With its latest update, SwiftKey Cloud users on iOS can now track which emoji are used most frequently in each U.S. state. “So it’ll tell you where you’d best fit in,” The Next Web’s Amanda Connolly writes. “It turns out that Californian users are the biggest fans of the [taxi] emoji, perhaps something to do with it being where both Uber and Lyft were founded,” she writes. 

PayPal just bought mobile commerce platform Modest. The idea, as Venture Beat reports, is “to bring in expertise in contextual commerce.” The company was co-founded by Harper Reed, the chief technology officer for President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign. 

Nieman Lab checks in with the young founders of The Skimm -- a 3-year-old general news roundup for millennials. “The Skimm now counts 1.5 million subscribers to its daily email, which breezes through the day’s news in a conversational, direct tone,” it writes. For its success, Skimm credits “legions of readers who promote the email in their networks and encourage friends to sign up.”

The Verge considers Samsung’s efforts to integrate a startup sensibility into its hulking business operations. Among other efforts, “three startups it brought into the fold -- SmartThings, LoopPay, and Pixie -- will play critical roles across Samsung’s most important consumer categories: appliances, smartphones, and televisions,” it writes. 

Apple has reportedly decided to put off the launch of its live TV service until 2016. What’s the holdup? “Talks to license programming from TV networks such as those owned by CBS Corp. and 21st Century Fox Inc. are progressing slowly,” Bloomberg Business reports. “Apple also doesn’t have the computer network capacity in place to ensure a good viewing experience, said some of the people.” 

Ecommerce startup Jet.com is reportedly preparing to raise more money at a valuation of no less than $2 billion. “Jet is expected to formally kick off the Series B fundraise sometime next month,” Fortune reports. “The New Jersey-based company so far has raised $220 million in equity and debt capital, including a $125 million deal.” 

For The New York Times, mobile notifications have been an education, day editor Karron Skog tells Nieman Lab. “It’s been a process to train editors’ and reporters’ brains that this isn’t print,” says Skog. “You can go back as many times as you want and add in extra grafs.” As expected, “we also have a lot of discussion about [alerting for feature stories or exclusives],” she notes. 

Fyber, a Berlin-based mobile monetization platform announced the addition of video pre-caching controls for its Mediation product.Pre-caching allows ads to play even when they aren’t connected to the Internet, reducing load time by effectively saving them to users’ phones. Pre-cached videos cut down on loading times, but can also drain the memory and battery life of devices.Fyber’s new pre-caching controls allow developers to decide how many ad networks are initialized. A forthcoming feature will also be able to control when pre-caching happens within an app. These features should mitigate the strain pre-caching puts on a device and help loading …

Andreessen Horowitz partner Connie Chan considers WeChat and its immense success in China. “While seemingly just a messaging app, WeChat is actually more of a portal, a platform and even a mobile operating system, depending on how you look at it,” she writes. “Few outside of China really understand how it works.” 

The biggest loser during Thursday night’s GOP debate might have been Fox News’ digital department. “For most of the debate, the live stream was unavailable through official Fox sources,” Mashable reports. “Users attempting to login on mobile or the web were greeted with errors or pages that never loaded correctly.”