Axios: DWAC fires its CEO amid stalled deal to buy Trump’s Truth Social . “Digital World Acquisition Corp., the blank check company seeking to buy Truth Social parent company TMTG, on Wednesday disclosed that it has fired chairman and CEO Patrick Orlando.”
Washington Post: U.S. government is not investigating Elon Musk’s Twitter purchase. “Federal authorities have no plans to open an investigation into Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter with help from foreign investors, according to two people aware of the matter, despite concerns from President Biden and the demands of a top Democratic senator worried about the social network’s international financial backers.”
Ars Technica: The flight tracker that powered @ElonJet has taken a left turn. “A major independent flight tracking platform, which has made enemies of the Saudi royal family and Elon Musk, has been sold to a subsidiary of a private equity firm. And its users are furious. ADS-B Exchange has made headlines in recent months for, as AFP put it, irking ‘billionaires and baddies.’ But in a Wednesday morning press release, aviation intelligence firm Jetnet announced it had acquired the scrappy open source operation for an undisclosed sum.”
TV Tech: Fabric Acquires Internet Video Archive. “The media and entertainment catalog management solution provider Fabric has acquired Internet Video Archive (IVA), which has a large inventory of entertainment trailers, as well as a substantial baseline catalog of film and television metadata. Financial terms of the deal for IVA were not disclosed. For the past 18 years, IVA has been providing movie, TV, and game promotional content to some of the largest names in the media industry.”
The Verge: Discord acquires Gas, the popular app for teens to compliment each other. “Gas has polls that ask users to vote for things like the most beautiful person they’ve met or the classmate that isn’t afraid to get in trouble. It has soared in popularity among high schoolers since launching in August. One of the co-creators of TBH, a very similar teenager app acquired and shut down by Facebook, created Gas, which has caught the attention of more than 1 million daily active users and 30,000 new users per hour in October.”
CNBC: JPMorgan shutters website it paid $175 million for, accuses founder of inventing millions of accounts. “JPMorgan Chase on Thursday shut down the website for a college financial aid platform it bought for $175 million after alleging the company’s founder created nearly 4 million fake customer accounts.”
New York Times: Twitter’s Rivals Try to Capitalize on Musk-Induced Chaos. “Apart from employees at Meta, former Twitter workers have begun projects for what they say could be the next Twitter. Start-ups like Post and niche services like Mastodon and Hive Social have also reared their heads, as has the microblogging platform Tumblr.”
The Hill: The true tragedy behind Musk’s Twitter buyout is the power of billionaires. “The fact that one single person, Elon Musk, could access enough money to buy out an entire social media platform is incredible. It would take the median American worker, working full time at $55,640 a year, no fewer than 790,797 years to make the $44 billion needed to buy Twitter. This is longer than human beings have been on the planet.”
PRNewswire: Bending Spoons to Acquire Renowned Productivity App Evernote to Enhance Suite of Consumer-Facing Digital Products (PRESS Release). “Bending Spoons, a leading European technology company based in Milan, Italy, today announced it has reached a definitive agreement to acquire Evernote, the renowned personal productivity app.”
TechCrunch: Google acquires Twitter-backed AI avatar startup Alter for $100 million. “Google has acquired Alter, an artificial intelligence (AI) avatar startup that helps creators and brands express their virtual identity, for about $100 million, a source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch, in a push to boost its content game and better compete with TikTok.”
Gizmodo: Elon Musk Says He Doesn’t Actually Plan to Cut Twitter Staff by 75%: Report. “Elon Musk, who’s reportedly on track to finalise his purchase of Twitter this week, doesn’t actually plan to cut the social media company’s staff by 75%, according to a new report from Bloomberg News. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be significant pain at the social media company after Musk shells out $US44 ($61) billion in the highly publicized deal.”
New York Times: Twitter Tries Calming Employees as Deal With Elon Musk Looms. “With Mr. Musk’s $44 billion deal to buy Twitter set to close no later than Oct. 28, the company is trying to reassure workers about their employment and compensation.”
Politico: Parler was jubilant about Kanye West buying it. Then the problems started.. “On the afternoon that Parler, a social media platform popular with conservatives, announced its acquisition by Ye, better known as Kanye West, the site emailed hundreds of VIP members to excitedly share the news. There were just two problems.”
New York Times: Meta Forced to Sell Giphy After British Antitrust Order. “Meta said on Tuesday that it would sell Giphy, the online repository for video clips of pets, facial expressions and other animated GIFs, a major defeat for the social media giant in a long-running dispute with British antitrust regulators.”
The Verge: The ugly business logic behind Kanye West’s Parler acquisition. “According to a source familiar with the discussions, Parler’s parent company, Parlement, has been trying to offload its social media platform to potential buyers over the last few weeks. One prospective buyer described Parlement’s asking price for the platform as wildly inflated, and said they were stunned by the site’s low number of daily active users.”
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