Since its launch in 2018 as a ride-hailing service in Togo, Gozem has steadily expanded across French-speaking West Africa, integrating a wide range of services as it sought to become a super-app. The company now offers ride-hailing, commerce, vehicle financing, and digital banking across Togo, Benin, Gabon, and Cameroon. Now, in a bid to scale [β¦]
Β Yoel Roth said Match is focused on improving men's behavior for safer dating.
EVELYN HOCKSTEIN/REUTERS
Yoel Roth is leading Match Group's initiative to curb inappropriate messages on dating apps.
The company uses AI to flag abusive messages, promoting respectful dating interactions.
Match's CEO said safety and security are good for business.
Yoel Roth, Twitter's former head of trust and safety, is trying to reduce inappropriate messages sent on Match Group's dating platforms, like Tinder and Hinge.
The company is working on what Spencer Rascoff, its new CEO, called "an ecosystem cleanup." On an earnings call earlier this month, Rascoff said safety and security are good for business.
Roth joined Match a year ago as its vice president of trust and safety, responsible for overseeing content moderation across its dating apps. He formerly led the team that set rules for what was allowed on Twitter but quit shortly after Elon Musk took over the platform in 2022.
"For men especially, a big part of our safety approach is focused on driving behavioral change so that we can make dating experiences safer and more respectful," Roth told the Financial Times.
Using AI tools, Match can flag messages that could be perceived as abusive or overtly sexual. Match asks users who type what Roth called "off-color" messages if they would like to reconsider β and a fifth do, the FT reported.
The company found "a real need and opportunity to help people understand the norms and behaviors that go along with respectful and consensual dating," Roth said.
Due to dating app fatigue, women are also creating their own alternatives. A journalist with no previous event experience created theΒ Bored Of Dating AppsΒ events, where single people can meet in real life and form deeper connections, which took off in the UK and the US.
Between May 2023 and the end of 2024, more than half a million users left Tinder, a report from the UK-based online behavior research group Ofcom said.
Bumble and Hinge also reported losing 368,000 and 131,000 users, respectively, in the same period. Bumble's stock has slumped 37% in the past year, and Match is down 7.7%.
Match Group did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
Italian company SIO, which sells to government customers, is behind an Android spyware campaign called Spyrtacus that spoofed popular apps like WhatsApp, per security researchers.
Aja Beckett is the creator of Shotsy, an app for tracking weight-loss medications.
Shotsy
Shotsy is a first-of-its-kind app for tracking the use of GLP-1 medications like Ozempic and Wegovy.
Software engineer Aja Beckett built the app out of necessity after finding manual notetaking clumsy.
The company now has $2 million in fresh funding to ramp up marketing efforts and grow its team.
When Aja Beckett started using a GLP-1 medication, she took notes on her phone to track her doses, side effects, and hunger. As her notes became long and unruly, Beckett, who was working as a software engineer for The Athletic, decided to build an app instead.
Today, that app, Shotsy, has been downloaded over 100,00 times and has reached a revenue run rate of $1 million β a projection of yearly revenue based on current revenue numbers. The app is available to download and use for free and offers additional features that can be accessed through a $19.99 annual subscription. Beckett says the eight-month-old company is profitable.
Investors are taking notice. Shotsy has raised $2.25 million in seed funding to ramp up marketing and grow its team, the startup tells Business Insider exclusively. April Underwood of Adverb Ventures led the round, while Coalition Operators, Springbank Collective, and angel investor Esther Dyson participated.
The excitement around weight-loss drugs has both Big Pharma and Silicon Valley chasing the Wegovy wave. The telehealth unicorn startup Virta Health recently began prescribing Ozempic for weight loss in a push toward profitability. Omada Health, which works with employers and health plans to deliver better care to people with type 2 diabetes, said employer interest in its weight-loss program is behind its latest growth spurt. And on Super Bowl Sunday, ads for junk food and beer shared airtime with a controversial Hims & Hers spot promoting its version of the popular weight-loss drug.
But even as startups rush to capitalize on this supersized market, there hasn't been a basic app for tracking medication use. Beckett knows this firsthand.
Shotsy enables people to log their weekly shots and keep track of their medication history.
Shotsy
Beckett, 43, said she's struggled with her weight for years and cycled through diets like keto and Weight Watchers. She became curious about Ozempic after reading about these drugs in the news. Thirteen months ago, she began using Zepbound, an injectable branded to treat obesity.
Beckett kicked her Dr. Pepper habit almost overnight. As she lost weight, a bum ankle that had bothered her for years was no longer sensitive. She also noticed that she could think more clearly without the "food noise."
She started tracking her weekly injections in the Notes app on her phone. Beckett noted that side effects like nausea peaked at different lengths of time after her shot, and by logging her doses, she could estimate when she would feel ill and plan accordingly. She also tracked her injection sites to make sure she rotated body areas and how much weight she lost per shot.
But the Notes app left her wanting. So she built an app, saying that her fading obsession with food gave her more energy on nights and weekends to code.
Beckett also became active on a Reddit group for Zepbound users. She invited other members to take the app for a test drive. The excitement was palpable, and the feedback poured in.
"Nobody else was providing any tools for specifically GLP-1 users," Beckett said. "So it was really exciting for all of us in the community to feel seen."
Shotsy saw 3,000 downloads in the first 24 hours after its App Store debut.
Still working full-time, Beckett used some of the subscription proceeds to hire a part-time designer to improve the app's look. The app continued to rack up downloads. She felt comfortable quitting her job when the app generated enough revenue to replace her software engineering salary.
"It started to feel like I was missing out on an opportunity to do everything I wanted to do with Shotsy," Beckett said.
The Swiss bank UBS estimates that the population using GLP-1 medications could reach 40 million people by 2029.
Iuliia Burmistrova/Getty Images
By chance, she ran into an engineer friend and gave him a demo while traveling through an airport on her return from a developer conference. He asked to connect her to some investors, including Underwood, the former Slack head of product.
Shotsy clicked with the investor for a few reasons. It tapped into an emerging market that Swiss bank UBS says could eclipse 40 million people by 2029. Shotsy was the first to market with an app consumers were craving, as evidenced by the Reddit love. And it had a founder solving a problem she understood from experience.
"She needed it, she built it. It's gotten incredible traction as a side hustle," Underwood said. "She now has cash in the bank that allows her to build a team around her that is going to be able to extend the capabilities of the app to make it more useful and stickier, reach more audiences, and address more needs."
Beckett said Shotsy has only scratched the surface of its product road map, but she didn't comment on what that may include. Ashley Mayer, a general partner at Coalition Operators who led its Shotsy investment, said that the most important thing Shotsy can do now is create a product that users love.
"If you earn people's trust and you accompany them on a journey that is life-changing and emotional," said Mayer, Glossier's former communications boss, "you earn the right to build other experiences for them or help them in other ways."
Four people have so far come forward as victims of the Paragon spyware campaign targeting WhatsApp users, including one journalist and three activists.
Fizz, the college social app, is looking for ways to enhance and expand its platform, and a recent new hire is poised to help drive these ambitions. The company has brought on David Vasquez, who previously served as TikTokβs head of creator monetization and a product lead for TikTok Shop, as Fizzβs new head of [β¦]
Israeli spyware maker Paragon Solutions confirmed to TechCrunch that it sells its products to the U.S. government and other unspecified allied countries. Paragonβs executive chairman John Fleming said in a statement to TechCrunch on Tuesday that βParagon licenses its technology to a select group of global democracies β principally, the United States and its allies.β [β¦]
There are plenty of pedometer and step counter apps in the world, but this new app has a fun twist. Walkstar, which launched Tuesday in the App Store, enhances your workout by syncing your tunes with your movement. The moment you pause, the music fades away, making it a perfect motivator for those looking to [β¦]
The 'Mean Girls' star joins the ranks of the brand's famous faces Eva Longoria, Heidi Klum, Kendall Jenner and Cara Delevingne. "And don't forget Viola!" Rapp says. "I would lay my life on the line for Viola Davis."
A large portion of Egyptβs population lacks access to traditional banking, forcing many to rely on cash transactions and informal lending. Khazna, a fintech startup founded in 2019, is tackling this issue by offering financial services tailored toward low- and middle-income workers. The company provides solutions like salary advances, digital payments, and microloans to help [β¦]
Mark Zuckerberg addressed several recent policy changes in a company all-hands meeting on Thursday.
Zuckerberg admitted that the company was slow to respond to TikTok's rapid growth.
The CEO also told employees to "buckle up" for an "intense" year ahead.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged the company was slow to respond to TikTok's meteoric rise because executives didn't view it as truly social, offering a rare window into how the tech giant missed one of social media's biggest shifts in recent years.
"When I look back on TikTok, I think part of the reason why we were slow to it is because we didn't think TikTok was social," Zuckerberg said in a recording of an all-hands meeting obtained by Business Insider. "We looked at it and we thought, 'Oh, this is like, a little more like YouTube.'"
The admission came in response to an employee's question about whether Meta's current focus on artificial intelligence might cause the company to miss the next major social media trend, as it did with TikTok.
Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
Zuckerberg explained at the meeting that Meta's traditional view of social interaction β centered around friends posting content and commenting β caused the company to initially misread TikTok's appeal. The company failed to recognize how users were sharing TikTok content through private messages, which has become a crucial form of social interaction across Meta's platforms.
"Because we were too dismissive up front, it wasn't just about people commenting in the feed. It was about people seeing stuff in their feed and then sharing it into message threads," Zuckerberg said, referring to the company's instant messaging platforms WhatsApp, Messenger, and direct messaging in Instagram, where "the majority of social interaction is happening."
Zuckerberg also addressed TikTok's uncertain future in the US. President Trump signed an executive order on January 20 that gave TikTok 75 more days to operate in the US, as owner ByteDance will either have to divest from TikTok or it will be banned in the US.
"We don't have control of what's going to happen to Tiktok," Zuckerberg said. "We have a lot of competitors, but they're an important one. So, who's gonna own Tiktok at the end of the year? What's gonna happen? I mean, that's a pretty big deal, something that's a card that we get to turn over."
Looking ahead, Zuckerberg emphasized that the company needs to avoid taking "too narrow of a view" of social interaction as it navigates the emergence of AI. He outlined a vision for AI-powered features in Facebook and Instagram feeds, including interactive AI agents that users can converse with and more immersive content experiences.
"I think the next trend here is there're going to be things that either AI can produce, that we can just put in there... I think this year we're gonna have stuff where it's like, okay, you have an AI agent, and you can just start talking to it," Zuckerberg said.
The Meta chief also pushed back against concerns that the company's AI investments might detract from its core social media business, noting that as a large company, Meta needs to be able to "walk and chew gum at the same time."
"If we can't build Facebook and [the] next platform at the same time, then, like, eventually game over," he said.
Do you work at Meta? Contact this reporter from a nonwork email and device at [email protected] or [email protected]. You can also reach him securely via Signal at +1408-905-9124. Your identity will be protected.
Netflix announced on Wednesday that itβs giving iOS users a new feature that allows them to download an entire season of their favorite TV show with one tap. The feature first became available to Android users.Β The Season Download button is available in the Netflix app, located next to the Share button on a showβs [β¦]
Block, Jack Dorsey's company behind fintechs Square and Cash App, debuted an AI agent Tuesday.
The AI helps with coding, is used by about 1,000 engineers internally, and took nine months to build.
Two company insiders outline why they're making it available for anyone to use.
As the race to develop AI agents on Wall Street heats up, one of the industry's largest fintechs has made the rare move of making its version available to anyone to use.
Block, billionaire Jack Dorsey's company behind Square, Afterpay, and Cash App, launched its AI agent, Goose, on Tuesday. Goose has been used internally to automate multi-day tasks in minutes, and even write code "better" and "faster" than some of Block's top engineers, Brad Axen, Block's lead AI engineer, told Business Insider.
While fintechs' edge is often in the underlying technology intellectual property, Block is sharing Goose and basically everything under its hood by making it open source β therebygiving any engineer, rivals included, a shortcut to an AI agent framework to use, modify, and distribute, even for commercial purposes.
"Open source is a really big bet that we're making as a company," Jackie Brosamer, vice president of data and AI engineering at Block, told BI. "The risk is that openness isn't the best way to do a lot of these things," she added.
Block's AI agent took a team of about 12 AI and machine-learning experts, software engineers, and designers nine months to build. The fintech worked closely with Anthropic, an Amazon-backed AI startup, but it can work with any large-language model.
"We're trying to fulfill this bigger mission of economic empowerment and we see that as more than just beating our competitors" or "trying to win some section of the market," Bosamer said.
How Block employees are using Goose
Goose was initially built to help engineers with their daily tasks, like writing, editing, and testing code, and even correcting its own errors along the way. It's helping them by automating mundane but frequent tasks, like moving an old system to a new coding language or patching in new updates and making sure those updates don't impact other connected systems. Since it launched three months ago, it's been adopted by about 1,000 engineers (20% of Block's engineer population) who report that it's been saving them about 20% of their time, Axen said.
In one example, Block engineers prompted Goose to fully rewrite one platform in a different coding language. In just 30 minutes, Goose rewrote about 70% of the underlying code; Axen, a principal engineer with a philosophy and physics Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley, said it would've taken him hours or even more than a day to do the same.
"People are great at coming up with ideas in a way that AI isn't yet. Once you agree on the right idea, it writes code better than I, it's faster than me," Axen said.
Brosamer said the company doesn't expect Goose to impact its hiring plans but "supercharge by 30% or even more our workforce going forward."
Soon after Block launched Goose with its engineering community, non-tech workers wanted to get in on the action. Designers and business employees started contributing ideas on how Goose could boost their day-to-day work, like plugging into Google Calendar to help them prep for meetings, Axen added. It also helps less-technical people write and understand code, like SQL, that's heavily used when working with data, Brosamer said.
Of course, Block will benefit from outside contributors to Goose who have made modifications or built out integrations with other apps, said Brosamer, adding that Block can "take those ideas and fold them back to our work rather than getting to it in six months when we needed it."
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