Zheping Huang / Bloomberg:Tencent, Alibaba, Xiaomi, and other Chinese companies are testing audio-only chats in their platforms, looking to emulate Clubhouse, which is banned in China — – Beijing’s ban on Clubhouse is an opportunity for startups — Several VC firms are considering investments in the sector
Sean Keane / CNET:Researcher Jane Manchun Wong finds features like “Undo Tweet” could be part of Twitter’s planned subscriptions — An app researcher’s screenshot shows that among the options for subscribers of an unrevealed service. — We’ve had repeated rumblings about Twitter working …
Wall Street Journal:GroupM: Google, Facebook, and Amazon “triopoly” grew its share of US digital ad market from 80% in 2019 to 90% in 2020, and now collects 50%+ of all US ad spend — The three tech giants now collect more than half of all ad dollars spent in the U.S. The pandemic economy got…
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Jay Peters / The Verge:Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and other Facebook apps like Gaming are experiencing outages — The Facebook-owned social networks are experiencing outages — Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger are down for many right now. More than 125,000 users have reported issues with Instagram on DownDetector.
Financial Times:Sources: UK’s CMA is preparing an antitrust investigation into the way Facebook allegedly uses customer data to squash rivals in social media and online ads — CMA prepares fresh crackdown on Big Tech after investigations into Google and Apple — Britain’s competition regulator is preparing …
Wall Street Journal:Sources: China is restricting use of Tesla cars by military and state employees, citing concerns that the data they collect could be sent back to the US — People familiar with the effort cite concerns Tesla cars could be source of national security leaks — SINGAPORE—China’s government …
Josh Constine / Josh Constine’s PressClub:Transcript of a Clubhouse chat with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, and Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke about creator economy, Apple, and more — The Facebook, Spotify, and Shopify CEOs discuss the creator economy and Apple’s policies
Sam Shead / CNBC:EU calls on countries to change laws on stock options and immigration so that startups can attract the best talent; 25 countries across Europe have signed up — – The EU Start-up Nations Standard calls on countries to change their laws on stock options and immigration visas so that start-ups …
Upmanyu Trivedi / Bloomberg:India asks a Delhi court to stop WhatsApp from implementing its new privacy policy, alleging that the controversial policy violates India’s technology laws — – Modi government urges a high court to restrain WhatsApp — India says WhatsApp’s policy violates technology laws
Telegram:Telegram expands Voice Chats to channels, with no limits on number of listeners, and now allows admins to record audio and celebrities to switch accounts — Voice Chats first appeared in December, adding a new dimension of live talk to Telegram groups. Starting today, they become available …