Techmeme
November 5, 2022, 6:00 PM

Top News

Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Twitter appears to roll out its new Blue subscription, offering a blue checkmark for $8/month, on iOS in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and UK  —  Twitter is officially rolling out its new Twitter Blue subscription service, which offers “blue check” verification to everyone for $8/month.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
A Twitter product lead says the new Blue subscription isn't live yet, but some users may see updates “because we are testing and pushing changes in real-time”  —  Just days after newly minted Twitter CEO Elon Musk floated changes to Twitter's system for verifying user accounts …
Brian Morrissey / The Rebooting:
Elon Musk's focus on Twitter Blue is part of a trend in which consumer tech platforms pivot away from advertising to recurring revenue through subscriptions  —  Tech's marriage of convenience to the ad industry hits the rocks  —  Request: Please fill out this survey as I think through what a Rebooting membership plan would look like.
Platformer:
Sources detail Twitter after mass layoffs: key teams gutted, severance packages account for the WARN Act, and an ad hoc Google Docs directory of remaining staff  —  I. The Snap  —  The email went out at 5:21 PT PT on Thursday.  —  For a full week, Twitter employees had waited in hopes …
Financial Times:
Current and former Twitter staff shed light on Elon Musk's “War Room”, which includes Jason Calacanis and David Sacks, tasked with fixing the stagnant business  —  In his first week as owner, billionaire axed management, began mass job cuts and launched new products
Faiz Siddiqui / Washington Post:
More: Reuters, The Guardian, TechCrunch, Associated Press, MobileSyrup, The Irish Times, VICE, Gizmodo, New York Times, Mashable, Mercury News, Cryptopolitan, Insider, Gizchina, The Hill, NBC News, Politico, Bloomberg, and The Economic Times
CNN:
Sources: 1,300 Starlink units in Ukraine went offline as SpaceX and the US DoD negotiate funding despite Elon Musk claiming the company will continue “for free”  —  Ukraine's fears that its troops  may lose access to Elon Musk's crucial Starlink internet service deepened …
Nilay Patel / The Verge:
Q&A with telecom reporter Karl Bode about Gigi Sohn's nomination to the FCC as Comcast and Fox Corp. team up to lobby swing votes in the Senate against her  —  How often do the parent companies of Fox News and MSNBC team up? … Today, we're just talking about a problem.
Bloomberg:
Source: NSO Group, which has ~$400M in debt, cut 15% of its workforce and raised prices by ~20% after a potential sale to defense contractor L3Harris collapsed  —  Embattled spyware maker NSO Group is taking drastic steps to pacify creditors holding around $400 million in debt as it waits …
Zeke Faux / Bloomberg:
El Salvador's Bitcoin “revolution” is failing miserably and behind the debacle are crypto evangelists from wealthier countries who cheered on President Bukele  —  On an estuary along the coast of El Salvador, a few miles west of the Conchagua volcano, about 70 families live in a settlement called Flor de Mangle.

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Deepsekhar Choudhury / Moneycontrol:

Earlier Picks

Bloomberg:
Wall Street Journal:
More: Insider, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, TIME, The Verge, Adweek, CNBC, SlashGear, Mercury News, The Information, Forrester, Bloomberg, and VICE
Reed Albergotti / Semafor: