook make real autonomy from the company impossible.
“A lot of people want to immediately dismiss the Oversight Board and look for something new,” Oversight Board Head of Communications Dex Hunter-Torricke said.
Hunter-Torricke, who spent four years working on the Facebook executive communications team and served as a speechwriter for both Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, also hinted at a more expansive vision for the board.
“This is a model that we’re testing here to see if this is the kind of institution that can have an impact in one sphere of Facebook and the content moderation challenges they face,” Hunter-Torricke said. He added that the board intends to “evolve and grow” using what it learns from handling Facebook moderation cases.
“… As we build up our expertise and our body of experience in dealing with Facebook I expect there will be more capabilities that come onto the board,” Hunter-Torricke said. “We are on a journey. It’s not something [where] we necessarily know the final destination yet but we are looking to test this model and refine it further.”
TechCrunch reached out to the Oversight Board to ask if the group sees its future as an external governing body for social networks beyond Facebook.
Facebook’ Oversight Board is currently facing the hugely consequential case of whether to reinstate former President Donald Trump, who was removed from Facebook after inciting the violent mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol in early January.
Five of the group’s 20 members will evaluate the Trump case, though the board will not disclose which members evaluate which cases. Once the five reach their decision, the broader board must pass the decision in a majority vote. The board’s verdict is expected within the next two months.
The Facebook Oversight Board’s most prominent Trump critic, legal scholar Pamela Karlan, left her role at the board to join the Biden administration last week and won’t be involved in the decision. Karlan testified at Trump’s first impeachment hearing, arguing that Trump’s actions constituted impeachable offenses.
The board is accepting comments on the Trump case through Friday in an effort to consider “diverse perspectives” in its decision process.
On Thursday, former Facebook Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos signed onto a public letter urging the Oversight Board to keep Facebook’s decision to remove Trump in place. “Without social media spreading Trump’s statements, it seems extremely unlikely these events would have occurred,” the comment’s authors wrote.
“There no doubt will be close calls under a policy that allows the deplatforming of political leaders in extreme circumstances. This was not one of them.”
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/11/facebook-oversight-board-other-social-networks-beyond-facebook/
Knife Capital, a South African venture capital firm, is raising a $50 million fund for startups looking to raise Series B financing. With Knife Fund III called the African Series B Expansion Fund, the firm seeks to directly invest in the aggressive expansion of South African breakout companies. It also plans to co-invest in companies across the rest of Africa.
The first fund, known as Knife Capital Fund I or HBD Venture Capital, was a closed private equity fund managed by Eben van Heerden and Keet van Zyl. The firm offered seed capital to startups. It also generated significant exits from its portfolio — VISA acquisition of fintech startup Fundamo, and orderTalk’s acquisition by UberEats come to mind.
In 2016, the VC firm launched its current 12J offering with Knife Capital Fund II. The fund (KNF Ventures) which invests primarily in Series A stage has eight startups in its portfolio. Last year the firm told TechCrunch of its intention to extend the Fund II and open to new investors. The plan was to give startups access to networks, money and expansion opportunities.
“We want to help South African and African companies internationalize,” said co-managing partner Andrea Bohmert at the time. A testament to its cause, one of its portfolio companies, DataProphet, raised $6 million Series A to expand into the U.S. and Europe.
Bohmert tells TechCrunch that the third fund aims to address the critical Series B funding gap that has characterised the venture capital asset class in South Africa, resulting in businesses not reaching full potential or exiting too early.
“Lately, we see an increase in companies able to raise $2 million to $5 million funding rounds. And while the companies are operating within their home country, in our case South Africa, such amounts take you far due to the local cost structure,” Bohmert says. “However, once these companies start gaining international traction and need to build an infrastructure outside of their home country, they need to raise significant amounts to afford so. There are currently hardly any South African VC funds, perhaps other than Naspers Foundry, that can write checks of $5 million or more and are willing to deploy them to finance the externalization of South African companies into larger markets.”
As a result, Bohmert argues that Africa has become an incubator for international VCs who can write these checks but cannot provide the local support most of these companies still need. Likewise, there are instances where international investors actively search for local co-investors in South Africa to invest in a round, and not finding one might blow the chances of them going further with the investment. This is the gap Knife Capital intends to fill by launching this fund, Bohmert says.
“We want to be the local lead investor of choice for South African technology companies looking to internationalise, co-investing with international investors who can lead the Series B discussion and further.”
This week, Knife Capital secured $10 million out of the 50 from Mineworkers Investment Company (MIC), a South Africa-based investment firm. The commitment positions MIC as an anchor investor to the fund alongside other local and international investors.
Nchaupe Khaole, the CIO at MIC, explained that the move to change the way local institutional investors approach venture capital investment has been in MIC’s pipeline for a while. And by partnering with Knife Capital, this idea can begin to materialize.
“Our commitment brings to the table the investment, along with many of our strengths as an experienced player. One of which is our ability to influence the companies within our portfolio to partner with us and effect real, tangible change to the South African economy. We are delighted to be a key catalyst in the success of this funding round,” he said.
As per other details, Knife Capital aims for a first close by May and a final close by the end of the year. Most of its participation will be co-investing, and the idea is to that in 10 to 12 companies.
TikTok is expanding its integrations with third-party services, with the launch of a test that allows creators in the food space to link directly to recipes found on the Whisk app. This is being made possible by way of a new “recipe” button overlaid on related TikTok food videos. The feature makes a TikTok cooking video more actionable as it encourages viewers to not just watch the content, but also take the next step to save the content for later use.
The new button could also potentially drive significant traffic to Whisk — especially if a particular recipe went viral — like the “TikTok Pasta” videos have, in recent days.
The addition is being made available in partnership with Whisk and is currently in “alpha testing,” TikTok confirmed to TechCrunch. TikTok says its also worked with Whisk to help identify food content creators who could serve as the first adopters of the new functionality.
We found the feature in action on one of TikTok’s top food creators profiles, The Korean Vegan, aka Joanne L. Molinaro.
Image Credits: TikTok screenshot
The button was also first spotted by social media consultant Matt Navarra on the @feelgoodfoodie TikTok account.
New? TikTok’s got a recipe card feature via an integration with @whiskteam pic.twitter.com/5C5fOyR8YZ
— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) February 10, 2021
The way the feature works, from the TikTok viewer’s side, is fairly simple.
A user who’s in the test group may come across a video on the app that includes the new button that reads: “See full recipe.” The button appears just above the creator name and video description on the bottom left of the screen — the same spot where the “Green Screen” button would otherwise appear. When tapped, you’re directed to a Whisk page where you can view the recipe photos, ingredients, and choose to save the recipe to your own collection, if you’re a Whisk user.
This all takes place while still inside the TikTok app.
On the creator’s side, adding the recipe button to a video is done during the posting workflow via a new “add link” option.
The ability to add a “save recipe” feature to a TikTok video wouldn’t necessarily have to be limited to food content creators, however. Whisk allows anyone to create a recipe community on its platform, which means people can grow their followings simply by curating their favorite recipes around some sort of category or theme — like Instant Pot meals or favorite smoothie ideas or comfort baking, for example.
Image Credits: Whisk
Whisk has also been working more recently to expand its recipe communities to serve as a home for curators and creators alike by allowing them to point to their websites, if they have one, or link out to their social media profiles, including Instagram, YouTube, and of course, TikTok.
The idea is that fans would view the content on social media and be inspired, then visit Whisk as the next step in terms of saving the recipe, creating a shopping list, or actually trying the recipe at home. This sort of “actionable” content could present a challenge to Pinterest, which has been expanding into short-form video through Story Pins. The feature allows Pinterest creators to share video content in the tappable “story” format — including recipe and cooking videos.
Pinterest hoped to use Story Pins as a way to differentiate its short-form videos from rivals, noting during its earnings last week that Story Pins are “not as focused on entertainment,” but rather “what the Pinner could do to enrich their own lives.”
TikTok’s selection of Whisk as a new partner makes sense as the recipe app has gained a rapid following since its late 2019 launch. Today, Whisk sees over 1.5 million interactions per month on its platform. It also just won a “Best of 2020″ Google Play award.
Whisk’s TikTok button, however, is not the first integration of its kind.
Last month, learning platform Quizlet announced a similar TikTok feature aimed at creators in the education space. In its case, the buttons overlaid on top of videos would link directly to Quizlet’s study sets, like its digital flashcards. At the time, it wasn’t clear that the new Quizlet feature was a part of a larger effort to connect TikTok videos more directly with related apps and services — an addition that could lead to an expansion in TikTok content and, perhaps, influencer sponsorships, further down the road.
There’s potential for TikTok to form other partnerships like this as well, given the app’s ability to drive trends across a number of content categories, effectively becoming the video alternative to Pinterest’s image bookmarking site.
At year-end, for example, TikTok published lists of 2020’s “top trends” in cooking, music, beauty, and style. On the style front, TikTok already ran a livestreamed video shopping pilot with Walmart that used influencers to drive purchases, demonstrating the potential in connecting video inspiration to consumer action in an even more timely fashion.
“For All Mankind: Time Capsule” is a new augmented reality app created by Apple to promote the upcoming second season of “For All Mankind,” which premieres on February 19 on Apple TV+.
Even for those of you who aren’t fans of the the show — which tells the story of an alternate history in which the Soviet Union beat the United States to the moon leading to an extended space race in the ’70s and beyond — the app is still noteworthy as another sign of Apple’s interest in AR, even beyond the reports that it’s working on AR glasses.
“Time Capsule” takes place during the decade-long gap between seasons one and two, tracing the relationship between Danny Stevens and his parents, the astronauts Gordo and Tracy Stevens. Users who download the free iOS app will be able to interact with a variety of objects — such as a mixtape and an Apple II computer — that illustrate the family relationship.
“Time Capsule” walks users through a linear experience with between 45 and 60 minutes of content, but it sounds like it’s also designed to support further exploration and additional visits. You’ll be able to check “D-mail” and play a text adventure game on the computer, and if you’ve got an Apple device with a LiDAR scanner (such as an iPhone 12 Pro, iPhone 12 Pro Max or iPad Pro) you can use a virtual slide projector to project Danny’s family photos onto your own walls.
“For All Mankind” producer Ben McGinnis said the app was created in parallel with the show’s second season, with the creative team working with Apple to figure out “which objects were best for getting the story across,” and offering feedback as the actual AR objects were developed.
Creator and executive producer Ron Moore added that he’s excited about the possibility of giving fans new ways to explore the show’s world and characters, especially since writers on the show often create far more material than what ends up on screen.
“Part of the promise of this technology is that a fan of any show, by definition, usually wants to know more about it, more about the characters,” Moore said.
In this case, “For All Mankind”‘s team had written things like love letters and newscasts that are only seen briefly on screen. They could then be used in the app, along with additional material by Stephanie Shannon, a writer on the show. The key, Moore said, is to “play fair by the audience that just wants to show up.”
“You can certainly watch ‘For All Mankind’ on-air without the AR stuff,” he added. “But if you do the AR stuff first, it enriches your experience.”
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/11/for-all-mankind-time-capsule/
