DeCODE The Week ≠ Audio & Video Technology Weekly

Pic taken by Lisa Maree Williams

Say Hi to the little platypus.

/News Briefing.

Twitter Spaces overtook Clubhouse

Twitter Spaces, a rival to the social audio service Clubhouse, has been iterating rapidly. Twitter has updated the preview cards that appear on the timeline and relabelled its “title” feature from an accessibility perspective. The rapid pace of development helped the new product reach Android users ahead of the Clubhouse this week.

WhatsApp introduced voice and video calling to its desktop companion app

These calls are encrypted end-to-end and will be extended to group calls later.

Netflix launches’ Fast Laughs ‘

This is a Feed similar to TikTok’s funny short video version. The feature, which is currently iOs-only, allows users to view full-screen, vertical viewing, including short clips of Netflix shows, and the ability to react to them, share them and add them to watch lists.

Spotify is expected to surpass Apple Podcasts in U.S. podcast audiences for the first time in 2021 **

There are now 28.2 million listeners on Spotify and 28 million on Apple Podcasts.

Microsoft releases Group Transcribe

It’s a new mobile translation app for group meetings. The app requires all attendees to record with their own phones, which improves accuracy and speaker recognition. It also offers a real-time translation service to help non-native speakers follow up.

Low-code streaming startup Stream raised $38 million

Stream raised the money to develop a service that lets developers build live chat and active subscriptions into their applications with just a few lines of code. The company now provides communications services to 1 billion users, including apps such as TaskRabbit, NBC Sports, Delivery Hero, Gojek, and more.

Social audio App Cappuccino

Social audio is growing in popularity thanks to apps like Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces. A startup called Cappuccino now wants to bring social audio to a more private place: the circle of friends. The Anti-Clubhouse app lets friends record private “podcasts” – designed for personal consumption.

In an interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin of CNBC and the New York Times, Gates said: “I actually use an Android phone. Sure, I use my iPhone a lot, but I still carry Android with me.

/Startups.

A16Z invests in online activity platform Hopin

Here is their Investment Letter:

The last 12 months have fundamentally changed the way we work together. In just a few short months, many businesses have had to adjust to a world in which people can no longer meet face to face. Conferences, training sessions, community gatherings, seminars — the number of parties moving to virtualization is endless.

As the world slowly recovers from the epidemic, it is hard to predict exactly what future gatherings will look like. However, we can be sure of two things:

1) It will not work as before; 2) It will involve a new generation of real-time communication technology that will bring people together in different ways.

Hopin quickly became a standout among the many companies and development tools that began to seize this opportunity. In a very short time _(the company was founded in February 2020!) They are the leaders in this field with their integrated platform of events. From hosting large corporate events to Streamyard’s live event production, Hopin has won customers with its outstanding execution speed and event experiences that resemble real-world events.

None of this will come as a surprise to anyone who has met Johnny Boufahat. He first came up with the idea for Hopin while battling an autoimmune disease that prevented him from attending events in person. Since then, he has developed a series of compelling products almost entirely under the stress of the epidemic and the increased demand for highly reliable platforms. We have had the opportunity to meet Johnny several times over the past year, and each time he proposes his plans, we think they are bold, even impossible… .

It wasn’t until a few months later that he practiced and even surpassed his original idea again and again! We sometimes see this level of execution in growth investment projects, but rarely on such a large scale and in such a short period of time.

For these reasons and more, we are excited to announce that A16Z will invest in Hopin from the Growth Fund and that Sriram Krishnan will join their board of directors. For Sriram, it was a natural next step in his relationship with Johnny and Hopin, who had spent the past year staying up late talking about products and building the company.

Over the next few years, we will be working with Johnny and his team to help them build their products and businesses. This is just the beginning ーー and we can’t wait to see all of you at our Hopin event soon!

Hopin website:https://hopin.com/

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