media and entertainment

Amazon layoffs begin, Ticketmaster can’t handle Taylor Swift, and much of Twitter HQ quits • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 19, 2022Posted in Layoffs, Media & Entertainment, media and entertainment, Social, Week in ReviewNo Comments

Hello again! Time for another edition of Week in Review, the newsletter where we recap the week’s most read ZebethMedia stories in one quick and easy-to-skim blast. Get it in your inbox every Saturday AM by signing up here. (There won’t be a newsletter next Saturday because I’ll be off being thankful/eating leftovers/being thankful for leftovers, but we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled programming the weekend after.) If you read last week’s edition, you’ll notice some echoes here: more layoffs, more FTX drama, and more absurdity at Elon’s Twitter. Let’s dive in! —Greg most read Mass resignations at Twitter: After laying off thousands of Twitter employees over the past few weeks, Elon presented something of an ultimatum to those remaining: commit to being “extremely hardcore” as “part of the new Twitter” or leave with three months severance…and, well, a lot of people took door number 2. It’s unclear at this point (even to Twitter, it seems) how many declined the ultimatum, but all indications are that it was hundreds/thousands. SBF DMs: For some reason the founder of FTX — the once massive crypto exchange that imploded last week — decided to have an impromptu interview with a Vox reporter by way of DM. Seemingly without any agreement that any of it was off the record, said DMs were, of course, quickly published. His biggest regret in all this? Weirdly, filing for bankruptcy. Evernote gets bought: Evernote was once something of an App Store darling — an early go-to example of design, quality, and company leadership. Then after a series of pricing/privacy/design changes pissed off the user base, it just sort of…faded away. This week the company was acquired by Italian app developer Bending Spoons, in what Kyle Wiggers calls “the end of an era.” Amazon layoffs: Rumors suggested layoffs were on the way at Amazon, with some estimates suggesting upward of 10,000 would be let go. This week the layoffs began, with CEO Andy Jassy writing in a memo that the layoffs will continue into next year. Ticketmaster face-plants: Tickets for Taylor Swift’s first tour in years went on presale this week, and Ticketmaster, the website that no one on earth is happy to use, couldn’t keep up with the Swifties. Things went so awry with the gated presale that the scheduled public sale was outright canceled. You know your site outage is bad when it relights the political fire to break up your company’s overwhelming dominance. audio roundup Podcasts! We’ve got them! People seem to like them! Or a lot of people are just downloading/subscribing for the sake of inflating our collective ego. That’s okay too. Here’s what’s up in TC podcasts lately: Live from our ZebethMedia Sessions: Crypto event during one of crypto’s wildest weeks in ages, the Chain Reaction crew “tore up the script” and talked all about Sam Bankman-Fried’s “surreal, absurd” DM conversation with Vox. What does a corporate comms team do? The Equity team sat down with a pair of deeply experienced comms people to learn how all that behind-the-scenes machinery works. ZebethMedia+ Two states received 80% of venture funds raised: “Through the third quarter of 2022, U.S. venture firms raised $150.9 billion across 593 funds,” writes Rebecca Szkutak. Where did it all go? Rebecca breaks down the stats. A look at Sateliot’s Series A deck: 90% of the planet has no cell connectivity. What if you need an IoT device to phone home from, say, the middle of the ocean? That’s the idea behind Sateliot, which raised an $11.4 million Series A earlier this year. The company shared the pitch deck it used to raise with our resident pitch expert Haje Jan Kamps, who explored “the good and the bad of this high-flying space deck.”

Meta lays off thousands, FTX collapses, and Twitter has a very weird week • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 12, 2022Posted in Crypto, Media & Entertainment, media and entertainment, Week in ReviewNo Comments

Hey, friends! Welcome back to Week in Review, the newsletter where we recap the top ZebethMedia headlines from the past seven days. Get it in your inbox every Saturday AM by signing up here. Ready? Let’s go. most read Twitter had a week so strange that it could easily make up this entire newsletter, so we’ll keep to the bullet points: Last week Elon laid off a huge chunk of the company. This week, some of those who were let go were reportedly asked to come back. Twitter started giving blue verified checkmarks to anyone who’d pay $8. Things got chaotic fast. Twitter rolled out a new, second checkmark for “Official” accounts. And then got rid of them. And then…brought them back? By Friday morning, after fake “verified” accounts popped up for everything from companies to athletes to politicians, Twitter paused the $8 verification badge program. A number of execs quit — to the point where the exits perked the ears of the FTC. Elon reportedly told Twitter employees that “bankruptcy isn’t out of the question” for the company. FTX collapses: Once one of the biggest crypto exchanges in the world, FTX effectively exploded this week. It briefly looked like competitor Binance would step in to acquire FTX, only for Binance to take one look at FTX’s books and back out almost immediately. FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried has since resigned, and the company has filed for bankruptcy. Meta layoffs: Meta — the parent company behind Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp — laid off 13% of its workforce this week. With a worldwide headcount of around 87,000 employees, that works out to over eleven thousand roles cut. Gmail will no longer let you go back to old Gmail: Don’t like the new look that Gmail started rolling out back in July? Bad news. While users could previously revert to the old design, the Gmail team announced this week that the new design will be the “standard experience” for all within weeks. Google finds exploits in Samsung phones: “Google says it has evidence that a commercial surveillance vendor was exploiting three zero-day security vulnerabilities found in newer Samsung smartphones,” writes Zack Whittaker. “The chained vulnerabilities allow an attacker to gain kernel read and write privileges as the root user, and ultimately expose a device’s data.” audio roundup Looking for a new podcast to tune into on your commute? Here’s what’s up in TC podcasts lately: The Chain Reaction crew broke down the absurd collapse of FTX as it was happening. Equity (with a guest appearance from TC’s Becca Szkutak) covered the seemingly endless layoffs we’re seeing from tech companies big and small, and what FTX’s meltdown means for it and companies like it. Darrell was joined on The ZebethMedia Podcast by TC senior reporter Dom-Madori Davis to talk about “the coalition of VCs that are standing for reproductive rights” and to recap the biggest tech stories of the week. ZebethMedia+ Not a ZebethMedia+ member yet? Here’s what members were checking out most behind the paywall: How ButcherBox bootstrapped to $600M in revenue: How did ButcherBox grow from a modest Kickstarter to $600 million in revenue in just a few years? Haje outlines the company’s path so far. The Exchange: In his increasingly popular daily newsletter, Alex Wilhelm wonders: Has everyone been valuing software companies the wrong way all along?

Meta announces legs, Hulu raises prices, and Microsoft embraces DALL-E 2 • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 15, 2022Posted in Media & Entertainment, media and entertainment, Venture, Week in ReviewNo Comments

Hi, friends! It’s time for another edition of Week in Review, the newsletter where we quickly recap the most read ZebethMedia stories from the past seven days. Want it in your inbox every Saturday morning? Sign up here. most read LEGS: The company formerly known as Facebook held its Meta Connect conference this week, where it announced everything from a $1,500 VR headset to a work-focused partnership with Microsoft. Here’s the full roundup of all the news. The thing Zuckerberg seemed most excited about? His metaverse is getting legs. Hulu’s price bump: Another year, another Hulu price hike. This week the ad-supported plan got bumped from $7 to $8 per month, while the ad-free plan went from $13 to $15 per month. Microsoft x DALL-E: AI tools that can generate new images from text prompts are starting to go mainstream, with Microsoft announcing this week that it will integrate DALL-E 2 into at least two of its apps. OG App gets KO’d: The “OG App” promised to provide an ad-free/suggestion-free Instagram experience more like that of yesteryear. Unfortunately, it didn’t have Instagram’s permission to do so. Instagram owner Meta quickly announced plans to take “all appropriate enforcement actions” against the app, which has now been pulled from both Google Play and the iOS App Store. Google’s video calling booths get real: Last year, Google announced Project Starline, a wild, experimental “video-calling booth” that uses 3D imagery, depth sensors, and light field displays to make a video chat feel more like an in-person conversation. Until now, Starline booth prototypes were hidden away exclusively in Google’s offices; they’re now expanding that to include “the offices of various enterprise partners, including Salesforce, WeWork, T-Mobile and Hackensack Meridian Health.” audio roundup Been busy, and not the commuting/working out/doing housework kind of busy that lets you listen to podcasts while you get stuff done? Here’s what you missed in TC podcasts this week: On Equity, Natasha and Alex caught up with the incredibly insightful Sarah Guo, who recently launched a $100 million early-stage VC firm after being an investor/partner at Greylock for nearly a decade. Darrell and Jordan were joined on Found by Attabotics founder Scott Gravelle, who detailed how ant colonies inspired his approach to robotics. The Chain Reaction crew talked about why the SEC is investigating the company behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection and what it could mean for the crypto ecosystem. techcrunch+ Here’s what subscribers were reading most behind the TC+ member paywall this week: Supliful’s seed deck: “This is one of the best decks I’ve ever seen, despite being butt-ugly and riddled with mistakes,” writes Haje in the latest installment of his popular Pitch Deck Teardown series. Growth hacking is really just growth testing: 10+ years after the term “growth hacking” was coined, what does it really mean today? Growth marketing expert Jonathan Martinez shares his insights.