Twitter begins laying off staff, sending a “Your Role at Twitter” email to their company account for those staying and personal account for those leaving
Employees said the layoffs came across teams, as Twitter broadly reduced its workforce.
Sources: Elon Musk weighs adding paid DMs to let users privately message “Very Important Tweeters”; docs show Twitter Blue checks won't require ID verification
The billionaire and his advisers have discussed adding paid direct messages, fees to watch videos and other features to the service.
Twitter workers file a class action lawsuit against the company in San Francisco for executing mass layoffs without at least 60 days notice, per the WARN Act
Twitter Inc. was sued over Elon Musk's plan to eliminate about 3,700 jobs at the social-media platform — half of its workforce …
General Mills and Audi paused Twitter ads, and sources say Pfizer and Mondelez have as well, as concern over content moderation grows
Advertisers are concerned about a flurry of executive departures at Twitter and new owner Elon Musk's plans for content moderation
Sources: Twitter plans to shut down newsletter platform Revue, acquired in January 2021, by the end of 2022, and pauses its new Notes product and crypto wallet
A new Vine camera is in. Notes and Revue are out — With massive layoffs expected to hit Twitter tomorrow …
PayPal plans to support iPhone's Tap to Pay in its PayPal and Venmo iOS apps “soon”, add Apple Pay to its checkout options on merchant platforms, and more
The PayPal and Venmo iOS apps will soon offer Apple's Tap to Pay on iPhone functionality, allowing merchants that use PayPal …
Elon Musk says Twitter has had a “massive” revenue drop due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, despite doing “everything” to “appease the activists”
Chief of the social-media company cites activist groups pressuring advertisers
A look at the use of biometric surveillance tech in European soccer stadiums; 15,000+ cameras will monitor fans in eight stadiums at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar
Stadiums around the world, including at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, are subjecting spectators to invasive biometric surveillance tech.
Hands-on with Netflix's Basic with Ads: while most shows have pre-roll ads, mid-roll ads are more unpredictable; many popular shows are locked to higher tiers
Clicking into something on Netflix's new ads tier is a roll of the dice: you never know how many ads you might have to sit through.
PayPal reports Q3 revenue up 12% YoY to $6.85B, vs. $6.81B est., and payments volume up 14% YoY to $337B, vs. $343.2B est.; stock drops 4%+ on lower FY forecast
Jennifer Surane / Bloomberg :
Sources: Elon Musk told Twitter's teams to find up to $1B in annual infrastructure cost savings, including reduced spending on cloud services and server space
Elon Musk has directed Twitter Inc's teams to find up to $1 billion in annual infrastructure cost savings, according …
How Reddit's blockchain-based Collectible Avatars, which avoid the NFT label, became popular; Polygon data shows the total sales volume was $10M+ by November 2
At 2:59 p.m. ET on Oct. 20, when Reddit announced its second generation of collectible avatars, Ethan Clark was ready, phone in hand.
Amazon pauses hiring for roles in its corporate workforce, after announcing in October plans to freeze hiring for corporate roles in its retail business
KEY POINTS — Amazon is pausing hiring for roles in its corporate workforce, the company announced in a memo to staff Thursday.
A profile of Twitter's global head of safety and integrity Yoel Roth, who has become one of few executives to gain Elon Musk's public support after his takeover
Reed is Semafor's Technology Editor, joining us from the Washington Post. Louise is a Technology Reporter for Semafor, joining us from NBC News.
PitchBook: VCs raised $151B across Q1, Q2, and Q3 2022, exceeding any prior full-year cycle, concentrated among large funds at Sequoia, Lightspeed, and others
Limited partners who back venture funds still seek access to startups, which have outperformed other asset classes during recessions
Combined capital spending by Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft grew 32% in 2021, same as in 2020, to $140B, and 20% in the first nine months of 2022
Companies are not going to let up spending despite weakening economy — Investors have grown accustomed to periodic leaps …
Lookout: almost 50% of Android phones used by US state and local government staff run outdated versions of the OS, exposing them to hundreds of vulnerabilities
Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer :
AMD unveils the RX 7900 XTX for $999 and the lower powered RX 7900 XT for $899, its first GPUs built on its RDNA 3 chiplet architecture, shipping on December 13
The Verge :
Chainalysis: Binance processed around $7.8B through Iran's largest crypto exchange Nobitex since 2018, despite US sanctions; 75% of transactions were in Tron
Crypto giant Binance has processed Iranian transactions with a value of $8 billion since 2018 despite U.S. sanctions intended …
Coinbase Q3: net revenue down 28% QoQ to $576M, net loss down 50% QoQ to $545M, subscription and services up 43% QoQ, and monthly transacting users down to 8.5M
Fellow shareholders, Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Q3 was a mixed quarter for Coinbase. Adam Morgan McCarthy / The Block : Coinbase, Block jump 12% following third quarter earnings Andrew Throuvala...
Dataloop, which offers data annotation and unstructured data management tools, raised a $33M Series B led by Nokia Growth, bringing its total funding to $50M
Data annotation, or the process of adding labels to images, text, audio and other forms of sample data, is typically a key step in developing AI systems.
A look at the promise and peril of generative AI, as Microsoft plans to develop GitHub Copilot for other job categories, like security and video game design
Dina Bass / Bloomberg :
Amazon plans to roll out the Matter over Wi-Fi standard to 17 Echo devices in December, starting with Android phones, covering smart plugs, bulbs, and switches
Twilio reports Q3 revenue up 33% YoY to $983M, vs. $972.2M est., 280K+ active customer accounts, and Q4 revenue guidance below estimates; stock drops 30%+
Jordan Novet / CNBC :
Atlassian reports Q1 revenue up 31% YoY to $807.4M, vs. $806.4M est., and forecasts lower than expected Q2 revenue; stock drops 20%+ after falling 54% in 2022
- Atlassian's quarterly revenue outlook missed expectations. — The software maker said existing customers are adding users at a reduced pace.
Block Q3: revenue up 17% YoY to $4.52B, vs. $4.49B est., gross profit up 38% YoY to $1.57B, vs. $1.53B est., and Cash App gross profit up 51% YoY; stock up 9%+
Kif Leswing / CNBC :
Momento, which offers a “serverless cache” optimized for cloud computing that it claims developers can add with ~5 lines of code, exits stealth with a $15M seed
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch :
Sources: Apple paused hiring in October for many jobs outside of R&D, including some corporate functions and standard hardware and software engineering roles
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg :
OpenAI releases a DALL-E API in public beta, letting developers integrate DALL-E into their apps and products; the API is priced per image output, based on size
Sharon Goldman / VentureBeat :
Meta lets select Instagram creators in the US test a toolkit for minting NFTs and selling them on and off the platform, and says it won't charge fees until 2024
Bot Sentinel: ~877K Twitter users deactivated their accounts and 497K suspended their accounts between October 27 and November 1, more than double the usual
Chris Stokel-Walker / MIT Technology Review :
Mastodon says 230,000 people joined its open-source decentralized social network in the past week and the service has hit a record 655,000 active users
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch :
DoorDash reports Q3 revenue up 33% YoY to $1.7B, orders up 27% YoY to 439M, and net loss up 193% YoY to $296M; the stock jumps 10%+ on strong Q4 guidance
Preetika Rana / Wall Street Journal :
Sources: China's central bank struggles to get Tencent, Meituan, and others to share user data with state credit scoring companies before the December deadline
Sun Yu / Financial Times :
Lyft plans to cut 13% of its 5,000+ employees, or nearly 700 jobs, due to “a probable recession”, after laying off 60 people, or under 2% of staff, in July 2022
Substack announces Chat, an opt-in feature letting writers host discussions with their subscribers, available in the Substack iOS app and coming soon to Android
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch :
Police and other sources say Block's Cash App has become a primary payment tool for adult and children sex traffickers due to lax monitoring and user ID rules
US political groups are increasingly using influencers, a practice the FEC's campaign finance laws do not regulate, relying on an honor system for disclosures
Stephanie Lai / New York Times :
Google unveils an AI model trained on 400+ languages with the largest “coverage seen in a speech model” and plans to support the 1,000 most spoken languages
James Vincent / The Verge :
Ericsson's Vonage agrees to pay $100M to settle FTC allegations about creating obstacles to canceling internet-based phone services and charging unexpected fees
Shopify's new AI commerce stack
Their VP of Product digs into just-launched products to help entrepreneurs and developers build with the latest AI.
Email fatigue is real: Here's how smart email tools help you regain control
Picture this: It's Monday morning. You walk into the office feeling energized and ready to take on the week.
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data
Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.