Lyft, the popular ride-hailing company, said it plans to pay drivers a bonus and that they could use the cash to buy shares in its IPO. Lyft filed paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday to list its shares on the NASDAQ stock exchange, an IPO that could come as early as next month. …

Facebook is building a certification tool that will require advertisers confirm they received user permission before using emails to target advertising on the huge social network.  The tool, reported earlier by TechCrunch, will be part of Facebook’s Custom Audiences program, which allows advertisers to upload lists of hashed customer data, such as email addresses. Facebook then matches that data against its …

Enlarge Image The new function allows you to write a series of tweets and send them all at the same time.  Screenshot by Justin Cauchon. The virtual forecast calls for storms. Tweetstorms. Twitter said Thursday that it’s testing a function that’ll let users fire off a series of linked messages, commonly known as a tweetstorm, in a single blast rather …

President Donald Trump wants to make the iPhone American. In an interview Tuesday, Trump told The Wall Street Journal that Apple CEO Tim Cook has promised to build three manufacturing facilities in the US. The facilities would be “big plants, beautiful plants,” he told the paper.  “He’s promised me three big plants — big, big, big,” Trump said, referring to …

Like talking about music with your friends on Facebook Messenger? Then build a playlist with them while chatting. Spotify rolled out the new feature, called somewhat obviously Group Playlists for Messenger, earlier on Wednesday. The feature is included in the Spotify Chat Extension for Messenger. Once you’re in the feature, you can create a group playlist and add songs to …

Looking for a new MacBook? You might want to wait until next month. Apple is going to update its line of laptop computers at June’s Worldwide Developers Conference, according to a Bloomberg News report published Tuesday. The article, which cited three people familiar with the situation, said the company’s MacBook Pro, a new 12-inch MacBook and a 13-inch MacBook Air …

Facebook Live is living well. One out of every five videos shared on the social network is Live, Fidji Simo, the company’s head of video, wrote on her Facebook page on Thursday. The amount of time people spend watching those videos has grown more than four times over the last year, she added. “A year ago today, we made it …

Here’s a cure for “texting thumb:” Use your lips. Starting Friday, AT&T is letting its mobile subscribers dictate and send text messages over devices powered by Amazon‘s Alexa assistant. Those include the Echo and the Echo Dot. The service, known as a “Skill,” allows customers of the mobile phone network to store up to 10 contacts in the app’s memory. …

Signal is getting a strong signal of its popularity. The encrypted messaging app, made by Open Whisper Systems, has seen a 400 percent increase in installations since last week’s presidential election, co-founder Moxie Marlinspike told American Public Radio’s Marketplace program. Marlinspike didn’t specify how many users the messaging app had, but said “millions of people” used it before the November …

Apple says counterfeit power products constitute a threat to consumer safety. Jack Taylor, Getty Images That shiny new Lightning cable you bought through Amazon for you iPhone? Good chance it’s a fake, according to Apple. In a lawsuit filed earlier this week, the iPhone maker said Mobile Star LLC and 50 unnamed defendants had infringed on its trademarks and copyrights …