hi there as quickly as extra! Greg right here as quickly as extra with Week in consider. WiR is the publication the place we take most probably the most be taught TechCrunch tales from the final seven days and wrap them up in as few phrases as attainable — no fluff, no nonsense,* solely a quick blast of every part you most probably should get hold of out about in tech this week.
*maybe considerably little bit of nonsense.
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most be taught
Tip your Amazon driver (on Amazon’s dime): in case you’ve acquired an Alexa system at house, Amazon pays your supply driver an further $5 in case you say, “Alexa, thank my driver” after a supply. Amazon might, in any case, simply pay drivers extra to start with…however that, depressingly, most probably wouldn’t be a transfer which might get Amazon most probably most probably the most be taught headlines of the week.
Slack’s CEO to depart: final week Salesforce CEO Bret Taylor stepped down; this week, Stewart Butterfield, CEO of (Salesforce-owned) Slack, introduced he’ll additionally step down come January. Ron Miller shares his insights on inbound Slack CEO Lidiane Jones and her many years of product expertise.
The “Twitter information”: “Elon Musk reminded his followers on Friday that proudly owning Twitter now means he controls every facet of the agency — collectively with what its workers mentioned behind closed doorways earlier than he took over,” writes Taylor as an array of as quickly as-private inner Twitter communications is made public.
Lensa AI goes viral: Do your whole social media associates instantly have avatars that make them appear to be sci-fi gods and movement heroes? It’s most probably as a outcomes of Lensa AI, a photograph enhancing app that went viral this week after including assist for safe Diffusion’s AI-generated artwork devices. reputation didn’t come with out controversy, although — many proceed to debate the ethics of promoting one factor generated by an AI expert on the works of exact people; in the meantime, others famous that the AI might very properly be “tricked” into producing in any other case disallowed NSFW imagery.
extra tech layoffs: This week Airtable laid off about 20% of its workers — over 250 people. Plaid additionally laid off 20%, which for them works out to 260 people. African fintech unicorn Chipper money let go of fifty people, and the U.okay. drag-and-drop e-commerce platform Primer let go of eighty five (about one-third of the agency).
Google combines Maps/Waze teams: When Google purchased the navigation app Waze for over $1 billion again in 2013, Google mentioned they’d preserve the Waze and Google Maps teams separate “for now.” seems “for now” meant about 9.5 years, however Google confirmed this week that the two teams will probably be merged. Google says it expects Waze to protect a stand-alone service.
Twitter Blue might price extra on iOS: Twitter’s $eight “Blue” subscription plan (which comes with a blue “verified” checkmark) continues to be on pause for now after a few false begins, however when it returns, it’ll reportedly price a pair of dollars extra in case you subscribe by the iOS app to be in a place to offset Apple’s decrease.
audio roundup
found — our podcast about founders and the firms they construct — has a mannequin new co-host! Becca Szkutak stepped into the position this week, becoming a member of Darrell Etherington in a chat with Daye CEO Valentina Milanova. in the meantime, the equity crew tried to make sense of 2022 in a 12 months-finish look again, and Taylor Hatmaker hopped on The TechCrunch Podcast to discover what the sudden explosion of AI-generated artwork means for exact human artists.
TechCrunch+
right here’s what subscribers have been studying most on TechCrunch+:
retailers sound the alarm about attainable private equity tech affords: “Who desires to promote when prices are low?” Ron Miller and Alex Willhelm ask.
Rootine’s $10M pitch deck: “in case you instructed me that an group that’s charging $70 month-to-month for multivitamins could be in a place to raise a $10 million spherical, I’d demand to see the receipts,” writes Haje. With that in thoughts, he dives deep into the pitch deck that helped make it happen.
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