User blogs

Growth for Facebook is coming from the developing world, and so the social network today made another key move to cater better to consumers in those countries. After nearly three years in the planning, Facebook is taking the plunge today and officially launching Instagram Lite, a less data- and storage-intensive Android-only version of one of its popular photo and video app, which will take up just 2MB on a phone and is going live in 170 countries, with a focus on emerging markets, today.

Instagram Lite is launching with all the basic bells and whistles around editing, sharing and viewing photos and videos, as well as the ability to add stickers, create and view Stories, IGTV and the Explore discovery and recommendation algorithms. And given the launch across 170 countries, it’s coming with specific language support to be usable in those markets.

But to whittle down the experience from the 30MB that full-fat Instagram takes up on iOS and Android devices (and countless MB of mobile data usage), it’s launching without some things, too.

Namely, the developers have left out many graphics; they haven’t included advertising; and it’s missing some key features like dark mode, Shopping, and end-to-end encryption. (Notably, encryption was reportedly being worked on for the main app in 2019, but it has yet to launch). Nor are there iOS or feature phone versions of the app in the works.

Facebook said that some of that list — such as dark mode, and (of course) adverts — will be added in future updates.

Instagram Lite has been teased out in different forms by Facebook since 2018, and it’s hitting what has proven to be a receptive market for the social media giant. Tzach Hadar, Tel Aviv-based director of product management for all of Facebook’s Lite apps — which also include versions of Facebook and Messenger, also built in Tel Aviv — said this week that Facebook Lite now has more than 200 million monthly active users.

That’s just a fraction of the billions that use Facebook itself, but represents a key way of targeting those newer to Facebook or those who might not otherwise be using the app because of financial or bandwidth constraints.

But although Instagram is wildly popular and would have been an obvious candidate for the Lite treatment years ago, and Instagram Lite was one of the most requested items from users in developing markets, it has proven to be trickier beast.

That’s not just because the app focuses on images and videos, which by their nature use up more bandwidth and data; but because over the years Instagram has become increasingly laden with features: those aimed at enhancing the user experience; those aimed at competing better with other apps (hello, Stories); and those to extend monetization opportunities for Facebook.

“Instagram offered another kind of unique challenge for us to deliver under the same constraints the same experience,” said Nick Brown, a product manager based out of New York (the app was co-developed across Facebook’s Tel Aviv and NYC offices and — presumably, given the year we’ve had — across many Facebook employees’ homes). “The philosophy is really that we want to bring all of Instagram to these users.”

Image Credits: Facebook

Indeed, as with other Lite versions of apps like Facebook and Messenger, Instagram Lite is geared towards consumers in emerging economies, where smartphones are most likely to be Android-based and less likely to be top-of-the-range devices; consumers are more likely to be more price- and bandwidth-sensitive when it comes to using mobile data; and a substantial proportion are still only now getting to grips with being online.

Facebook notes estimates that show 65% of emerging market populations are online versus 90% in North America, which is one reason why the company focuses so squarely on serving those users: they represent growth at a time when growth has slowed down, or become significantly more competitive against newer entrants, in its more mature markets like the U.S. and Europe.

However, building for the demands of developing markets can often, by their nature, run counter to the concept of building in ever more features as you might otherwise see with highly competitive consumer apps.

The Instagram Lite app had some fits and starts over the years, with the first version, built on React Native, launching in a limited release back in 2018, taking up a mere 573kb of space on a device. It also came without a lot of features, but Instagram itself had less features, too. While it was never explained why, that version was quietly pulled last year, and then shortly after a newer version was launched again in December in a limited test. Debuted first in India, a key market for the company, Instagram Lite launched there with support for Bangla, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil and Telugu.

And it’s that last test that has turned into the official Instagram Lite app. Interestingly, it turns out that in the process, the whole app was rebuilt, moving it away from Facebook’s own React Native framework and building it instead on an internal framework called Bloks (not to be confused with Bloks), heavy lifting a lot of the basic workings from Messenger and Facebook’s Lite versions. I’ve asked for more detail about this, and I wonder if it’s related to LightSpeed, which was a development shift that saw a lighter and new version of Messenger get released last year.

“Bloks is a framework that is much more performant and has more features and capabilities, and this new Instagram light application is built upon it,” said Hadar. “So it’s like a new app altogether.” It’s not clear what exactly happened behind the scenes leading to the previous app getting pulled, but it seems that in any case the foundations now give the company more room for expanding the service (even while bumping up the app size from under 600kb to 2MB).

That fact might matter less to users, but does point to some notable trends at the company itself and how it’s approaching tech in the future, and viewing feature parity between full and Lite versions of its flagship apps.

Sources say Web Summit, the giant tech conference company which specialized in very large gatherings in cities like Lisbon, is poised to spin out its Hopin-like proprietary conference software as an independent startup. Although it’s put out a statement today that it will be licensing its software to the United Nations Development Programme, I’ve spoken to well-placed sources who say the platform will be spun out as a separate company and will raise venture funding, the context being that similar virtual conference platforms have already achieved million and billion-dollar valuations. A spokesperson denied the claim.

The software – which was first showcased at Collision in June 2020 and played host to 104,000 attendees at Web Summit in December 2020 – was initially designed to complement networking at physical events, but was flipped to work online after international travel was restricted for business and companies worldwide as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The United Nations Development Programme will be the first customer to run Web Summit’s conference software for its event – Istanbul Innovation Days, March 23-25.

Paddy Cosgrave, co-founder and CEO of Web Summit said: “We’ve agreed to run an event in March for the UNDP on our platform. We couldn’t imagine having a better first customer. It’s been a long journey, and we’ve taken it slow, perfecting the software over years. We’re in no rush for new customers, and we will take our time. In 2022, we hope to partner with other great events.” Speaking to TechCrunch, he denied the platform was to be spun-out.

However, our sources say investors are circling around the software platform in the light of the recent valuations of the likes of Zoom and Hopin, with the latter recently achieving a valuation of between $5 billion and $6 billion after its recent $400 million Series C.

The potential move come by Web Summit comes at an interesting time for the virtual events space.

Although Hopin’s valuation has soared, Zoom’s valuation has been called “impossible to justify”. And the huge growth of Microsoft Teams could hurt Zoom’s business as well.

That said, specialized virtual conference software is doing well, as we’ve seen with the recent $14m funding of Spatial and others.

Web Summit says will return to an in-person conference in November 2021, in Lisbon, Portugal.

Remix, the startup that developed mapping software used by cities for transportation planning and street design, was born out of a hackathon during a Code for America fellowship. Nearly seven years later, the San Francisco-based startup is being acquired by Via for $100 million in cash and equity.

Remix will become a subsidiary of Via, an arrangement that will let the startup maintain its independent brand. Remix’s 65 employees and two of its co-founders — CEO Tiffany Chu and CTO Dan Getelman — will stay on.

The acquisition adds yet another service to Via’s ever-expanding business as well as customer base of more than 350 local governments in 22 countries.

Remix’s strength is in planning, while Via brings expertise in software and operations, Chu said in a recent interview.

“By having those two strengths come together, we can be much stronger as an end-to-end solution — from the initial genesis of this idea around transportation planning and carrying that through to operations — in a way that we, individually, would not have been able to achieve otherwise,” Chu said.

Image Credits: Remix 

Via started as a on-demand shuttle operator in 2012. The company, which last year hit a $2.25 billion valuation after raising $400 million in a Series E round, has evolved from its initial consumer-facing focus.

Today, Via’s core business is its software and operations platform, which is used by cities and transportation authorities to plan, schedule and deploy their own on-demand and fixed route transit, paratransit and school buses. Via has 200 partners in 24 countries.

Via is backed by Exor, the Agnelli family holding company that owns stakes in PartnerRe, Ferrari and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles as well as Macquarie Capital, Mori Building, Shell 83North, Broadscale Group, Ervington Investments, Hearst Ventures, Planven Ventures, Pitango and RiverPark Ventures.

Accidental founders

Remix’s Silicon Valley-esque origin story was driven by some unlikely entrepreneurs.

Chu had been a user experience designer at Zipcar when she moved to San Francisco to complete a one-year fellowship with Code for America. In the middle of the fellowship, Chu along her eventual co-founders Getelman, Sam Hashemi and Danny Whalen were working on a hackathon project that to help citizens of San Francisco suggest better transit routes to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency.

The transportation planning tool was shared on Twitter and it went viral. Within two weeks, 30,000 maps had been created.

“It became this funny, unexpected armchair transportation planning tool that people explored online,” Chu recalled. But it wasn’t just the local citizenry who took notice. About 200 urban planners reached out, asking the team to build extra features that could be used by agencies for their own transportation planning projects.

“It was kind of a mind blowing moment for us when we realized the project that was supposed to be a grassroots kind of civic project actually had implications around solving real needs and problems in transportation,” Chu said.

Remix was founded shortly after and the company’s founders applied and were accepted into Y Combinator. The company went on to raise a total of $27 million in investments from Y Combinator, Sequoia and Energy Impact Partners.

Apple is beginning to assemble the iPhone 12 in India as it ramps up its production capacity in the world’s second largest smartphone market. Foxconn, a contract manufacturing partner of Apple, is assembling the iPhone 12 model — though currently no other iPhone 12 model — Pro and Pro Max, and Mini — in the country.

The move underscores how India is emerging as a big production hub for global smartphone makers. Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, and OnePlus have been assembling their smartphone models in India for more than half a decade and have increased their production capacities in recent years.

To attract global giants, New Delhi has been offering tax benefits to firms that locally produce in India and in recent quarters has significantly increased the perks.

“We are optimistic and looking forward to building a strong ecosystem across the value chain and integrating with the global value chains, thereby strengthening electronics manufacturing ecosystem in the country,” said India’s IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad last year.

Apple began locally assembling select iPhone models in India in 2017 — beginning with the iPhone SE — though for the initial years the company’s contract partners locally produced only older iPhone models in the country.

Analysts have estimated that Apple, which launched its online store in India last year and is working to set up its first physical retail store in the country this year, plans to move between seven to 10% of its iPhone production to India as it looks to cut reliance on China. TechCrunch understands the figure is “wild speculation.”

The iPhone maker suffered a setback in India late last year after a violent protest broke at a facility in Wistron, one of its key manufacturing partners of Apple, near Bangalore last year. But the Taiwanese firm appears to have resolved the issues. It said last month that it was rehiring workers and will soon be resuming production at its facility.

“Apple is dedicated to making the best products and services in the world to delight our customers. We are proud to be starting production of iPhone 12 in India for our local customers,” said an Apple spokesperson in India in a statement.

Apple assumes just 2% of the Indian smartphone market, but it has grown in recent quarters. Apple shipped more than 1.5 million iPhone units in India in the quarter that ended in December, up 100% year-on-year, making this its best quarter in the world’s largest smartphone market to date, according to research firms Counterpoint and CyberMedia Research.

Unlike several foreign firms that offer their products and services at low prices in India, Apple has focused entirely on a small fraction of the population that can afford to pay big bucks, said Jayanth Kolla, chief analyst at Convergence Catalyst. And while it took several years, Apple has carved out a slice of the market that is growing, he said.

The team behind Songclip thinks that social media could use more music.

Yes, music is a big part of the experience on a handful of apps like TikTok and Triller, but Songclip co-founder and COO John vanSuchtelen told me, “That is not the end of how music is going to be a feature, that is a beginning.”

He added, “In the next nine to 12 months … just like you never have a phone without a camera, you’re not going to have an app without music clips as a feature when you make videos.”

That’s what vanSuchtelen and his co-founder and CEO Andy Blacker are hoping to enable with Songclip, which announced today that it has raised $11 million in new funding.

The startup has created an API that, when integrated with other apps (current integrations include photo- and video-editing app PicsArt), allows users to search for and share music. VanSuchtelen said that like Giphy, Songclip plans to popularize a new media format — the short audio clip — and make it accessible across a wide range of services.

“If I were to say, I’m going to send you a four-minute song,’ it’s just not going to work that way, that’s not how we communicate anymore,” vanSuchtelen said. “How do you take the music and turn it into the bite that you want to use in a social context?”

To do this, Blacker said Songclip doesn’t just license music, it also does its own tagging and clipping, while offering tools for music labels to protect their intellectual property and providing data on how people are interacting with the music. And unlike Giphy, Songclip isn’t looking to build a consumer brand.

All of this involves a combination of human editors and technology. Blacker said the human element is key to understand the nuances of songs and their association, like the fact that Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” isn’t really about bridges or water, or that Katrina and the Waves’ “Walking on Sunshine” is a happy song even though it doesn’t have the word “happy” in it.

Songclip has now raised a total of $23 million. The new round was led by Gregg Smith of Evolution VC Partners. The Kraft Group, Michael Rubin, Raised in Space, Gaingels and ​Forefront Venture Partners​ also participated, as did industry executives Jason Flom and Steve Greenberg and the band AJR.