Tech

When the mobile, short-form content app Quibi launched on April 6, co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg surely wasn’t expecting it to release in the midst of a worldwide virus outbreak. In a New York Times interview, Katzenberg blames all of Quibi’s launch struggles on COVID-19. “I attribute everything that has gone wrong to coronavirus. Everything,” he said.

UPDATE: The Los Angeles Police Department has arrested “Ink Master” star Daniel Silva for murder, it announced Monday night. Silva was arrested in the death of YouTuber Corey La Barrie, who was a passenger with him in a car crash in Los Angeles on Sunday night, according to TMZ. It was La Barrie’s 25th birthday.

Twitter has introduced new labels and warning messages to posts that contain “disputed or misleading information” related to COVID-19, the company said Monday. The new labels — which will be retroactively applied to older tweets — will link to a Twitter-curated page (or an external “trusted source”) with additional information on the claims. If a

Paul L. Vasquez, the 2010 internet sensation whose astonished reaction to seeing a double rainbow went viral, died on Saturday. He was 57. Vasquez died in the emergency room of John C. Fremont Hospital, the Mariposa County coroner’s office told the Modesto Bee. Although a cause of death is not confirmed, Vasquez had been posting

How long will work-from-home last? Most Google and Facebook employees likely will not be going back to the office full time until 2021. The tech industry’s two biggest internet companies have told employees to settle into home-office routines through the end of the year amid the COVID-19 crisis. Both Google and Facebook this week said

Almost two months after Apple shut down retail outlets in most countries, the tech giant will begin reopening a handful of U.S. stores starting next week. In mid-March, the company said it was closing down about 450 stores worldwide for two weeks because of the coronavirus outbreak, before saying a few days later that all

The coronavirus crisis has played to the strengths of tech companies: People are staying indoors, increasingly using the internet and streaming more video than ever. It’s clear that the tech giants are well positioned to make it through the crisis relatively intact. “Alphabet [Google’s parent], Facebook and Amazon will be just fine,” says Tal Chalozin,

Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter and Square, has donated $10 million to CORE (Community Organized Relief Effort), the coronavirus-testing organization co-founded by Sean Penn. The donation, via Dorsey’s #StartSmall initiative, will let CORE open free COVID-19 testing sites in additional major metro areas as well as rural communities across the U.S. CORE has operated a

Traditional cable and satellite TV providers posted their most massive quarterly subscriber losses in the first three months of 2020, as the COVID-19 tornado started to hit the U.S. economy in March. What’s more, internet-delivered “virtual” TV providers registered a net loss in the period, too. And the cord-cutting bleeding is only going to get

Vice Media Group, amid the turmoil caused by the coronavirus pandemic, is getting a new head of human resources: Daisy Auger-Domínguez has been hired as the youth-media company’s chief people officer. Auger-Domínguez will officially start at the Brooklyn-based company next Tuesday (May 12), reporting to Vice Media Group CEO Nancy Dubuc. She takes over the

Who’s afraid of a pandemic-impacted market? Hip-hop artists aren’t, and neither is country star Kenny Chesney. Rap has dominated both the album and single charts in recent weeks and will again for the one that will be generated by the current tracking week, even as Chesney’s new “Here and Now” represents a conspicuous interloper .

Roku’s first-quarter revenue beat Wall Street estimates as COVID-19 quarantines have resulted in a massive streaming surge for the company. However, it warned that advertising revenue will see slower growth in 2020 than expected because of a pullback in U.S. spending. The company said it ended Q1 with 39.8 million active accounts, a net increase

A Quibi attorney argued on Thursday that the company would suffer “immense harm” if forced to disable its Turnstyle feature pending the outcome of a patent lawsuit. Eko, a New York-based video company, filed suit in March, alleging that Quibi had stolen its method of rotating video between horizontal and vertical orientations. Eko is seeking

Peacock just got some game: NBCUniversal inked a deal for the streaming service to be available on Microsoft’s Xbox One console family when Peacock is scheduled to make it nationwide debut in July. Peacock will be available on Microsoft’s Xbox One family of devices, including Xbox One S and Xbox One X, when it launches

Skateboard legend Tony Hawk and restaurateur/ author Chris Cosentino are featured in the second of Outpost’s Creator Exchange, a weekly live-streamed conversation between two different types of creators from different disciplines that launched last week. The chat takes place Friday (May 8) at 6 p.m. ET/3 p.m. PT. The conversations will be moderated by journalist

Comcast’s annual Xfinity Watchathon Week — promoting free on-demand content from dozens of partners — this year will feature a collection of Hulu original shows for the first time. As part of the massive 10,000-plus batch of free TV series and movies, available the week of May 11-17, the cable operator is including full seasons

Alamo Drafthouse, the cinema chain that largely popularized in-theater dining, is launching a video-on-demand platform called Alamo on Demand. Alamo On Demand, which was created in partnership with ScreenPlus and Vista Cinema, will allow the theater chain to extend services beyond its 41 locations in the U.S. Moreover, it provides a revenue stream while theaters

Patton Oswalt will return as host of the Webby Awards, with the stand-up comedian, actor and writer serving as emcee for the awards-show-from-home, set to be livestreamed on Tuesday, May 19. This year’s show, dubbed “WFH: Webbys From Home” by event organizers, will focus on those using the internet to respond to the impact of

Amazon Prime Video has taken the exclusive rights to drama series “Little Fires Everywhere,” executive produced and starring Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington, in Europe, Latin America, Canada and Australia, where it will launch on May 22. Based on Celeste Ng’s 2017 bestseller, “Little Fires Everywhere” follows the intertwined fates of the picture-perfect Richardson family

BuzzFeed, still hoping to avoid layoffs during the economic downturn caused by COVID-19, will furlough 68 staffers without pay starting next week through mid-August. Among other cost-cutting steps, the digital-media firm also will extend previously enacted scaled salary reductions through the end of the year. CEO Jonah Peretti announced the furloughs in a memo Wednesday

Here’s some real news about a fake (or, at least, unreal) star: Miquela, the digital avatar and music artist created by an L.A.-based entertainment company, has signed as CAA’s first virtual client, Variety has learned exclusively. Miquela, aka “Lil Miquela,” launched on Instagram in April 2016 without explanation — and today she has 2.2 million

Get ready to see a tide of T-shirts, toys and other merch based on “Like Nastya,” the hugely popular Russian-American 6-year-old YouTube vlogger. The family of Anastasia Radzinskaya, star of YouTube’s Like Nastya channel with nearly 54 million subscribers, inked an exclusive global deal with IMG to develop a line of licensed consumer products. The

Things got weird on the Chinese Internet in January. With at least 760 million of the nation’s residents — a group more than twice the size of the U.S. population — stuck at home amid coronavirus-imposed restrictions, people got creative and let their freak flag fly on the country’s local version of TikTok. As COVID-19

An Amazon employee who worked at its fulfillment center on Staten Island, N.Y., died after contracting the coronavirus, the company said Tuesday. He is at least the fifth Amazon worker to have died from COVID-19, according to media reports. In a statement, an Amazon spokesperson said, “We are deeply saddened by the loss of an

The American Film Institute’s AFI Movie Club, daily selections of favorite films new and old to watch during quarantine, is now available directly on the Apple TV app — thereby making it easier to stream the titles from the app or pay Apple to rent or buy the titles. Launched in March, AFI Movie Club’s

Apple set a start date of June 22, 2020, for its first virtual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), held entirely online given the COVID-19 pandemic. The weeklong WWDC20 will include keynotes, sessions, news and other events, all available in the Apple Developer app and on the Apple Developer website for free to all developers. (The price

BuzzFeed News has tapped a new editor-in-chief, veteran journalist Mark Schoofs who formerly worked at the digital-media company. But he will continue his work as a professor at USC. Schoofs takes over the role after former BuzzFeed EIC Ben Smith exited to join the New York Times earlier this year. BuzzFeed founder/CEO Jonah Peretti announced

YouTube is pumping up 2020 virtual pomp-and-circumstance circuit with a video graduation ceremony, including commencement addresses delivered by former President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama. YouTube’s “Dear Class of 2020” original special will feature other celebs and notable names including BTS, Lady Gaga and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The festival-style lineup will feature

Vizio hired Adam Townsend, who previously spent a collective 12 years at Showtime Networks and CBS in finance roles, as chief financial officer of the consumer-electronics brand. Townsend, who exited as Showtime’s CFO in March, takes over the role at Vizio after president/COO Ben Wong had been handling chief financial officer duties. Prior to moving to

Splice, the popular online music production marketplace that offers royalty-free samples and presets, has seen record-breaking activity since the start of the nationwide COVID-19 quarantine — and is using that momentum to give back to musicians in need. There have been over 1.1 million sound downloads a day on Splice since the week of March