| Instagram grows larger, faster. That and more in The Daily Crunch for April 26, 2017. Which is a Wednesday – I totally thought it was Thursday until just now. 1. Instagram's pace of growth is accelerating You'd think that by now, Instagram's growth would be tapering off, given its massive size – but in fact, that growth is only accelerating, at least when it comes to monthly active users. The social network, which is possibly Facebook's smartest acquisition of all time, is now at 700 million monthly actives, up from 600 million in December. That's a lot faster than it added the 100 million before that. Stories might be a significant contributing factor, given the product timeline. 
2. Uber takes aim at the sky Uber is still ambitious, despite its ample bad news. The company is hosting a meeting of the minds in the field of VTOLs, or vertical take-off and landing craft. Uber wants to deploy networks of these vehicles, from a number of different aircraft makers in a number of different cities. It's hoping to get the first such service up and running by 2020 in Dubai and Dallas. Uber likes places with 'D' names. 3. FaceApp is the latest example of racist machine learning The internet goes crazy for apps that mess with your face, and FaceApp is the latest viral hit. The company behind it has apologized for its racist tendencies, however, which include whitewashing faces as a means of adding "hotness" to your visage. Also please stop posting your own examples of this creepy app at work. 4. Uber seeks info from Larry, has to reveal more Uber was in court with Waymo again yesterday, and a judge denied an appeal that would've allowed Anthony Levandowski's Fifth Amendment rights to apply to a legal agreement between Levandowski and Uber that set out the specifics of their arrangement early on. Uber also wanted to depose Google co-founder Larry Page over a convo he and Levandowski allegedly had, but the court instead allowed only one written question. 5. Lytro is proving its light field tech's worth Camera maker Lytro had a product that was too unique for the consumer market, but its technology is behind the new VR film Hallelujah, and it seems very promising for the company's overall strategy shift to an industry supplier. 6. Twitter nets a rare earnings win Typically, earnings time for Twitter is when fatalists enjoy watching the company crater out, but this time around, it performed a little better than expected by analysts in most respects, which helped its stock price make strong relative gains. I don't even think we have a feature graphic of a Twitter chart going up. 7. Uber wants riders to know their rating In a big change in how it approaches its customers, Uber is now putting rider ratings in a much easier-to-access location within its app. It's only a single tap away from the main screen, now, and that means a lot of people are going to find out they're not as pleasant to drive around as they may think. You can (maybe?) help boost your rider rating by coming to New York, where we're hosting Disrupt NY 2017 from May 15 - May 17. Get your tickets now and come say 'I'm a 4.76.' 
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