HBO Max is almost two years old. Soon, the streaming service will add Discovery Plus to its catalog as the channel will become part of AT&T’s WarnerMedia. Instead of offering these two services as a bundle, WarnerMedia will incorporate Discovery into HBO Max.
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Snapchat is insanely popular with the younger demographic, and it flourishes in areas like schools, where there is a community of individuals using the app who see each other face to face.
One of Snapchat’s greatest weaknesses, though, is that it lacks good discovery tools built inside the app. It’s why I believe that its growth, although impressive, has been bridled in some instances. It’s why an app like GhostCodes can provide a valuable bridge to user discovery on the platform.
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T-Mobile is expanding its Binge On initiative that allows users to stream content in certain apps without using up their data allowance, and with today’s update YouTube, Google Play Movies, and many other services are now officially supported.
Vimeo is out with a new version of its iOS app today that adds support for iOS 9 features, improves content discovery, makes video sharing faster, and more. iPad users will be happy to learn that Vimeo now supports iOS 9’s picture-in-picture feature for video playback when using other apps. The video service has also tuned up video discovery features and recommendations in the latest version of their iOS app.
Screenshot via <a href="http://recode.net/2015/07/20/spotifys-personalized-computer-generated-playlists-are-here-and-theyre-pretty-good/" target="_blank">Re/code</a>
With custom playlists at the center of Apple Music’s discovery experience, Apple’s biggest streaming competitor Spotify is also focusing its efforts on playlists for its latest feature called Discover Weekly. It’s not exactly a “me too” feature, though, as Apple’s and Spotify’s approaches each differ in how playlists are created. While Apple highlights having human editors curating its featured playlists, Spotify is basing its new feature around listening behavior to deliver weekly recommendations…
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After updating its app for iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus last month, Instagram is out with a feature update today with some welcome features.
Users will likely appreciate the ability to edit photo captions and locations attached to photos in post now. That means if you make a typo on your caption, you no longer have to choose between correcting yourself in the comments, deleting and re-posting the photo with the correction caption, or just ignoring it altogether.
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Twitter launched its new music discovery app Twitter #music for iPhone today.
Twitter #music takes a step toward filling the void created when everyone migrated from MySpace, which was one of the most effective music discovery tools for me until it was largely vacated.
Twitter promises to “change the way people find music, based on Twitter,” per the social network’s blog, which I believe will be widely appreciated.
After receiving some clarification from Apple last night over the removal of discovery app AppGratis, CEO Simon Dawalt is weighing in today with a statement posted on the AppGratis website explaining that the situation has been “absolutely crazy” to deal with:
And that is pretty much where we stand, still stunned that Apple took the decision to destroy so much value within their own ecosystem, but more than ever convinced that what we’re doing is good, and accomplishing a much needed mission in a broken App Discovery world.
While explaining that App Gratis has gone through a number of rejections for breaking App Store guidelines in situations that were later resolved with Apple, Dawalt shed some light on what happened on Apple’s side:
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According to a report from CNET, Twitter might be preparing to launch a new standalone iOS music app as early as the end of this month. The report cites “a person familiar with the matter” and claimed Twitter would use technology it acquired through its purchase of music discovery service We Are Hunted to provide a music service dubbed “Twitter Music.” CNET says the service will provide customized content suggestions based on who users follow on Twitter. It would also apparently integrate with SoundCloud and carry Twitter branding unlike the company’s recently launched video sharing app Vine:
Twitter Music suggests artists and songs to listen to based on a variety of signals, and is personalized based on which accounts a user follows on Twitter. Songs are streamed to the app via SoundCloud.
The report provided a breakdown of how the app works, explaining that it will offer suggested songs and artists based on Twitter followers, links to songs people are listening to through the hashtag #NowPlaying, and popular and emerging tracks for trending and newly popular artists:
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