The Reddit and Astera Labs IPOs last week ate up a lot of media oxygen.
And with good reason, the two tech IPOs priced well and traded with even more gusto.
After a long dearth for technology offerings, seeing two large, multi-billion dollar offerings in the same week was part of a much-needed win for private-market tech companies, and sigh of relief for the same.
But there was another offering last week that has a tech-angle to it: Trump Media and Technology Group, which is the company behind Truth Social.
More from TechCrunch here, but the gist is that after much back-and-forth, it merged with its chosen SPAC and started to trade.
Donald Trump’s beleaguered SPAC deal is finally going through, and just in time to pay nearly half a billion dollars owed over several legal actions — if the board agrees to let him sell.
And that’s without reckoning with the questionable success of Truth Social, the partisan social network hurriedly stood up after the former President was booted from Twitter.
TMTG reportedly had a net loss of around $49 million in 2023, on revenues of under $4 million — not exactly hot numbers.
There’s no doubt that many, many shareholders in the newly public TMTG will sell their shares as soon as possible.
But if Trump wanted to finance his current liabilities, he’d have to sell some 12 million shares at the current price — around 15% of his total stake.
Meta announced on Thursday that its beta experience of sharing Threads accounts to the fediverse is now open to users ages 18 and up with public profiles.
To opt into the fediverse beta experience on Threads, go to account settings and toggle on fediverse sharing.
This gives you the chance to connect with other people who may not be on Threads but use alternative social networking apps.
For instance, beta users on Threads can’t see people in the fediverse who replied or liked their posts.
Users also can’t share posts with polls.
Social network X (formerly Twitter) launched new top-up packs for its developer API program on Tuesday.
Last year, Elon Musk curtailed free API access and released new paid tiers with the basic level starting at $100 per month.
With the new top-up launch, the social network said that there are also limits to the number of upgrades developers can purchase.
Developers with basic tier are capped at 10 top-ups and developers with pro tier are capped at 5 top-ups per month.
The company’s alternations to its API rules also impacted researchers and their ability to study the platform’s data.
Remember when you would “poke” your friends on Facebook to get their attention, annoy them or just start a poke war?
Well, Facebook is trying to bring back that experience with some small updates to the poking feature.
Plus, Facebook added the ability to poke a friend when you search for them on the social network.
Facebook says these small changes have led to a 13x spike in poking in the past month.
Facebook never defined what the idea behind poking was, and left it up to users’ interpretation, with some choosing to use it a way to flirt.
LinkedIn, the Microsoft-owned social platform, has made a name for itself primarily as a platform for people looking to network and pick up knowledge for professional purposes, and for recruitment — a business that now has more than 900 million users.
Now, to boost the time people are spending on the platform, the company is breaking into a totally new area: gaming.
App researchers have started to find code that points to the work LinkedIn is doing.
The LinkedIn spokesperson declined to say how and if Microsoft is involved in the gaming project at LinkedIn.
Facebook, the world’s biggest social network, has been a major driver of social gaming over the years.
ShopMy, a marketing platform for content creators to connect with brands and monetize their content, announced today that it raised $18.5 million.
To date, creators have earned “tens of millions in commissions” on the platform, the company tells TechCrunch.
“He observed a significant disconnect in the social media ecosystem: influencers struggled to monetize their product recommendations effectively, and their followers didn’t have an easy path to purchase.
Chris viewed ShopMy as the solution, a bridge that transformed how influencers share and monetize their product recommendations,” Rein explains.
Even Instagram has embraced creator marketing, launching a marketplace tool for paid partnerships in 2022.
Don Lemon announced on Wednesday that X owner Elon Musk has canceled the deal for his upcoming talkshow on the platform.
Lemon, a former CNN anchor, says Musk terminated the partnership hours after he interviewed the multibillionaire for the first episode of the show.
“Elon Musk has canceled the partnership I had with X, which they announced as part of their public commitment to amplifying more diverse voices on their platform,” Lemon wrote in a statement.
“He informed me of his decision hours after an interview I conducted with him on Friday.”Despite the canceled deal with X, The Don Lemon Show will live on.
The interview with Musk will remain the premiere episode of the show and is scheduled to air on March 18 on YouTube, podcast channels and X.
The original version of Block Party was built on top of Twitter’s API to automate the process of blocking bad actors, trolls, harassers, and others.
However, Twitter’s API crackdown meant that Block Party’s ability to operate was immediately impacted.
That product, now on hiatus, has since been rebranded Block Party Classic.
Privacy Party will also act like middleware here, allowing users to interact with platforms and services to adjust their privacy settings with fewer clicks.
“They also present controls that you have including an additional level of control that automates finding and fixing privacy settings for you.”Chou did not say when Privacy Party would exit beta, but it’s free to use for the time being.
Anonymous social apps tend to appeal to younger users and are often used for bad behavior like bullying, harassment, and online abuse.
It seems every few years — and no matter how many times anonymous apps like these fail — someone, somewhere builds yet another anonymous social platform.
Yik Yik, in fact, is on its second life.
No matter how many times this trend is tried, standalone anonymous social apps aimed at consumers rarely lead to a sustainable business.
Yik Yak, Sidechat, Whisper, and Fizz were asked for comment using public email addresses published on their websites and in their terms of service.
