Author: TechBrunch
Twitter/X alternative Bluesky is gearing up for one of social media's biggest weekends with the launch of a custom feed tailored for Super Bowl fans. One feed will focus on conversations about the big game itself, and the other will feature her expected to be in attendance to cheer on her boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. Also includes news about Taylor Swift. Swift's high-profile attendance at Kelce's games throughout the season has divided opinion among sports fans, especially after Kelce's comments that the NFL is “going too far,” and the NFL's coverage of the pop star. decided…
Welcome to Startups Weekly — A weekly roundup of everything you can't miss from the world of startups. sign up here Delivered to your inbox every Friday. Oh my god, how about another Friday? I feel like just yesterday he wrote one of these newsletters. But there's a lot of exciting movement in the startup world. There are highs, lows, drama, and fun new trends. My big contribution this week was a deep dive into the world of crowdfunding and whether you should use it to raise money for your startup. So what else happened this week? . . The…
Some people watch the Super Bowl because of the actual football game. Many people watch this event for the halftime show or as an excuse to eat wings and other game day snacks. Some people watch this to find a better software solution for their company. probably? Papaya Global hopes so. The late-stage global employee payments startup is running his 30-second ad on Sunday. The ad aims to highlight the company's software that helps other companies comply with payroll for cross-border teams. The commercial takes place inside an office and is a relatively lackluster Super Bowl ad compared to Super…
Meta doesn't want its new app, Threads, to become a second Twitter, full of heated political debate and the toxicity that comes with it. In today's announcement, the company detailed how it will approach recommending political content on both Instagram and its sister app Threads, Elon Musk's X competitor. That means we will no longer impose politics on our users. Similar to Meta's existing policies on Facebook, the Instagram and Threads recommendation engines will not proactively suggest political posts to users by default, the company announced Friday. At Facebook, Meta has reduced the amount of political content that appears in…
great rollback It is here. The phrase refers to how big tech companies began cutting back on some of their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs in the immediate aftermath of George Floyd's murder. Just recently, Zoom announced that it had fired his DEI-focused team. Google and Meta have started cutting funding to their DEI programs, and funding for Black founders continues to decline. Lawsuits targeting DEI programs are being filed, and while billionaires debate X over whether their DEI efforts are discriminatory, companies are being forced to hide their inclusion efforts. ing. It's clear this year will be a…
2023 was the year social networks realized that they were sitting on massive troves of data. And some companies, such as Twitter (now X) and Reddit, decided to change their terms to shut out third-party experiences on these platforms. In the process, they also put a price on their data — something they believe is highly valuable today as it can be used to train AI models. After talking to several third-party developers who built apps and services on top of these larger social networks, we learned that there are mixed feelings among the developers about building experiences around social…
When I was… As a student in the UK, I remember that it was common for some people, especially students living in short-term accommodation, to rent home appliances such as washing machines and televisions. Israeli startup Xyte (pronounced “excite”) believes a return to this kind of Hardware-as-a-Service model is the way forward for manufacturers whose profits are constantly under pressure, and has raised $30 million. I just procured it. If software-as-a-service works well, why doesn't it work well in hardware? Xyte let me look at a deck of 27 slides to see how it worked. Were you excited about Zayt's…
20VC founder Harry Stebbings has announced his third and final derivative fund, called 20PRODUCT, starting with a $5 million capital commitment. Like his previous funds, 20Sales and 20GROWTH, 20Product brings together a group of experts who invest in early-stage founders looking to build, grow, and scale their companies. Essentially, it's like lining up a bunch of experienced operators on the cap table, Stebbings told TechCrunch. The fund will write checks of $100,000 or more to pre-seed, seed and Series A companies and will not make any further investments. These three special funds emerged from Stebbings' efforts to leverage experts from…
Grammarly announced this week that it will lay off 230 employees worldwide as part of a “business restructuring.” The company said the layoffs are part of Grammarly's efforts to increase its focus on the “AI-powered workplace of the future.” “To arrive at today's decision, we looked at our organizational design and the current skill sets of our teams from a company strategy perspective,” said Rahul Roy Chowdhury, CEO of Grammarly. stated in a memo to. “Increasing our focus on promoting an AI-enabled workplace and deepening our technology investments in AI will require a different mix of capabilities and skill sets.…
Elon Musk's X, formerly of Twitter, has signed a deal with sports betting operator BetMGM, the companies announced Friday. The deal, which BetMGM describes as a “strategic partnership” with X, will see the operator become X's exclusive live odds sports betting partner and introduce access to betting services on X. Initially, X users in the US will be able to explore pro football betting odds, with more pro and college sports to be rolled out over time. Through the new interface, users will be able to click through to BetMGM's website or app and place bets there, but the company…