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Google created some of the first social media apps on Android, including Twitter and others

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Here’s a bit of startup history that might not be widely known outside of tech firms themselves: the first versions of popular Android apps like Twitter were created by Google itself. This revelation got here through latest podcast with Twitter’s former senior director of product management, Sara Beykpour, now co-founder of artificial intelligence startup Particle.

In the podcast hosted by Lightspeed partner Michael Mignano, Beykpour reflects on his role in Twitter’s history. She explains how she began working at Twitter in 2009, initially as a tools engineer, when the company only had about 75 people. Beykpour later began working on Twitter on mobile devices, around the time that other third-party apps were gaining popularity on other platforms resembling BlackBerry and iOS. One of them, Loren Brichter’s Tweetie, was even acquired by Twitter and became the basis of its first official iOS app.

As for the Twitter app for Android, which comes from Google, Beykpour said.

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The Twitter client for Android is “a demo app that Google built and gave us,” she said on the podcast. “They did it with all the popular social media apps at the time: Foursquare… Twitter… they all looked the same at first because Google wrote them all.”

Mignano interjected: “Wait, then step back; Explain this. So Google wanted companies to adopt Android to build apps for them?”

“Yes, exactly,” Beykpour replied.

Twitter then acquired the Android app built by Google and continued to develop it. She said Beykpour was the company’s second Android engineer.

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In fact, Google detailed its work on the Twitter client for Android in a blog post from 2010but most news reports on time it didn’t credit the app with Google’s work, which made it a forgotten piece of web history. In Google’s post, the company explains the way it implemented Android best practices in the Twitter app. Beykpour told TechCrunch that the creator of the post, Virgil Dobjanschi, was a lead software engineer.

“If we had questions, we were supposed to ask them,” he recalled.

Beykpour also shared other stories from Twitter’s early days. For example, she worked on Twitter’s Vine video app (after returning to Twitter after working at Secret) and was under pressure to launch Vine on Android before Instagram launched its video product. She met that deadline by launching Vine about two weeks before the Instagram video, she said.

The latter “significantly” impacted Vine’s performance and, in accordance with Beykpour, led to the popular app’s demise.

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“That was the day the writing was on the wall,” she said, regardless that it took years for Vine to finally shut down.

On Twitter, Beykpour led the shutdown of Vine – an app still so beloved that even Twitter/X’s latest owner, Elon Musk holds teasing about bringing it back. Beykpour, nevertheless, believes that Twitter made the right decision in selecting Vine, noting that the app lacks growth and is dear to take care of. He acknowledges that others might even see it otherwise, perhaps arguing that Vine didn’t have sufficient resources or management support. Ultimately, nevertheless, the shutdown got here right down to Vine’s impact on Twitter’s bottom line.

Beykpour also shared an interesting anecdote about working on Periscope. She joined the startup right after it was acquired by Twitter and after leaving Secret. She remembers that she needed to officially rejoin Twitter under a fake name to maintain the takeover a secret for some time.

On Twitter, she also mentioned the difficulty of obtaining resources to develop products and features for power users resembling journalists.

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“Twitter really had a hard time defining its user,” she said, since it “used a lot of traditional OKRs and metrics.” But the fact was that “only a fraction of people tweet” and “of the fraction of people who tweet, a subset of people are responsible for the content that everyone wants to see” – this was difficult, in accordance with Beykpour. to measure.

Now at Particle, her experience constructing Twitter is getting used to create strategy for an AI-powered news app that goals to offer individuals with information that interests them and what’s happening around them.

“Particle is a reimagining of the way you consume daily news,” Beykpour says on the podcast. The app goals to offer a multi-perspective have a look at the news while providing access to high-quality journalism. The startup is searching for one other strategy to earn money on reports other than promoting, subscriptions or micropayments. However, the details of how Particle will do that are still under discussion. The startup is currently in talks with potential publishers on how one can reward them for his or her work.

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This article was originally published on : techcrunch.com

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Microsoft Nadella sata chooses chatbots on the podcasts

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Satya Nadella at Microsoft Ignite 2023

While the general director of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, says that he likes podcasts, perhaps he didn’t take heed to them anymore.

That the treat is approaching at the end longer profile Bloomberg NadellaFocusing on the strategy of artificial intelligence Microsoft and its complicated relations with Opeli. To illustrate how much she uses Copilot’s AI assistant in her day by day life, Nadella said that as a substitute of listening to podcasts, she now sends transcription to Copilot, after which talks to Copilot with the content when driving to the office.

In addition, Nadella – who jokingly described her work as a “E -Mail driver” – said that it consists of a minimum of 10 custom agents developed in Copilot Studio to sum up E -Mailes and news, preparing for meetings and performing other tasks in the office.

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It seems that AI is already transforming Microsoft in a more significant way, and programmers supposedly the most difficult hit in the company’s last dismissals, shortly after Nadella stated that the 30% of the company’s code was written by AI.

(Tagstotransate) microsoft

This article was originally published on : techcrunch.com
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The planned Openai data center in Abu Dhabi would be greater than Monaco

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Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI

Opeli is able to help in developing a surprising campus of the 5-gigawatt data center in Abu Dhabi, positioning the corporate because the fundamental tenant of anchor in what can grow to be considered one of the biggest AI infrastructure projects in the world, in accordance with the brand new Bloomberg report.

Apparently, the thing would include a tremendous 10 square miles and consumed power balancing five nuclear reactors, overshadowing the prevailing AI infrastructure announced by OpenAI or its competitors. (Opeli has not yet asked TechCrunch’s request for comment, but in order to be larger than Monaco in retrospect.)

The ZAA project, developed in cooperation with the G42-Konglomerate with headquarters in Abu Zabi- is an element of the ambitious Stargate OpenAI project, Joint Venture announced in January, where in January could see mass data centers around the globe supplied with the event of AI.

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While the primary Stargate campus in the United States – already in Abilene in Texas – is to realize 1.2 gigawatts, this counterpart from the Middle East will be more than 4 times.

The project appears among the many wider AI between the USA and Zea, which were a few years old, and annoyed some legislators.

OpenAI reports from ZAA come from 2023 Partnership With G42, the pursuit of AI adoption in the Middle East. During the conversation earlier in Abu Dhabi, the final director of Opeli, Altman himself, praised Zea, saying: “He spoke about artificial intelligence Because it was cool before. “

As in the case of a big a part of the AI ​​world, these relationships are … complicated. Established in 2018, G42 is chaired by Szejk Tahnoon Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the national security advisor of ZAA and the younger brother of this country. His embrace by OpenAI raised concerns at the top of 2023 amongst American officials who were afraid that G42 could enable the Chinese government access advanced American technology.

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These fears focused on “G42”Active relationships“With Blalisted entities, including Huawei and Beijing Genomics Institute, in addition to those related to people related to Chinese intelligence efforts.

After pressure from American legislators, CEO G42 told Bloomberg At the start of 2024, the corporate modified its strategy, saying: “All our Chinese investments that were previously collected. For this reason, of course, we no longer need any physical presence in China.”

Shortly afterwards, Microsoft – the fundamental shareholder of Opeli together with his own wider interests in the region – announced an investment of $ 1.5 billion in G42, and its president Brad Smith joined the board of G42.

(Tagstransate) Abu dhabi

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Redpoint collects USD 650 million 3 years after the last large fund at an early stage

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Redpoint Ventures, an organization based in San Francisco, which is a few quarter of a century, collected $ 650 million at an early stage, in keeping with A regulatory notification.

The latest RedPoint fund corresponds to the size of its previous fund, which was collected barely lower than three years ago. On the market where many enterprises reduce their capital allegations, this cohesion may indicate that limited partners are relatively satisfied with its results.

The company’s early stage strategy is managed by 4 managing partners: Alex Bard (pictured above), Satish Dharmraraj, Annie Kadavy and Eric Brescia, who joined the company in 2021 after he served as the operational director of Githuba for nearly three years.

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The last outstanding investments of the RedPoint team at an early stage include AI Coding Pool Pool, which was founded by the former partner Redpoint and CTO GitHub Jason Warner, distributed laboratories of SQL database programmers and Platform Management Platform Platform Levelpath.

A multi -stage company also conducts a development strategy led by Logan Barlett, Jacob Effron, Elliot Geidt and Scott Raney partners. Last 12 months, Redpoint raised its fifth growth fund at USD 740 million, which is a small increase in the USD 725 million fund closed three years earlier.

The recent RedPoint outputs include the next insurance, which was sold for $ 2.6 billion in March, Tastemada Startup Media Travel -utar -Media was enriched by Wonder for $ 90 million, and the takeover of Hashicorp $ 6.4 billion by IBM.

Redpoint didn’t answer the request for comment.

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(Tagstranslate) Early Stage Venture Capital (T) Basenside (T) Redpoint Venture Partners

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