Is Yik Yak automatically burying any mention of rival messaging apps on its platform? TechCrunch says the startup built a system to do just that. “Tests … demonstrate that it’s Yik Yak itself suppressing [mentions] its competitors,” it reports. In response to these claims, Yik Yak’s founder “said their intention wasn’t to suppress competitors,” TechCrunch reports. Rather, they insist that the smothering is an unforeseen byproduct of an anti-spam system, and they’re working to correct the issue.   

At the risk of alienating younger users, Tumblr is reportedly cracking down on the sharing of pirated music files. “A wave of [users] complaints suggest that increased anti-piracy activity by the music industry is resulting in Tumblr more readily banning users as part of a ‘three strikes’ policy,” Torrent Freak reports. “The DMCA requires Tumblr to respond to copyright holder complaints by removing infringing content in a timely manner.” 

To counter slow user adoption, The New York Times is considering giving away its NYT Now app, CEO Mark Thompson said at a conference, this week. The app currently costs subscribers $7.99 a month. “We’ve not sold as many subscriptions as we would have liked,” Thompson said, this week. As Thompson knows, The Times can’t risk loosing mobile audiences. Regarding the future of professional media, he said: “The battle will be won on the smartphone.” 

Twitter is now letting users share accounts without having to share their passwords. “The small tweak should help Twitter accounts that are controlled by multiple people -- namely the accounts of government organizations, major companies or celebrities -- avoid most embarrassing social media hacks,” The Washington Post repots. Twitter just added the feature to TweetDeck. 

After the introduction of smartphones, smart watchers, and smart cars, could smart toys be far behind? Apparently not. “A company called Elemental Path is developing a new line of smart toys for children which will be powered by the super computing system IBM Watson,” TechCrunch reports. For better or worse, the toys will apparently be able to engage in real and personalized conversations with kids, and get smarter over time. 

Is Twitter a complete and utter waste of time and energy for publishers and media professionals? After playing around with Twitter’s new activity measurement tools, The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson seems to suggest as much. After a little digging, Thompson concluded: “My most popular tweets averaged a click-through rate of about 1.7% … quite near the rate of conversions on flash-media East Asian display ads.”

The Apple Watch has its skeptics, but Apple isn’t one of them. Ahead of an April launch, the tech giant has ordered the production of up to six million units of its three watch models. The numbers “indicate that Apple expects its watch to far outpace [the sales of] other wearable devices,” The Wall Street Journal reports. “Half of the first-quarter production order is earmarked for the entry-level Apple Watch Sport model [which should retail for $349], while the mid-tied Apple Watch is expected to account for one-third of output,” WSJ notes, citing sources. 

Naturally, Yik Yak drew a lot of notice when it raised $62 million from Sequoia, late last year. Since then, however, the anonymous messaging app appears to have stopped growing. “The number of people regularly on its app peaked and then started declining,” GigaOm reports, citing data from App Annie and comScore. One problem may be Yik Yak’s “hyperlocality,” as GigaOm puts it. Because users only see posts from people within a 1.5 mile radius, “That doesn’t give you much incentive to get your friends in far-flung places on it.” 

The typically press-shy Apple and its head designer Jony Ive open up for a seriously intimate New Yorker profile. Ive says, “I’m shy,” but the company’s aloofness is generally considered to be a form of control and perfectionism -- threads that run through everything Apple produces from its public image to its gadgets. As sources tell The New Yorker, however, Ive and his colleagues are feeling the pressure. In anticipation of Apple’s forthcoming smartwatch, Ive is facing “a level of expectation and anticipation that [is] preposterous,” -- or so he recently said, according to his friend and filmmaker J. J. …

Worldwide, malware infections in mobile devices increased by 25% in 2014 -- up from an increase of 20% in 2013, ZDNet reports, citing new data from French telecom equipment company Alcatel-Lucent and its Motive Security Labs division. “The current malware infection rate for mobile devices stands at 0.68 percent,” ZDNet writes. “Mobile spyware was identified as being on the increase, according to the report, with six of the mobile malware top 20 list now made of mobile spyware.”