FinTech news in social category

It seems like a lot of moolah in a volatile market, even coming as it does from two separate a16z funds: the firm’s $600 million debut games vehicle and its $4.5 billion crypto fund, both of which were announced last May. The latter remains privately held, but after scrapping plans to go public through a special purpose acquisition company, it managed to snag $350 million in funding in 2021 from Netmarble, Kabam, and affiliates of funds managed by Fortress Investment Group, which suggests it’s doing just fine. The pair previously co-founded the once-hot social media platform MySpace (which originally sold to MySpace for $580 million in 2005) and the mobile game studio Jam City. (Indeed, Jam City, which claims to have 30 million monthly active users, announced this morning that a third cofounder, Josh Yguado, is now running the show after serving as the company’s COO and president previously.)

When I met with Lydia’s co-founders Cyril Chiche and Antoine Porte, they both had read my recent article on Zenly, another popular social app designed in Paris.

Split Payments was introduced alongside the news that Messenger is launching new voice message recording controls so users can pause, preview, delete or continue recording a voice message before sending it. The company said that its feature offering end-to-end encrypted group chats and calls in Messenger is now fully rolled out. The launch of Split Payments comes as Messenger added Venmo-like QR codes for person-to-person payments last summer. Messenger also added another security feature that will alert users if someone snaps a photo from Messenger’s disappearing messages.