Victoria's Blog

TV Time , the consumer app that helps bingers keep track of where they are with favorite shows and socialize with fellow viewers, is today expanding its business with the launch of an analytics platform called  TVLytics.  The new service will allow creators and distributors to tap into real-time data from across more than 60,000 TV shows. It will also offer other anonymized data collected from viewers, including things like on which platforms viewers watched, their favorite characters, bingeing behavior, viewers’ locations, anticipation from fans for new episodes, social engagement and more. The data is pulled from the app’s community of around a million daily users  from more than 200 countries who check in with the app some 45 million times per month. To date, TV Time has tracked more than 10 billion TV episodes, and has seen 210 million reactions. TV Time began its life as a source for TV show GIFs known as WhipClip , but later pivoted to a social TV community afte...

Binance , the world’s largest crypto exchange based on volume, has made its first acquisition after it snapped up mobile wallet company Trust Wallet . The deal is undisclosed, but Binance confirmed to TechCrunch that the compensation is a mixture of cash, Binance stock and a portion of its BNB token. U.S.-based Trust Wallet will remain independent following the deal, but Binance, which is headquartered in Malta these days, will assist running the admin side of the business and in non-technical areas like marketing. “The Trust Wallet team shares the same values as us and the products are very complementary,” Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao told TechCrunch in an interview. “For users who like to withdraw funds into a wallet now we have a product they can use. “We plan to keep the app as independent as possible. There will be more features going into it but not so much from a Binance demand perspective. We are like the addition of a godfather for the baby…...

Facebook’s plan to take on Musical.ly may involve more than just its own take on a lip syncing feature.  It appears to also be working on something called “Talent Show,” which would allow users to compete by singing popular songs then submitting their audition for review. The feature isn’t live, but was rather uncovered in the Facebook app’s code by researcher Jane Manchun Wong. Wong has a history of uncovering yet-to-launch features or those still in testing through the use of reverse engineering tactics. She has previously spotted things like Instagram’s first time-well-spent feature , Lyft’s unlaunched bike or scooter program , Instagram’s upgraded two-factor authentication system , new ways of displaying IGTV videos , and more. In the case of “Talent Show,” Wong has discovered an interface that allow users to pick a song from a list of popular tunes, which is then followed by a way to start recording yourself singing the track in question. The app’s code also makes referen...

WORDS: BRETT FILLMORE PHOTOS: CLAIRE BENNETT Never attended? Here’s what to expect from Calgary’s pre-eminent music event. Getting There The venue is right in the city centre so it’s easy to get to, however, it’s also a big island park so there’s no parking anywhere around the festival. The closest area with parking spots is Eau Claire, where availability and rates suck. The CTrain doesn’t have any stops nearby. Your best bet is cycling, as the bike paths along the Bow are as handy as they are beautiful. Hot tip : the festival site has a free valet bicycle parking system that works well. Staff Essentially everyone you see working as festival staff is a volunteer. They are super nice and just want to have a good time.  Don’t be a dick. Hot tip : the security people at the gate are also volunteers, not actual trained security guards. They’re not running the tightest ship, so if you’re not an idiot you can bring in basically anything you want. Hotter tip : if you can’t afford t...

In October 2017 CEO Nikolay Storonsky’s Revolut raised $71 million at a valuation of $350 million . Today it’s certified unicorn, approaching a $2 billion valuation . His stake is said to be worth over $510 million. But not all success is a huge mystery. For Storonsky, working hard is his big secret. Revolut’s core product is a payment card that boasts super-low fees when spending abroad. But, the company has been slowly adding more and more additional financial services, from insurance to cryptocurrency trading and current accounts. Revolut is becoming a bank by the back door, and it’s a strategy that’s working. Storonsky is aiming for 100 million customers by 2023 and a succession of new features. Born in a small town on the outskirts of Moscow, Storonsky boxed as a child and then took up swimming as a teenager before studying for a physics masters degree at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, a top Russian university. He became a state champion swimmer while at uni...

Prepare for the invasion of the unskippables. If the Stories social media slideshow format is the future of mobile TV, it’s going to end up with commercials. Users won’t love them. And done wrong they could pester people away from spending so much time watching what friends do day-to-day. But there’s no way Facebook and its family of apps will keep letting us fast-forward past Stories ads just a split-second after they appear on our screens. We’re on the cusp of the shift to Stories. Facebook estimates that across social media apps, sharing to Stories will surpass sharing through feeds some time in 2019. One big reason is they don’t take a ton of thought to create. Hold up your phone, shoot a photo or short video, and you’ve instantly got immersive, eye-catching, full-screen content. And you never had to think. Facebook CPO Chris Cox at F8 2018 charts the rise of Stories that will see the format surpass feed sharing in 2019 Unlike text, which requires pre-meditated reflection t...

WORDS: BRETT FILLMORE PHOTOS: CLAIRE BENNETT Never attended? Here’s what to expect from Calgary’s pre-eminent music event. Getting There The venue is right in the city centre so it’s easy to get to, however, it’s also a big island park so there’s no parking anywhere around the festival. The closest area with parking spots is Eau Claire, where availability and rates suck. The CTrain doesn’t have any stops nearby. Your best bet is cycling, as the bike paths along the Bow are as handy as they are beautiful. Hot tip : the festival site has a free valet bicycle parking system that works well. Staff Essentially everyone you see working as festival staff is a volunteer. They are super nice and just want to have a good time.  Don’t be a dick. Hot tip : the security people at the gate are also volunteers, not actual trained security guards. They’re not running the tightest ship, so if you’re not an idiot you can bring in basically anything you want. Hotter tip : if you can’t afford t...

Google is cracking down on the apps published to the Play Store. An updated version of the company’s Developer Policy , released this week, indicates the company will now ban a wider variety of apps including cryptocurrency miners, those selling firearms and accessories, those that aim to trick children into downloading adult-themed apps, and apps built using automated tools or wizard services, or based on templates. The latter move is especially interesting, as Apple did something similar last December that resulted in developer backlash, controversy, and even a U.S. Congressman reaching out to Apple to clarify its intent and reconsider its policy. While it’s true that apps made with templates and wizards lead to spam apps and App Store clutter, several developers felt Apple, with its blanket ban, was wiping out small businesses from being able to participate in the App Store. The issue at hand was the fact that many smaller businesses, nonprofits and other organizations used an...

If William Faulkner had ever been given enough money to recreate Yoknapatawpha County in the world, would he have done so? The short answer is “no,” thus ending an essay long before it even had the chance to begin, ignoring my compelling concern about location and landscape stemming from Taylor Hagood’s academically thick definition of Faulkner’s definition of place… Faulkner establishes plots of space informed by an Arcadian ethic and haunted by configurations and reconfigurations of pagan values. And he uses these places to tease out the conflicts of speech and speechlessness by invoking literal historic earth to expose the mythic layers of experience that define the mythic-imperial place and control its constituents. …and what it might mean to physically sit with the maps of Yoknapatawpha County and the stories of Faulkner themselves. I think Hagood’s point regarding Faulkner is a good point but is one that misses the breadth of usefulness contained in having a sense of location...

IGTV didn’t get the benefit of being splayed out atop Instagram like Stories did. Instead, the long-form video hub is a bit more distant, located in a standalone app as well as behind a static orange button on the main app’s homescreen. That means users can go right on tapping and scrolling through Instagram without coming across IGTV’s longer videos that range up to an hour. IGTV has only been out a month and Instagram’s feed has been around for 8 years so it makes sense to try to push views from the app’s core feature to this new one. That’s why Instagram is experimenting with a way to show off a carousel of IGTV videos in its main app’s feed. Spotted by app researcher Jane Manchun Wong , we asked Instagram about it. A spokesperson confirmed the existence of the carousel, and provided this statement: “We’re always testing new and different ways to surface interesting content for people on Instagram.” The IGTV carousel appears below the Stories tray, pushing down the traditio...

Snapchat hopes to boost ad spend by connecting businesses with its top independent creators, but it won’t take a cut of deals it helps arrange. Today Snap Inc launches its “Snapchat Storytellers” pilot program that will introduce brands to five of the app’s most popular content makers including Mplatco, Cyrene Q, and Shonduras. They’ll star in ads for Stories and Discover or provide creative direction to brands with their expertise gleaned from gathering audiences of millions over the past few years in exchange for cash. Top creators can often earn tens of thousands of dollars or more for deals with brands. The program is late but a smart move for Snapchat, since it needs to educate businesses about how to make great Stories ads. These often require stylish vertical video that’s a big creative jump from the tiny photo, link, and text ads many are accustomed to, or even the pithy landscape videos they’ve learned to make for YouTube or Facebook. If creators can help brands make grea...

Prologue December 2014 “Without families you don’t get stories.” The woman who tells me this stands making coffee in her apartment in Amsterdam. Her name is Hesseline, Lien for short. She is over 80 and there is still a simple beauty about her: a clear complexion without noticeable makeup; a little silver watch but no other jewelry; and shiny, unpainted nails. She is brisk in manner but also somehow bohemian, dressed in a long dark gray cardigan with a flowing claret paisley scarf. Before today I have no memory of ever having met her. All the same, I know that this woman grew up with my father, who was born in the Netherlands immediately after the war. She was once part of my family, but this is no longer the case. A letter was sent and a connection was broken. Even now, nearly 30 years later, it still hurts Lien to speak of these things. Article continues after advertisement From her white open‐plan kitchen we move to the seating area, which is full of winter sunlight, filtered...