After breach, Twitter hires a new cybersecurity chief

Following a high-profile breach in July, Twitter has hired Rinki Sethi as its new chief information security officer.

Sethi most recently served as chief information security officer at cloud data management company Rubrik, and previously worked in cybersecurity roles at IBM, Palo Alto Networks and Intuit.

In the new role at Twitter overseeing the company’s information security practices and policies, Sethi will report to platform lead Nick Tornow, according to her tweet announcing the job move.

So excited to be a part of the team @twitter working alongside @nicktornow @michaelmontano @paraga and more! https://t.co/SGoBLr5957

— Rinki Sethi (@rinkisethi) September 28, 2020

Sethi also serves as an advisor to several startups, including LevelOps and Authomize, and cybersecurity organizations, including Women in Cybersecurity.

Twitter had left the role of chief information security officer vacant since the departure of its previous security chief, Mike Convertino, who left in December to join cyber resilience firm Arceo.

In July, the company was hit by a very public cyberattack on the company’s internal “admin” tools that played out on the social media platform in real time, as hackers hijacked high-profile Twitter accounts to spread a cryptocurrency scam. The hackers used voice phishing, a social engineering technique that involves tricking someone on the phone to hand over passwords or access to internal systems.

Earlier this month, the company said it bolstered its security following the attack, including rolling out security keys, which makes the kind of attack that targeted Twitter far more difficult.

A hacker used Twitter’s own ‘admin’ tool to spread cryptocurrency scam

 

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‘The Real Facebook Oversight Board’ launches to counter Facebook’s ‘Oversight Board’

Today a group of academics, researchers and civil rights leaders go live on with ‘The Real Facebook Oversight Board’ which is designed to criticize and discuss the role of the platform in the upcoming US election. The group includes Facebook’s ex-head of election security, leaders of the #StopHateForProfit campaign and Roger McNamee, early Facebook investor. Facebook launched its own ‘Oversight Board’ last November to deal with thorny issues of content moderation, but Facebook has admitted it will not be overseeing any of Facebook’s content or activity during the course of the US election, and will only adjudicate on issues after the event.

The press conference for the launch is streamed live today, below:

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg claimed last November that the Oversight Board was “an incredibly important undertaking” and would “prevent the concentration of too much decision-making within our teams” and promote “accountability and oversight”.

The move was seen as an acknowledgment of the difficulty of decision-making inside Facebook. Decisions on what controversial posts to remove fall on the shoulders of individual executives, hence why the Oversight Board will act like a ‘Supreme Court’ for content moderation.

However, the Oversight Board has admitted it will take up to three months to make a decision and will only make judgments about content that has been removed from the platform, not what stays up. 

Facebook has invested $130 million in this board and announced its first board members in May, including ex-prime minister of Denmark, Helle Thorning-Schmidt and the ex-editor-in-chief of the Guardian, Alan Rusbridger.

The activist-led ‘Real Facebook Oversight Board’ includes the ex-President of Estonia, Toomas Henrik Ilves, an outspoken critic of Facebook and Maria Ressa, the journalist currently facing imprisonment in the Philippines for cyberlibel.

Board members also include Shoshana Zuboff, author of Surveillance Capitalism, Derrick Johnson, president of the NAACP, Yael Eisenstat, former head of election integrity at Facebook, Rashad Robinson, president of Color of Change, and Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League.

This issue of how Facebook moderates its content and allows its users to be targetted by campaigns has become ever more pressing as the US election looms closer. It’s already been revealed by Channel 4 News in the UK that 3.5 million Black Americans were profiled and categorized on Facebook, and other social media, as needing to be deterred from voting by the Trump campaign.

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Europe eyeing limits on how big tech can use data and bundle apps — reports

European lawmakers are considering new rules for Internet giants that could include forcing them to share data with smaller rivals and/or put narrow limits on how they can use data in a bid to level the digital playing field.

Other ideas in the mix are a ban on dominant platforms favoring their own services or forcing users to sign up to a bundle of services, according to draft regulatory proposals leaked to the press.

The FT and Reuters both report seeing drafts of the forthcoming Digital Services Act (DSA) — which EU lawmakers are expected to introduce before the end of the year.

Their reports suggest there could be major restrictions on key digital infrastructure such as Apple’s iOS App Store and the Android Google Play store, as well as potentially limits on how ecommerce behemoth Amazon could use the data of merchants selling on its platform — something the Commission is already investigating.

A Commission spokesperson declined to confirm or deny anything in the two reports, saying it does not comment on leaks or comments by others.

“We remain committed to presenting the DSA still this year,” he added.

Per the Financial Times, the leaked draft states: “Gatekeepers shall not use data received from business users for advertising services for any other purpose other than advertising service.”

Its report suggests tech giants will be shocked by the scale of regulations coming down the pipe — noting 30 paragraphs of prohibitions or obligations — with the caveat that the proposal remains at an early stage, meaning big tech lobbyists still have everything to play for.

On bundling, lawmakers are eyeing rules that would mean dominant platforms must let users uninstall any pre-loaded apps — as well as looking at barring them from harming rivals by giving preferential treatment to their own services, according to the reports.

“Gatekeepers shall not pre-install exclusively their own applications nor require from any third party operating system developers or hardware manufacturers to pre-install exclusively gatekeepers’ own application,” per Reuters, quoting the draft it’s seen.

The Commission’s experience of antitrust complaints against Google seems likely to be a factor informing these elements — given a string of EU enforcements against the likes of Google Shopping and Android in recent years have generated headlines but failed to move the competitive needle nor satisfy complainants, even as fresh complaints about Google keep coming.

Google’s ‘no choice’ screen on Android isn’t working, says Ecosia — querying the EU’s approach to antitrust enforcement

Per Reuters the draft rules would also subject gatekeeper platforms to annual audits of their advertising metrics and reporting practices.

Platforms’ self-serving transparency remains a much complained about facet of how these giants currently operate — making efforts to hold them accountable over things like content take-down performance doomed to fuzzy failure.

The Commission’s public consultation on the DSA was launched in June — and closed on September 8.

In a lengthy response earlier this month, Google lobbied against ex ante rules for platform giants, urging regulators to instead modernise existing frameworks where any gaps are found rather than imposing tougher requirements on tech giants.

Should there be ex ante rules the adtech giant pushed lawmakers not to single out any particular business models — while also urging against an “overly simplistic” definition of ‘gatekeeper’ platforms.

Facebook has also been ploughing effort into lobbying commissioners ahead of the DSA proposal — seeking to frame the discussion in key risk areas for its business model, such as around privacy and data portability.

In May, CEO Mark Zuckerberg made time for a livestreamed debate run by a big tech-backed policy ‘think tank’ CERRE — appearing alongside Thierry Breton, the Commission VP for the internal market. The Facebook CEO warned about ‘Cambridge Analytica-style’ privacy risks if too much data portability is enforced, while the commissioner warned Facebook to pay its taxes or expect to be regulated.

More recently, Facebook’s head of global policy has sought to link European SMEs’ post-COVID-19 economic recovery prospects to Facebook’s continued exploitation of people’s data via its ad platform — tacitly warning EU lawmakers against closing down its privacy-hostile business model.

Such lobbying may be falling on deaf ears, though. Earlier this month Breton, told the FT the feeling among Brussels’ lawmakers is that platforms have got ‘too big to care’ — hence the conviction that new rules are needed to enforce higher standards.

Breton said then that lawmakers are considering a rating system to allow the public and stakeholders to assess companies’ behaviour in areas such as tax compliance and how quickly they take down illegal content.

He suggested a blacklist of activities could be applied to dominant platforms with a sliding scale of penalties for non-compliance — up to and including the separation of some operations, according to the FT’s report.

He also committed to not removing the current limited liability platforms have around content published on their platforms, saying: “The safe harbour of the liability exemption will stay. That’s something that’s accepted by everyone.”

In another signal of looming intent earlier this month, the Commission said it’s time to move beyond self-regulatory approaches to tackling problem content like disinformation — though it’s yet to flesh out its policy plan in that area. In June it also suggested it’s eyeing binding transparency requirements related to online hate speech, saying platforms’ own reporting is still too patchy.

How will EC plans to reboot rules for digital services impact startups?

Europe sets out plan to boost data reuse and regulate ‘high risk’ AIs

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Brands building for scale should look to hypercultural Latinx consumers

Ilse Calderon Contributor

Ilse Calderon is an investor at OVO Fund where she specializes in pre-seed investments across capital-efficient markets. Prior to OVO, Ilse spent a year at Silicon Valley Bank rotating across consumer and software teams.

Kathleen Garcia-Manjarres Contributor

Kathleen Garcia-Manjarres (Kat Garcia) is a Growth Architect at BCG Digital Ventures (BCGDV) where she invests, invents, builds and scales startups with the world's most influential companies.

As two female investors who themselves identify as hypercultural (HC) Latinx, we see much potential for brands and startups that invest in this demographic.

For the purpose of this article, we will focus on 13-to-25-year-old individuals who can trace their heritage to a Latin American country who have spent the majority of their lifetime in the U.S. Whether they were born in the U.S. doesn’t matter as much as how much time they have spent immersed in mainstream American culture. This is important to note because this demographic is largely defined by always having one foot in their parents’ native country and another in the United States.

In simplest terms: A Latinx person has origins from a country in Latin America, like Mexico or Brazil, while a Hispanic person has origins from a country where Spanish is the dominant language, such as Mexico or Spain. A Pew Research study found that one in four people who describe themselves as Hispanic or Latino have heard of the non-gendered “Latinx,” but only 3% of them use the term in everyday life.

So what makes the hypercultural Latinx so unique and worthy of pursuit? It’s not a secret that they have massive purchasing power behind them (a collective $1.9 trillion to be exact). However, they are also different from their mostly white counterparts in the way they vigorously engage with technology, their obsession with being online at all times and their unique shopping habits.

Hypercultural Latinx consumers are accustomed to being early adopters of new technology: 81% of them say they like to learn about the latest technology (overindexing their white counterparts by 36%). Latino households are filled with the latest gadgets and smart tech toys. Although we assume most Gen Zers and young millennials love technology, HC Latinx love tech at astronomical rates and shell out more dollars than their white, mostly monocultural counterparts.

This makes sense given that 60% of HC Latinx grew up in the internet age versus only 40% of their white counterparts. Across levels of HC Latinx income (or their parents’), there is always a budget for technology. In my own Mexican household (Ilse), I grew up prioritizing tech over other (sometimes more important) categories like books or vacations.

The online lives of the HC Latinx can be summed up by one statistic: 24% spend three hours or more on social media per day. compared to only 13% of their white counterparts. So much time is spent online by this Latinx youth that they are able to create a digital comunidad where they thrive socially and intellectually. This comunidad has so much influence in how the HC Latinx thinks about what they purchase and how loyal they are to the brands they buy from.

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Element acquires Gitter to get more developers on board with the open Matrix messaging protocol

Some interesting news for lovers of open, decentralized communications tech: Element, the company behind the eponymous Matrix-based Slack competitor (formerly known as Riot) has acquired developer-focused chat platform, Gitter, from dev services giant GitLab, which picked it up back in 2017.

The acquisition means Gitter’s community of some 1.7M users will be migrating to Matrix, the underlying decentralized comms protocol also made by Element — assuming they stick around for the ride with the new owner, of course. But Element is going out of its way to reassure Gitter users they’ll feel properly at home on Matrix.

In a blog post discussing the acquisition, the top-line message from Element CEO and Matrix co-founder, Matthew Hodgson, is that nothing will change in the short term. Furthermore, the pitch to the Gitter community is that, down the line, there will be plenty to gain from the migration/eventual assimilation as a “Gitter-customized version of Element” running on Matrix.

This is because the pledge is feature parity first (so, yes, that means Element will be gaining a bunch of Gitter features; such as threads and instant live room peeking, to name two). Then, once Gitter migrates to Element, it’ll get access to “all the goodies” the combination brings — including end-to-end encryption; reactions; VoIP and conferencing; widgets; all the alternative clients, bots, bridges and servers; the full open standard Matrix API; and the ability to fully participate in that decentralized network…

Another enticing promise is “constantly improving native iOS & Android clients” — which the Element team notes is a welcome alternative to Gitter’s natives ones, given they’re already being deprecated.

The migration will also mean Element will be replacing the current “creaky” matrix-appservice-gitter bridge.

“We’re going to build out native Matrix connectivity — running a dedicated Matrix homeserver on gitter.im with a new bridge direct into the heart of Gitter; letting all Gitter rooms be available to Matrix directly as (say) #angular_angular:gitter.im, and bridging all the historical conversations into Matrix via MSC2716 or similar,” it writes. 

“Gitter users will also be able to talk to other users elsewhere in the open Matrix network — e.g. DMing them, and (possibly) joining arbitrary Matrix rooms. Effectively, Gitter will have become a Matrix client,” Element adds.

So the tl;dr is that current Gitter users should have plenty of reasons to be cheerful about the acquisition. (Plus, as Hodgson points out, anyone less than happy with the direction of travel can of course fork the platform and go their own way, being as Element is an open source company. Though of course the hope is no one will feel the need to fork it.) 

The decision to migrate Gitter to Element has been made purely on resources/efficiency grounds, per Hodgson — to avoid the need for Element to maintain both apps over the longer term. He tells TechCrunch the migration will likely take around a year — “possibly more”.

Element also plans to “comprehensively” document the whole process so that it can serve as “the flagship example of how to make an existing chat system talk – and transition to — Matrix”, as it puts it, so it’s got its eye on encouraging more apps to make the move to Matrix.

While Element says GitLab approached them about taking on Gitter they confess to a long-time “crush” on the platform — saying they jumped at the chance when the other company came knocking. (Financial terms of the transaction are not being disclosed, however.)

TechCrunch can claim a teeny part in this open source love-in, being as we’re credited with accidentally introducing the teams — after they found themselves across the aisle exhibiting at Disrupt London, back in 2014 (so you truly never know who you’ll serendipitously meet in Startup Alley).

Riot wants to be like Slack, but with the flexibility of an underlying open source platform

Taking on Gitter is not just a passion project for Element, though. They saw they see the acquisition boosting growth of the Matrix ecosystem as a whole other developer community gets plugged in and — they hope — converted to evangelists for the open network.

“If developers are using it then when they need something to build on — a technology for their messaging apps — then they will naturally use Matrix. And if we want to grow this ecosystem and have as many apps as possible built on top of the protocol then we need to make it known to everyone so if they’re using it for their own comms it makes it easier for them,” Element COO, Amandine Le Pape, tells TechCrunch.

“We’re really doing this for Matrix, rather than for Element,” adds Hodgson. “We’re just trying to grow and make the Matrix network larger and healthier. So it’s not a matter of we can then sell it to governments as a communication platform more easily, it’s much more… that it becomes known to more developers so that when they build their next WhatsApp they don’t go and invent the wheel all over again. They would just obviously use Matrix because that’s what they’re already using to co-ordinate on working on React or Angular or whatever technology they already know.”

He says bringing Gitter into the Matrix fold is “obviously” a boon to developers who already use Element — such as the Mozilla community and Rust developers — as it will help reduce fragmentation.

“Half the world is on Gitter, half the world is on Element, and some poor lost souls are stuck in Discord and Slack. So by going and bringing the open guys together it will just be very concretely more useful in Element that if you want to reach out to whatever developer you will be able to find them in once place rather than having this horrible split brain between the two,” he adds.

Asked about its decision to sell Gitter, GitLab told us it has never been a core element of its business focus.

“While GitLab has contributed to Gitter’s growth in the past three years, Gitter has always been a standalone product, independent of GitLab, even after GitLab’s acquisition in 2017. GitLab and Element saw an opportunity for Gitter to grow further under Element,” it said.

“GitLab has a core business focus to be the market’s leading complete DevOps platform,” it added. “It is not a case of stepping away but seeing an opportunity for an important tool to grow further. In true open source fashion, Gitter is free to use, without limits, for everyone to create public or private communities and to contribute back to. It is currently the only developer-centric messaging platform which is an open source, free, uncapped messaging SaaS. The platform has not been monetized yet and has no commercial edition. Gitter is available on the web with clients available for Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android.”

Image credit: GitLab/Gitter

Element said it will be bringing on board Gitter’s dev team as part of the acquisition — albeit, it’s actually just one “superstar” developer running the whole thing, per Hodgson and Le Pape. So the team integration process at least shouldn’t be too challenging. 

(For the record, Element is the new name for New Vector (the company) and Riot (the messaging app) which was originally called Vector. So that’s Vector > Riot > Element; and New Vector > Element. “We decided to bring everything under one single brand — as now Element the company, Element the app and Element Matrix Services for the hosting platform,” explains La Pape on this recent rebranding.)

Momentum for Matrix

Matrix, meanwhile, has been continuing to gain momentum throughout the pandemic — thanks to the accelerated shift to remote working pushing demand for secure (and, well, sovereign) digital messaging up the public sector agenda.

“Recently we’ve had the German education system coming on board, the German military coming on board. And we have two other governments who, irritatingly, we can’t disclose yet — but suffice to say they are both very big and very exciting,” notes Hodgson. “They’re in paid trials. Once we successfully convert those it will be as big, if not bigger, than France in terms of banging on about it.” 

“In all of these instances they have gone and slightly tweaked the app. They have forked Element, they have branded it, they’ve built it into an existing tool that they have and it really ties in with the developer story — the reason that they feel happy building on an open standard is because of the wider developer ecosystem,” he adds.

“We’re also seeing a whole galaxy of little startups — nothing to do with us — who are building on Matrix successfully,” Hodgson also tells us, pointing to a German healthcare startup called Famedly as one example.

“It’s unrelated to us but it’s fun to see other companies basically betting the farm on the protocol. So, again, the happier developers are to use the protocol the more random startups like that will begin to bubble up,” he adds. “And if the next-gen of Slack killers happen to be on Matrix — whether it’s us, or anybody else, so much the better.”

Automattic pumps $4.6M into New Vector to help grow Matrix, an open, decentralized comms ecosystem

Another key factor that could accelerate momentum for Matrix is interoperability — a topic area regulators are increasingly eyeing as they consider how to ensure competition thrives in digital markets that can be prone to ‘winner takes all’ network effects.

Accusations of anti-competitive behavior are also being thrown around in the real-time messaging space specifically. Notably, in July, Slack filed an antitrust complaint against Microsoft arguing the latter is being anti-competitive by unfairly bundling its rival Teams product with its cloud-based productivity suite, Microsoft 365.

The Matrix network is no such walled garden, of course — and Element the app offers bridges to other messaging platforms, enabling its users to chat with others siloed on proprietary platforms like Slack. Slack, however, hasn’t offered the same courtesy to Element (only going so far as offering a bridge for, er, email users last year).

“It would be great for Slack, and [Microsoft] Teams and Discord to join in,” says Hodgson, arguing: “I think there’s probably more impetus for them to do so in terms of being able to interoperate with other systems, because we have so many bridges. If you were migrating from Skype for Business to Slack or something the Matrix could be the bridge between the two.”

“They have different users, right,” continues Le Pape, fleshing out the case for such platforms to open up to Matrix. “Usually Teams ends up being the one for the big companies who are actually using Office 365 while Slack might be more of the startup side of things so, in the end, if we could actually join everything together it would be good.” “If you all actually were able to talk to one another then that would solve it,” she adds in reference to Slack’s antitrust complaint against Microsoft.

Hodgson posits that if Microsoft were to expose Teams into Matrix it could help it defend against the complaint — being as it would be able to tell regulators it’s “participating in a global open standard network” that lets users pick whichever client they like. “I think that’s a very compelling solution,” he suggests, adding that Element is involved in discussions with “various parties” on the EU side “to make sure people understand there are viable open standards for doing this”. 

“Historically, before Matrix, basically there wasn’t anything that had the feature set that you would expect from Slack or Teams. Whereas now there is actually a viable middle language,” he adds.

Asked if it’s a wild idea that a polished consumer messaging app such as Telegram could ever move to Matrix, Hodgson describes it as an “interesting” thought — but admits there’s still a bit of a feature gap for Element, while also lauding the Telegram’s technical performance.

“I could see there being some friction in joining Matrix as it is today because it would be a slight backwards step for them… However the pressure is therefore on us to go and get to the point that Element is as snappy and as polished as Telegram — and [Element already] has good encryption,” he says. “At which point I think the tables could turn interestingly.

“But they’ve got hundreds of millions of users. I guess they feel they’re doing it right. They would rather, perhaps, become the next WhatsApp and be a 2BN user silo rather than play nice with other people because they’re already past critical mass. But perhaps if we do our job and make Matrix large enough and interesting enough that it is worth their while to link to it then why not?”

New Vector scores $8.5M to plug more users into its open, decentralized messaging Matrix

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Juno Bio launches a vaginal microbiome test kit — targeting the women’s health data gap

Entrepreneur First-backed Juno Bio has launched a home test kit for women wanting to get a better understanding of their vaginal microbiome while also contributing data to further research into women’s health.

The vaginal microbiome refers to the community of microbes and bacteria that naturally live in the vagina. Variances in the vaginal microbiome are thought to have implications for women’s health conditions — such as recurrent bacterial-vaginosis or a higher risk of contracting an STI, and even preterm birth and infertility. But a historical lack of research into women’s health issues means there’s still a long way to go to fully understand what’s going on. (Or indeed how to intervene to correct an unhealthy imbalance.)

That’s where Juno Bio wants to come in.

Last year the 2018-founded UK startup ran a study in the US that gathered samples from more than 1,000 women to build up a repository of data on the vaginal microbiome. That initial data-set underpins the commercial Vaginal Microbiome Test kit it’s launching today — at a cost of $149 (which includes free shipping).

Women who pay to be screened will receive a test kit in the post. They then carry out a sample gathering procedure at home, passing a Q-tip like swab across the walls of their vagina for around 20 seconds and sealing the sample in the tube provided (with stabilizing agents) to return it by post to Juno Bio for analysis.

Once the sample has been processed the user will be invited to log in online and view her results, with the option to book a one-on-one call with a Juno Bio “vaginal coach” to discuss the data.

It’s worth emphasizing that the startup is being careful to caveat what kind of service it’s offering.

A disclaimer on its website states the tests are “currently exclusively intended to be used for wellness purposes” — and it further adds: “The tests we offer are not intended to diagnose or treat disease, or to substitute for a physician’s consultation.”

Juno Bio confirms the test is purely a commercial offer for now — although it says it’s working on “a regulated version” so it will be able to inform clinical decision making in this area in the future, starting with the US which is its initial market focus (though test kits are also available in the UK).

“For sure we’re not replacing a doctor here,” says CEO and co-founder Hana Janebdar, in a call with TechCrunch. “There’s really two buckets of women, if you like, that tend to join the Juno Study or pre-order a test. And the first woman is someone who wants to be very proactive about her general wellness and wants to know more about her body — and this is one of the best ways that you can learn about your microbes and what that means for your vaginal wellness and your pH etc.

“The other women are women who may have had recurrent bacterial vaginosis or recurrent infections and want to know more about what it is that’s causing it potentially — and so she wants a comprehensive picture of her vaginal microbiome. Because if you go and try and figure out, right now, what is causing your bacterial vaginosis using existing methods of diagnosis they’re not always the most helpful. So while that should always be the first port of call, and women should always go to their doctor when they think they have an issue, this is an incredibly important resource when it comes to wellness for a lot of women.”

“There are 10% of women in America, for instance, who have recurrent bacterial vaginosis — which is just one condition of the vaginal microbiome. And it’s one of the highest recurrent rates in medicine,” she adds. “And partly because the diagnostics are terrible in this space.”

Another of the startup’s investors is life sciences giant, Illumina, which is providing the DNA sequencing technology it’s using to analysis the samples, per Janebdar.

“This is the first comprehensive vaginal microbiome test kit that’s available that’s next generation sequencing based,” she says of the test kit. “Obviously vaginal testing has existed for a while but no one has really used next generation sequencing — which is the technology that enables a really comprehensive picture of what all the microbes that are in the vagina are. And that’s what’s needed to A) unravel the vaginal microbiome and its impact on women’s lives and fertility and health, and then B) to give women actually the full picture of what those microbes are.”

“The conditions that have been associated with the vaginal microbiome — like BV, or recurrent yeast infections or even the downstream conditions like pelvic inflammatory disease — they’ve historically been poorly characterized. So the diagnosis that have existed to date have been [poor at determining] when and what women have these conditions and therefore what the best treatments should be,” she adds.

Janebdar says the prevailing scientific understanding has been that a Lactobacillus dominant vaginal microbiome is healthy — but more recent studies suggest a more nuanced understanding is needed.

“What’s become clear in the literature is that maybe that’s not always be the case. And also the type of Lactobacilli is important. And also there’s really important differences between the vaginal microbiomes and what healthy might look like for caucasian women vs African American women, for instance,” she notes.

Her background includes a degree in biology and a masters in biochemical engineering — including specific work on microbiome science. It was via her experience of the research field that she says she realized there was a huge gap in women’s health research.

Juno Bio CEO and co-founder, Hana Janebdar (Photo credit: Juno Bio)

“What really shocked me what that while there was this explosion of research and work and commercialization of the gut microbiome and the soil microbiome and every microbiome under the earth that you could think of the vaginal microbiome had been relatively ignored,” she says, going back to 2017-18 and her inspiration for the startup.

“It really shocked me because of all the microbiomes the vaginal microbiome was the most readily accessible, the most readily associated with the conditions that could improve women’s lives and there were so many women that have these conditions — it was really a sense of hang on, what is going on? And why is this just so incredibly ignored?” she adds. “This needs to be fixed.

“As an Afghan woman — women’s rights and the fact that women are ignored, and medical health research has been sidelined when it comes to women — it’s a very core part of my actual experience as well.

Juno Bio’s ultimate goal is to gather enough data and understanding to be able to offer “microbial interventions” that can be used to correct problematic imbalances, per Janebdar.

“One of the saddest things… is the fact that microbial interventions could work but having it in this wishy-washy, probiotic, kombucha land has meant that people haven’t fully realized it’s real potential — and it’s really exciting that in the gut microbiome space, which is analogous to us, first the first time this year you’re seeing sort of phase three approved microbial interventions for the gut. So I see the vaginal space as analogous to that. And this is the kind of stuff that the Juno data-sets will unlock.”

Those shelling out to donate their vaginal microbiome data to Juno Bio’s repository are promised it will be “anonymized” — though clearly links will be retained to some individual data points, such as age and ethnicity.

The startup’s privacy policy can be found here — where it writes: “The information we use in Research is often summarised, aggregated, or combined across a group of subjects to minimize the chance of identification.”

“In the event we require use of individual-level Personally Identifiable Information in Research or for other purposes, we will reach out to you and obtain specific consents applicable to such other use,” it adds.

Juno Bio is being advised by Dr Gregory Buck, Ph.D., who was the principal investigator on the Vaginal Human Microbiome Project (VaHMP) and the Multi Omic Microbiome Study Pregnancy Initiative (MOMS PI) — two studies that were part of the US National Institutes of Health Human Microbiome Project.

Commenting in a statement about the launch of the test kit, Buck said: “While previous studies have worked to characterize the vaginal microbiome, these studies have often been limited in population size, utilize limited gene sequences and lack metadata. As a result, present studies now lack data and a comprehensive strain bank of vaginally associated microbes. Having dedicated much of my career to researching microbiomes of the female reproductive tract, I am confident that the Vaginal Microbiome Test will create one of the richest research repositories of data for future research into vaginal health and related issues. Not only that, but it will help change the stigma around vaginal wellness for the better.”

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Facebook introduces cross-app communication between Messenger and Instagram, plus other features

Facebook announced today it will begin rolling out new functionality that will allow Instagram and Messenger users to communicate across apps, in addition to bringing a host of Messenger-inspired features to the Instagram inbox. On Instagram, users will be presented with an option to update to a new messaging experience that offers the ability to change your chat color, react with any emoji, watch videos together, set messages to disappear and more. As a part of this update, they’ll also have the option to chat with friends who use Facebook, the app will inform them.

Image Credits: Facebook

The broad set of more “fun” additions to the Instagram inbox will serve as a way to entice users to agree to the upgrade. This decision, in turn, locks users further inside the Facebook universe. With cross-platform messaging interoperability, users may see fewer reasons to try a different chat app as one messaging app can reach friends and family across two of the world’s largest social networks.

Facebook says the new interoperability will also work even if the Instagram users don’t have a Facebook account, and vice versa.

In time, Facebook plans to fold WhatsApp into the experience, too, in a further consolidation of its market power.

Zuckerberg wants messages to auto-expire to make Facebook a ‘living room’

Though many users may choose to update for the fun enhancements, Facebook notes they can then opt out of being reachable across platforms using new privacy controls, after the fact.

Through an expanded set of privacy tools, users can specify who can reach their main Chats list, who is sent to the Message Request folder and who can’t reach them at all. If an Instagram user doesn’t want to hear from anyone on Facebook, they can turn this feature off.

Image Credits: Facebook

These controls can also be managed in the new Accounts Center, which Facebook launched yesterday. The tool allows users to manage a growing set of cross-app features, like Single Sign On and Facebook Pay.

As before, users on both Instagram and Messenger apps will be able to block and report suspicious and unwanted messages and calls on an as-needed basis. But blocking and reporting will be expanded to allow users to report full conversations in addition to single messages on Instagram. The “Safety Notices” feature in Messenger, which helps users spot and respond to suspicious activity, will also come to Instagram — initially to minors’ accounts.

Image Credits: Facebook

Even if you agree to being reachable across platforms, Facebook clarifies that it’s not actually merging your inboxes.

In other words, you won’t see all your Instagram chats in Messenger or vice versa. Instagram users’ messages and calls from friends and family will remain in the Instagram app, but these may now include messages initiated by a Facebook user, if permitted.

If these changes seem a bit confusing, that could be by design. Facebook and Instagram users have to navigate a labyrinth of privacy and security settings that grow more complicated every year as the functionality offered by Facebook’s networks also expands. Though Facebook offers a range of nuanced controls, many users no longer bother to try to figure them out, as they’re constantly changing, relocated or made more complex.

Consumers may only view the messaging interoperability as a handy way to reach their friends on other services. But for industry observers, it’s another example of how Facebook appears to be leveraging its market dominance to possibly stifle new competition. For a company already under multiple antitrust investigations, it’s a move that seems to thumb its nose at government regulators.

Before buying Instagram, Zuckerberg warned employees of ‘battle’ to ‘dislodge’ competitor

The project to make Facebook’s chat platforms interoperate has been a significant technical undertaking from an infrastructure perspective. Last year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg detailed the company’s plans for messaging interoperability as part of his larger vision for a more private social networking experience.

Earlier this summer, Facebook began testing the changes with a small percentage of users.

In terms of the larger update beyond interoperability, Instagram users will also be able to watch videos together, including those from Facebook Watch and soon Reels.

Image Credits: Facebook

They’ll also be able to make their messages disappear, like Snapchat, with a “Vanish Mode” option. Other new features include Boomerang-like “Selfie Stickers,” the ability to personalize the chat’s colors, use custom emoji reactions, forward messages with up to five friends or groups, reply directly to a specific message in a group chat for clarity’s sake and add visual flair to messages with animated effects.

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Facebook says the features will begin rolling out to the general public, initially with a handful of countries around the world before expanding globally.

Facebook introduces Accounts Center, a tool for managing a growing number of cross-app settings

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Memo Bank details its offering for its business bank accounts

French startup Memo Bank has unveiled three different plans for its new customers. The company is building a business bank for small and medium companies that generate between €2 million and €50 million in annual turnover.

Earlier this year, Memo Bank obtained licenses from the French regulator (ACPR) and the European Central Bank to become a credit institution. It can provide all the services you’d expect from a business bank, from current accounts to credit lines.

On paper, Memo Bank’s current accounts look a lot like a software-as-a-service product. There are three different plans. For €49 per month, you get one user account and each additional account costs €10 per month. You get 20 transactions in and out per month, each additional transaction costs €0.40 per transaction.

For €149 per month, you can create as many user accounts as you want and you get 200 transactions per month. Once again, additional transactions cost €0.40 per transaction.

And if you handle a lot of transactions, you get unlimited transactions for €399 per month. The mid-tier plan also lets you access an authorized overdraft.

Interestingly, companies on the top two tiers will earn interests on their deposits — 0.15% up to €100,000 and 0.30% up to €200,000 for the top two plans respectively. Memo Bank isn’t mentioning checks or payment cards for now.

Image Credits: Memo Bank

The startup is also saying that its web platform should work better than your average banking site. The search feature works as expected, you can issue grouped transfers to pay your employees and you can set up an approval workflow for big transactions.

More importantly, Memo Bank is open for business to issue loans. Companies can apply to get a €20,000 to €200,000 loan and pay back over 1 to 7 years. With this product, the startup is competing with online lending platforms, such as October.

Memo Bank unveils its business bank, credit license and $22.5 million in new funding

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Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers will get EA Play on November 10th

Earlier this month, Microsoft announced that Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers would be able to access EA Play for no additional cost. The company shared more details about the rollout. Console players will be able to activate their complimentary EA Play subscription on November 10th.

Microsoft is also launching the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S on November 10th. As a reminder, EA Play includes back-catalog games from EA, such as Fifa 20, Madden NFL 20, Battlefield V, Mass Effect games, Dead Space games, etc.

The Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription include access to Microsoft’s library of games, an Xbox Live Gold subscription, Microsoft’s cloud gaming service xCloud and soon EA Play. It costs $14.99 per month. If you just subscribe to the Xbox Game Pass for $9.99 per month, you won’t get EA Play.

On Windows, Xbox Game Pass (and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate) subscribers will able to download EA games in December. Unfortunately, you’ll have to create an EA account, download the EA client and link your Xbox and EA accounts.

If you’re already paying for EA Play and an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription that grants you access to EA Play, your EA Play subscription will be canceled and your remaining time will be converted to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. If you had between 50 days and 3 months left, you’ll receive one month of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. If you had between 4 and 6 months remaining, you’ll receive 2 months of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. You can get more details in the FAQ.

Microsoft is using this opportunity to confirm that some Bethesda games will be added to its subscription service. Doom Eternal is coming on October 1 for instance.

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Lee Fixel’s Addition leads $35 million investment in India’s Inshorts

Inshorts, which operates a popular news aggregator app in India, has raised $35 million in a new financing round led by Lee Fixel’s Addition as the Indian startup looks to scale its adjacent, social network platform.

For Fixel, who wrote several high-profile checks to Indian firms while running Tiger Global, InShorts is the first Indian startup he is backing from his new VC firm. Fixel, who also invested in InShorts when he was at Tiger Global, has backed about six startups through Addition including New York Area-headquartered Odeko, which offers ordering and supply chain tools to cafes, Synk, which develops tools used to identify vulnerabilities, and dLocal, which operates a cross-border payment processor to connect global merchants to emerging markets.

SIG Global and Tanglin Venture Partners, also participated in Inshorts’ new round, which values the startup at about $125 million, a person familiar with the matter told TechCrunch.

Azhar Iqubal, founder and chief executive of Inshorts, told TechCrunch in an interview that the startup raised the capital to further scale Public, a social network it launched in April 2019.

Public is a location-based social network that connects individuals to people in their vicinity. Think about people living in the same society, or people in a mall or within a few miles from each other.

Public, which is available in several major Indian languages including Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Odia, Assamese, Gujarati and Marathi, is allowing shop owners to drive e-commerce, serving as a classified platform and allowing recruiters to hire people from neighborhood, said Iqubal.

The app, which also provides entertainment and news services, has amassed over 50 million monthly active users, he said. More than 1 million videos are being created on the platform each month.

“There are more than 10,000 urban centres in India and existing social networking apps that are aimed at connecting friends leave room for a location-based play,” said Iqubal.

In the next few months, Iqubal said Public will attempt to deepen its penetration across India. In the future, he wants to expand Public outside of India as well, he said.

Inshorts, which is profitable, competes with a handful of players in the country including DailyHunt. Interestingly, both DailyHunt, co-run by Umang Bedi (former head of Facebook India) and Inshorts have expanded to explore opportunities in the space of social networks.

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Emjoy picks up $3M to get more women tuned into sexual self-care

Barcelona-based Emjoy, an audio app for women that sells a narrative of sexual self-care and empowerment, has picked up $3 million in seed funding led by JME Ventures, with existing investor Nauta Capital participating.

The femtech startup believes it has lit on a major opportunity to target women with sex-positive subscription audio content that’s focused on sexual empowerment, intimate education and sensuous entertainment — all wrapped in unapologetically direct digital marketing.

Nor is it alone in seeking to build a brand around such ‘female first’ audio content. (Another startup that springs to mind in this ‘mindful sex’ space is Ferly, for example.) But Emjoy reckons there’s all to play for in this nascent space — which it says is benefitting not only from progress toward female empowerment in recent years but the rise in popularity of podcasting and audiobooks.

“My inspiration for founding Emjoy is based on my personal experience and the experiences of many girlfriends of mine. All of us had normalized not climaxing when having sexual encounters,” Andrea Oliver, CEO and co-founder tells TechCrunch.

“When I began researching this I came across the pleasure gap, with some studies showing that 40% of women have some type of sexual dysfunction. Having been in the VC world and having seen the tremendous success of startups in the mental health and fitness spaces, I was shocked when I could not find an app focusing on sexual wellbeing.”

“What sets us apart from competitors is offering a broad library of both wellbeing and entertainment audios, being extremely trustworthy and reliable because of our in-house sex therapist, partnering with sexual wellbeing experts, and finally being a product company that offers more than just content,” she goes on, discussing the competitive landscape. “An example of this is our ‘Daily Routines’ feature, which allows our users to take 30-day challenges to create new habits, such as accepting their bodies.”

Oliver moved from Nauta Capital, where she’d been working with startups, to founding her own business in January 2019, along with co-founder Daniel Tamas, CTO — taking in an initial €1M from her former VC employer to get the app to market.

Emjoy launched worldwide in early 2020 and went on to clock up 80,000 registered users in its first six months. It now has 150,000 active users globally, with the U.S. and the U.K. its main markets (NB: content is currently only available in English).

Almost 10% of “recently acquired” active users paying a subscription, per Oliver.

“The women who use Emjoy are typically in their 20s, and while most are cisgender we have also received tons of positive feedback from trans and non-binary folk. Really, Emjoy is about getting to know what you like and enjoying yourself, regardless of the gender of your partner(s),” she says.

“We are building a wellbeing brand for women because we see that sexual wellbeing is a major part of overall wellbeing. We want to normalize this,” Oliver adds, nothing that Emjoy’s “wellbeing positioning” includes “entertainment content with our erotic stories”.

The startup’s team has grown to 11 people at this point — including an in-house sex therapist. Most of Emjoy’s content is produced in house at this point.

Discussing its approach to content, which the app touts as “backed by science and supervised by our in-house intimacy therapist”, Oliver says: “For each theory or guided session we try to find a scientific study to back what we say, and we work with our in-house sex therapist who creates most of the content and supervises it. We also partner with external collaborators who are experts in different fields such as sexual trauma, body acceptance, relationships etc.”

“It is important to offer science-based content because most of the sexual content that is available today, in blogs or on YouTube, for example, is very untrustworthy. We want to be a trusted and safe environment for our users,” she adds.

The new seed funding will be ploughed into making more content — with plans for additional collaborations with “leading academics, experts and influencers within the sexual wellbeing and education space” — and the overarching aim of building the “category-defining” app in the female sexual wellness space.

Asked why he’s excited about women’s sexual wellbeing audio as a category, investor Samuel Gil, partner at JME Ventures, told us the space is interesting because it’s been so overlooked.

“It has been ignored or forgotten for a very long time but that’s now changing with women being more empowered than ever,” he said, adding: “Women with sexual wellbeing issues might be reluctant to search for help in a more traditional way due to shame or friction. A digital product is ideal to broaden access to sexual wellbeing solutions.”

He also lauded the “really immersive experiences” possible with audio content which he said “facilitates content production”. (Or, well, it’s a lot easier to get erotic sounds past ‘family-friendly’ App Store review rules than hardcore visuals.)

On investing in Emjoy specifically, Gil added: “It is a nascent category with no clear leaders yet. Emjoy’s vision, ambition, and above all, execution, so far makes us believe that they are really well-positioned to take the leading position very soon.”

Asked what she believes this new rush of female-pleasure-focused audio startups are tapping into, Olivier says: “It is very much an underserved need. We go hand-in-hand with our users to help them discover their bodies, gain confidence, and explore what turns them on, among many other things. We and our users see Emjoy as a journey, with our audio content helping users explore what they like and who they are.

“We are not telling users what they should do, or how they should feel because there is no normal, there’s no ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t’. Each personal experience and body is unique and Emjoy adapts to each user’s unique journey.”

“Our users are also generating new habits with Emjoy and we are becoming an everyday tool for women who want to feel more confident or want a safe, female pleasure-centric and trusted place to get in the mood, as opposed to mainstream porn,” she adds.

LocalGlobe partner Julia Hawkins discusses femtech’s risks and rewards

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October closes $300 million in new funds for its SME lending marketplace

French fintech startup October has raised some fresh capital to invest in small and medium companies on its lending platform. Overall, the company has gathered $300 million (€258 million) from various partners that will be deployed over the next few years.

This is not a traditional startup funding round as today’s new investment is specifically designed to finance new loans on its platform. October isn’t selling equity in exchange for capital.

October works with small companies in France, Spain, Italy, Netherlands and Germany that need a credit line. For small and medium companies, you can apply for a loan and get an answer just a few days later. October evaluates risk before handing out loans thanks to industry-specific data analysis and human analysts.

Loans range from €30,000 to €5 million. There’s no personal guarantee and interest rate varies depending on the risk associated with your application.

On the other side of the marketplace, individuals can contribute to SME financing. But the startup has been relying more and more on institutional investors looking for different types of assets to diversify their investment portfolios.

Hence today’s new influx of cash. Here’s the full breakdown:

• $23 million (€20 million) will be used for traditional SME loans with monthly repayments.
• $44 million (€38 million) will be deployed in the tourism industry specifically — hotels, restaurants and more. Six insurance companies and French public sector financial institution CDC are contributing to this fund. Companies applying for loans in this category can delay repayment.
• $232 million (€200 million) will be injected in Italian SMEs in particular. Italian bank Intesa Sanpaolo Group is investing exclusively in this fund. Those government-backed loans will go live quite rapidly as everything will be deployed by the end of 2020.

As you can see, October is becoming an important technological partner for European support plans during the economic crisis. The startup can issue government-backed loans and some public institutions are choosing October to finance SMEs.

Over the past five years, October has handed out around 1,000 loans. It represents $521 million (€448 million) in capital. That number will go up rapidly following today’s announcement.

Crowd-lending platform October hits pause on loan repayments

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TravelPerk launches an open API platform to extend its work trip SaaS

Business travel SaaS startup, TravelPerk, has launched an open API-based platform — letting its customers and partners build custom integration and apps.

The initial APIs covers HR and expense management use-cases but more are set to be added as usage and demand grows.

“Applications we’ve seen being built on the platform already include HR functionality (think BambooHR), expense management systems, company payment cards, financial reporting, and ERP,” says co-founder and CEO Avi Meir, discussing the launch.

Longer term he says the hope is the platform generates “a huge range” of additional functionality for customers to draw on.

“Many of our customers are tech companies full of developers, so we’re confident that if we give them the tools it will be boundless what they can create,” he adds. “In fact, we’re working with one customer already who is using our API to build a custom approvals process because they need a more complex system than the standard offering.”

TravelPerk has been running a private beta over the last few months with 20+ partners and customers but is now flipping the switch to open it to all users.

“We are providing a fully fledged toolkit for developers, from the most curated developer hub and API documentation, to a sandbox environment to test their solutions for quality assurance,” adds Ross McNairn, TravelPerk’s chief product officer, in a statement.

“We do not see TravelPerk as a silo tool, but rather one that needs to coexist with hundreds of other SaaS tools. Our ultimate goal is for partners and developers to consider TravelPerk as the platform to build and grow with us. Easy to understand, easy to build, and easy to grow.”

Business downtime resulting from the coronavirus pandemic slashing global travel has given TravelPerk a window of opportunity to focus on product dev.

“It’s no surprise that the [business travel]  market isn’t yet back to normal but we know that if we keep investing in creating the products businesses need to travel confidently we’ll emerge from this stronger,” says Meir, who notes that it’s been seeing signs of a recovery in some of its markets — with domestic segment usage in Germany and the US having returned to “pre-pandemic levels”.

Returning to the API, Meir says customer demand was a factor in the decision to augment its business travel SaaS with a free and fully open API platform: “Part of the reason we’ve brought this in was the huge demand for this kind of product from many of our customers, particularly SMEs. On the back of that demand, we’re expecting to see tens or hundreds of applications and customer integrations built in the coming months.”

The other driver is cultural, per Meir — who says the startup has a “philosophy of being open, collaborative and innovative” which he claims sets it apart from the “current, closed systems” offered by legacy travel industry players.

“Creating this marketplace means we can provide customers with a wide choice of expert-created functionality, rather than forcing a single proprietary solution on them,” he adds.

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Facebook names VP of product growth Alex Schultz as new CMO

To fill its empty CMO position, Facebook just promoted to the C-suite a longtime Facebook executive focused on product growth.

Former VP of product growth and analytics Alex Schultz, who has been with the company since 2007, announced the move Tuesday in a Facebook post. Schultz will fill the position left open by Antonio Lucio, who joined the company from HP in 2018 and announced his departure last month. Lucio said he was leaving the company to “dedicate 100% of my time to diversity, inclusion and equity.”

In his Facebook post, Schultz said he planned to bring “experience in segmentation, targeting, and measurement” to the table to extend Facebook’s already massive reach. Schultz, who is the executive sponsor of Facebook’s LGBTQ resource group, added a personal note to the news, writing that Facebook is the first workplace where he has “truly safe to be gay and be open about it.”

Stepping into the role late in the U.S. election, an intensely consequential time for the company, Schultz acknowledged Facebook’s precarious position in the public eye. Touching on Facebook’s failures around platform enforcement, Schultz mentioned that he spent “most of my energy” over the last four years working on safety at the company. That work includes projects like Facebook’s community standards enforcement report, a new quarterly accounting of the company’s efforts to rid its platform of hate speech, harassment and other rule-breaking behavior.

“I believe deeply in the good Facebook’s products do,” Schultz said in his Facebook post. “We have all seen it through this pandemic as billions of people have connected with family and friends socially online while staying physically apart and slowing the spread of the virus. At the same time I think scrutiny of any new technology is appropriate and there are ways we can, and should, improve without losing all the good.”

Chris Cox returns to the fold as Facebook’s chief product officer

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Ringing alarm bells, Biden campaign calls Facebook ‘foremost propagator’ of voting disinformation

In a new letter to its chief executive on the eve of the first presidential debate, the Biden campaign slammed Facebook for its failure to act on false claims about voting in the U.S. election.

In the scathing letter, published by Axios, Biden Campaign Manager Jen O’Malley Dillon specifically singled out a troubling video post the Trump campaign shared to Facebook and Twitter last week.

Over the course of that video, the president’s son claims that his father’s political opponents “plan to add millions of fraudulent ballots that can cancel your vote and overturn the election” and calls on supporters to “enlist now” in an “army for Trump election security operation.” Those false claims appear to have inspired some Trump supporters, who plan to guard ballot drop-off sites and polling places — a form of voter intimidation that would likely constitute a federal crime.

When the Biden campaign (along with many others) flagged the video to Facebook, the company apparently said that the content would not be removed, pointing to its small, unobtrusive voting info labels that appear alongside all posts related to the 2020 U.S. election. The video remains up on Twitter with a similar label.

“We were assured that the label affixed to the video, buried on the top right corner of the screen where many viewers will miss it, should allay any concerns,” O’Malley Dillon wrote in the letter, addressed to Mark Zuckerberg.

“No company that considers itself a force for good in democracy, and that purports to take voter suppression seriously, would allow this dangerous claptrap to be spread to millions of people. Removing this video should have been the easiest of easy calls under your policies, yet it remains up today.”

Twitter and Facebook wrestle with Trump telling Americans to vote twice

In the letter, O’Malley Dillon also cites the president’s own repeated attempts to undermine national confidence in the 2020 election with unsubstantiated lies about the voting process, which is already under unique strain this year from the pandemic.

Rather than taking a strong approach to limit the reach of election-related disinformation from the president and his supporters, Facebook has largely remained hands-off. The platform is more comfortable touting its get out the vote campaign and other politically neutral efforts to inform and mobilize voters. Facebook clearly hopes those measures will offset its current role disseminating domestic disinformation from the president himself, but given the scope of what’s happening — and its lingering failures from 2016 — that doesn’t look likely.

“As you say, ‘voting is voice.’ Facebook has committed to not allow that voice to be drowned out by a storm of disinformation, but has failed at every opportunity to follow through on that commitment,” O’Malley Dillon wrote, adding that the Biden campaign would “be calling out those failures” over the course of the remaining 36 days until the election.

Twitter’s rules address worries over ‘peaceful transfer of power’ in US election

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