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Bumble rolled out a handful of new safety features on Monday, including ID verification, in an attempt to draw in a new class of users who are focused on safety. ID verification requests a government-issued ID to authenticate the user’s age and name and then adds a badge indicating they are who they say they are on their profile. Users can then filter profiles by both photo verification and ID verification. ID verification is now available in 11 markets, including the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, with plans to expand further. Another safety-focused feature, Review Before You Send, addresses the messaging section, where users often receive inappropriate content. Originally launched for the Compliments feature, it prompts users to revise flagged messages before theyre sent. In addition, the company is launching a new “Share Date” feature that lets users share details about their dates with selected contacts. The safety efforts could help Bumble bring users to its namesake dating app at a time when the broader dating industry is dealing with post-COVID slumps, generational changes in dating behavior, and AI making it harder than ever to tell who is real or fake. Bumble, whose founder Whitney Wolfe Herd is back in the helm after leaving the post a little over a year ago, is pushing to revitalize the dating and social connection company. Bumble reported a 3.8% decline in quarterly app revenue in its most recent earnings report. Bumble’s biggest rival Match Group is also feeling the pressure. The company, which owns Hinge, Tinder, and other star dating apps, recently swapped out chief executives. The company’s new leader, Spencer Rascoff, sent employees a note last week that called for increased focus on product and user experience. Rascoff said that going forward, users need to be at the core of every choice. Every product decision, policy, and innovation must be guided by their experience and outcomes, he said. Trust is the foundation of real connections, and we are committed to rebuilding it with urgency, accountability, and an unwavering focus on the user.
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E-Commerce
More than a year after her viral project was shut down, TikToks Tunnel Girl has officially been given the green light to resume digging a massive tunnel beneath her home. On her TikTok account @engineer.everything, the womanwho identifies herself only as Kalahas built a following of over 657,000 by documenting her ambitious, off-the-books tunnel project in Herndon, Virginia. Despite the handle, Kala has no formal engineering background; she began digging in 2022 as a hobby. While many viewers were fascinated by her underground progress, others questioned the legality of the endeavor. Are we are we allowed to build tunnels? one commenter asked under Kalas one-year anniversary recap video. The answer, as Kala eventually discovered, is nonot without proper permits. After nearly two years of work, her project was shut down in January 2024. @engineer.everything Should I go deeper? #engineering #minecraft #secrettunnel #construction #mining #diy Beautiful Paradise – Aga Alamsyah “They did give me a stop work order and are requiring an immediate evaluation by a professional engineer. Fortunately, contrary to rumors here, it is constructed entirely below the slab of my house and it shouldn’t be too hard to get the permits and approval,” she explained in a TikTok video posted shortly after. @engineer.everything Replying to @dogs.bestfriend Sadly yes, but we are working it out. #engineering #mining #tunnel #permits #construction Suspenseful and tense orchestra(1318015) – SoLaTiDo Turns out, she was right. The permits have now been approved, and the tunnel is officially back in progress. A video posted last week shows Kala receiving a phone call and unrolling stamped construction plans. You have permits now, so clearly you did a good job!” one commenter wrote. Another added: Digging is one thing, but navigating a complex permitting process after the work has been done is nearly miraculous. If you’re inspired to dig your own tunnel, dont expect the process to be easy. “I’ve had to go and get a lot of engineering certifications, a lot of tests, and provide a lot of documentation and provide a lot of calculations and information for the permit process,” Kala told the news station WUSA9. The tunnel system currently extends 22 feet below ground with a 30-foot entrance below her house on her property. Where does it lead? Nowhereyet. “The permits that I submitted for only goes about where I wrapped up right now,” Kala told WUSA9. “My permits have a note that [the tunnel] may be expanded in the future, of course, I’ll have to go through the engineering process, the permit process, but I would like to potentially go a little bit further.” Kala hopes to finish the tunnel within the next six months. The end goal? A self-contained underground shelter just outside the footprint of her homebecause, well, why not?
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E-Commerce
A little over a decade ago, Netflix decided to take streaming into its own hands: Instead of relying on commercial content delivery services, the streamer built its own servers from scratch, and gave them away to internet service providers. Since then, Netflix has distributed over 18,000 of these servers, now installed in 6,000 locations spread across 175 countries, forming the companys Open Connect content delivery network. Now, Netflix is ready to take this tech beyond movies and TV shows: The company has begun to develop its own cloud gaming infrastructure, with servers that could eventually allow any Netflix member to play complex games on their smart TVs without an expensive game console. This kind of cloud gaming requires a whole new generation of Open Connect servers. The appliances that are going to stream games will need to look different, says Netflix CTO Elizabeth Stone. Thats something that were building now. Netflixs servers have improved by 40x Netflix began working on Open Connect in 2011, and placed a first set of servers in the data centers of select U.S.-based internet providers in 2012. At the time, Netflix engineers taped a different movie quote on each custom-built, bright red Open Connect server. The concept behind Open Connect has stayed pretty much the same ever since: Once a server gets installed in an internet providers local data center, it gets loaded up with copies of Netflixs movies and shows, which are then streamed to the providers customers whenever theyre ready to watch something. When you click play, the content is coming from around the corner, Stone explains. That allows Netflix to deliver movies faster and more reliably, while also reducing congestion for upstream pipes that connect a service provider to the internet at largea win-win for everyone involved. These days, the movie quotes are long gone, as are the red chassis housings. The technology itself has changed as well: Netflix server racks now incorporate both machines with fast flash drives that stream Netflixs most popular fare, as well as massive hard drive clusters to store thousands of additional movies and shows for customers with more eclectic taste. One half-rack of our servers serves all of Netflixs catalog, Stone says. It can serve about 500,000 simultaneous streams. When we first got started, this half-rack could only serve about 13,000 simultaneous streams. Video games are a different beast Open Connects next challenge is Netflixs budding video game business. The company has launched more than 120 mobile games since it began exploring gaming in 2021, but its ambitions reach far beyond mobile: Netflix ultimately wants to allow its subscribers to access games comparable to whats available on Microsofts Xbox and Sonys PlayStation directly from the Netflix app running on a regular smart TV. To do this, Netflix has begun to build its own cloud gaming service, which it is currently testing with a subset of its subscribers in eight countries, including the U.S. and Canada. Subscribers in the beta test get to play around a dozen titles, including the indie game hit Oxenfree and the rebooted Atari classic Centipede: Recharged. This trial run helps Netflix test its cloud gaming technology, and optimize the design of its new Open Connect game servers. These appliances are very different from Netflixs existing streaming hardware. If you are streaming games to the TV, you execute the game on a server, Stone explains. The server then captures a live video feed of the game and beams it to the consumers TV. That requires Netflixs game servers to be optimized for real-time graphics rendering. More GPU-heavy, different types of chips, and a different type of design, Stone says. Cloud games also need to be delivered with as little latency as possible so that players dont miss a critical jump or turn due to a delayed stream. For some games, synchronization across locations is also needed to allow Netflix subscribers to play together remotely. Cloud games tend to be pretty social, in many cases, Stone says. Stone readily admits Netflixs current cloud gaming test is small. As we feel more confident in our approach, we [will] start to scale to other countries and other game types, she says. That will come in the coming years. The Tyson-Paul disaster helped future-proof Open Connect Getting a new technology like cloud gaming right can be challenging, especially for a company the size of Netflix; opening up the service too early to all of its 300 million subscribers could easily overwhelm the companys infrastructure. Netflix did get a lesson in humility last year when it aggressively expanded into livestreamingonly to have the broadcast of a match between boxing legend Mike Tyson and YouTube star Logan Paul turn into a train wreck. Everything about Tyson-Paul was extraordinary, including how large that event was, Stone says. An estimated 65 million viewers tuned in simultaneously, overwhelming even Netflixs content delivery network. The result: widespread buffering, and some users being kicked from the stream entirely. Stone describes the experience as a painful but necessary lesson. For that fight, there was no way to simulate that in a lab, she says. The insights her team gained from that knockout not only helped Netflix successfully stream two NFL games over the holidays, but are helping make Open Connect more resilient for whatever comes next, from live sports to cloud gaming. Our aspirations are much larger than 300 million members, Stone says. In order to stream film and TV to 400 million members, 500 million members all around the world, we need Open Connect to continue to evolve.
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E-Commerce
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