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☆ What These Founders Learned From Trying to Take on Elon Musk's Twitter
▼ + stars: | 2024-10-28 | by ( Amanda Hoover | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

About three weeks after Elon Musk bought Twitter in October 2022, #RIPTwitter started trending. As the bird app's outlook grew more bleak, several alternative conversation platforms hatched: Narwhal, Spoutible, Spill, Post, and Cohost among them. I talked to several founders about what they learned trying to compete with Musk, and the state of civil discussion online. "There's a ton of power in whoever controls" a big social media platform, Thompson says. Spill, a Black-owned social platform, has been downloaded more than half a million times.

Persons: Elon Musk, RIPTwitter, shitposting, Gabor Cselle, Cselle, Meta, Jack Dorsey, Twitter, Musk, Twitters, he's, imminently, Fortune, Noam Bardin, Andreessen Horowitz, Bardin, Laurene Powell Jobs, Nicholas Thompson, Thompson, Narwhal, Trump, Hitler, Alphonzo Terrell, Kerry Washington, Terrell, there's, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Harris, I've, I'm Organizations: Elon, Google, Twitter, Anti Software Software, Politico, Boston Globe, The, Amplica Labs, Democratic, Spill, Phillies

☆ Ex-Meta staffers see booming business targeting online disinformation after two wars break out
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-17 | by ( Jonathan Vanian | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +15 min

Wagner left Facebook parent Meta last year, and her work in trust and safety feels like it was from a prior era. One of her first investments was in a startup called Cove, which was founded by former Meta trust and safety staffers. "One thing I would recommend is transparency at a time where third-party access and understanding to what is going on at scale on social platforms is what is needed." Post is an example of the kinds of companies that trust and safety startups are focused on. Fishman said customers are starting to see trust and safety tools as almost an extension of their cybersecurity budgets.

Persons: Joshua Bratt, Lauren Wagner, Wagner, Mandel Ngan, Roblox, Wagner's, Michael Dworsky, it's, Mason Silber, Donald Trump, Manu Aggarwal, Aggarwal, Abhijnan Dasgupta, Sara Ittelson, Ittelson, Cove's Dworsky, they'd, Alex Goldenberg, Noam Bardin, he's, Bardin, that's, Brian Fishman, Cinder, Fishman Organizations: Meta, Facebook, Hamas, Twitter, Radium Ventures, White, AFP, Getty, CNBC, Innovation Labs, Google, Apple, Republican, Everest Group, Accenture, Genpact, Big Tech, Tech, Venture, Accel, European, Digital Services, Defamation League, Network, Research, Rumble Locations: King's Cross, London, Israel, Washington ,, San Francisco, Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Cinder, who's, ActiveFence

☆ Is Big Tech’s R&D Spending Actually Hurting Innovation in the U.S.?
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-08 | by ( Christopher Mims | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

The moment Noam Bardin , former chief executive of navigation app Waze, knew that life at a big company would be profoundly different from running a startup came soon after he sold his company to Google. “The first few weeks after the acquisition, we began dealing with the bewildering corporate bureaucracy,” says Mr. Bardin. “What seems natural at a corporation—multiple approvers and meetings for each decision—is completely alien in the startup environment: make quick decisions, change them quickly if you are wrong.”

☆ Twitter alternatives like Mastadon see downloads plunge
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-09 | by ( Kali Hays | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

Long before Elon Musk came along, Twitter users bemoaned the service yet remained addicted to it. It is a text-based social platform, or "microblogging" site, home to independent servers, or "instances." In early November, the hashtag TwitterMigration was trending on Mastodon for several days as Twitter users set up accounts amid Musk's chaotic takeover. Daily users have held steady though, at 1.4 million, a major increase from its usage prior to Musk's takeover of Twitter, which typically hovered around 20,000 daily users. Downloads of the iOS app have grown 290,000% to 1.5 million since Oct. 24, with daily users up 660,000% to 321,000, according to Apptopia data.

☆ Twitter alternatives that got traction after Elon Musk takeover are suddenly seeing downloads plunge. Which has staying power and who is the next Clubhouse?
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-24 | by ( Kali Hays | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

Long before Elon Musk came along, Twitter users bemoaned the service yet remained addicted to it. It is a text-based social platform, or "microblogging" site, home to independent servers, or "instances." In early November, the hashtag TwitterMigration was trending on Mastodon for several days as Twitter users set up accounts amid Musk's chaotic takeover. Daily users have held steady though, at 1.4 million, a major increase from its usage prior to Musk's takeover of Twitter, which typically hovered around 20,000 daily users. Yet, it has maintained more than 500,000 daily users.

☆ Google to merge mapping service Waze with maps products teams
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-08 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

Dec 8 (Reuters) - Google said on Thursday it will merge teams working on mapping service Waze and products like Google Maps, effective Dec. 9, in a bid to consolidate processes. The Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O)-owned company will integrate Waze, which it acquired in 2013 for $1 billion, into Google Geo, its portfolio of real-world mapping products that include Google Maps, Google Earth, and Street View, a Google spokesperson said. Waze CEO Neha Parikh will exit the company following a transition period, Google said, adding that Waze will continue to be a standalone app, with about 151 million monthly active users worldwide. "By bringing the Waze team into Geo's portfolio of real-world mapping products, the teams will benefit from further increased technical collaboration," the spokesperson said. In a letter dated July 12, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said the company would streamline processes and consolidate investments where they overlap.

☆ See the exclusive 22-slide pitch deck that AI company 4M Analytics used to raise $45 million in Series A funding
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-20 | by ( Sindhu Sundar | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

4M Analytics uses AI and other tools to create its 'Google maps' for underground utilities. 4M Analytics, which uses technology and resources like artificial intelligence, satellite imagery and records to locate underground utility infrastructure, has raised a total of more than $45 million in Series A funding. The latest was an extension of its Series A round — led by Insight Partners and ITI Venture Capital Partners — which raised some $30 million. "We saw the market of subsurface utility engineering and the manually intensive processes of creating maps," Malka said. 4M Analytics' technology to create these underground maps does not use sensors — it uses just satellite imagery, records, and a data engine to identify utility infrastructure underground, according to the company.

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