Meta, Amazon, Twitter, Coinbase, Snap and other firms across the tech industry are downsizing. Worldwide, more than 120,000 jobs have been lost, according to the Layoffs.fyi website. The BBC reports that several factors are driving the cuts. Among them: tech firms expanded too rapidly during the pandemic, online advertising revenue has slumped, and rising interest rates are increasing the threat of a recession.
Elon Musk has issued an ultimatum to Twitter employees: commit to a new “hardcore” Twitter or leave the company with severance pay. According to the midnight email, which was obtained by the Washington Post early Wednesday morning, employees were asked to click an icon and respond by Thursday if they wanted to stay.
Micron Technology said it is scaling back production of its chip wafers, citing market conditions as the industry grapples with softening demand, the Wall Street Journal reports. Micron recently agreed to invest up to $100 billion over the next 20-plus years to build a leading-edge memory megafab near Syracuse.
In less than a week, the cryptocurrency billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried lost most of his fortune, saw his $32 billion company FTX plunge into bankruptcy and became the target of federal investigations. In an interview with the New York Times, he said that he had expanded too fast and failed to see warning signs. But he shared few details about his handling of FTX customers’ funds.
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Politico owner and publisher Robert Allbritton started Protocol in February 2020 with the goal of covering the “evolving power center of tech.” Now, the publication is closing its doors and laying off all of its staff. Its ad-driven model fell short, Grit Daily reports.
Evernote, the note-taking and task management app founded over 20 years ago, has been acquired by Milan-based app developer Bending Spoons, Tech Crunch reports. In 2013, Evernote was reportedly valued at nearly a billion dollars. But then trouble set in, and it failed to keep pace with competitors like Notion.
Search giant Google has agreed to a $391.5 million settlement with 40 states to resolve an investigation into how the company tracked users’ locations, AP reports. The states’ investigation was sparked by a 2018 AP story, which found that Google continued to track people’s location data even after they opted out of such tracking.
There are a ton of KPIs, but many provide minimal insights. HubSpot has created a guide to help navigate YouTube Analytics and measure the metrics that actually matter.
The hype surrounding NFTs, digital artworks in file format with certificates of authenticity on a blockchain, dominated the international art world for two years. Then the market collapsed, with NFTs losing an average of 92 percent of their value, and buyers lost millions. Yet optimism still pervades the scene, Spiegel Online reports.
The sandals Steve Jobs wore while pacing the floors of the California house where he founded Apple have been sold for nearly $220,000, AP reports. “The cork and jute footbed retains the imprint of Steve Jobs’ feet, which had been shaped after years of use,” Julien’s Auctions said in the listing on its website.