Lauren Forristal

Lauren covers media, streaming, apps and platforms at TechCrunch.

The Latest from Lauren Forristal

Prime members can now get a One Medical membership for $9/month

Amazon announced today a new One Medical membership benefit for Prime members, giving them access to affordable healthcare services for $9 per month or $99 annually. Originally $199 a year, members ar

Waze gets a new safety feature that warns you if a road has a history of crashes

Waze announced today the launch of crash history alerts, designed to notify you if a road you’re approaching has a history of crashes. The new feature is powered by proprietary AI technology, wh

Former Myspace founders introduce a text-to-video generator that uses your selfie to personalize content

For almost two decades, Chris DeWolfe and Aber Whitcomb — the minds behind social network platform Myspace and gaming company Jam City — have made it their mission to be on top of the hott

DoorDash tests warning non-tippers that their order could be slow to arrive

Shame on the non-tippers. As Americans tip customer service workers less and less, per a Bankrate survey, DoorDash is testing a new feature that aims to convince customers to tip their drivers before

Kaiber’s new app helps artists create music videos using generative AI tools

Kaiber, the generative AI creative studio behind the music videos of popular artists Kid Cudi and Linkin Park, announced today the launch of its new mobile app to give creators, musicians and artists

Apple Music shuts down its Siri-only Voice Plan nearly two years later

Google Search can now help you solve geometry, physics and calculus problems

Google updated its search engine and Lens tool with new features to help you visualize and solve problems in more difficult subjects like geometry, physics, trigonometry and calculus. The update allow

DistroKid users can now upload their songs to TikTok Music and CapCut

Thanks to a new agreement between TikTok and music distribution service DistroKid, millions of independent artists will now be able to promote their music on TikTok Music, the recently launched subscr

Agora enables brands to host live shopping events and auctions

Agora, the company that develops “real-time engagement” APIs, is making its livestream shopping technology widely available to help more brands build live commerce experiences, including s

Generative AI startup 1337 (Leet) is paying users to help create AI-driven influencers

There’s been a rise of virtual influencers in recent years — computer-generated personalities who are just as active on social media platforms as real humans are. Many companies are investing

Amazon’s new generative AI tool lets advertisers enhance product images

Amazon is rolling out a new AI image generation tool for advertisers to generate backgrounds based on product descriptions and themes. Amazon is currently beta testing the tool with select advertisers

TikTok partners with Tickets.com to sell tickets for its first live music event

A few months ago, TikTok launched its subscription-only music streaming service to compete with major players Spotify, Apple and Amazon. Now, the company appears to be throwing its hat in the ticketin

New app ‘Wyzr Friends’ helps older adults make friends, arrange carpools

Whether you’re an empty nester, divorcé or a newcomer looking to make friends in a new city, Wyzr Friends wants to be the go-to activity-based friendship app for adults 40 years old and up to conne

Anti-Instagram photo-sharing app Daylyy has no vanity metrics, filters or algorithm

While social media has its perks, it can also be a toxic wasteland crawling with hate comments, unrealistic body standards, scammers and spam bots. As this toxicity continues to infest the digital lan

Google Meet now lets you apply a skin-smoothing effect with its new portrait touch-up mode

Google Meet finally rolled out a portrait touch-up mode to compete with rivals Zoom and Microsoft Teams. The new capability allows you to apply beautifying features during video calls, including compl

TikTok ads expand to the real world with new ‘Out of Phone’ program

A few months after TikTok teamed up with Redbox to feature content on more than 3,000 kiosks, the short-form video app is partnering with more companies to expand its advertising opportunities for bra

Objective emerges from stealth to deliver multimodal search to developers as an API platform

Objective (previously named Kailua Labs), a multimodal search platform built by machine learning experts from Apple, Google, Meta, Amazon and Twilio, emerged from stealth today with $13 million in ven

PayPal’s app can now track your packages, even if you didn’t check out with its service

PayPal launched a package tracking feature on its app that allows you to instantly see the status of online orders. Rather than manually entering the order number into a carrier website or searching y

Swsh’s new app helps you maintain your friendships through polls and games

Ever since BeReal became popular among Gen Zers, giving them a platform to be their true selves rather than scrolling through heavily edited content, there’s been a rise in social apps that cater to

Live commerce startup TalkShopLive launches new app for sellers to broadcast on mobile

Live commerce platform TalkShopLive announced today its new Studio app for creators and brands, bringing an array of management and broadcast tools to mobile, including the ability to virtually collab
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