Haven’t you heard? Twitter was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange. Taken private by an eccentric billionaire who builds rockets and electric vehicles in search of a new mountain to climb: restoring the town square of the Internet via social media content moderation. He may have fought it and tried to escape the deal multiple times through various tweetstorms, upper and lower court lawsuits. But here we are. Elon Musk owns Twitter.
Ah, how blissful to take the summer off from writing. Was it a quiet summer? Oh noo no no. We moved! Out of the Bay to Boston. Took some vacation. Got Covid on vacation. Had to put my head down and do a fair amount of work too. So yeah, like many of you I’m limping back into the swing of things.
You may have noticed the temperature has risen…and I’m not talking about the weather. All across the tech ecosystem the heat is on with teams “pushing harder” amid headwinds of slumping growth, plunging valuations, and an escalating sense of impending doom.
What else did I miss?
For Twitter employees it was supposed to be a recharge week without meetings. You can imagine how quickly that got turned upside down when Elon entered the app. Just a couple weeks before payments startup Fast hit the wall and shut down suddenly leaving hundreds of employees looking for new jobs. In a rapidly changing macroeconomic environment, things are getting tougher out there!
I’ll tell you what, I felt pretty stupid sitting down to write about management with war breaking out in Eastern Europe last week. Couldn’t find the words. So I took the week off. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one doom scrolling the timeline. In the days since Russia invaded Ukraine (again) we’ve seen the horror of war and the indomitable will of the Ukrainian people on full display to the world.
W2:
1.) Doge Founder Barks
2.) TikTok Shelves IPO
3.) A Fleeting Feature
4.) Delta Variant 📈
W3:
1.) Activision Toxic?
2.) Zoom Radios Five9
3.) Streaming to Gold
4.) Tech Things
1.) It’s Audio Week!
2.) Netflix Ran Outta Subs
3.) Peloton Pressure
4.) Travis Kalanick is Back?
1.) Tesla Buys Bitcoin
2.) Social Resurgence
3.) Bumble IPO
4.) Salesforce Goes Hybrid
The internet effectively broke this past Sunday with the shocking news of the tragic death of Kobe Bryant. A basketball giant and complicated pop culture icon. Information and misinformation rocketed around the world at warp speed before the truth could catch up. It was an unprecedented day both in sadness and scale. We also said […]