Matthew Lynley says, “Tim Kendall’s new job is to make sure Pinterest’s partners are finding new ways to make money off one of the most engaging platforms on the Internet. He’s been plenty busy since he got started, including launching Buyable Pins. We sat down with him to find out a little bit more about the company’s commerce plans. “It is tempting to draw a buy button on a product and say you’ve enabled commerce,” Kendall said. “In our case we feel like we’ve built the full end-to-end capability. We now offer 2.5 million products that are buyable.” Kendall said,... [...]

Frederic Lardinois says, “Skyscraper launched last year as a pretty straightforward blog advertising service with a focus on helping bloggers make money through direct ad sales. That’s still a main part of its business, and it is currently serving up more than 1.5 million ads every day, but as its co-founder Paul Burger told me last week, the company’s focus is slowly shifting to becoming a full-service blog monetization service that “covers all bases.” Until today, Skyscraper was only available as a closed beta, but it’s now open for all. Today, Skyscraper is also launching its... [...]

Josh Constine says, “Facebook plans to open up its Periscope livestreaming competitor to more than just celebrities. In replies to requests from Verified Pages about when they’d get access to the VIP-only Facebook app Mentions that houses Facebook Live, the company wrote “In the future, Mentions will be available to verified Profiles”. When I asked if that would include Facebook Live, it told me it plans to roll Mentions out to verified Profiles soon, which includes access to Live. Given Facebook changed its tune from just a week ago when it was cagey about when more people would get... [...]

Drew Olanoff says, “Have you heard about the Tinder Meltdown (TM)? Some even called it a “stunt.” In case you haven’t, here’s the quick and dirty: a piece appeared on Vanity Fair that Tinder didn’t like. And it reacted. On Twitter. A lot. I asked a few communications industry professionals how they thought Tinder was going to back its way out of this 30 tweet tirade. Some thought they’d blame a social media person. Nah, that’s weak. Some thought they’d claim they were hacked“. “How Not To PR” By Tinder TechCrunch  [...]

Anthony Ha says, “If you’re sending emails or other messages to your customers, there’s a standard way to measure your success — you look at whether they opened those messages, and whether the openers actually clicked. But that’s setting the bar kind of low isn’t it? I assume you’re usually trying to drive some sort of behavior, whether it’s making a purchase, trying out a new feature, reactivating an account, or whatever. That’s what customer communication company Intercom aims to measure with a new feature called Message Goals. “I still think there’s absolutely value... [...]

Josh Constine says, “Google just announced a big restructuring of the company, sending shares up about 6 percent in extended trading. After the announcement, shares of Google rose 5 percent, but have since risen even further. As part of the restructuring, Larry page is now the new CEO of a parent company called Alphabet, while Sundar Pichai will be CEO of Google. According to a regulatory filing, Google’s business will include “search, ads, maps, apps, YouTube and Android and the related technical infrastructure.” Clearly, investors like the move. Google, which basically prints money... [...]

Alex Wilhelm says, “Shares of Twitter, a popular social media company, fell sharply today, dipping nearly 6 percent by midday trading. The company’s equity fell in value below the $30 mark, setting new lows. As of the time of writing, shares of Twitter are worth just over $29. For context, Twitter went public at $26 per share, and saw its value skyrocket. The firmdebuted at $45.10 per share1, and managed a 74 percent day-one pop. Investors, quite simply, were ecstatic about Twitter. The street was not done, however. Twitter’s value on a per-share basis nearly reached the $70 mark in... [...]

Alex Wilheml says, “Shares of Twitter, a popular social media company, fell sharply today, dipping nearly 6 percent by midday trading. The company’s equity fell in value below the $30 mark, setting new lows. As of the time of writing, shares of Twitter are worth just over $29. For context, Twitter went public at $26 per share, and saw its value skyrocket. The firm debuted at $45.10 per share1, and managed a 74 percent day-one pop. Investors, quite simply, were ecstatic about Twitter. The street was not done, however. Twitter’s value on a per-share basis nearly reached the $70 mark in... [...]

Harrison Shih says, “Following the launches of brand-centric services on sites like Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Google+, social media was the place for businesses to acquire new users and engage their fans. This seemed like an efficient way to get exposure: Businesses could essentially “rent” a spot on Facebook, much like a small shoe brand could rent a store in the mall to take advantage of the infrastructure and heavy foot traffic. As brand pages grew on social sites, they tracked volume metrics such as the number of “likes” or followers, as well as interactions such as sharing... [...]

Josh Constine says, “35 million people run into a Facebook email and password login roadblock on iOS each day, and over half of them bounce. That’s why Facebook confirms to me that it’s testing a new tool that lets users log in to Facebook on Safari with one tap, rather than having to type in their credentials — which most don’t. It could ease frustrations for users while boosting Facebook’s ad tracking. Former TechCrunch writer MG Siegler spotted the test, and Facebook responded with details after I inquired. Users in the test who click external links inside Facebook’s iOS app... [...]