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Weekly News For You To Stay Updated With The App Industry
Xiaomi financials apps removed from app stores in India
Xiaomi recently announced that the company has removed its financial services apps Mi Pay and Mi Credit from all the app stores in India, including its own app store, Xiaomi GetApps. This has come after a strategic assessment within the company, resulting in the closing down of Mi Financial Services in March 2022 and focusing more on the core business services. Mi Pay was a UPI payment network, whereas Mi Credit was an online curated marketplace for lending, to offer personal loans to Mi Fans.
Source: https://bit.ly/3TTqoLE
BeReal sees a 315% increase in MAU, secures $60 million in the funding round
BeReal, a French social media app, has gained immense popularity in the past year. A competitor to the popular photo- app, Instagram, BeReal asks users to post a photo of whatever they are doing within a span of 2 minutes, once prompted to. It has gained popularity among various celebrities, like Jimmy Fallon, Harry Styles, etc. According to Apptopia, the app’s MAU has grown by 315% between April 2021 and April 2022. It has also raised funding of $60 million in Series B pushing its valuation to €600 million.
Source: https://bit.ly/3DNNSMT
Apple is choking competition, destroying its audiobook store: Spotify
In another week of anti-competitive news, Spotify, in one of its blog posts, said that Apple is making it harder to sell audiobooks, a feature introduced last month. As per the CEO of Spotify, Daniel Ek, “Apple continues to dictate what online innovation looks like, doing serious harm to the internet economy, choking competition and the imagination of app developers. Apple has shown time and again that it will not self-regulate and has no real incentive to change.” The company also says that Apple’s restrictions are “far too complicated and confusing,” and they change “arbitrarily, making them impossible to interpret.”
Source: https://bit.ly/3DnLgUv
Hinge adds an extra layer of verification with a video identity feature
In order to combat fake accounts, the dating app, Hinge will roll out a video verification feature starting next month. Called “Selfie Verification,” the feature will prompt users to upload a video of themselves, which the app will use to confirm that the person in their profile picture is the same as the video. People who are confirmed by the app will get a “Verified” badge on their dating profile. In February, the Federal Trade Commission issued a warning to online daters, noting that people reported losing a record $547 million in 2021 from online dating fraud. This feature is a step towards protecting users from such fraud.
Source: https://bit.ly/3zwSpR0
Twitter acquired by Elon Musk, top executives fired
This has to be news of the week, one that everyone already knows by now, hence, this comes at the end of this blog. Elon Musk acquired Twitter at the cost of $44 billion. He arrived at the Twitter headquarters carrying a sink, tweeting about it saying, “Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in!” Sources say that he fired top executives, CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, and the head of legal policy Vijaya Gadde on his first day.
Source: https://cnb.cx/3SKD1HG
