Daily Crunch: Twitter CEO admits he purchased platform for $44B because ‘I kind of had to’
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The TechCrunch Top 3
- Bird, bird, bird is the word: Lots of Twitter news today, so sit back and take it all in. First, Elon Musk confirms what we basically all knew — he bought Twitter because he thought he’d be forced to. Darrell has more on that. Also, Ivan writes that the legacy check mark you have is set to expire on 4/20…we think. We’ve heard that before, but now some colleagues are seeing them go. And in case you missed it, Amanda reports that NPR leaves Twitter and that Twitter, Inc., has a new name.
- Who’s there?: Truecaller is bringing live caller ID to iPhone to its premium tier subscribers, but there’s a little bit of work involved on the part of the user. Jagmeet has more.
- Gimme a beat: Music makes everything better, and a new integration with Spotify gives Strava users a soundtrack to their activities, reports Aisha.
Startups and VC
The early days of the pandemic proved to be a massive boon for the home fitness crowd. Gyms closed indefinitely, and even when they began reopening, many members seriously questioned whether the model would continue to suit their life moving forward. One of the companies that saw early gains and then a lot of turbulence was Tonal. Brian reports that the company just picked up $130 million worth of fresh funding and minted a new CEO.
“Upon further review, it has come to our attention that the way the process was described [in the TechCrunch article] could potentially be seen as bank fraud. As a result, our process partner has terminated our relationship,” a spokesperson for Smoakland said in an email to Haje. Whoops.
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Big Tech Inc.
Are we alone in assuming all of you have at least two LinkedIn notifications to connect from someone who hasn’t figured out how to add a photo to their profile? Or they could be shielding their identity for other reasons, of course. Either way, you probably want to keep it strictly business on LinkedIn. Well, Aisha writes that LinkedIn rolled out a free feature to verify your identity and employment so that you can tell if it is the actual person. Now, whether or not you want to provide a government ID and phone number to a social media site is your call.
Meanwhile, Kyle tells you all about Databricks’ new open source model that has a super-cute name, but also some flaws.
And we have five more for you: