Hey TechCrunch friends. It’s great that he’s back in the US after spending a week in South Korea and the Philippines. A big thank you to Henry for intervening over the past two weeks due to my ignorance of Korean Air. isn’t it Offers in-flight Wi-Fi. Talk about good sports.
If you’re wondering about Greg’s status, don’t worry. He is due to be changed from maternity leave as he will be returning within a month. In the meantime, we’ll let you know about TechCrunch’s upcoming headliner events.
TechCrunch Early Stage is approaching. This year, it will be held in Boston on his April 20th and will host venture and tech industry experts who will talk about solutions to get your startup on track. (Also in Boston: City Spotlight kicks off on his February 27th.) Beyond that is his TechCrunch Disrupt (September 19-21), which is expected to be an absolute blast this year. Take a look at our tentative guest list and let me just say: It won’t disappoint.
With those administrative issues out of the way, let’s get down to the weekly review. (If you would like to receive it every Saturday, sign up here). Here are the top stories of the past few days!
most read
Dashed Ambitions: took There is an exclusive report that Dash CEO Prince Boakye Boampong has been temporarily suspended pending an investigation into the company’s financial misconduct. Boampong, one of Africa’s most famous serial entrepreneurs, has reportedly been accused of being involved in financial misreporting. A source told TechCrunch that management repeatedly hid financial information within the company while firing employees at will. Prior to Boampong’s alleging suspension, Dash had raised his capital in a multi-million dollar venture at a valuation of over $200 million.
New iOS, new emoji: Apple has released the iOS 16.4 developer beta. This brings the following emoji set to the iPhone: First announced in the draft stage last year, the emoji span categories like food and drink, activities, objects, animals, and symbols. Sara Among the highlights, she writes, are variations of the heart emoji, hand gestures, and the “shaking face” emoji. Curious users can enroll in Apple’s Developer Program to check out new additions.
Paramount Pony Up: Ahead of the launch of its new Showtime and Paramount+ integrated TV streaming service bundle called “Paramount+ with Showtime,” Paramount has announced that it will increase the price of the Paramount+ premium tier from $9.99 per month to $11.99 per month. It’s not an unexpected move — Paramount CEO Bob Bakish telegraphed the plans in early December — but it still wants Showtime to compete with Warner Bros. Discovery’s upcoming HBO Max/Discovery+ service. It can put your Paramount+ on board at a disadvantage.
Feishu is the new Slack. ByteDance’s Slack-like workplace collaboration app Feishu surpassed $100 million in annual recurring revenue last year. Rita I am writing. ByteDance’s hefty investment in Feishu speaks volumes for the state of enterprise software in China. At a time when Silicon Valley investors are heralding product-led growth, Chinese software still relies heavily on sales, marketing, and service to acquire users.
Channeling Instagram: Instagram launched a new broadcast chat feature called “Channels” this week. Aisha reports that creators will be able to share public one-to-many messages to engage directly with their followers. Channels support text, images, polls, reactions, and more. Instagram has begun testing select creators and channels in the US and plans to expand capabilities in the coming months.
Salesforce under pressure: As activist investors put pressure on the company, Salesforce is looking for new ways to cut costs. This week, Salesforce implemented a more rigorous engineering performance measurement. Some salespeople are being pressured to retire or bow to their own stringent performance policies.As Ron It’s probably related to the fact that activist investors are circling around the company, no doubt putting pressure on management to boost productivity and cut spending.
Safety concerns Dog Tesla: Tesla this week announced a recall of its fully self-driving (FSD) beta software. FSD is an advanced driver assistance system that federal regulators say can cause vehicles to behave unsafely around intersections. The recall, which affected more than 362,000 vehicles, was partly due to concerns such as FSD-powered vehicles may not be able to cope well with speed limit changes, he said, Telsa revealed. . The FSD beta software — from its name and Musk’s promises about its functionality, to its rollout and safety concerns — is controversial and under scrutiny from regulators.
User Snap: Snapchat now has over 750 million monthly active users (MAUs). The company announced the milestone at Thursday’s Investor Day. Sara report. Snapchat says he sees a path to reaching over a billion people in the next two to three years, but it remains to be seen if he can actually achieve that. Either way, 750 MAU puts Snapchat ahead of Pinterest (450 million) but trails Facebook (2.96 billion).
Tetris movie: Apple TV+ released the first trailer this week for Tetris, a movie based on the origin story of the popular puzzle video game. Starring Taron Egerton, who plays American video game salesman Henk Rogers, “Tetris” tells the story of Rogers and his mission to secure the distribution rights to the game. The film will premiere at his South by Southwest film festival in March, after which Apple will release it to the world on his Apple TV+ (March 31).
audio
In case you didn’t know, TechCrunch has a great line-up of audio programming. I mean, I’ve been doing podcasts for days. In this week’s equity, Mary Ann and Becca We talked about Descope’s $53 million seed round, Phenomenal Ventures’ new fund, and the recent funding of a Mexican neobank. when discovered, Darrell and Becca We spoke with Alex Rappaport, CEO and co-founder of ZwitterCo. This makes it practical for the industry to recycle water and enhance product recovery with new filtration technologies. And at TechCrunch Live, we joined CFO-turned-CEO Christina Ross and her Mayfield Fund partner Rajeev Batra live (not to repeat) to share the story behind Ross’ company, Cube. , that’s how the customer is where they are.
TechCrunch+
Is the tech job market as bad as it looks?: Ron A survey of the state of the tech job market found some numbers declining, but not a clear-cut problem.His top-level observations? Tech workers, especially those with specialized skills such as engineering, data science, AI and cybersecurity, continue to be in demand as supply lags behind the number of open vacancies.
