Author: TechBrunch

brutal On a December day, we learned that 17% of Spotify's employees were laid off in the company's third round of layoffs last year. Shortly thereafter, music fans around the world discovered that the cult-favorite website Every Noise at Once (EveryNoise), an encyclopedic treasure trove of music discovery, was no longer working. These two events were not separate. His Spotify data alchemist Glenn McDonald, who founded EveryNoise, was one of his 1,500 employees fired that day, but his firing had far-reaching effects. Without access to his Spotify internal data, MacDonald can no longer maintain EveryNoise, which has become a vital…

Bitcoin prices hit $50,000 today, one month after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved 11 applications for Spot Bitcoin ETFs. Issuers of these ETFs have seen demand soar beyond the billions originally predicted. These issuers have a total of approximately $28.35 billion in assets under management and a market capitalization of $39.8 billion, according to Blockworks data. The 24-hour trading volume was $1.38 billion. Topping the Spot Bitcoin ETF pack is Grayscale Bitcoin Trust with $20.27 billion, followed by BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust with $3.31 billion and Fidelity's Wise Origin Bitcoin.・The trust is worth $2.75 billion. Image credits: Blockworks…

Users of Twitter/X alternative service Spoutible claim the company removed their posts after they asked Spoutible CEO Christopher Bouzy to be more honest about the nature of recent security issues. The company denies the claims, but it's the latest bizarre development in a string of security incidents at the startup over the past week. Last week, Bouzy admitted that his startup, which he envisions as a more inclusive and kind Twitter, had a security vulnerability that exposed users' emails and phone numbers. But Troy Hunt, a security researcher and creator of Have I Been Pwned, a website that lets you…

X, formerly Twitter, announced Today, advertisers will soon be able to place ads next to specific content creators. The move will allow advertisers to prevent their ads from appearing next to controversial or offensive content. The launch of the new service comes after a number of brands pulled their ads from X last year after their ads appeared next to pro-Nazi content. “Starting this month, X advertisers will be able to advertise to a curated list of premium content creators through Creator Targeting,” the company said in an article. blog post. “This will allow advertisers to use the self-service Her…

The question of where AI fits into the corporate stack is not as simple as it might seem (i.e., “nowhere”). However, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office today declared that, like other intellectual property, only individuals can receive rights to it. Official protection. The news came in the form of “guidance,” official policy but not ironclad law, that will soon be federally registered. The guidance document (PDF) clearly states that only “natural human beings” can obtain patents, for clear legal reasons and the basic idea that “patents have the function of encouraging and rewarding human ingenuity.” It has been. It…

Venture capital firm Homebrew is New fund goal is $50 millionaccording to a new filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The filing was a bit of a surprise, considering Homebrew announced it was pursuing it about two years ago. more Evergreen model that is not limited by stage It would simply be funded by Satya Patel and hunter walkGeneral Partner of Homebrew. However, many companies raise multiple funds at any given time to target specific opportunities. For example, some early-stage companies raise a second opportunity-focused fund to supplement their primary vehicle. TechCrunch reached out to Walk for comment…

Only 7% of founders Prepare a pitch deck that includes a reasonably good go-to-market (GTM) narrative. Given that many founders are raising money to acquire new customers, let me put into words what this means. This is totally embarrassing. Most of the slide material hardly qualifies as even coherent brainstorming. As an investor, I despair when I see decks like that. Why should I give you his $5 million when I have no clear clue how to utilize that money in a meaningful way? Trust me when I say this. Funding is currently difficult and there are no signs that…

After Meta's X competitor Threads admitted last week that it doesn't actively promote political content, the company today announced testing of a new trending feature, “Topics,” where such content might surface anyway. did. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Monday that Threads will roll out the feature first in the U.S. to help users find “timely topics” being discussed by others on the social network. announced that it would begin small-scale testing. The topic of the day in this section's title is determined by Meta's AI system and is based on what people are engaging with on the thread, Meta told…

Wingman Ventures seeks the best in Swiss startups, and its diverse portfolio already spans from mobile commerce to robotics. The Zurich-based venture capital firm, which focuses on pre-seed startups, announced today that it will rebrand to Founderful and has already raised $85 million for its new Fund II, with more to come. The goal is to raise $120 million within the next few months. The fund's backers include institutional investors, family offices, and the founders of unicorn companies such as Duolingo, Climeworks, GetYourGuide, Deliver Hero, and Scandit. So far, there have been two exits: Insights, a vision chip startup acquired…

Spotify has announced an expansion of its partnership with video and podcast recording platform Riverside and announced the retirement of some of its traditional podcasting tools. The company is discontinuing its web and mobile-native creation tools, including its “Music + Talk” tool, an experimental feature that allows podcasters to include fully licensed music tracks in their podcast episodes on Spotify. Masu. The decision to end the “Music + Talk” feature, which first launched in June, was a huge blow to music podcasters who share music tracks during in-podcast discussions. Spotify is also ending its “Record with Friends” and “Voice Messages”…