Thursday, March 27, 2025

Signal sees a surge in downloads

Thursday, March 27, 2025

Welcome to TC PM! Today we're looking at how the recent U.S. Signal fiasco has affected the messaging platform; we have updates from multiple social media companies; and we learn of a new AI factory being built in Africa.

TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: Signal

📈 Signal is surging: Encrypted messaging app Signal has been in the news a lot this week after Trump administration officials accidentally added a journalist to their Signal chat about war activities in Yemen. Now Signal is seeing a spike in downloads in both the U.S. and Yemen.

🎮 It's portable: Ahead of the launch of the Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo is releasing a feature called Virtual Game Cards, which will make it easier for users to port their existing Switch games to other devices. This makes a lot of sense.

🇲🇽 LatAm fintech: Mexico City-based Mendel wants to be the "Ramp for enterprises" in Latin America. Mendel is a one-stop shop for B2B spend and is currently focused on expense management, payments, and corporate travel.

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Afternoon must-reads

Image Credits: Silas Stein/picture alliance / Getty Images

😼 The copycats continue: Meta's Instagram is releasing a new feature that lets users speed up Reels videos by up to 2x. Does this sound familiar? If you use TikTok, you've likely come across this feature before.

👯 Speaking of Meta: Earlier this year, Mark Zuckerberg teased a return to the "OG Facebook." Now we see the first step toward that goal. The company is introducing a "Facebook Friends" tab that will only show updates from friends. What a concept. Do Instagram next.

🏃 Efficiency agents: Paris-based Twin today announced an automation agent in partnership with fintech Qonto, called Invoice Operator. This is Twin's first agent, and it probably won't be the last. The company thinks there are many industries that could benefit from B2B agentic applications.

🛍️ ShopTok till you drop: TikTok is planning on extending TikTok Shop, its e-commerce platform, to users in France, Italy, and Germany. This marks an expansion of the product in Europe; it has been available in the U.K. since 2021.

🚗 A gift to Tesla: None of the cars Tesla sells in the U.S. will be subject to the 25% vehicle import tax because its factories are in the U.S. That puts it in a great position. As Sean O'Kane writes, "Essentially every other automaker is in a worse position than Tesla, and the tariffs will especially affect competing EVs."

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Around the web

🤺 The girls are fighting: After Elon Musk gave a Nazi salute onstage a few months ago, many subreddits were blocking links to Musk's X platform in protest. Musk publicly attacked Reddit on X, and apparently privately went after Reddit's CEO, Steve Huffman, too.

🌍 AI in Africa: Africa is getting its first artificial intelligence factory. Zimbabwean billionaire Strive Masiyiwa's Cassava Technologies is partnering with Nvidia to build this factory, which will be powered by Nvidia supercomputers. Neat!