Ever wanted to cry some real-fake tears in a Facebook Messenger video call? (What? No? Well, Facebook is letting you anyway.) Facebook on Monday said it added new features like animated reactions, filters, masks and effects, and the ability to take screenshots to both one-on-one and group video chats, according to a blog post Monday.  …

Amazon Web Services, the e-commerce giant’s other mega business that powers websites for companies like Netflix and Comcast, has been working on a translation service that clients could use to make sites and apps available in multiple languages, CNBC reported Monday.  Amazon is already using a technology internally to translate items like product information, but the company is now preparing to …

Tim Westergren, who co-founded Pandora 17 years ago and who’s been serving his second round as CEO for the past year, plans to step down, Recode reported Sunday. Pandora started as a vanguard of music streaming with its digital version of radio, but it has lost steam over the last five years to faster-growing rivals like Spotify and Apple Music. Earlier this month, Pandora agreed to sell …

Spotify is — still — No. 1.  More than 140 million people stream tunes on Spotify every month, according to a blog post Thursday by head of sales Brian Benedik. The company last updated its listener number a year ago, when it notched 100 million listeners a month.  That means Spotify has nearly twice the number of active listeners as Pandora, its …

Pandora will launch an automated feature Friday to infinitely play songs similar to the last thing you listened to, called AutoPlay, on its fledgling $10-a-month Premium service. With AutoPlay, subscribers using an Apple mobile device or Android product will immediately segue into a similar song based off the last thing that finished playing, be it an album, track or playlist.  …

Amazon’s Echo may dominate smart speakers, but Pandora appears to rule the Echo.  Pandora’s streaming music service represents more than 40 percent of listening on Amazon’s Echo devices, Pandora CEO Tim Westergren said Tuesday at a keynote discussion during A2IM Indie Week, an independent music label conference in New York.  That jibes with third-party data released earlier this year suggesting …

Facebook has signed deals with companies already putting tons of video on its giant social network, including Buzzfeed and Vox, according to a report by Reuters. Facebook declined to comment. Video has been crucial for Facebook, which has been aggressively advancing the number of clips and live streams that bubble up to the top of your News Feed. The social …

Amazon on Tuesday introduced a wedding hub to its Handmade arm, creating a dedicated shopping section for handmade wares catering to brides- and grooms-to-be. The e-commerce giant launched Handmade in 2015 to take on Etsy, which has dominated the market for handcrafted goods sold directly by the artisans who create them. Amazon has been pushing into more types of product …

European Union states approved plans to make social media companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google’s YouTube address hate speech and calls for violence on their networks, according to a report by Reuters. The proposals still need a vote in European Parliament before they come law, but it’s the first such legislation at the EU level. Abusive language and violent speech …

Hunting for a streaming TV option that doesn’t make you pay for ESPN? Viacom may be aiming to deliver. The TV company, which owns networks like Comedy Central, MTV and Nickelodeon, is talking with rival programmers AMC and Discovery about a possible digital-TV bundle that could cost as little as $10 a month, according to a report late Monday in …