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In this case, it appears that the shopper base was content with the old model, and it certainly seems like the model was working well for shoppers despite more chaotic income rates.
And as Instacart continues to expand, it’s going to have to not only rely on a good shopper experience and marketing, but also positive word of mouth from shoppers. | Apps |
If even a “vocal minority” ends up fighting back against changes, that’s going to cause a potential optics issue for the company’s attempts to attract new shoppers.
“What we look at, from the shopper’s perspective, there is a market-clearing wage that we have for shoppers,” Mehta said. “What we benchmark is with other on-demand services and other jobs that are similar. | Apps |
We need to make sure we are paying competitive to those. That’s better than anyone else, this is a competitive market, if shoppers are not able to earn a competitive wage on Instacart they will defect to other platforms.”
Customers will still pay a service fee at checkout. “This payment will be used to guarantee a higher commission to all shoppers,” the company said in a blog post. | Apps |
“Shoppers will no longer need to depend on tips for the majority of their compensation. This also means that customers no longer need to feel obligated to tip. | Apps |
However, if a customer wishes to recognize exceptional service, they will have the ability to tip their shopper directly on the Instacart platform.”
This update launches on October 17 in Washington D.C., and the change comes to San Francisco and Instacart’s other markets on October 24.. | Apps |
mParticle announced today that it has raised $17.5 million in Series B funding.
The New York City startup helps marketers collect user data through a variety of services and then funnel that data to other marketing and analytics tools. | Advertising Tech |
Co-founder and CEO Michael Katz said this not only reduces integration challenges and technical difficulties, but also helps businesses get a more unified view of their customers.
The Series B was led by Bain Capital Ventures, with participation from Social Capital (which led the $15 million Series A that mParticle announced at the beginning of this year).
The company says it’s managing data on more than 1 billion mobile users each month, with new customers that include Jet, Hulu, Foursquare, Postmates and Chick-Fil-A.. | Advertising Tech |
null | Mobile |
Today, Pinterest said it hit 150 million monthly active users, up from the 100 million it announced in September 2015.
However, as TechCrunch previously reported, Pinterest in 2015 was targeting that it would hit 151 million monthly active users by the end of 2015. We reported the story in October last year, and the information was used by Andreessen Horowitz to solicit limited partners to invest in a special investment fund for Pinterest earlier in the year.
With Pinterest growing by half this year, it looks like it may miss on its 2016 projections that it set earlier last year as well. | Mobile |
Leaked documents reviewed by TechCrunch at the time also projected that Pinterest would end 2016 at 218 million monthly active users. The Wall Street Journal today also reported the company is expected to triple last year’s revenue to $300 million in 2016. | Mobile |
That, too, falls below projected estimates of $663 million for 2016 from those leaked documents.
Again, these projections came in early 2015, and companies are constantly revising them as the years progress. | Mobile |
Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann, in response to those projections, told The Wall Street Journal that “there were some early projections when we were just a couple months into building the business, but we’ve learned more about it.”
“Start up life is dynamic, and years old projections aren’t particularly relevant to where companies are today,” Andreessen-Horowitz partner Jeff Jordan, who is on Pinterest’s board, told TechCrunch. | Mobile |
“We’re thrilled with Pinterest’s performance — strong continued user growth, best-in-class user engagement, and an increasingly robust platform for advertisers that’s leading to rapidly expanding revenue. We’re very excited about what’s to come.”
Revenue of $100 million for 2015, and potentially $300 million for 2016, are enviable numbers for a consumer ad-driven startup that’s only 7 years old. | Mobile |
This isn’t really a reflection of poor performance for Pinterest, it would seem — just that the expectations may have been set a little high. Many startups are sometimes valued, to some extent, at a multiple of next year’s revenue. | Mobile |
While Pinterest’s valuation is likely also relative to the latent pent-up marketing and user demand, as well as its growth and overhead, it would still seem the company needed to reset its expectations.
Last week, the company announced that it had brought on its first chief financial officer, former Twitter executive Todd Morgenfeld. | Mobile |
But at that time, The Wall Street Journal reported that the company had generated $100 million in 2015, which fell below its projections of $169 million. | Mobile |
To be sure, 50% growth year-over-year would be an enviable clip for any service with more than 100 million users (as in, Twitter), but there has always been a question as to what the upper bound of Pinterest would be beyond really powerful use cases like wedding planning or recipes.
There are a lot of potential reasons for this. | Mobile |
With Facebook still immensely growing, scooping up new communications platforms and offering a wider array of advertising products, advertisers may be more inclined to simply stick to what they know. And the experimental budgets that these firms have, which previously may have gone to Pinterest, may be shifting to other emerging platforms like Snapchat, which has 150 million daily active users. | Mobile |
Snapchat, a 5-year-old company, is already projecting revenue as high as between $500 million and $1 billion for 2017.
The souring on alternative platforms to Facebook and traditional advertising has been made increasingly apparent as Twitter’s valuation has dropped off a cliff. In recent weeks, reports came out that suitors have emerged (and slinked back, and emerged, and so on) to buy Twitter. | Mobile |
That sent Twitter’s shares rocketing up, but it’s since cratered back to a market cap of around $12.5 billion. That’s not too far off from Pinterest’s valuation of $11 billion in its previous financing round.
Pinterest has increasingly offered an advertising tool that serves a larger funnel than other services. | Mobile |
While Facebook — and likely Snapchat — are very effective at awareness and brand advertising, Pinterest has billed itself as a way for marketers to push users further and further toward conversion. It can get their attention at the awareness phase, their intention to purchase with search, and finally a conversion when they are pinning products or even purchasing them. | Mobile |
For many kinds of products, particularly fashion, Pinterest is one of a very small set of marketing tools that touches users at every point in a purchasing life cycle.
That’s also why it’s been aggressively investing in tools surrounding visual search, including a tool that would allow users to search for products with photos from their smartphone cameras. | Mobile |
Those sort of things are designed to capture the moment of an impulse purchase, increasingly offering alternative marketing products to its partners — and potentially to draw advertising dollars away from Facebook (or Snapchat).
In addition, Pinterest is also an online advertising service. | Mobile |
Something like that might generally require little overhead, and to be sure, the company is generating a lot of revenue. | Mobile |
It raised $553 million in its last financing round that valued it at $11 billion, so at face value it would appear that the company shouldn’t have any fear of running out of cash despite a lot of R&D investment and talent acquisitions — to go along with a healthy revenue stream.
What remains to be seen is whether this represents a more general trend for Pinterest. | Mobile |
Will it being to see slowing user growth similar to Twitter, or more sustained gains like Facebook? The company’s international expansion appears to be going effectively, with 80 million of its users coming from outside the United States. There are of course different cultural quirks in different countries, but there’s clear demand for a service like Pinterest.. | Mobile |
Samsung is hoping to keep its customers with incentives, including a $100 credit for Note 7 owners who stick with a Samsung device as their replacement hardware. But carriers are leaving the door open for buyers to pick whatever kind of smartphone they want instead. | Gadgets |
A new survey conducted by e-commerce agency Branding Brand suggests that a decent number may end up moving to other brands, and Google’s new Pixel phones could get a sizeable early bump for its new premium approach to in-house designed hardware.
Of those surveyed, which include 1,000 Samsung smartphone owners (of any devices, not just the Note 7), has found that 40 percent of respondents won’t buy another device from the manufacturers, which represents a 6 percent increase in the number of buyers looking elsewhere compared to the first time Branding Brand ran this survey just after the first Note 7 recall.
Of that group, 8 percent of those planning a switch will buy a new Google Pixel (which wasn’t yet announced when the first survey was conducted), and 30 percent will switch to iPhone, with the remaining 62 percent saying they plan to go to another Android maker. | Gadgets |
Compared to the original survey, those considering iPhone dropped 4 percentage points, which means Pixel is looking like a legitimate premium competitor to some at least, alongside iPhone and Samsung’s top-tier hardware.
Pixel still represents a very small percentage of buyer choices in the survey, of course, but the fact that it’s tipping the scales at all already represents a kind of victory for Google and its marketing efforts around the device. | Gadgets |
I still don’t think Pixel will make a sizeable dent in the premium smartphone market this year, but Note 7 woes could help it make a stronger showing than it would have otherwise.. | Gadgets |
Periscope is embracing professional streaming and expanding beyond amateur content shot on phones with its new Periscope Producer feature. | Apps |
It allows creators to generate a special URL that they can then stream to from a wide array of devices, including professional cameras, studio editing rigs, satellite trucks, desktop streaming software like OBS, games, VR headsets, drones and later, potentially 360 cameras.
Periscope Producer is Twitter’s answer to Facebook’s Live API, which similarly allows news rooms, brands, web celebrities, app developers, and others to livestream to mobile and web users. | Apps |
The feature could help fill Periscope and Twitter with more polished content, filling the gap between off-the-cuff Periscope phone broadcasts, and the big licensing deals Twitter has struck with the NFL and other premium content makers.
Today Twitter will start offering Periscope Producer access to more creators who apply here, with availability on iOS now and Android coming soon. | Apps |
Eventually Periscope wants to roll it out to all streamers as well as provide an API for programmatically initiated broadcasts.
Check out our interview with Periscope CEO and co-founder Keyvon Beykpour about the potential for Periscope Producer and its impact on Twitter’s strategy above.
“We’re taking a big step towards allowing any live broadcast, captured on mobile or otherwise, to be piped into Periscope and vicariously Twitter” Periscope co-founder and CEO Kayvon Beykpour told reporters yesterday at Twitter HQ. | Apps |
When asked if Periscope might eventually serve ads on Producer-based streams or help creators monetize, Beykpour said “Periscope Producer is definitely laying the groundwork to do those explorations.”
Periscope Producer has been in testing for six weeks with launch partners like ABC’s Dancing with the Stars, CBS 12, Estadao, Fusion, Louis Vuitton, The News & Documentary Emmy Awards, Walt Disney Studios, XBox UK, and TechCrunch’s Disrupt conference. | Apps |
You can click these links to check out what they’ve created with the feature.
If you have Producer access, you’ll be able to go into your Periscope app’s profile settings, and in Additional Sources you can generate the streaming link you’ll enter into your professional equipment. Once your stream starts recording, you’ll see a preview in Periscope from which you can publish the stream publicly. | Apps |
Once a stream has started, you’ll have all the typical Periscope features, like visible replies from the audience, view counts, feedback hearts, and more. Tweets hosting Periscope videos can also be embedded on the web.
Periscope Producer won’t actually help make your video itself look more professional. It’s just a new pipe. | Apps |
But creative content makers using their own software or equipment can create overlaid graphics, swap in images or videos, take call-ins from Skype, stream from the first-person perspective of a VR headset, or use iOS ReplayKit to broadcast live gaming footage. Creators can even make their streams or games react to viewer comments or feedback. | Apps |
The Periscope team built a version of Flappy Bird that goes faster and gets harder as more viewers send hearts.
“We think this is the lowest common denominator to giving the most people access to this tool” Beykpour says about building Producer as a feature available in Periscope’s app rather than an API only more experienced developers can use. | Apps |
The streaming link method means anyone with a desktop streaming studio app like OBS can instantly broadcast through Producer with no coding skills necessary.
For example, bedroom web TV host Alex Pettit used Producer to show sponsorship reels, bring on Skype call-ins, and display overlaid graphics like you’d see on CNN.
Tyler Hansen used Producer to stream from a Mount Everest VR game.
TechCrunch has been testing Periscope Producer since September, and found it to be powerful and simple to use. | Apps |
There were a few issues, though. Periscope Producer streams get cropped into squares within embedded tweets, which can cut off the sides of the video as seen below. | Apps |
Longer streams can suffer since Producer doesn’t offer a way to republish tweets with the link, so you’d have to manually promote your stream during the broadcast after it drops down Twitter’s river.
Periscope will to prove the reach of Producer streams in order to attract broadcasters. | Apps |
The easier the set-up and the bigger the audience, the more creators who’ll be willing to syndicate video to Periscope or make content for its specifically. | Apps |
It will be competing with Facebook Live video, which can now be watched on televisions, and YouTube Live, which has close ties to creators.
Getting more broadcasts piped in is critical for Twitter at a time when live video is emerging as its best bet for success. | Apps |
It needs to demonstrate any long-term business potential it can right now as it’s accepting acquisition bids from Salesforce and possibly others. Rather than just being the second screen for television, Producer could bring that the best video content to Twitter so it can be the first screen too.. | Apps |
null | Apps |
Song identifying app Shazam is rolling out music video channels to all of its 120 million monthly active users in a partnership with Vadio, a Portland-based startup. Through their partnership, whenever a user taps on the Shazam icon to identify a song, a thumbnail of the official music video for that track will display on the song’s Shazam page.
As we recently reported, the Shazam app has been downloaded over 1 billion times since the company was founded in 1999 and has finally become profitable.
Thankfully, the videos don’t just auto-play. | Apps |
A user has to click on the video thumbnail to make that happen. | Apps |
After the first video concludes, another relevant video will cross-fade in and begin playing through Vadio. Vadio shares a portion of its ad revenue with content creators but declined to discuss specific terms.
Something like a mashup of Outbrain and Vimeo, Vadio’s technology “ingests” premium video content, mostly music videos, distributes them and monetizes them with advertisements. Vadio CEO Bryce Clemmer said that Shazam and Vadio aim to “influence the discovery of new video content,” through this integration.
Vadio does not yet offer users an offline mode for bookmarking video channels to keep watching on the go, but Clemmer said the company is always working with partners to develop new features.
In a company statement, Shazam said the integration of Vadio is part of an effort to “give fans a great reason to spend more time with Shazam.”
Video channels within Vadio can be curated by editors, auto-generated using trending data, or built by marketers to reflect what they think are the interests of their targeted audiences. That means Shazam, or other platforms using Vadio, could extend a new type of creative unit, a video channel, to advertisers or artists on their platform.. | Apps |
Tucked away inside Pandora’s rebranded app, launched yesterday, the company was hiding its first iMessage app, too. | Apps |
In fact, it’s the first third-party party streaming music service to launch its own iMessage extension, the company says.
That’s not to say it’s the only music-focused iMessage app, of course.
Apple Music already lets you share your favorite songs within iMessage, and Shazam recently launched a similar tool to both detect and send songs directly in iMessage.
However, Pandora’s app works a little differently.
Shazam and Apple Music’s iMessage extensions both point users to Apple Music and iTunes after a track preview is shared with the friend.
Meanwhile, Pandora’s app also lets you send a 30-second sample within a chat thread, but if the recipient likes the track, they can tap it to start a Pandora artist station based on that shared track instead.
The experience works better if both parties have the Pandora app installed, though the recipient doesn’t need to be logged in to hear the track (just start the station.) And if the person you’re sharing with doesn’t have Pandora installed, they’ll be prompted to download it, the company notes.
Obviously, kicking of artist radio stations via a shared music clip isn’t as useful as being able to go directly to that artist and listen to their entire song, album, or catalog, as with an on-demand service. | Apps |
However, given that Pandora’s install base tops 78 million users, it’s more likely that your friends have Pandora on their phone rather than any other third-party music service, including Spotify, which has 40 million subscribers as of September, or even Apple Music, which announced at its iPhone 7 event that it had grown to 17 million subscribers.
In order to share songs, you simply launch the iMessage app while playing a Pandora station on your phone.
The current track will immediately pop up under “Now Playing” in the iMessage extension. | Apps |
Pandora’s curators will also handpick tracks that are good for sharing, including the current top hits and those that are trending.
As a bonus, the app includes a dozen stickers you can use to annotate your message. | Apps |
These are fairly basic – a thumbs up and thumbs down, a heart, lips, sad and happy emojis, and a few that say things like “Fire” or “Jam Alert,” among others.
There are also a couple of versions of the new Pandora logo included in the sticker pack. | Apps |
Why? Uh…because branding?
The iMessage extension arrived in yesterday’s app update, but like all iMessage apps, it only works if you’re running iOS 10.. | Apps |
Want Google Assistant, but don’t want to spend your allowance on a Pixel? I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is you can get it with two tiny tweaks to a single config file — the bad news is you’ll need root access, and there’s no guarantee it’ll work on your phone in particular.
⚠️ Warning! Danger! ⚠️Don’t try this unless you know what you’re doing. | Artificial Intelligence |
Fiddling around in root and bootloaders can and does brick phones. Make a backup first — lots of users are reporting problems.
With that said… XDA user and shiba inu brianelv runs the thread with details and a growing compatible-phones list, and Lifehacker has step-by-step instructions.
Save and reboot, then go to Settings>Apps, select Google, and clear its data and cache. | Artificial Intelligence |
It should reload with Assistant built in, which you can call up with a long home button press.
Don’t have root? You may still be able to get the feature if you have an unlocked bootloader; you’ll need to go through a custom recovery image or the built-in fastboot. | Artificial Intelligence |
Even more problems are being reported with this method, though, possibly due to mismatched build.prop files.
Mit Panchani runs you through the process below.
Uninstall the Google app entirely to start. Then download the files from here (thanks FaserF) and flash them, GoogleAssistantVelvet.zip first and then GoogleAssistantBuildProp.zip second. | Artificial Intelligence |
Reboot, OK the extra permissions Google now wants and you should be off to the races.
Sound like too much trouble? It might be! It’s risky! You probably shouldn’t. This Assistant doesn’t sound like all that much fun anyway. You’re going to anyway? Well, I tried.. | Artificial Intelligence |
Lyft has struck a landmark partnership with one of the largest operators of senior living facilities in the U.S., Brookdale Senior Living.
Through this partnership, Brookdale residents will be able to book a Lyft ride, on-demand or pre-scheduled via a concierge in their community, no smartphones or apps required. | Apps |
The rides will be billed to their rooms, and they won’t have to give out personal credit card information to book them.
According to Andrew Smith, Brookdale’s Director of Strategy and Innovation, Lyft’s app will also be included in tech education courses for seniors living in Brookdale communities. | Apps |
Seniors who do use smartphones, or web-enabled feature phones, will be able to learn how to book Lyft rides on their own from Brookdale tech educators.
The partnership is the latest indication of Lyft’s strategy to gain users in the massive, aging boomer demographic. | Apps |
Uber has pursued a similar strategy, partnering with cities to and senior groups and facilities within them to offer tech education and services.
In January, Lyft announced it was launching something called Concierge, a service that lets a “requester” book non-emergency medical transport for seniors.
Via Concierge, a requester puts in a passenger’s name, pick-up and drop-off locations and Lyft dispatches a driver with a vehicle that can accommodate their needs, including wheelchair-friendly vehicles.
Brookdale does run some transportation services of its own to take seniors on a regularly scheduled basis to shopping centers, museums and other cultural or social hubs, as well as medical appointments.
But Smith said Lyft will give residents more personal freedom in between those scheduled rides, and can help Brookdale tap into a network of Lyft drivers and avoid having to navigate all the mom and pop transportation services in every market where they operate.
Brookdale is currently facing a False Claims Act lawsuit filed by a nurse, Marjorie Prather, who previously worked there alleging $35 million worth of Medicare billing fraud. | Apps |
The case was recently reopened by the U.S. | Apps |
Court of Appeals after previous dismissals.
The Lyft service is currently being piloted at 10 Brookdale communities around the San Francisco Bay Area and Phoenix, Arizona.
If it proves a success, Brookdale will consider expanding it across their 1,114 facilities across 47 states, where more than 100,000 seniors live today.
Both companies are slated to discuss innovation and technology design for and with seniors at the Aging 2.0 OPTIMIZE conference in San Francisco on Friday October 14th.
Aging 2.0 seeks to improve the lives of older adults through media and events that bring senior care professionals together with tech entrepreneurs, and connect both to senior communities who can inform the design of their products and services.
Updates: After publication we added information to this post about a lawsuit Brookdale is facing for alleged billing fraud.. | Apps |
Tribe’s voice recognition video chat technology could make Snapchat and Facebook Messenger look outdated. That tech also attracted a $3 million seed round led by prestigious VC Sequoia, its first seed investment of the year.
Today, Tribe’s one-touch video walkie-talkie app launches a huge Version 2 update on iOS and Android powered by access to some unreleased Google voice APIs. | Apps |
You still hold down on a friend or group’s tile to send them a short, asynchronous video message, but now Tribe automatically adds subtitles to your video chats. And if it recognizes you’ve said a “Magic Word,” Tribe will offer a helpful related link.
Say “coffee” and Tribe offers a button to send a calendar request overlaid on your video chat. | Apps |
Say a celebrity’s name and it will link to their social media accounts. | Apps |
Products link to Amazon, locations link to maps and songs playing in the background link to Spotify.
Cyril Paglino, CEO and founder of Tribe, calls this “augmented messaging.” He built the features because, he says, “I want Tribe to be the most convenient app for me and my friends.”
Now the question is whether these features are enough to pull people away from the standard messaging apps they use, like iMessage, Facebook Messenger and Snapchat. | Apps |
Those all do video, but Tribe wants to make the format the default way people communicate, with text just for when you have to be quiet or share details people need to copy.
Tribe already has 500,000 downloads since its founding in August 2015, and now has 40,000 daily users. It built that community on a meager $500,000 seed round from Ludlow Ventures raised last November. | Apps |
But with the new cash secured in May from Sequoia, plus Ludlow, Partech Ventures and Kima Ventures, Tribe is ready to challenge the world’s most powerful chat apps. | Apps |
And if it doesn’t work out, I’m sure one of the tech giants would be happy to scoop up this product team.
“Professional breakdancer” isn’t on the résumé of most startup founders, but that was actually how Paglino got the idea for Tribe. While signed with Red Bull’s dance team, he traveled across Europe making friends. | Apps |
But trying to keep up with them all over text messengers like WhatsApp was too slow. You can’t type as fast as you can think on mobile. But you can talk.
After building and selling a startup called Wizee in his home of France, Paglino realized he could create an app to solve his typing problem. | Apps |
With Tribe, instead of mashing out long text messages, you simply hold down on the screen, record a video message and it’s instantly sent to friends. | Apps |
Paglino teamed up with some buddies, rented a hacker house in San Francisco’s secluded Dolores Heights for them to live and work from and pushed out the MVP of their app in December.
Tribe is still video first, but it’s also adding a text option just in case you need to send someone something they’ll want to copy and paste, like a phone number or address. | Apps |
Tribe is also branching out from just being for personal contacts to allow Telegram-style public rooms. For now you’ll have to watch every video left in the room, in order, but the startup is building feedback and ranking features to algorithmically show you the best ones first.
But the big new feature, Magic Words, could be the key to monetizing messaging without annoying its users. | Apps |
Affiliate links to Amazon are one obvious way Tribe could make money. There are also opportunities for tie-ins with other apps, like pushing people to certain ride-sharing services. | Apps |
Paglino imagines that one day you might use Tribe to get per-minute legal advice or telemedicine from a doctor.
The first step is mass traction, though, which could be difficult when everyone’s social graphs are already established on other apps. | Apps |
Tribe does let you pull in your Facebook friends, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Facebook cut off access for competing with it, which it’s done to messaging apps in the past. | Apps |
Video might be more vivid and less taxing on your thumbs, but not everything needs a face behind it, and utilitarian chat platforms could feel easier than Tribe.
What Tribe is betting on is that the shift to video will upend these chat apps like iMessage, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp that are essentially desktop IRC programs ported to mobile. | Apps |
And with Snapchat’s increased focus on broadcasting of Stories instead of private messaging, and the failure of Taptalk, there’s a huge open space.
Tribe and Sequoia think that gap can be filled with a video walkie-talkie that doesn’t just let you talk instead of type, but actually understands what you’re saying.
Tribe 2.0 already has one loyal user: Paglino’s mom, who’s deaf. | Apps |
Thanks to the subtitles, she can still see the face of her son and video chat with him even though he’s far away in Silicon Valley, chasing his dream.. | Apps |
With Android Experiments, Google is giving itself the freedom to experiment with quirky little apps that show off some interesting technologies but don’t really have any other real purpose. | Apps |
The latest of these experimental projects is Sprayscape, a VR camera app for Android that is probably not quite what you expect when you read the words “VR camera app.”
Unlike similar apps, including Google’s own Cardboard Camera, Sprayscape doesn’t simply capture a 360-degree sphere. | Apps |
“Just point your phone and tap the screen to spray faces, places, or anything else onto your canvas,” is how Google describes it.
When you first try the app, it’s not immediately obvious that you shouldn’t keep your finger on the screen as you move around. All that will give you is a very blurry image. | Apps |
It’s all a bit weird, but oddly fun, too.
Once you’ve captured your 360-degree photo collage, you can share your photos with the rest of the world via a link.
The app uses the Cardboard SDK to read gyroscope data and the NatCam Unity plugin to control the camera. | Apps |
Google has published the app’s code on GitHub, so if you want to build a similar app, you can use Google’s code to see how it’s done.
If you want to give it a try, you can download the app here.
. | Apps |
A startup called Shine is rolling out a new service offering on-demand life coaching via text messages as a paid tier to its free, daily texting service. While a number of today’s chatbots and SMS-based concierge services have been focused on helping people shop via text message, Shine to date has instead focused on helping you become a better person. | Mobile |
Through automated texts, Shine delivers daily self-help, encouragement, and advice to its subscribers, via either SMS or Facebook Messenger.
With the debut of Shinevisor, it’s preparing to introduce a more personal touch: advice and guidance from real people, who are certified life, career, and school coaches.
Launched into beta roughly a year ago, Shine’s free service is largely targeted toward a millennial audience. | Mobile |
Every day, it sends out an automated text that tackles life’s struggles. | Mobile |
For example, recent texts I’ve received from Shine have delved into subjects like facing criticism, trying to let go of the need to exert control over everything, overcoming procrastination, practicing patience, learning self-compassion, and so on.
Many of the texts are particularly tuned into issues you would face at work, and in particular those that women deal with in their careers. | Mobile |
As co-founder Naomi Hirabayashi explained at last year’s launch, half of women report having experiences with self-doubt about their performance and careers, compared with 31% of men. Shine wants to address that.
Each Shine text starts of with an introduction to the day’s subject, which you can respond to by texting back “M” (for more). | Mobile |
Shine then sends additional insight, including the why’s and how’s of the issue and hand, as well as further reading via web links.
As of this summer, the service had sent out over 2.8 million messages to a user base that’s almost entirely (88%) under the age of 35. | Mobile |
Today, that number has grown to 10 million messages, to an audience that’s 70% women.
Now, Shine is experimenting with the next phase of its business: personal, one-on-one coaching. | Mobile |
Through Shinevisor, users are connected with a certified coach they can text any time.
According to messages recently sent out to early Shine users, a number of members have been asking for the ability to talk to a real person for advice on work, school and life.
These advisors and coaches are first vetted by Shine before being connected to users. | Mobile |
They have to have accreditation from a formal coaching program, many are referred through the Dreamers // Doers community for entrepreneurial women, and they receive virtual training to make sure their coaching is on-brand in terms of Shine’s voice, energy and personality.
The cost for this service is not cheap, however. Shinevisor is a fairly steep $15.99 per week (billed on a 12-week basis). | Mobile |
That’s nearly as costly as the co-pay at a therapist (for those with health insurance), even though it isn’t like having an in-person session.
Instead, this real-world life coach will listen to your venting, your problems, and your life goals, via text, then write back with customized advice, feedback, and guidance. | Mobile |
They’ll also send articles on the subject, so you can learn more about whatever it is you’re facing. Paid members are guaranteed at least one texting session per day, and the messages are sent asynchronously.
“We’re meeting people where they are in terms of the platform – which is on the go,” explains Hirabayashi. | Mobile |
“So you can text your coach at any time, and they’ll get back to you when they’re able, and vice versa. | Mobile |