Posts by Nick Papple

Good afternoon, Early Risers! Here’s what you need to know TECH Facebook is re-testing SMS. Facebook wants to make Messenger your one-stop shop for all your communication needs. A few years ago SMS was part of Messenger, but because of the low user adoption, Facebook decided to drop it. Now Facebook thinks it’s time to…

Good afternoon, Early Risers! Here’s what you need to know TECH Should you A/B test your dating profile?  Coffee Meets Bagel says yes, you should — and they want to help. For a small fee, CMB offers its premium users all kinds of ways to find out whether their profile is working or not, like ranking and…

Good afternoon, Early Risers! Here’s what you need to know TECH “Think of these as the Oscars for the hoodie generation.” It’s the glitz and the glam without any of the pressure… or the public interest, said Crunchies host, comedian, and actress Chelsea Peretti. TechCrunch held its annual Crunchies awards on Monday night. Here’s an inside look at the…

Good afternoon, Early Risers! Here’s what you need to know TECH Google is offering 2GB of free Drive storage today. This is the easiest free 2 GB of free storage you’ll get all year. How it works: Complete Google’s “security checkup” — it takes less than a minute, I did it this morning, and you’re…

Good afternoon, Early Risers! Here’s what you need to know TECH The hidden science behind great Super Bowl ads. “I got a question for ya… What does this city know about luxury?” Five years ago Chrysler stole the show with its “Imported from Detroit” Super Bowl ad (no.13). “Selling an American car was a tough task [in…

Good afternoon, Early Risers! Here’s what you need to know TECH “My bathroom mirror is smarter than yours.” “Sometime late last year I realized that I wanted my ordinary bathroom mirror to be more like the future we were promised in the movies,” says Max Braun. Instead of waiting for “the future” to come to Max;…

Good afternoon, Early Risers! Here’s what you need to know TECH Uber’s cringe-worthy rebranding process. On Tuesday, Uber rebranded. Check your phone app, I’ll wait… What was wrong with the old brand logo, you ask? Nothing. But, according to Wired, “This is a problem [Travis Kalanick] has been working through for more than two-and-a-half years.” Two years.…

Good afternoon, Early Risers! Here’s what you need to know TECH Musk be a slow news day indeed. If you haven’t heard yet, Elon Musk is getting a lot of heat over cancelling one of his customer’s Tesla Model X pre-orders because of a “rude” open letter this customer published. The open letter bashes Tesla’s poorly run launch event…

Good afternoon, Early Risers! Here’s what you need to know TECH What’s up WhatsApp? “When Facebook Inc.’s Mark Zuckerberg agreed to pay a staggering $19 billion for WhatsApp Inc. in February 2014, his justification was simple: The messaging service was expected to reach 1 billion users and become essential for a sizable slice of the world…

Good afternoon, Early Risers! Here’s what you need to know TECH What Facebook can teach you about success. Before I reveal the tipping point to Facebook’s success over the past four years, we need to go back to 2012 — when consumer habits took a hard left. “People started viewing websites and using apps on…

Good afternoon, Early Risers! Here’s what you need to know TECH “It’s communication with a wink.” “Once he had a working prototype, Alex Chung sent a link to a few friends — who sent it to a few friends, who sent it to a few friends. Within hours, Giphy had more than 30,000 page views, and…