Note: Techmeme is hiring part-time editors. Go here to apply, or tell a friend!
Techmeme
November 1, 2022, 6:30 PM

Top News

Elon Musk / @elonmusk:
Twitter's CEO: current blue checkmarks are “bullshit” and Twitter Blue will cost $8/month with half the ads, priority in replies, mentions, and search, and more  —  Twitter's current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn't have a blue checkmark is bullshit. Power to the people! Blue for $8/month.
New York Times:
Twitter Chief Customer Officer Sarah Personette resigns; sources: top ad company IPG recommended that clients pause spending on Twitter over moderation concerns  —  At least three Twitter executives have left in recent days, as one of the world's largest ad companies said clients should pause spending on the social media platform.
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Twitter is planning to end the ability of Twitter Blue subscribers to access ad-free articles from hundreds of publishers  —  Move comes as company's new owner, Elon Musk, continues to make changes to social-media platform  —  Twitter Inc. is ending the ability of subscribers …
Bloomberg:
Sources: Twitter froze some staff access to content moderation and policy enforcement tools, raising worries about a misinformation spike before the US midterms  —  Twitter Inc., the social network being overhauled by new owner Elon Musk, has frozen some employee access to internal tools used …
James Ball / New Statesman:
Elon Musk's plan to monetize Twitter verification would generate little revenue, even at $20/month, and could create myriad issues, including enabling spammers  —  Elon Musk's latest brainwave risks alienating the users Twitter depends on and would expose it to lawsuits.
Matt Levine / Bloomberg:
Kali Hays / Insider:
David Pierce / The Verge:
YouTube rolls out Primetime Channels in the US, offering shows and movies from 35 partners, including Paramount+ and Epix, and plans to add NBA League Pass soon  —  Streaming services are coming to YouTube.  The company is rolling out a new feature called Primetime Channels that will bring shows …
Nilay Patel / The Verge:
Q&A with Amazon Music VP Steve Boom on offering Prime users the company's ~100M song catalog without ads, running the unit, the music industry, labels, and more  —  Apple Music raised its rates.  Will Amazon Music follow suit? … Steve Boom is the VP of Amazon Music, and he has a great name for the music business.
Ewen Callaway / Nature:
Meta researchers develop a LLM to predict the structures of 617M+ metagenomic proteins; the model is less accurate than DeepMind's AlphaFold, but ~60x faster  —  You can also search for this author in  —  PubMed Google Scholar  —  When London-based Deep Mind unveiled predicted structures …
Andy Robinson / Video Games Chronicle:
Sony reports PlayStation Plus subscribers fell from 47.3M in Q1 to 45.4M in Q2 despite its revamp as PlayStation Network MAUs fell from 103M in Q1 to 102M in Q2  —  PlayStation Plus subscribers have dropped by nearly 2 million users since the revamped service launched in June.
Steve Dent / Engadget:
Taylor Soper / GeekWire:
Twilio will sunset Zipwhip's business texting service on December 1, 2023, after acquiring the Seattle startup last year for $850M in cash and stock  —  Twilio will sunset Zipwhip's software after acquiring the Seattle startup for $850 million last year.  —  According to the latest update …
Denny Jacob / Wall Street Journal:
Airbnb Q3: record net income of $1.2B, up 46% YoY, record revenue of $2.9B, up 29% YoY, vs. $2.85 est., and ~100M Nights and Experiences Booked, up 25% YoY  —  Home-sharing company logs longer stays despite inflation challenges  —  Airbnb Inc. ABNB 2.00%increase; green up pointing triangle posted …

Sponsor Posts

Google:
Generate videos with Veo 3 in Google Gemini  —  Create high-quality, 8-second videos with Veo 3, our state-of-the-art AI video generator.  Try it with a Google AI Pro plan or get the highest access with the Ultra plan.
UiPath:
UiPath Unveils 10 Innovations that Will Shape the Agentic Future  —  Orchestration engine, API workflows and agentic testing among key features of new UiPath Platform™ for agentic automation, launched at UiPath DevCon 2025
Zoho:
6 Tips to Unlock Revenue with Transactional Emails  —  This is a guest post by Tabular.You might think of transactional emails as boring necessities, but the truth is, they're far more powerful than you realize.
IDrive:
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.

Featured Podcasts

Acquired:
The Steve Ballmer Interview
Learn the playbooks that built the world's greatest companies - and how you can apply them as a founder, operator, or investor.
Subscribe to Acquired.
Lenny's Podcast:
Why Uber's CPO delivers food on weekends | Sachin Kansal
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Big Meta/Anduril Deal Is A Big Deal
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe to Techmeme Ride Home.
The Social Radars:
Ron Conway, Founder, SV Angel Part 4 (Bonus)
Come be a fly on the wall as Y Combinator's Jessica Livingston and Carolynn Levy talk to some of the most successful founders in Silicon Valley about how they did it.
Subscribe to The Social Radars.
Hard Fork:
The A.I. Jobpocalypse + Building at Anthropic with Mike Krieger + Hard Fork Crimes Division
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
The Logan Bartlett Show:
Rick Smith (CEO, Axon): The Wild Ride From Near-Bankruptcy to $50B+
A podcast hosted by Logan Bartlett, an investor at Redpoint Ventures, covering tech with industry insiders.
Subscribe to The Logan Bartlett Show.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 6:30 PM ET, November 1, 2022.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Washington Post:

Earlier Picks