Techmeme
February 26, 2021, 3:55 AM

Top News

Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge:
Twitter announces Super Follow feature to let users charge for tweets, and a Communities feature to let users create and join groups based on specific interests  —  It's also planning a groups feature  —  Twitter announced a pair of big upcoming features today: the ability for users to charge …
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Twitter says it is planning a safety mode that would let users automatically block and mute accounts that “might be acting abusive or spammy”  —  The company is also working on a new ‘safety mode’  —  Twitter plans to introduce a way for you to automatically block and mute abusive accounts …
Cameron Faulkner / The Verge:
Facebook is rolling out an opt-in feature, allowing “Hey Facebook” to be used as a wake word for its Portal displays and Oculus Quest platform  —  Available on Portal smart displays and rolling out on Oculus Quest headsets  —  Facebook has introduced a new “Hey Facebook” …
Ryan Mac / BuzzFeed News:
Facebook's Andrew Bosworth told staff that Facebook is considering building facial recognition into future smart glasses products, weighing legal implications  —  Facebook is discussing building facial recognition into its upcoming smart glasses product and has been weighing the legal implications …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft confirms it has fixed a five-hour Xbox Live outage which prevented some users from signing in or making purchases  —  Microsoft's gaming network went down worldwide  —  Microsoft's Xbox Live service went down for more than five hours today, preventing users from signing in to the service.
Karissa Bell / Engadget:
Facebook responds to the Oversight Board's 17 recommendations and commits to action on 11 of them, most of which focus on increasing transparency  —  has agreed to tweak some of its policies in response to recommendations from the Oversight Board.  The board issued its
Jay Peters / The Verge:
As part of Epic lawsuit, judge orders Valve to tell Apple how much money 436 Steam games made but narrows the amount of info Valve has to provide overall  —  Apple subpoenaed Valve for the data  —  Valve has been compelled by a California court to provide sales data on more than 400 Steam games …
Zoe Schiffer / The Verge:
Eleven current and ex-Mailchimp employees say company executives knew about allegations of racism and sexism at the company, some as early as 2014  —  Alejandra Luaces had only worked at Mailchimp for four months when she got a surprising anonymous email.  “Oliver* is in an open marriage …
Robinhood:
Robinhood says it has added 6M new crypto customers so far in 2021; Robinhood averaged ~200K new crypto customers a month in 2020  —  Since we launched nearly three years ago, Robinhood Crypto has been central to our efforts to expand access to financial services and democratize finance for all.
Salvador Rodriguez / CNBC:
Airbnb posts a $3.9B loss in Q4 in first quarterly report since IPO, with revenues of $859M, down 22% YoY, blames much of the loss on charges related to the IPO  —  - Airbnb reported a loss of $3.89 billion in its first earnings report since its IPO late last year.  — However, the company beat expectations for revenue.
Stephanie Condon / ZDNet:
Salesforce reports Q4 revenue of $5.82B, beating estimates of $5.68B, subscription and support revenues of $5.48B, up 20% YoY, and 14K net new paid customers  —  In spite of the solid performance for the quarter, Salesforce shares were down slightly in after-hours trading.
Reuters:
ByteDance has agreed to a $92M class action settlement over data privacy claims from some US TikTok users, according to court documents  —  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - ByteDance has agreed to a $92 million class-action settlement to settle data privacy claims from some U.S. TikTok users …
Cynthia Littleton / Variety:
AT&T and PE firm TPG reach a deal to make DirecTV a standalone company with TPG owning 30%; the deal is valued at $16.25B, includes DirecTV, AT&T TV, U-verse  —  The sides have been in talks for months as AT&T has sought to find a solution to the problem of DirecTV's subscriber losses dragging …
Natalie Gagliordi / ZDNet:
Autodesk says it will acquire Innovyze, which makes a SaaS product for the design, construction, operation, and maintenance of water infrastructure, for $1B  —  The acquisition is the largest in Autodesk's history and is meant to position Autodesk as a provider of end-to-end software for the operations of water infrastructure.
Natasha Mascarenhas / TechCrunch:
Newsela, a SaaS platform for K-12 educational content, raises $100M Series D at a $1B valuation led by Franklin Templeton and TCV  —  Newsela, a SaaS platform for K-12 instructional material backed by the likes of TCV, Kleiner Perkins, Reach Capital, and Owl Ventures, announced today that it has raised $100 million in a Series D round.
More: Newsela
Matthew Gault / VICE:
Amazon-owned Twitch bans Amazon's anti-union ads, saying they should never have been allowed to run on the service  —  “These ads should never have been allowed to run on our service,” Twitch said.  —  Matthew Gault  —  Amazon warehouse workers in Bessemer, Alabama are voting on unionization …
Emily Birnbaum / Protocol:
First House antitrust hearing of the new Congress saw bipartisan agreement on antitrust reforms, including on reforming burden of proof in merger cases  —  During the first House antitrust hearing of the new Congress, Democratic chairman David Cicilline and Republican ranking member Ken Buck …

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Earlier Picks

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