Tecnología

Amazon already has the number one Shopping app in the App Store, but the company believes it still has room to grow. Now, to incentivize more customers to install its app and shop from their phones, the online retailer is pushing out a mobile referral program that’s paying up to $10 for each new mobile app user. That is, Amazon is offering current app users $5 to share the Amazon App with friends, and it will give your friends who install the app $5 to spend on the site. Both are in the form of an...

Pinterest has a new way to entice users to come back and buy things: keeping tabs on the price. That comes in the form today of a new tool that helps Pinterest users monitor price drops on products they’ve pinned. When users save pins, they’ll get a heads up when a price drops in the form of an in-app notification and an email. They can then jump straight to that pin and make the purchase. The tool was driven by some user behavior the company expected to see in the shopping experience, Pinterest product marketing manager Sarah...

There’s no shortage of ideas and projects in the virtual reality space. There are tons of studios popping up all over the world to create immersive content for the platform. With the Oculus, HTC and Sony offerings coming next year, now’s a better time than any to dabble in the space. If only there was money to be raised. Welp, Colopl, a company deeply rooted in mobile gaming, solved that with a newly launched $50M fund. Here’s what the company said in its release: After two years of VR research and development, plus dozens of developers...

If you’re a Vine user then you know that finding new clips can be difficult. I rely mostly on my network to surface really funny Loops, but the team wants to make it easier for you. Today it has introduced a new channel within the app called “For you.” Here’s what Vine had to say about it today: Our home feeds on Vine are filled with posts from the accounts we follow across comedy, music, sports and more. The world of entertainment on Vine extends far beyond our home feeds. There’s a ton of great content created...

Finnish mobile OS maker Jolla, whose Sailfish platform is one of the few remaining alternatives trying to fight the Android-iOS duopoly, has pulled out of its latest financing death valley by closing a delayed Series C financing round. A relieved chairman, Antii Saarnio, confirmed to TechCrunch Jolla has received the “first tranche” of the investment — which he said will stabilize the company’s financial situation. “It’s not often that you can actually recover from the very, very difficult situation but we have done it,” he said. Late last month the Finnish mobile OS maker announced it was having to temporarily let go of half its...

Facebook this year continued to hold the number one position as the top app installed on U.S. smartphones based on the average number of unique users, according to a new report out this week from Nielsen, but its mobile messaging application clocked in as the fastest-growing app of 2015. Having foreseen the shift from more public social networking to private communications, Facebook forced users to install Messenger in spring 2014 by ripping out chat from its main app. In the months since, the app has soared to the top of the App Store’s charts. Over 2015, Messenger...

Facebook should tell me what to do tonight. It already knows what I like, where I live, and who I hang out with. Now it will. After accidentally becoming the most powerful force in party invitations, Facebook is jacking us into its omniscient view of the event landscape. Starting today on iOS, Facebook has a powerful new Event browsing experience. First, rather than suggesting Events on random dates, you can now specify if you’re looking for something to do today, tomorrow, this weekend, or next week. There’s also a “Suggested For You” section based on all...

The worlds of gaming, sports, live music, commerce and adult entertainment are all primed for a revolutionary consumption shift with the advent of virtual reality (VR). Fantasy shall become reality; a new age of immersive entertainment lies just around the corner. And just as the world progressed from radio to television, so too shall it do so with VR. Lo and behold, we have the Samsung Gear VR as this Christmas’ must-have VR toy. Virtual reality, nestled under your tree, for the low, low price of only $99 (plus the $500 Samsung smartphone you need to actually...

China may be the world’s largest app market when it comes to downloads, but new data indicates that those download numbers aren’t translating into loyal users who return to apps on regular basis. According to a report released this morning from eMarketer, citing data from Alibaba-owned analytics platform Umeng, the majority of mobile applications launched in China struggle to retain users. In fact, most apps don’t engage users for more than a week, the research indicates. The Umeng report, which was based on data from the apps tracked on its platform – the firm tracks 780...

Meet Alive, a Swiss Army Knife for live photos on the iPhone 6s. There are many live photo editing apps out there, but this one is particularly well designed. Alive lets you turn your live photos into gifs, make animated collages with multiple live photos and clean up your live photo library. But the best part is that it’s my favorite way to view live photos on my phone. Developed by the team behind Dispatch and Clips, Alive doesn’t try to do everything, but it does a few things right. When you first launch the...