Techmeme: Sources: in an update to investors, Twitter reports a ~40% YoY decline in both revenue and adjusted earnings for December 2022, as advertisers fled the platform (Wall Street Journal)

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March 4, 2023, 4:30 PM

Top News

Erin Woo / The Information:

Sources: after Twitter refused to pay its AWS bills for months, Amazon threatened in February 2023 to withhold payment for the ads the company runs on Twitter — Elon Musk is running into an obstacle in his relentless drive to cut costs at Twitter: some of the same vendors that Twitter …

More: 9to5Google

Mastodon: @sully1503@mastodon.online and @darnell@one.darnell.one

Tweets: @amir, @9to5google, @pt, @film_girl, @carnage4life, @strobist, @pt, @atrupar, @jessicalessin, @joshtpm, @tomcoates, @joshtpm, @tlakomy, @shaig, @fordm, and @quinnypig

Wall Street Journal:

Sources: in an update to investors, Twitter reports a ~40% YoY decline in both revenue and adjusted earnings for December 2022, as advertisers fled the platform — The company recently made a first interest payment to banks that lent $13 billion to help pay for Elon Musk's buyout, people familiar with the matter said

More: Reuters, Insider, and Bloomberg

Mastodon: @frank@ramblings.social. Tweets: @zefede, @emptywheel, @chrisfralic, @goangelo, @eliotetc, @chrchristensen, and @scottlincicome

Yuan Gao / Bloomberg:

The US adds China's Inspur, the world's third largest server maker that has joint ventures with IBM and Cisco, to its Entity List, limiting its US tech access — The Biden administration's blacklisting of China's Inspur Group Co. targets a company that US tech giants like Cisco Systems Inc. …

More: Tom's Hardware, South China Morning Post, TechSpot, Bloomberg, Reuters, and History-Computer

Lawrence Abrams / BleepingComputer:

Bing Chat appears to have a hidden Celebrity mode, in which the chatbot answers questions while impersonating Biden, Trump, Tom Cruise, and other famous people — A secret Bing Chat ‘Celebrity’ mode allows users to instruct the AI to impersonate celebrities, answering questions and talking like the person it imitates.

More: HotHardware and MSPoweruser

Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:

BidenCash, a dark web marketplace for stolen credit and debit cards, leaks a free database of 2.1M+ cards sharing emails, card expiry dates, CVV codes, and more — A carding marketplace known as BidenCash has leaked online a free database of 2,165,700 debit and credit cards in celebration of its first anniversary.

More: Security Affairs, Restore Privacy, and The Record

Harry McCracken / Fast Company:

A profile of Slack CEO Lidiane Jones, who was a Sonos VP of software management before joining Salesforce, as she leads Slack through its “biggest product year” — Over a few days in late November and early December of 2022, it became clear that Slack was about to go through …

Tweets: @harrymccracken, @peterschwartz2, @lidianejones, and @slackhq. Thanks:@technologizer

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge:

Ring says new Ring Alarm users will have to pay for a Ring Protect subscription starting at $3.99 per month to use existing free features, starting on March 29 — Yet another company will charge its customers more money for using existing features as the subscription-based smart home becomes the norm.

More: Android Central, PCMag, Digital Trends, SlashGear, HotHardware, Engadget, and The Ambient

Kif Leswing / CNBC:

LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman quits OpenAI's nonprofit board, seeking to invest in companies using OpenAI's tech, which he says may cause a conflict of interest — - LinkedIn founder and Greylock partner Reid Hoffman is leaving the nonprofit board of OpenAI, he announced in a post on Friday.

More: LinkedIn, Bloomberg, San Francisco Business Journal, Reuters, The Economic Times, and Michael Tsai

Tweets: @davemcclure, @reidhoffman, @sama, @joshelman, @adamnash, and @gdb

Will Douglas Heaven / MIT Technology Review:

Q&A with OpenAI's Sandhini Agarwal, Liam Fedus, Jan Leike, and co-founder John Schulman on training ChatGPT, dealing with its virality, fixing issues, and more — Exclusive conversations that take us behind the scenes of a cultural phenomenon. — When OpenAI launched ChatGPT …

Tweets: @tiagodf, @trengriffin, @antonioregalado, @techreview, @ndiakopoulos, @niallfirth, @ketanj0, and @jjaron

Noah Bierman / Los Angeles Times:

San Jose-based Vintra, whose clients include the IRS and police departments, says its “co-appearance” AI can map associations between people caught on video — A gray-haired man walks through an office lobby holding a coffee cup, staring ahead as he passes the entryway.

Tweets: @daragh_murray, @latimes, @senmarkey, @latimes, @latimes, @sarahdwire, and @nickbaumann

Kate Park / TechCrunch:

Singapore-based e-commerce aggregator Una Brands raised a $30M pre-Series C, following a $30M Series B in September 2022, bringing its total funding to $115M — Una Brands, a Singapore-based e-commerce aggregator, has raised $30 million in pre-Series C financing just five months after announcing …

Demetri Sevastopulo / Financial Times:

The US imposes new rules requiring that CHIPS Act beneficiaries agree not to expand manufacturing capacity in “countries of concern”, like China, for 10 years — Commerce department imposes new rules on beneficiaries of $39bn programme — Chipmakers must agree not to expand capacity …

More: Engadget, Dallas Morning News, Japan Times, and New York Times

Tweets: @steve_hanke, @dimi, and @srinathraghava3

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From Mediagazer

Natalie Korach / Status:

Eight antitrust experts assess what Paramount's pause on WBD acquisition means, which side it benefits most, and where the merger is headed over the next year

Dominic-Madori Davis / TechCrunch:

London-based European Technology Network, a TBPN-like news show livestreaming 5x per week on YouTube and X, raised a $1.6M seed from Axel Springer and others

Katie Deighton / Wall Street Journal:

eMarketer: ~45% of US influencer marketing spend will go to those with <20K followers in 2026, up from 19.5% in 2021; 19.9% will go to those with <5K followers

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More News

Financial Times:

Some UK officials and SoftBank staff blame onerous FCA rules, process complexity and cost, and the UK's political chaos for Arm shunning a London listing

More: PitchBook, BBC, The Guardian, Barron's Online, Press Association, Coinspeaker, UKTN, and Tech Monitor

Tweets: @robinwigg, @arashmassoudi, @peter_tl, and @ajb_powell

Josh Eidelson / Bloomberg:

An NLRB director rules that Google is a “joint employer” with YouTube subcontractor Cognizant and must bargain with Cognizant's YouTube workers if they unionize

More: The Verge. Tweets: @alphabetworkers, @laszlobock, @ekp, @daveyalba, and @josheidelson

Forbes:

Ryan Breslow sues Mark Phillips, a convicted fraudster he hired to build his social impact DAO, for allegedly stealing ~$10.5M of the project's seed funding

Tweets: @sub8u, @moo9000, @carnage4life, @evacide, @yoda, @hkanji, and @sarahnemerson

Aaron Tilley / Wall Street Journal:

Apple approves a BlueMail app update that adds a ChatGPT feature, after the email app's developer Blix assured Apple that the update includes content moderation

More: MacSecurity.net, Gizmodo, The Economic Times, CNBC, MarketWatch, MacDailyNews, WinBuzzer, New York Post, Tom's Guide, Neowin, and Barron's Online. Tweets: @evelyndouek

CoinDesk:

Silvergate plans to discontinue its Silvergate Exchange Network, a 24/7 instant settlement service that its clients could use to move money to crypto exchanges

More: Protos, Reuters, The Block, Cointelegraph, Crowdfund Insider, Livemint, Bloomberg, and Bitcoinist.com

Tweets: @silvermanjacob, @mayazi, and @adamscochran

Bloomberg:

Sources: Stable Diffusion creator Stability AI seeks to raise money at a ~$4B valuation, after raising a $101M seed at a ~$1B valuation in October 2022

More: PitchBook. Tweets: @hkanji, @pkedrosky, and @katie_roof

Earlier Picks

Paul Alcorn / Tom's Hardware:

Intel moves to a two-year data center GPU release cadence, canceling Rialto Bridge and delaying its Falcon Shores chiplet-based hybrid chips from 2024 to 2025

More: HotHardware, ServeTheHome, Intel, Jon Peddie Research, Wccftech, Phoronix, and VideoCardz.com. Thanks:@paulyalcorn

Cristiano Lima / Washington Post:

Sources: Google hired a law firm for a civil rights and racial equity audit into its services and policies, after years of pressure from advocates and Democrats

More: Reuters. Tweets: @adriennelaw, @deepseadawn, and @viacristiano

Financial Times:

Sources: Character.AI, whose chatbot generates chats in the style of famous people like Shakespeare, raised $200M to $250M led by a16z at a ~$1B valuation

More: Newcomer. Tweets: @georgenhammond

Mitchell Clark / The Verge:

One month after Elon Musk said Twitter started sharing ad revenue from reply threads with users who pay for Twitter Blue, Twitter has yet to provide any details

Mastodon: @Waterloo@mastodon.lol and @jeremyburge@mastodon.world

Annie Palmer / CNBC:

Amazon plans to close eight Go convenience stores in Seattle, NYC, and San Francisco, as the company reevaluates its brick-and-mortar strategy and cuts costs

More: GeekWire, Engadget, The Verge, PCMag, Bloomberg, Neowin, Seattle Business Journal, Gizmodo, The Information, and American Banker

Tweets: @silviakillings, @tomgara, @harrymccracken, and @rakeshlobster

Erik Schatzker / Bloomberg:

Coinbase acquires One River, a crypto asset management startup that serves only institutional clients, like pension funds; One River was valued at $186M in 2021