Substack is building on its interactive Chat feature, today introducing an integrated video tool for creators.
Newsletter creators who use the popular platform can now send videos directly to their subscribers in chat. Those subscribed to a creator’s chat will be instantly notified that a video has been uploaded.
Creators can use their phones to record and upload these videos directly onto Substack.
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In a blog post written by Jasmine Sun, Product Manager at Substack, the feature is described as «an easy way for creators to speak directly to their subscribers», without being at the mercy of algorithms on other video-centric platforms.
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«We built video in Chat for publishers who wish to speak directly to subscribers in this way,» writes Sun.
«Think of video in Chat like sending a voice memo to a group chat, or recording a video for your Instagram story—minus the opaque algorithm deciding whether your post gets seen,» reads the post, which didn’t miss a chance to take a dig at Meta-owned social giant Instagram.
Substack has certainly gotten into videos more seriously, involving video podcasts and shareable clips into its options for newsletter writers. The platform appears to be adapting and redesigning its products to keep up with the sea of social media platforms out there, as seen with the many features introduced in the past few years: the invention of chat, private newsletters, and «Notes», to name a few.
With this latest feature, it seems the platform is ready to take on even more functions – and perhaps attempt to eclipse competitors.
New York-based Revel has made a lot of pivots since initially launching in 2018 as a dockless e-moped sharing service. The BlackRock-backed startup briefly stepped into the e-bike subscription business. It launched and now operates a handful of electric vehicle charging stations across the five boroughs. And it started an all-Tesla, all-employee ride-hail service, in part so its charging infrastructure would see guaranteed utilization.
After dropping the moped sharing business in 2023, Revel is pivoting once again to abandon one of the main things that made its ride-hail service unique: The startup is laying off its over 1,000 drivers and embracing a gig worker model similar to that of rivals Lyft and Uber.
The move comes after Revel successfully piloted the model in late February with 100 Revel drivers, and has since brought on 100 more.
“The reason we ran this pilot in the first place was just increasing feedback from our driver pool, as well as in our recruitment efforts,” Haley Rubinson, vice president of corporate affairs at Revel, told TechCrunch. “The leading reason people didn’t want to join Revel was the lack of flexibility.”
Rubinson, who was Revel’s first hire, said that drivers were initially attracted to the platform because they didn’t want to deal with the hassle of owning or renting their own vehicles, buying insurance, dealing with 1099 taxes and managing their own expenses. But now, she says, Revel is having trouble recruiting drivers to its platform.
“We have to be responsive to what the industry is telling us,” said Rubinson.
In the email sent to employees that TechCrunch has viewed and Bloomberg first reported on, Keith Williams, vice president of rideshare operations, said that four out of the five drivers who piloted the gig worker model would recommend the program.
The question of flexibility has been at the heart of the debate over whether ride-hail drivers should be classified as gig workers or employees. If salaried employees are in fact asking to be made into contractors, Revel’s switch could lend credibility to arguments made by Uber and Lyft as the companies fight across the country to maintain their current gig worker models.
“Now there really is the opportunity to serve more of the city’s for-hire vehicle population,” said Rubinson.
Current drivers on Revel’s payroll will have the option of staying on with the company as independent contractors after September 12, when the switch will take effect. Drivers can sign up to rent from Revel’s fleet of Teslas for $10 per hour, which includes auto liability insurance, vehicle cleaning and maintenance and a full day of battery charging.
In 2025, Revel will open up the platform to drivers with their own EVs, giving the startup an asset-light way to grow the business and offer riders a better service. Revel has made over 2.5 million rides with its fleet of 550 Teslas, but customer wait times have been a problem with such a small fleet. Especially when compared to Uber and Lyft, whose driver numbers are in the hundreds of thousands in NYC.
That said, Rubinson says Revel’s ride-hail portion of the business recently hit gross margin positivity and was tracking to be EBITDA positive by the end of the year.
The increased fleets may also help Revel with its actual long-term bet – EV charging infrastructure. In 2022, Frank Reig, Revel’s CEO, told TechCrunch that over 90% of its charging hub utilization came from Revel’s own ride-hail fleet. That number has since shifted to about 50% as EV adoption increases, according to Robert Familiar, Revel’s senior corporate affairs manager.
Revel has three active EV charging hubs in NYC – two in Brooklyn (Bed Stuy and South Williamsburg) and one in Long Island City, Queens. The startup aims to launch another hub this summer at Pier 36 in lower Manhattan right of FDR Drive, a highway that runs along the East River. Rubinson said Revel also plans to launch three more: One near LaGuardia Airport, another in Maspeth, Queens that’ll be the largest site with 60 plugs, and another in the Bronx.
Outside of New York, Revel is eyeing San Francisco and Los Angeles.
In total, Revel has raised around $214 million since its launch, per Crunchbase data. TechCrunch has reached out to backers at BlackRock, Toyota Ventures and Maniv to learn how investors view the startup’s latest shift, but did not hear back in time.
The moves have rattled fans. Hardcore Xbox customers are upset that exclusives are available on rival consoles, with many wondering why they should continue to invest in the Xbox ecosystem when Microsoft is shutting down studios and its games are appearing on rival platforms anyway. Sunday’s Xbox Games Showcase is a chance for Microsoft to try and get fans excited about the future again. I’m expecting two big game reveals, a lot of release dates, and some surprises along the way.
At the heart of all the turmoil leading up to this Xbox showcase are strategy shifts for both hardware and first-party games. Microsoft has promised a big technical leap for its next-gen Xbox, and the company is rumored to be working on an Xbox handheld. But there’s an ongoing project to bring more games to rival consoles like the PS5 and Nintendo Switch that could undermine both hardware efforts.
The plan that’s proven so controversial with hardcore Xbox fans is known internally as “Project Latitude,” sources familiar with Microsoft’s efforts tell me. Project Latitude started off with an initial wave of games, including Hi-Fi Rush, Pentiment, Sea of Thieves, and Grounded,heading to the PS5, with some going to the Nintendo Switch, but the plan extends beyond these four games and into some titles that might surprise Xbox fans.
U.S. astronauts Barry «Butch» Wilmore and Sunita «Suni» Williams left Earth on Wednesday in a new Boeing spaceship, after a string of delays and engineering problems that spanned a decade.
Following two scuttled launch attempts over the past month, the third try appeared to be the charm with a seamless countdown. Starliner‘s first crewed test flight blasted off at 10:52 a.m. ET from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. It is the sixth time in history NASA astronauts had launched on a new spacecraft.
The United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket hoisted the capsule into the sky, blowing out enormous plumes behind it. NASA confirmed the ship, named Calypso by Williams, reached space minutes later.
«Suni and I are honored to share this dream of spaceflight with each and every one of you,» Wilmore said right before liftoff. «Let’s put some fire in this rocket, let’s push it to the heavens where all these tough Americans are prepared to be.»
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The long, thorny history of Boeing’s Starliner spaceship
If the flight goes as planned, Wilmore and Williams will reach the International Space Station on Thursday and remain at the lab, about 250 miles above the planet, for about a week. Williams is the first woman to pilot a new orbital spacecraft.
For the ride home, rather than plop the astronauts into the ocean as SpaceX does, Boeing will bring the astronauts home to the Army’s White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. A system of parachutes and air bags should cushion the capsule’s desert landing.
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NASA hired Boeing and SpaceX to build spaceships to carry astronauts to and from the International Space Station in 2014. While SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule went into service four years ago and has since ferried at least 50 people into orbit, Boeing’s Starliner has yet to pass muster. The legacy company has struggled to resolve a series of issues with the spacecraft.
NASA astronauts Barry «Butch» Wilmore and Sunita «Suni» Williams wave to crowds prior to a previous launch attempt on June 1, 2024. Credit: NASA / Joel Kowsky
But problems with the rocket — not Starliner — caused the past two scrubbed launches. On Saturday, a ground computer that takes over when the rocket is in the final minutes of the countdown executed the abort. Teams have since swapped out a faulty power distribution unit that caused the automated launch cancellation. Mission managers inspected the replacement and approved the rocket for another liftoff attempt this week.
A successful flight of Starliner would help to secure a second commercial carrier for taking astronauts into space. No longer serviced by its own Space Shuttle, NASA hitched rides on Russian rockets after 2011 to the space station. Though SpaceX has provided a taxi service for NASA since 2020, the agency never intended to have all its eggs in Elon Musk‘s basket and says it’s still crucial to have a backup.
If certified, Starliner missions will have the ability to take up to four astronauts to the station at a time, increasing the amount of research at the orbiting lab.
«Right now we only have two ways to get humans into space. One was with the Soyuz and our Russian partners, and we all know that our relationship with the Russian Federation is a little bit tricky,» said Mike Fincke, an alternate NASA astronaut for the Starliner crew. «This redundant way to go is so that if something goes wrong with anybody, we still can get people up and down to the International Space Station.»
Starliner is carrying close to 800 pounds of cargo, which includes food, clothing, exercise gear, medical supplies, photo and media equipment, tools, and other items, including a thumb drive of 3,500 images of children’s artwork.
Twitch has come up with a solution for the ongoing copyright issues that DJs encounter on the platform. The company announced Thursday a new program that enables DJs to stream millions of tracks in a new DJ Category, giving them more clarity on which songs are safe to use in their streams.
The only catch is DJs have to cough up a portion of their earnings.
This move is part of a larger initiative to avoid DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) takedown notices. These notices have been a consistent problem for the many DJ streamers on Twitch who incorporate prerecorded music from artists into their own mixes. According to the company, the number of DJs streaming on the platform more than quadrupled, with 15,000 of them monetizing off streams. In May 2020, creators began receiving thousands of weekly music-related DMCA notifications from record labels.
Participating DJs in the program must contribute a percentage of their earnings from streams to cover some of the music rights costs. Twitch partnered with all major labels to bring a majority of popular music to the offering, including Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and Sony Music, as well as several independent labels represented by music licensing partner Merlin.
Twitch didn’t disclose the exact fee that DJs have to pay. However, in an official blog post, Twitch CEO Dan Clancy clarified that the cost is determined by how a channel monetizes. So, fortunately, DJs who aren’t monetizing on the platform don’t need to pay anything.
On the bright side, the company said it’s helping most DJs pay 50% of the royalties. Additionally, a one-year subsidy is being offered to existing Twitch DJs, providing financial support and a transition period to adapt to the new program.
“We’re proud to be the first major service to provide a safe, permanent home for DJs to livestream, and we’re excited to now be able to promote and support these creators as they build communities on our service and beyond,” Clancy said.
The program is launching later this summer.
Twitch will soon require DJs to share part of their revenue with the music industry.
«We’re going to have a structure, where we are going to have to share money with the labels, it doesn’t come for free… we’re going to split whatever the cost is.»#TwitchNews#TOSgpic.twitter.com/YndPV8JIcH
Clancy previously revealed details about the program in an interview with channel TweakMusicTips two months ago.
He said, “We are going to have to share money with the labels, it doesn’t come for free. I’ve already told a number of DJs this, and they realize, of course, they’d rather not have to share some money, but [Twitch is] going to split whatever the cost is.”
“It’s crucial that DJs understand the status quo on Twitch was not sustainable, and any viable future for the community required we find a solution,” Clancy wrote in today’s post.
The company is hosting a livestream later today at 2:30 pm ET with Clancy and DJ Jazzy Jeff to celebrate the new DJ category.
Texting with emergency services is about to get an upgrade. Starting this winter, Google Messages will support texting 911 through RCS.
Using SMS to contact 911 is available at just over half of all emergency dispatch centers in the US, but in those areas, people using RCS will benefit from a handful of new features like location sharing and read receipts. The timing of the announcement — just days before Apple is expected to announce RCS support in iOS 18 — is probably no coincidence, either.
Google is working with a company called RapidSOS, which can already relay certain medical information to emergency responders for both iPhone and Android users. Once enabled by an emergency dispatch center, people texting that center via Google Messages will see the usual indicators that they’re messaging over RCS. They’ll also see read receipts and typing indicators when the dispatcher is responding.
RCS will also support higher-quality image and video sharing with first responders and will allow you to send your precise location. Google says it’s working with its partners to expand RCS messaging with emergency services and is “inviting the ecosystem to partner with us to provide reliable emergency messaging for everyone.” I can’t help feeling that’s a nudge in Apple’s direction, which is widely expected to announce RCS support at WWDC next week.
SAVE $70: As of June 5, get the Acer Chromebook Plus 516 GE (Intel Core 5, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD) for $579. That’s a discount of 16%.
Google’s newly-released Chromebook Plus line comes with new and improved specs and additional AI features for souped-up takes on the company’s classic computers. Just announced last week, the Acer Chromebook Plus 516 GE is essentially the same as one of our favorite gaming laptops, the Acer Chromebook 516 GE, but with a newer processor and a few other tweaks that make it worth picking up as an update. Plus, you can get it on sale for the first time right now.
As of June 5, you can get the Acer Chromebook Plus 516 GE (Intel Core 5, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD) for $579. That’s $70 off its normal price of $649, and a 16% discount. This is the first time the newly-released computer has seen any sort of sale price, so it’s a big deal if you want to buy a new Chromebook.
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This version of the Acer Chromebook Plus 516 GE comes with the Intel Core 5 120U processor (upgraded from the 12th-gen Intel Core i5) with 8GB of RAM, a 16-inch 1660p display as well as an RGB keyboard, and 256GB SSD for plenty of space to store all your docs, photos, and more. Plus, this version comes in a new Obsidian Black colorway, all for the same price as the original model.
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This powerful little laptop is our current favorite gaming Chromebook, and it’s well worth picking up at this discounted price. Grab yours before it’s gone.
