Topic: platform growth
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Saudi's Gathern Raises $72M, Eyes IPO at $266M Valuation
Gathern, Saudi Arabia's leading vacation rental platform, has raised $72 million in Series B funding, valuing the company at over $266 million and making it the Middle East's most valuable woman-led startup. The funding will support preparations for an IPO on the Tadawul stock exchange and drive ...
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Fortnite's Next Big Wave of Gaming Crossovers Revealed
Epic Games is launching a major program to create over 100 Fortnite character crossovers per year, starting with about 40 in 2025, to drive synergy between the game and its store. The Epic Games Store saw significant growth, with a 57% increase in third-party PC game spending to $400 million and ...
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Pintarnya Secures $16.7M to Boost Indonesian Jobs and Financial Access
Pintarnya, an Indonesian platform for job seekers and financial solutions, raised $16.7 million in Series A funding led by Square Peg with support from existing investors. The platform uses AI-powered job matching and offers secured loans through asset-backed lenders, targeting Indonesia's large ...
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GNOME Bans AI-Generated Extensions From Official Platform
The GNOME project has banned AI-generated extensions from its EGO platform to ensure code quality and security, prioritizing human-crafted work over often flawed automated output. The policy addresses a flood of submissions containing poor, insecure code from developers who lack the understanding...
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AI Agents Launch Their Own Social Network, and It's Already Strange
Moltbook is a new, rapidly growing social platform designed exclusively for AI agents, where they can autonomously create content and form communities without human intervention. The platform is a companion to the OpenClaw personal assistant and raises significant security concerns due to its dee...
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Master Pinterest Ads: Formats & When to Use Them
Pinterest is a high-intent platform where over 600 million monthly active users seek inspiration and plan purchases, making its diverse ad formats a powerful marketing tool. Key ad formats include interactive options like Carousel and Collection ads for storytelling and product showcases, as well...
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Mastodon Aims to Lure Creators From X With New Features
Mastodon is launching new features to attract creators and public figures as a decentralized alternative to traditional social media platforms like X, focusing on improving user experience and community building. The platform is simplifying its complex onboarding process by guiding users to small...
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UpScrolled's Fast Growth Fuels Hate Speech Moderation Crisis
UpScrolled, a rapidly growing social media platform, is failing to control widespread hate speech and racial slurs in usernames and content, despite having policies against it. The platform's moderation is ineffective, as reported racist accounts and extremist material, including antisemitic cont...
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ChatGPT Ads Spotted in Android Code, First User Reports
Technical analysis of the ChatGPT Android beta app reveals code for an advertising framework, indicating active development of ads, likely integrated into search and shopping queries. OpenAI is introducing ads to monetize its free service and offset costs, with paid subscribers expected to retain...
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Kalshi Hits $11B Valuation With $1B Funding Round
Kalshi raised $1 billion in funding, increasing its valuation to $11 billion, with backing from investors like Sequoia and CapitalG, reflecting rapid growth and investor confidence. The platform and its competitor Polymarket gained user traction by enabling bets on events like the U.S. presidenti...
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Horizon OS Update: Rebuilt Home, Windows 11 Link & More
The update enhances personalization with a customizable Home environment and mixed reality features, allowing users to pin apps and place interactive objects in their physical space. It introduces a rebuilt Horizon Central as a more vibrant social hub, supporting more users, faster navigation, an...
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Unlock More AI Videos: Sora's New Premium Plan
OpenAI has introduced a paid credit system for Sora, allowing users to purchase additional video generations beyond the free daily limits, addressing sustainability concerns. Pricing for extra credits starts at $4 for ten videos, with the cost varying by video specifications, and purchased credit...
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Control YouTube's AI Upscaling on Your Videos
YouTube is introducing AI-powered upscaling to enhance videos originally uploaded in lower resolutions (240p to 720p) to high-definition quality, with future plans for 4K support and an opt-out option for both creators and viewers. The platform is adding new features including an instant shopping...
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Spotify Expands into Book Sales and Upgrades Audiobooks
Spotify is expanding beyond digital media by introducing direct sales of physical books through its app in the U.S. and U.K., facilitated by a partnership with Bookshop.org to support independent bookstores. The platform is launching new features like **Page Match**, which uses a phone's camera t...
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Threads Surpasses X on Mobile, Yet Trails in Overall Users
Threads now surpasses X in global daily active mobile users, with approximately 141.5 million users, indicating sustained growth rather than a sudden spike. While Threads leads globally on mobile, X still has more mobile users in the U.S. and dominates significantly in web traffic, where Threads'...
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Digital Natives Reveal Top Social Platforms
A Variety summit panel revealed distinct generational differences in social media and entertainment consumption patterns between younger and older millennials, providing valuable insights for creators and marketers. Six multi-talented creators from television, podcasts, and digital content shared...
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Google's Liz Reid: AI is Enhancing, Not Replacing Search
Google's head of Search, Liz Reid, asserts that AI is enhancing search by adding new interaction methods without replacing core components like blue links and human connections, emphasizing continued opportunities for valuable content creators. AI integration is expanding search capabilities, all...
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Inside the Strange World of AI Agent Social Networks
Moltbook is a novel social network platform, akin to Reddit, designed exclusively for AI agents to post, comment, and form communities, with over 30,000 active bots interacting via APIs. The platform is operated by an AI, with the founder's own agent managing the site's social media, code, and mo...
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Bluesky Hits 40M Users, Rolls Out 'Dislikes' Feature
Bluesky has exceeded 40 million users and is testing a "dislikes" feature to improve personalization in feeds and enhance conversation management tools. The platform is focusing on user-driven moderation with tools like block lists, content filters, and social neighborhood mapping to prioritize r...
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YouTube AI Helps Podcasters Create Clips & Shorts for Promotion
YouTube is introducing AI tools to help podcasters create engaging clips and Shorts from their content, aiming to boost discoverability and simplify repurposing. These features include AI-assisted clip suggestions for video podcasts and automatic conversion to Shorts, with audio-only podcasters g...
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