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  • Unicorn chat app Tango shuts down its e-commerce feature, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk have a rocket

  • pissing content on Twitter, Square readers are now supporting Apple Pay. and more...

  • It's Tuesday November 24th, and this is Crunch Report.

  • Tango, the mobile messaging app that hit a billion dollar valuation when Alibaba invested

  • $280 million in it early last year, is pulling back on an e-commerce effort and laying off

  • around 9% of its staff, or 30 employees. The commerce feature was linked to Alibaba and

  • Walmart inventory and launched back in May in the U.S., but the company now tells TechCrunch

  • thatTango Shopwas closed down last month after the initiative didn't pan out.

  • Tango now has 270 staff across its U.S. office and a smaller presence in Beijing, China.

  • Back in May when Tango Shop launched, the company claimed 300 million registered users,

  • but isn't updating that number on this most recent news. Which probably means user growth

  • isn't very exciting. Tango is somewhat of a chat veteran, first coming onto the scene

  • as a mobile video calling service back in 2009.

  • You know how Jeff Bezos has that space company, Blue Origin? Things appear to be going well.

  • Blue Origin's “New Shepardvehicle flew to space... well specifically, reached its

  • suborbit test altitude of 329,839 feet and then successfully landed vertically at the

  • launch site in West Texas. Bezos tweeted of the feat: "The rarest of beasts - a used rocket.

  • Controlled landing not easy, but done right, can look easy." Elon Musk, whose competitor

  • company SpaceX has been very publicly attempting similar milestones, first congratulated Bezos

  • on Twitter, which is very nice of him.... but then, he took the opportunity to explain

  • that "space" and "orbit" aren't the same thing, and then got into Mach 3 vs. Mach 30, and

  • mentioned SpaceX's Falcon 1 Grasshopper... and in general just let all of us know that

  • SpaceX did everything Blue Origin did, first. Billionaire space CEOs, splitting hairs about

  • vertical takeoff and landings. It's a wonderful life.

  • Newly public payments company Square has announced its new wireless card reader is now available

  • to pre-order on its website for $49, for shipment in early 2016. The big new feature is support

  • for Apple Pay, plus an NFC chip and a tokenization system for a variety of secure contactless

  • payments. If you can't pay with your phone for some reason, the new reader's design now

  • has a slot for chip cards too, which should make Square adoption in Europe a lot more

  • attractive. Being that it's wireless, a small built-in battery inside is rechargeable with

  • a standard microUSB port. Square says 100 retailers are already using the new reader,

  • which is a pretty small rollout... but I say any Apple Pay expansion is a good one. Speaking

  • of, sources cited by a new Dow Jones report claim that Apple plans to have Apple Pay live

  • in China by February 2016. China is Apple's big cash cow now, where revenue jumped 99%

  • year-over-year to reach $12.51 billion in the company's most recent quarter. Alipay

  • and Tencent’s WePay, which is the payments service inside the crazy popular WeChat app,

  • are currently the front runners in China’s mobile payments race.

  • It took me a while to warm up to Twitter's 6-second looping video app Vine. But over

  • the years, I've come around. Vines are excellent, and educational. And Today, Vine is letting

  • us all discover new Vines that have things in common with Vines we already like. So say

  • you're browsing a channel or through your own feed, you can now swipe left on a Vine

  • and see some more good stuff. For me, it's cat butts. For you, maybe, Justin Beiber.

  • It doesn't always work, but it's clearly helping me discover stuff I wouldn't see otherwise.

  • Vine actually launched a Similar Vines feature back in October for Android and then iOS,

  • but the swipe left feature is new, instead of having to click theSimilar Vines

  • tab under the post. Good for discovery for sure. Oh, and Vine's app is now Apple Watch

  • compatible, and if you're seriously into it, you can add Vine as a watch face that will

  • show your account’s total loops. ]

  • Tis the season to buy junky gifts for people who probably don't really want them. Do you

  • feel like doing that? Yeah me neither. Luckily, companies like Magic, Operator, Fetch, GoButler,

  • even Facebook, are all testing out messaging-based virtual assistants that help you buy pretty

  • much anything from gifts to restaurant reservations, airline tickets, all sorts of things you might

  • not feel like doing yourself. And now Google's trialing ITS own SMS-based alerting service,

  • with a special focus on helping holiday shoppers in the U.S. find the best deals. The company

  • announced in a Google+ post that it would be adding this service earlier this month,

  • and today the blog Google Operating System noticed a new option tosubscribeto

  • Black Friday phone deals on a mobile phone after a related search. Now Google explains

  • thesedeal alertsare actually an AdWords option that’s being trialed with a limited

  • number of advertisers, but didn't elaborate on ad pricing or which companies are participating.

  • That’s the report for today. I’m Sarah Lane.

  • Crunch Report airs every weekday at 7 pm Eastern, 4 pm Pacific, on techcrunch.com. You can also

  • find us on iTunes, and on YouTube. See you tomorrow!

Unicorn chat app Tango shuts down its e-commerce feature, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk have a rocket

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