<p>Patreon, a subscription platform for online creators, has signed podcasting partnerships with Sony Music Entertainment and Amazon&#8217;s Wondery, the company announced on Wednesday. Patreon says the partnerships are designed to make the site a home to fan engagement and exclusive perks for shows from major podcast networks, as the company looks to expand beyond its [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Zelle is shutting down its stand-alone app on Tuesday, according to a company blog post. This news might be alarming if you&#8217;re one of the over 150 million customers in the U.S. who use Zelle for person-to-person payments. But only about 2% of transactions take place via Zelle&#8217;s app, which is why the company is [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Skylight, a startup taking on TikTok with a more open alternative, is launching its mobile app to the public on Tuesday after just 10 weeks of active development. The app, which is backed by Mark Cuban and others, is now one of many to build on top of the AT Protocol &#8212; the same technology [&hellip;]</p>

<p>TikTok is shutting down its Instagram competitor, TikTok Notes, on May 8. The photo-sharing app launched in testing in Canada, Australia, and Vietnam last year. The company is notifying TikTok Notes users of its decision to retire the app and is directing them to ByteDance-owned Lemon8, which isn&#8217;t surprising given that the apps are quite [&hellip;]</p>

<p>You know the online dating scene is bad when dating giants like Tinder are now introducing AI personas for users to flirt with. On Tuesday, the company announced a new game powered by OpenAI, allowing users to interact with an AI bot to practice flirting, reenact meet-cute scenarios, and receive scores with suggestions for improving [&hellip;]</p>

<p>OpenAI&#8217;s ChatGPT may be the world&#8217;s most popular chatbot app. But rival services are gaining, according to data from analytics firms Similarweb and Sensor Tower. Similarweb, which estimates traffic to websites, including chatbot web apps, has recorded healthy recent upticks in usage across bots like Google&#8217;s Gemini and Microsoft&#8217;s OpenAI-powered Copilot. Gemini&#8217;s web traffic grew [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Despite Google&#8217;s intentions for its default image viewing and editing app for Android, the Photos app has, over the years, become one of the most popular photo backup services around. In fact, it was one of the most attractive offerings for years until it stopped offering unlimited storage in 2020. That change in the tech [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Apple Intelligence, the iPhone maker&#8217;s suite of AI-powered tools and features, is gaining new features. Most notably, the company on Monday announced that Apple device owners will now be able to take advantage of Priority Notifications, which allows Apple&#8217;s AI to highlight your most time-sensitive notifications in a new format. Other updates are coming to [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Apple announced on Monday that it&#8217;s rolling out visionOS 2.4, bringing Apple Intelligence-powered AI features to the Apple Vision Pro. The update also introduces new spatial experiences and the Apple Vision Pro app for iPhone. With Apple Intelligence on the Apple Vision Pro, users will get access to writing tools that allow them to rewrite, [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Encrypted messaging app Signal continues to see spiking downloads in the wake of the messaging scandal that saw The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg added to a group chat where high-ranking officials in the Trump administration were discussing an attack on Houthi rebels in Yemen. The resulting press coverage around the leak of these sensitive plans [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Substack continues to double down on video amid TikTok&#8217;s uncertain future in the U.S. The company announced on Monday that it&#8217;s rolling out a scrollable video feed in its app, making it the latest platform to introduce a TikTok-like feed. Given the timing of the launch, Substack is likely aiming to capitalize on the potential [&hellip;]</p>

<p>President Donald Trump has said that a deal with TikTok&#8217;s parent company ByteDance to sell the app will be finalized before the April 5 deadline, Reuters reports. &#8220;We have a lot of potential buyers,&#8221; Trump told reporters. &#8220;There&#8217;s tremendous interest in TikTok. He added, &#8220;I&#8217;d like to see TikTok remain alive.&#8221; Trump extended the deadline [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Media software maker and streaming app Plex on Monday released an updated version of its mobile app. The redesign features a new user experience, reorganized navigation that includes giving its Watchlist a dedicated spot, and other changes that aim to make it easier to access power-user features for Plex customers who use the company&#8217;s personal [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Manus AI, the viral AI agent platform out of China, on Monday morning launched two subscription plans starting at $39 per month. Manus, which is still in beta, is an AI-powered agentic tool that can be used to complete tasks ranging from creating a web page for a wedding invitation to crafting a scoring sheet [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Apple is developing a new version of its Health app that includes an AI coach that can advise users on how to get healthier, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. Gurman first reported that something like this was in the works back in 2023, but now he says development is moving ahead, with the new features [&hellip;]</p>

<p>WhatsApp launched a new feature on Friday, where users can include brief music clips in their Status updates, reminiscent of the Myspace era. Status resembles Instagram Stories and allows users to share photos, videos, and text that disappear after 24 hours. When creating a new Status, users can tap on a music note icon to [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Google said today that it will start offering user choice billing in the U.K., giving Google Play developers the ability to use other billing options instead of Google&#8217;s own system. The change kicks in on March 29, initially only to non-game developers. If developers opt for it, they cannot replace Google Play billing altogether. Instead, [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Meta-owned Instagram is copying yet another feature from TikTok. This time, it&#8217;s the ability for users to play a reel at 2x speed by long pressing on the right or left side of their screen. When TikTok first launched, videos could only be 15 seconds long. As the years passed and TikTok rose in popularity, [&hellip;]</p>

<p>TikTok is set to expand its TikTok Shop e-commerce platform to users in France, Germany, and Italy on Monday, Reuters reports. TikTok Shop has been available in the United Kingdom since 2021, and now the company is ready to expand farther into Europe. While TikTok Shop is also available in the United States and saw [&hellip;]</p>

<p>The encrypted messaging app Signal is getting some unexpected attention this week. High-ranking officials in the Trump administration, including Vice President J. D. Vance and Secretary of Defense Peter Hegseth, communicated the plans for an attack on the Yemeni Houthis via a potentially unauthorized group chat on Signal. However, Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was mistakenly [&hellip;]</p>