Hey, everyone — welcome back to Review Week, the newsletter where we highlight the most read TechCrunch stories of the past week. And wow, what a week it was.
Want this newsletter in your inbox every Saturday? Register here. Are you registered? Let’s dive right in.
Read more
Mass dismissal on TwitterIt was Elon’s first week as CEO of Twitter after $44 billion. Sweeping layoffs are said to be on the way — and well, they’ve already started. Access to all groups was suddenly revoked after an e-mail was leaked on Thursday evening. With reports that the layoffs will affect up to half the company, Twitter employees are calling the whole thing “The leak” (à la Thanos) A class action lawsuit has been filed alleging that Twitter is not following proper legal procedures here.
He gets fired everywhere.Meanwhile, news of tech industry downsizing continues to emerge: Lyft laid off 13 percent of its workforce, Stripe cut 14 percent, Opendoor cut its workforce by 18 percent, and Chime shed 12 percent. Meanwhile, Apple and Amazon have both reportedly entered hiring freezes.
Google is killing HangoutsWe knew it was coming, but this week Google put the final nail in the Hangouts coffin, shutting down the chat-focused web app (the Hangouts Android/iOS app was shut down last year) in favor of Google Chat. In fact, given Google’s history of chat applications, I expect at least two more to be launched and/or closed by the time I finish this newsletter.
Falcon Heavy returns to spaceThis week, SpaceX launched its Falcon Heavy rocket for the first time since 2019, finally moving forward to a late 2020 delay (“problems with payload readiness”).
Amazon expands its music service.Sarah writes: “The company says it will now offer Prime subscribers a full music catalog of 100 million songs, instead of the previously very limited selection of 2 million songs, and most of the top podcasts will be available on the service without ads.”
Audio summary
What’s in the TC Podcast Land this week? Here are some highlights:
- of Equality group We discussed the ever-evolving role of venture capitalism, and our friend Melia Russell sat down with Business Insider to fill us in on her latest story, “Investors Are Rewriting the Books on Their Firms’ Maternity Leave Policies.”
- Amanda joins Darrell. TC Podcast To discuss Elon’s “questionable plans” to change how identity verification works on Twitter
- of Chain reaction The team dives into a growing list of problems that have developed for Bitcoin miners over the past few months.
techcrunch+
Not a part of TechCrunch+ yet? Here’s what TC+ members have been reading most behind the paywall:
Pilot CEO breaks $60 million Series C networkPublished in early 2021, this blew up this week for some reason! A few weeks after raising a large Series C, Pilot CEO Wasim Daher sat down with Lucas Matney to break down what works for their pitch floor.
The most common pitch deck mistakesWhen it comes to pitch decks, TC’s resident pitch expert HJ Jan Kamps has a list of mistakes he’s tired of seeing in decks. Thousands from them.
