Author: Anthony Ha

Daily Crunch: Apple’s subscription fix The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here. 1. Apple’s iOS update makes it easier to get to your subscriptions Moving the Manage Subscriptions menu so that it’s just one click away from your App Store profile might seem like a minor change, but it was needed: As more mobile apps have adopted subscriptions as a means of generating revenue,…

Fiverr acquires ClearVoice to double down on content marketing Fiverr is acquiring ClearVoice, a company that helps customers like Intuit and Carfax find professionals to write promotional content. The two companies seem like a natural fit, since they both operate marketplaces for freelancers. Fiverr covers a much broader swath of freelance work, but CEO Micha Kaufman (pictured above) said the marketplace’s professional writing category grew 220 percent between the fourth quarters of 2017 and 2018, and he predicted that the need for content marketing will only increase. “The types of…

Facebook and Google still offer the best value for mobile advertisers (Singular report) Among mobile ad networks, Facebook and Google remain the best bet for advertisers, according to the latest ROI Index from marketing startup Singular. To pull this year’s index together, Singular says it sampled $1.5 billion in ad spending (from the $10 billion in spending that the company optimizes annually) and measured which networks are delivering the best return on investment. It also kept an eye out for ad fraud, apparently deleting a record 15 companies from the…

Daily Crunch: Amazon acquires Eero The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here: 1. Amazon is buying home mesh router startup, Eero It’s a pretty clear fit for Amazon as it pushes to make Alexa a feature in the connected home. The move also makes sense for five-year-old Eero — which, in spite of being early to the home mesh router game and pulling in…

Hulu greenlights ‘Howard the Duck’ and three other animated Marvel shows Four new animated Marvel series, plus a crossover special, are coming to Hulu. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Hulu has greenlit “MODOK,” “Hit-Monkey,” “Tigra & Dazzler Show” and “Howard the Duck.” The characters will then come together in a special titled “The Offenders.” These aren’t exactly A-list, or even B-list, Marvel characters. Howard the Duck (created by Steve Gerber) is probably the best-known — mostly for starring in a notorious ’80s flop — but I’ve also got a soft spot…

Bevy acquires community-focused networking company CMX Bevy announced today that it has acquired CMX, which it describes as “the world’s largest community for community professionals.” In other words, CMX is trying to connect and support the people whose job is to build communities around their companies. To do that, it organizes the CMX Summit and also offers membership to a private network called CMX Pro. Bevy, meanwhile, has built software for companies to manage community events. In fact, the company was created by the organizers of Startup Grind, who said…

Daily Crunch: Softbank bets big on autonomous delivery The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here: 1. SoftBank’s next bet: $940M into autonomous delivery startup Nuro Nuro has raised $940 million in financing from the SoftBank Vision Fund, a whopping amount that will be used to expand its delivery service, add new partners, hire employees and scale up its fleet of self-driving bots. The autonomous…

Marketing company Zeta Global hires Ben Hayes as its first chief privacy officer Zeta Global, the well-funded marketing technology company founded by CEO David A. Steinberg and former Apple CEO John Sculley, has hired its first chief privacy officer — Ben Hayes, who was previously chief privacy officer at Nielsen. Steinberg said the company already has a “global privacy team” and has been taking the issue “very seriously.” However, he said that by hiring Hayes, he’s hoping to make Zeta a “global thought leader.” “We want to send a message…

Original Content podcast: Netflix’s ‘Velvet Buzzsaw’ is lethally dull Jake Gyllenhaal, Rene Russo and writer-director Dan Gilroy — who worked together on the creepy crime thriller “Nightcrawler” — have reunited for a new Netflix Original film, “Velvet Buzzsaw.” While “Nightcrawler” wasn’t perfect, it was tense and unsettling, filled with eerily beautiful shots of nighttime L.A., plus a career-best performance from Gyllenhaal. It’s hard to believe that the same team was responsible for the muddled “Buzzsaw,” a film that tries to combine art-world satire and horror movies scares, ultimately failing on…

Apple turns Ariana Grande and other musicians into Memoji for its latest ads Just in time for the Grammy Awards, Apple has unveiled three new ads for Apple Music, featuring new singles from Ariana Grande, Khalid and Florida Georgia Line. In each video, the musicians have been transformed in Memoji (the human-style Animoji variant that was announced last year), which lip synch to their latest songs. The ads probably won’t change any minds when it comes to Memoji and Animoji — but if you like the format, they’re are fun. Apple…