Techmeme
April 11, 2017, 2:10 PM

Top News

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Instagram Direct now combines ephemeral messages with permanent messages in the same threads; Facebook says Direct now has 375M MAUs, up from 300M in Nov. 2016  —  After successfully cloning Snapchat Stories, Instagram is looking to one-up its competitor in chat with a reimagining …
Partha Sundaram / Facebook:
Facebook Messenger launches group payments for Android and desktop in US, letting users pay or request payment from everyone in a group  —  Since 2015, you could send and receive money on Messenger, but until now, these P2P payments have just been possible between two people.
Eileen Naughton / Google:
Google reveals its pay methodology to defend compensation practices, says there's no gender pay gap, and its means of suggesting pay amount is “blind” to gender  —  Pay equity is a huge issue, not just for Silicon Valley companies, but across every industry in every country.
Ina Fried / Axios:
Qualcomm responds to Apple suit over patent licensing and files countersuit including charge of limiting performance of Qualcomm modem chips in iPhone 7  —  Qualcomm formally responded to a lawsuit from Apple on Monday, rejecting the iPhone maker's claims and launching its own countersuit.
Lucia Moses / Digiday:
Forbes, The New York Times, and other publishers abandon or scale back use of Facebook's Instant Articles due to lack of monetization  —  Facebook's Instant Article push is in danger of fizzling.  —  Many publishers are deeply unhappy with the monetization on these pages …
Ryan Lawler / TechCrunch:
Deep-linking startup Branch raised $60M Series C from Andy Rubin's Playground Ventures  —  Branch, a startup making tools to enable developers to provide links between websites and apps, has raised a $60 million Series C round of funding from Andy Rubin's Playground Ventures, according to sources.
More: GeekWire, Axios, and Axios
Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Land:
Google's image search results for mobile web and the Android Search app now display “similar items” to purchase  —  Google's image search results on the mobile web and in the Android Search app are now showing “similar items” — i.e., if you're looking at “lifestyle” …
David Ingram / Reuters:
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg says company has 5M monthly advertisers, up from 3M in March 2016  —  Facebook Inc (FB.O) plans to announce on Monday that more than 5 million businesses are advertising on the social network each month and that it is updating its suite of ad services to try …

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Earlier Picks

Bloomberg:
Bart Jansen / USA Today:
Andrew E. Kramer / New York Times: