SendBird snags $52M Series B to expand messaging API tool

SendBird, a San Francisco area startup, helps developers add messaging to their apps with a couple of lines of code. It’s an idea similar to Stripe for payments or Twilio for communications. Today, the company announced a $52 million Series B investment. The round was led by Iconiq Capital. Existing investors Shasta Ventures, August Capital, […]

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Instagram is now testing a web version of Direct messages

Insta-chat addicts, rejoice. You could soon be trading memes and emojis from your computer. Instagram is internally testing a web version of Instagram Direct messaging that lets people chat without the app. If, or more likely, when this rolls out publicly, users on a desktop or laptop PC or Mac, a non-Android or iPhone or […]

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Microsoft’s latest Teams features take aim at shift workers

Collaboration tools tend to be geared towards workers who are sitting at a desk for much of the day, but there are plenty of shift workers, also known as first line workers, who rarely use a computer, but still need to communicate with one another and management. Microsoft released several new features today aimed at […]

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Landbot gets $2.2M for its on-message ‘anti-AI’ chatbot

Who needs AI to have a good conversation? Spanish startup Landbot has bagged a $2.2 million seed round for a ‘dumb’ chatbot that doesn’t use AI at all but offers something closer to an old school ‘choose your adventure’ interaction by using a conversational choice interface to engage potential customers when they land on a website. […]

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WhatsApp now marks forwarded messages to curb the spread of deadly misinformation

WhatsApp just introduced a new feature designed to help its users identify the origin of information that they receive in the messaging app. For the first time, a forwarded WhatsApp message will include an indicator that marks it as forwarded. It’s a small shift for the messaging platform, but potentially one that could make a […]

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Some Samsung users say their phones randomly sent photos to contacts

Some Samsung users are complaining that their smartphones randomly sent photos and scheduled texts to contacts. According to posts on Reddit and Samsung’s official support boards first spotted by Gizmodo, the devices affected include the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy Note 8. Their owners say that Samsung Messages, the default texting app for Galaxy devices, pushed […]

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WhatsApp copies Telegram to add one-way ‘broadcast’ mode to group chats

“Good artists borrow great artists steal” is a phrase that Facebook seems acutely aware of. It’s common to speak of Instagram, the Facebook-owned photo-app-now-social-network, borrowing from Snapchat, but now Facebook’s WhatsApp chat app is increasingly drawing its innovation from others such as Telegram. This week, WhatsApp outed a new feature for its groups that is […]

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Android users can now message from the web

Messages, Google’s more recent focus for its scattered messaging efforts following its decision to “pause” work on Allo, is now available for web users. The company announced that it would begin rolling out Messages for web starting today, with the full rollout completing over the next week. The feature, along with others including GIF search, […]

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Google starts migrating all G Suite users from Hangouts to Meet

Google today announced that starting now, it is moving all of its G Suite users who follow its recommended schedule from its Hangouts video chat service to Hangouts Meet, the more enterprise-ready version of Hangouts. The move will likely take about a month or so. This means all newly created Calendar invites will now link […]

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