In the 1970s, CFOs sat with CEOs and devised ways for upset consumers to not be able to get compensation easily. They put up automated phone systems and arcane and inflexible policies and rejoiced at how little the company had to “give up” to complaining customers. And this system worked… until social media gave every average “Joe” the same power as society’s… Read MoreBots, Messenger and the future of customer service
In the 1970s, CFOs sat with CEOs and devised ways for upset consumers to not be able to get compensation easily. They put up automated phone systems and arcane and inflexible policies and rejoiced at how little the company had to “give up” to complaining customers. And this system worked… until social media gave every average “Joe” the same power as society’s… Read More
Last week Apple released the latest iteration of its “Shot on iPhone” campaign. The new ad was developed for Mother’s Day, and features a slideshow of pictures and videos of moms and their kids. Now, a week later, Apple launched the aptly-named website momsshotoniphone.com, which lets you create a custom version of the ad that has a photo of you and your own mom. The… 
Musical.ly, the app that makes it easy to create music videos, is in the process of raising about $100 million in funding, at around a $500 million post-money valuation, TechCrunch has learned. The details are still being finalized, but the plan is for GGV Capital and Qiming Venture Partners to co-lead the round, with participation from Greylock Partners and DCM.
I used to answer every message. Not any more. When Messenger buzzes, now I don’t know if it will be a friend or a bot. Every chime forces me to do a little Turing test in my head. Was I expecting to be pinged by a pal? Or is it 8:11pm again and TechCrunch’s bot is sending me another daily digest. 
Amazon’s game streaming service Twitch is getting more social. The new “Friends” feature teased in April has now launched into beta, allowing users to search for, add, and view a list of friends, see when they’re online, and easily chat with them. The company says it has sent out the first round of beta invitations, and is now allowing users to add friends by… 
It takes some serious engineering magic to build low-latency group mobile video chat and simultaneous content viewing. That’s why Sean Parker’s recently relaunched video chat room app Airtime acquired vLine, which offered video chat infrastructure to SaaS companies. Founded in 2010, vLine was backed with $1.5 million from Kleiner Perkins and Harrison Metal. vLine’s team will… 
Lo and behold! A new wave of technology is preparing to crash down upon the unsuspecting consumer. Chatbots are surging towards our conversations at breakneck speed! 
The team who brought you gifyoutube.com is back. Having been part of gifs.com for a while, their new tool still lets you convert many video formats into gifs but adds a host of functions to your gif-making needs like: blur, stickers, hue changes and more. We covered the first version of this a few years ago when they were using a special URL to intercept and convert youtube videos.… 
Periscope added its biggest missing feature today in a move that could make it more palatable to brands and social stars, and help it compete with Facebook Live. You can now permanently save replays of your broadcasts by including #Save in their title. You still can delete them later if you want. Previously, broadcasts disappeared after 24 hours.