The FortyFour

Readings To Peak Your Mind

Profile of Maimai, a Chinese site modeled after LinkedIn with a Glassdoor-like forum where users can post anonymously, as it fights China’s tech firms in court (Zeyi Yang/Protocol)

by 44monk

Zeyi Yang / Protocol:Profile of Maimai, a Chinese site modeled after LinkedIn with a Glassdoor-like forum where users can post anonymously, as it fights China’s tech firms in court  —  For the Chinese tech press, 2021 started with a national debate about labor rights ignited by a big tech employee’s death, a suspected result of …

Wikimedia Foundation announces CEO Katherine Maher will step down as of April 15, says its annual budget doubled to estimated $140M in 2021 under her leadership (Felix Salmon/Axios)

by 44monk

Felix Salmon / Axios:Wikimedia Foundation announces CEO Katherine Maher will step down as of April 15, says its annual budget doubled to estimated $140M in 2021 under her leadership  —  Katherine Maher, the Wikimedia Foundation’s CEO, will step down as of April 15, she tells Axios, leaving the nonprofit …

Snap says Apple’s changes to IDFA will interrupt demand; Unity says IDFA changes will affect how mobile game developers “optimize lifetime customer value” (Megan Graham/CNBC)

by 44monk

Megan Graham / CNBC:Snap says Apple’s changes to IDFA will interrupt demand; Unity says IDFA changes will affect how mobile game developers “optimize lifetime customer value”  —  – Snap and Unity Software, which reported fourth quarter earnings after the bell Thursday, both warned of the upcoming impact …

Substack co-founder says Facebook and Twitter getting into paid newsletters is a positive thing for writers and the media ecosystem, implores them to go all in (Hamish McKenzie/Substack Blog)

by 44monk

Hamish McKenzie / Substack Blog:Substack co-founder says Facebook and Twitter getting into paid newsletters is a positive thing for writers and the media ecosystem, implores them to go all in  —  When Twitter announced that it had acquired the email newsletter provider Revue to create a Substack competitor, I tweeted a smartass response:

Ford will increase its investment in autonomous vehicles to ~$7B over 10 years through 2025, $5B of that from 2021 onward, as part of its Ford Mobility efforts (Andrew J. Hawkins/The Verge)

by 44monk

Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge:Ford will increase its investment in autonomous vehicles to ~$7B over 10 years through 2025, $5B of that from 2021 onward, as part of its Ford Mobility efforts  —  The Blue Oval is putting more money on its electric bet  —  Ford is increasing its investment in electric and autonomous …

Infinitus, which provides a machine-generated voice calling service for healthcare companies contacting customers, has come out of stealth with $21.4M Series A (Ingrid Lunden/TechCrunch)

by 44monk

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:Infinitus, which provides a machine-generated voice calling service for healthcare companies contacting customers, has come out of stealth with $21.4M Series A  —  Robotic process automation (RPA) has found a strong foothold in the world of enterprise IT through its effective use of AI …

Snap says Spotlight had 100M MAUs in January, two months after its launch, with the feature receiving an average of 175K video submissions per day (Jacob Kastrenakes/The Verge)

by 44monk

Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge:Snap says Spotlight had 100M MAUs in January, two months after its launch, with the feature receiving an average of 175K video submissions per day  —  A surprisingly successful debut  —  Snap says its TikTok competitor, Spotlight, had 100 million users in January 2021, just two months after it launched.

Apptopia: since Trump was banned from Twitter, daily use of Twitter has remained remarkably consistent (Alex Kantrowitz/Big Technology)

by 44monk

Alex Kantrowitz / Big Technology:Apptopia: since Trump was banned from Twitter, daily use of Twitter has remained remarkably consistent  —  Trump’s presence on Twitter had no impact on how much people used it, contrary to the popular narrative. … For as long as Donald Trump was president, there was a common misconception that Twitter’s fate …