Business

Anthony Ha is a writer at TechCrunch, where he covers media, advertising, and startups. Previously, he was a staff technology writer at Adweek, worked as a senior editor at the tech blog VentureBeat, and was also a reporter at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing.... ? Learn More If you’re having trouble achieving your goals, what you need might be a little social pressure. That’s the idea behind GoalHawk, a new startup in the current Teens in Tech incubator. Right now, GoalHawk is focused on fitness and programming. Granted, there are already plenty of social tools in these areas — that’s particularly true with fitness, but even on the programming side, Codecademy has social features. However, GoalHawk isn’t focused on any particular subject or industry, and is instead trying to build a broader platform for tracking your goals. The social dynamic is also more active — instead of just...

On Friday, Fox & Friends host Steve Doocy welcomed a panel to discuss a new political ad targeting Florida Allen West . RELATED: Attack Ad Targeting Allen West Depicts Him Punching Women, Stealing Cash “Allen west fancies himself a fighter,” the ad tells us. “Maybe so. West hits seniors, voting to end Medicare as we know it. He’s whacked women with his votes for huge cuts in women’s health care funding and mauled middle class families by support ago budget plan that would have supported taxes on the rich. Allen west is a fighter all right. But it’s time for us to fight back and knock him out of Congress once and for all.” As discussion about the ad — which features a boxing glove-clad West punching an older woman at one point — kicked off, Doocy began by asking panelist Jackie Salit , “Jackie, so there is Allen West punching out an old white lady. Can you imagine if it were the dynamic were turned around?” But, rather than speak to hypotheticals, Salit touched upon how as a clos...

Josh Constine is a technology journalist who specializes in deep analysis of social products. He is currently a writer for TechCrunch. Previously, Constine was the Lead Writer of Inside Facebook, where he covered Facebook product changes, privacy, the Ads API, Page management, ecommerce, virtual currency, and music technology. Prior to writing for Inside Facebook, Constine graduated from Stanford University... ? Learn More In what could blossom into an ecommerce opportunity, Facebook is testing a new “Mail A Postcard” feature powered by Sincerely that lets you choose one of your photos and have Facebook send it to a friend as a postcard — in real life . You can add a message that will appear on the back, and also mail friends prints of their own photos. The sender is charged a small fee, and Facebook is trying out a few different price points. Though built as a spur-of-the-moment Hackathon project, if Facebook rolls out Mail A Postcard it could give users a new reason to upload and i...

Billy Gallagher is a writer for TechCrunch. He is also the president and editor in chief of The Stanford Daily. Billy previously worked at The Stanford Daily for two volumes as a managing editor of news. He has also worked in sports and staff development at The Daily. In March of 2012 the Friends of The Stanford Daily awarded him... ? Learn More Users are complaining that Twoo, a social networking service, is sending unwanted messages to their contacts. Co-founder and CEO Lorenz Bogaert counters that this is a misunderstanding and the company is working to fix it. Users, both those who have emailed me and who have posted public reviews in the app store, say that the mobile app is intentionally designed to be tricky and cause the user to invite their entire address book. The app auto-selects all of the user’s friends with no unselect all button, meaning the user must manually unselect every friend. While the “connect” button fairly obviously pings all of the user’s contacts, the “next...