Last year Sony entered into a joint venture with Singapore-based startup Startale Labs. Now the first fruits of that collaboration have come to light, with the launch of Soneium, an Ethereum layer 2 blockchain, from Startale and Sony Block Solutions Labs. The platform is first being made available to developers, with plans for an eventual public launch, the goal being “to create new services by leveraging the various businesses and IP within the Sony Group so that Soneium becomes an infrastructure that everyone can use on a daily basis,” according to Sony. Continue reading Sony and Startale Labs Launch Soneium Blockchain for Web3

Sony Pictures Entertainment’s Crunchyroll and Game Show Network (GSN) have teamed to launch the Crunchyroll 24-hour anime streaming service. The new FAST channel will be available in the U.S. on Amazon Freevee, LG Channels, the Roku Channel and Vizio’s WatchFree+. Crunchyroll has been delivering East Asian content to U.S. audiences since 2006. In 2016 it partnered with Funimation, which also specialized in Japanese content. Sony acquired Funimation in 2017 and Crunchyroll in 2021, merging the two last year. Continue reading Crunchyroll and GSN Launch a FAST Channel for Anime Fans

A 2020 survey of downloads around the world revealed that TikTok tops the list of social media providers for the first time since the survey was initiated in 2018. TikTok parent company ByteDance debuted the international version of the app in 2017, which has since outdistanced Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger, all of which fill the other four spots in the top five apps. In 2020, former president Donald Trump called on TikTok to be forced to sell off its U.S. operations, citing security concerns. Continue reading TikTok Eclipses Facebook as Most Downloaded App Globally