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The company behind last summers hot social app Poparazzi appears to be readying a round two following its $15 million Series Aannounced in June. A new listing in the App Store under the developers account, TTYL, is teasing a pre-release app called Made With Friends. The app offers a twist on Poparazzis original concept of social networking profiles crafted by a users friends, instead of by the users themselves, but adds support for other types of content.

Poparazzi had encouraged friends to post photos to each others social networking profiles as if they were their friends paparazzi hence the name. Made With Friends, meanwhile, expands on that concept by asking users to post all sorts of things to their friends profiles including text-based content like answers to questions or prompts, as well as photos and videos.

This Poparazzi spin-off seems partly inspired by todays popular Q&A apps, like Sendit or NGL, which tie into other social networks, like Snapchat and Instagram. On those apps, users receive questions in an inbox that they can answer and share to their social profiles or Stories elsewhere. But in the case of Made With Friends, users arent posting questions anonymously, nor is the app itself delivering fake questions to create engagement as the anonymous Q&A apps had been doing (at least, until Apples App Review team caught on and requested changes to be made).

However, based on some earlier screenshots of the new app, it does appear the Q&A responses in Made With Friends could be designed for social sharing to other platforms, like Instagram.

Image Credits: Made With Friends

TechCrunch reached out to the team behind Poparazzi to ask about its plans for the new app and whether or not this was an attempt to pivot into a new area. The company responded (after publication) to confirm the new app would be released in the fall and noted Poparazzi was continuing to grow. It clarified, through a spokesperson, that Made with Friends was an evolution of Poparazzis Challenges feature from the past summer, where it challenges users to post using a prompt.

But according to data from Apptopia, the Made With Friends app was originally titled Pop Made with Friends, and had described itself as a way you could pop someone by answering questions about them, tagging them on a prompt with a photo, video, GIF, quote or description. The updated version on the App Store today does away with the pop lingo and branding, but introduces the same concept of social profiles that are essentially made by friends.

It makes sense that Poparazzis team is beginning to test new options.

Despite Poparazzis early success, which led the app to top 5 million installs a year after its launch, its since lost ground to a new wave of social networking apps that are attracting a younger, Gen Z audience. Currently, this group is dominated by BeReal, which has been steadily holding onto its position as the No. 1 app on the U.S. iPhone App Store. In addition, younger audiences have also downloaded a range of other social apps in larger numbers than Poparazzi like video networking app Yubo, which counted some 60 million sign-ups as of May, and homescreen social app Locket with around 20 million installs as of its $12.5 million seed funding announcement announced this month.

These trends could be driving TTYL to look for new twists on its friends-focused social networking concept.

This would not be the first time the team at TTYL experimented with a new social networking concept. Before delivering a hit with Poparazzi, the company had developed nearly a dozen other apps, including OMG, CampusFM, TYPO, Lynx, Yearbook 2020 as well as TTYL, the audio social network and Clubhouse rival the companys name references.

As TTYL co-founder Alex Ma explained earlier this summer, most social networking apps fail and the best thing to do is to keep building and experimenting until one works. This multi-app business model has also been adopted by another consumer social app maker, 9count, which recently raised new funding as both Wink and its Gen Z dating app Summer took off.

We noticed TTYL has already begun to market the new app through TikTok influencers as there are posts that show Made With Friends in action, despite its preorder status. One such video was also reposted to the new Made with Friends TikTok profile which teases the app as coming soon.

Its not clear what this additional may mean for Poparazzis future, but its worth noting that TTYLs flagship app has still not made its way to Android.

The App Store shows an expected release date of October 1, 2022 for Made With Friends, which is now available for preorder.

Updated 8/30/22, 4:48 PM ET with responses from TTYL.

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Following its Series A, Poparazzis team is readying a new social app that goes beyond photos - TechCrunch

Twitter has called Zatko a disgruntled employee who was fired for poor performance. Twitter's lawyers said on Tuesday that Musk's latest effort to terminate the deal was invalid and wrongful under the agreement. Of Zatkos whistleblowing claims, the social networking site has said: What weve seen so far is a false narrative about Twitter and our privacy and data security practices that is riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies and lacks important context.

Whereas any other tech industry worker could be ignored, Zatkos background lends some weight to his claims about Twitter. As one of the cybersecurity worlds founding characters, the former Cult of the Dead Cow hacker rubbed shoulders with pioneering ethical hackers.

CDC's hacking specialism was creating software tools that exploited security flaws in Windows, with the aim of forcing Microsoft to fix problems in the world's most popular computer operating system. Mudge's personal contribution was a tool named l0phtcrack, which unscrambled Windows users passwords.

His exploits quickly caught official eyes. In 1998 Mudge was one of seven hackers who said they could shut down the entire internet in 30 minutes, with the group making their extraordinary claim while testifying to the US Congress.

One of Mudge's contemporaries, Chris Wysopal, recalled the impact of those 1990s disclosures in a 2018 interview, saying: "Mudge and I have had meetings with Senator Mark Warner. We know Senator Cory Gardner. These guys are on the Senate Intelligence Committee." Wysopal also said the FBI had vetted the hackers at the time of their exploits to verify them as "good guys".

Mudge later turned to the corporate world where his technical and leadership skills were in high demand. Ever higher-profile jobs in the white collar world of information technology, which by the 2010s had become one of the world's dominant industries, beckoned.

In 2015 Mudge was called upon by the Obama White House to set up a software testing organisation. Two years later he returned to the private sector as head of security for Stripe, the payments processor; his success there caught the eye of Jack Dorsey, who tapped up the veteran hacker in 2020 to run security at Twitter.

By November 2021 Mr Dorsey had resigned, however, saying: I believe the company is ready to move on from its founders. His replacement was Twitter's chief technical officer, Parag Agrawal. Within tech companies there is always a tension between the IT department and the security department, and so it proved at Twitter: Mudge was ousted in January, with Twitter giving the reason as "poor performance".

Analysts say Zatkos whistleblowing claims could have implications in Musks ongoing litigation as he attempts to walk away from the $44bn takeover, which has centred around whether Twitter is honest about how many bots there are on the social network.

Ives, the Wedbush analyst, adds: Importantly, Zatko claims that Twitter does not have an accurate count of the number of spam and fake bot accounts on its platform, which will be front and centre for the Musk team.

Musk and Twitter are due to go to court on October 17 with the spotlight firmly on its former security chiefs explosive claims.

Excerpt from:
How a hacking guru could save Elon Musk $44bn in the battle over Twitter - The Telegraph

On 29th August 2019, Lilith, a vampire bat housed in the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, died, leaving behind a pup. Curiously, for Gerry Carter and Imran Razik the scientists studying these bats BD, another bat in the colony, whom Lilith had met only two months ago, adopted her pup. In that two-month span, BD and Lilith had evidently formed a close bond. While this is not the first instance of adoption exhibited by vampire bats (or in the animal kingdom), it does raise a peculiar question: if natural selection is about maximizing one's genetic legacy, what does a bat get out of raising the children of an unrelated bats?

Vampire bats are highly social animals, for whom "blood relative" takes on a whole new meaning. Roosting in groups, they spend a large portion of their waking time grooming each other, and even regurgitating food i.e., blood for the benefit of a few special friends. Gerry Carter, an assistant professor at Ohio State University, is trying to unravel the mysteries of vampire bat friendships. Carter's findings get us closer to understanding how and why cooperative friendships form in social animals, including humans.

Carter's journey with bats began with a fragment of a memory.

"It had a rubber band on its mouth," he said, describing the fruit bat he saw at age two on a trip with his mother to her native Philippines. "My mother is from an indigenous tribe in the Philippines, and she used to hunt flying foxes when she was a kid. Her family ate them." Carter explained. This memory re-emerged when, in elementary school, he saw the same bat in an encyclopedia. "From then on, I was obsessed with bats," Carter mused. After twenty years of studying vampire bats, Carter continues to be fascinated by these animals.

Common vampire bats the species Carter works with live in colonies of 8-12 in a tree or a cave. Typically, Carter says, the female bats stick around the colonies, while males leave within the first year. This leads to an interesting social structure. "

"You get these female social networks that form," Carter says, "and males fight for territory and access to females. Even the most dominant male doesn't monopolize paternity." Apart from the maternal lines of mother-daughters-granddaughters, members of a colony are mostly unrelated to each other.

Sometimes, an "unrelated" female may join the colony and start forming her social network. This would be an ideal situation for Carter to study the formation of new relationships forming in the wild but that would be hard, he says, "you would have to be there the moment a new individual joins a group."

Not only did these bats begin grooming each other, they continued to do so after Razik released them back into the larger cage where they had the option of spending time with more familiar bats.

So, they brought common vampire bats into a flight cage on the edge of forest at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, where Gerry's student Imran Razik has spent most of his PhD manipulating the social milieu of bats. Their captive colony usually has 20 to 40 bats, all of whom have names. Thanks to Razik's manipulations, Lilith and BD met; began grooming each other; and, soon enough, were throwing up bits of food for one another.

Lilith and BD weren't an anomaly. By observing hundreds of manipulated interactions, Razik and Carter learned that vampire bats go from being strangers to friends by mutual grooming. In rare instances, this turns into a food-sharing relationship. Every bat has a set of food sharing partners and a set of grooming partners.

In another set of experiments, Razik forced bats from three different sites in Panama to spend time together in a small cage for 114 days. Not only did these bats begin grooming each other, they continued to do so after Razik released them back into the larger cage where they had the option of spending time with more familiar bats. Considering bats can't go more than two days without food, having food-sharing partners has an obvious advantage. So why bother with grooming partners at all?

To explain this, Carter analogizes their situation to human relationships.

"If you're a person living in a small town where everybody is born and dies [there], you may want to have strong relationships at the expense of diversifying your network. But if you were in a situation like in a college or an academic conference, where you have no idea which individuals are going to stick around, you may want to diversify. If you have only two relationships and those individuals die or leave, you are left with nobody."

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Bats in a colony have different kinds of networks that comprise a mix of relatives and non-relatives, food-sharing partners and grooming partners. When Carter's group took away the key food donors of some of their captive bats, those who had previously fed non-relatives did much better because they had a larger support network to which they could turn. According to Carter's hypothesis, friendships with non-relatives act as an insurance against tough times (or, in this case, insurance against manipulative scientists). He calls it the social bet-hedging hypothesis, and it may explain why natural selection has favored relationships that don't directly maximize an individual's genetic legacy, i.e., offspring. In the extreme case of BD and Lilith, the latter directly benefited from having a non-relative as a food-sharing partner.

While the social bet-hedging hypothesis is intriguing, it doesn't necessarily explain how a bat goes about forming its own social network or even why BD adopted Lilith's pup. Carter, who has spent hundreds of hours watching bats and several more poring over data collected by his students, is determined to get to the bottom of these mysteries.

In the future, he hopes to understand how bats ensure cooperation and suppress conflict. "I think that's interesting to think about both in vampire bats and human relationships," Carter says. "We have amazing skills for social networking, manipulation and cooperation. I don't think we're doing most of that in a conscious way."

Loaded as we are with political baggage, we struggle to understand our own, human propensity to cooperate and compete. Studying highly cooperative winged mammals could provide insight into our own social dynamics.

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on animal social behavior

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Scientists manipulated bats' social relationships and watched them go from strangers to friends - Salon

Two days after a crowd of his supporters raided the U.S. Capitol Building, attacked police, and built a gallows for then Vice President Mike Pence, Donald Trump was unceremoniously kicked off Twitter. The social media platform was Trump's main form of communication with the public and the media.

Twitter co-founder and ex-CEO Jack Dorsey, who was running the show when the decision was made to kick Trump off of the platform, now says that it never should have been done. That wasn't his frame of mind on January 14th, 2021 when he said that banning Trump "was the right decision." Billionaire Elon Musk, when he made a $44 billion bid ($54.20 per share) for Twitter in April that he later rescinded, said that if he bought the company he would reinstate the former president.

Trump's Truth Social platform remains unavailable to the 44% of Americans that use Android

The Truth Social app is available in the iOS App Store

Axios notes that while Truth Social does have a banner that says "sensitive content" that is placed before some posts and reads, "This content may not be suitable for all audiences," content that threatens violence remains on the platform.

There are other issues as well. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) refused an application from Trump to trademark the "Truth Social" name. Another company named Digital World Acquisition Corp., which wants to take the platform public, is under investigation by securities regulators.''

Trump Media CEO Nunes says that the ball is in Google's court; Google says otherwise

Truth Social is owned by Trump Media and Technology Group and its CEO should be a familiar name to those who follow politics. Devin Nunes, a former member of the House, was chairman of the House Intelligence Committee from 2015 to 2019. One of Trump's most trusted lieutenants in Congress, Nunes now runs the Trump company that owns Truth Social.

Android users can only pre-register for the Truth Social app in the Play Store

Google said that the statements made by Nunes misrepresent the issue that Google is having with the platform. The Alphabet unit says that it has spoken to the company about the reason why Google will not allow the app to be listed in the Play Store. In response, Trump Media says that Truth Social is simply trying to create a "vibrant, family-friendly environment."

Read the rest here:
Here's why Google makes Trump's Truth Social app unavailable to 44% of Americans - PhoneArena

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Overall health has always been a hot topic of conversation, and inevitably talk of weight issues takes center stage. But even if your goal is not to lose weight, weight loss apps can be a great way for you to maintain your current weight, gain weight, track workouts, log hydration levels, introduce healthier foods into your diet or just monitor your overall health. With so many downloadable weight loss apps available, it can be exasperating to figure out which one is the best one for you.

The best weight loss apps will teach you sustainable healthy eating habits, educate you on portion control and promote balanced meals, says Stefani Sassos, MS, RDN, CSO, CDN, NASM-CPT, Deputy Director of the Good Housekeeping Institute Nutrition Lab. Hydration, sleep, activity, mental health and so much more play into the holistic health equation, arguably far more so than weight. Apps that provide support in those areas in addition to encouraging healthy food choices are ideal.

The registered dietitians at the Good Housekeeping Institute are here to help you navigate this crowded field and find the app that will help you achieve your goals. Please note that weight loss, health and body image are complex subjects before deciding to go on a diet, consider visiting our article that investigates the hazards of diet culture.

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Our registered dietitians took the following factors into consideration when reviewing and choosing these apps: Range of features, ease of use, cost, community and social networking opportunities, dietary preferences, and ability to log fitness, sleep and hydration. We also looked for apps that encouraged mindfulness and relaxation techniques and ones that were rated the highest among users on both Android and iOS.

When selecting the ideal weight loss app, you'll want to consider the following:

Meeting your wellness targets: Not all apps are created equal, so its important to find one that is tailored to your needs and lifestyle. If you travel a lot maybe you may want choose an app that has a large database and contains both local and international brands. If you cook at home, look for an app that welcomes a variety of ways to track such as with photographs or by entering recipes. Apps that provides healthy recipe ideas and substitutions may also be a great choice if you need guidance with meal prep.

Affordability: Most apps offer some sort of free trial, so you can give it a road test before committing to the full month or year subscription. Our experts say its important to carefully compare advantages of both short term and longer term commitments. The great thing about apps is that you can figure out if it's going to work for you after a few tries, so feel free to experiment and test it out for a month or two before you make a major commitment.

Community: If you are motivated by the shared experiences of others, look for an app with larger membership numbers and greater social opportunities, such as Facebook groups. Check out the activity and quality of interactions on the apps social media platforms before committing.

The experts in the Good Housekeeping Institute Nutrition Lab stress that these apps are not regulated and many are not formulated with dietary or medical experts. In addition, these apps require some work on your part, so it depends on how much time and effort you can commit to logging your daily foods. For many people, these systems work well because they hold them accountable for the foods they eat, although research is mixed on the effectiveness of apps. The concept is akin to a financial budget, which works only if you accurately track of your spending. When you are logging everything that you consume, you might be surprised at how many calories you are taking in, and that could encourage you to make different choices. As a bonus, these apps can help to keep you on track with staying properly hydrated and maintaining physical activity. Basically, its up to you to get the most benefit out of these apps.

Take note: For individuals with a history of disordered eating, logging calories could be associated with unhealthy dieting practices. In this instance, the use of weight loss apps should be avoided or monitored closely by a healthcare provider.

Weight loss apps arent for everyone, but they can be a useful tool to help to educate you about your diet and to teach you how to make healthier choices. It is always important to remember that there are many factors that go into successful weight loss including setting a realistic weight range that works for you and that you can maintain without feeling restricted. Genetics, life stage and overall health can also play a role.

Remember that there is no magic pill for weight loss; the goal should always be to improve your overall health and to learn how to make better choices when it comes to food and nutrition.

A well-balanced diet should consist of plenty of nonstarchy vegetables, lean proteins, healthy fats, whole grains, nuts, seeds and fruit. If you can use these apps to help you add more vegetables to your meals and to eliminate sugary foods and beverages while becoming more aware of what you consume, then it's a win.

As a registered dietitian, Amy Fischer has worked with thousands of patients to improve their overall health through a whole foods and nutritious diet. Amy believes that food is to be enjoyed even on a weight loss journey and that while calories count, the focus should be on health, eating and living better and not just losing weight.

Having been through her own weight loss journey and providing nutrition counseling to patients and clients for the past eight years, Stefani Sassos, registered dietitian and Deputy Director of the Good Housekeeping Institute Nutrition Lab, is passionate about sustainable weight management and healthy eating practices. Shes extremely well versed in the current health and wellness app space and leads category testing efforts for Good Housekeeping.

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11 Best Weight Loss Apps of 2022, According to Registered Dietitians - Good Housekeeping