Techmeme
February 25, 2021, 8:25 PM

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 …
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 …
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.
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 …
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
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” …
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.
Jeff John Roberts / Decrypt:
Coinbase files its S-1, reveals profit of $322M in 2020 on $1.2B in revenue, up from a loss of $30M in 2019 on $533M in revenue  —  The recent Bitcoin bull run helped Coinbase pull in a profit of $322 million on revenues of over $1.2 billion in 2020, putting the cryptocurrency giant …
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 …
Megan Graham / CNBC:
Facebook launches a TV, radio, and digital ad campaign in support of personalized ads called Good Ideas Deserve to be Found, ahead of Apple's IDFA changes  —  - Facebook is launching a new ad campaign called “Good Ideas Deserve to be Found,” which makes a case for personalized advertising.
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 …
Ben Schoon / 9to5Google:
Smart TVs running Google TV will come with a Basic mode that strips smart features from the TV  —  Google TV is the company's next effort to rule the living room, picking up on the progress that Android TV made over half a decade.  The first smart TVs running on top of Google TV have yet to hit the market …
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.
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 …
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
India issues tougher rules for tech firms and streaming services like Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, and Netflix over resolving user complaints and more  —  India announced sweeping rules to regulate social media firms, streaming services, and digital news outlets, joining a handful of other nations …

Sponsor Posts

Meta:
Open Source AI: Available to all, not just the few  —  Meta's open source AI enables small businesses, start-ups, students, researchers and more to download and build with our models at no cost.
Tribe AI:
Build AI products that matter  —  Tribe AI helps organizations rapidly deploy AI solutions that have real business impact.  We bring together world class AI talent and tooling to drive differentiated results.
Zoho:
CIO challenge 5: Can we find an effective solution that also minimizes operational costs?  —  Welcome to the next and final installment of our CIO series!  After what feels like a thousand cups of coffee …
Hamming:
Make AI Voice Agents trustworthy  —  Hamming AI automatically tests AI voice agents and continuously monitors them in production.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Wed. 11/20 - AI To Read The Books
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or RSS.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 8:25 PM ET, February 25, 2021.

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

Emily Birnbaum / Protocol:
Katie Roof / Bloomberg:

Earlier Picks

Rafael Frankel / About Facebook:
Daniel Van Boom / CNET: