Tech

Is Elon Musk fiddling while Twitter burns? On Thursday, hundreds of Twitter employees quit the company, per the New York Times. The mass resignation came after Musk, the mega-billionaire new owner of Twitter, demanded that staffers agree to an “extremely hardcore” work culture, meaning “working long hours at high intensity” — or take three months

BuzzFeed, the internet news site that popularized the listicle and broke major political and entertainment news, is the subject of an upcoming documentary from Kelsey Darragh, a former staffer and filmmaker. The film, which is currently in production, is backed by producer and financier Bright West Entertainment, which previously made “Subject” and “Sirens.” The company has

Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop media and lifestyle company has set a development pact with Audible, Amazon’s premium audio storytelling division, for an array of original audio productions. Audible has greenlit four titles under The Goop Pursuit banner, launching Jan. 12, 2023. Those include “Leaning Into Pleasure,” hosted by Penda N’diaye, founder of Pro Hoe, a brand

YouTube is kicking out a new ecommerce component to the beautiful game’s quadrennial World Cup tournament. On Nov. 21, YouTube Shopping and FIFA will launch the Game Face Shoppable Shorts Challenge for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. Fans can display their country pride by posting a YouTube Shorts video with the hashtag #FIFAWorldCupChallenge. From

Spotify is pulling influential Gen Z creator Emma Chamberlain into its podcast orbit. Under a multiyear pact with Chamberlain, Spotify starting in early 2023 will become the exclusive home for her “Anything Goes With Emma Chamberlain” podcast, including all back-catalog episodes and future installments. In addition, select new episodes on Spotify will be presented as

Streaming platform Roku said it will eliminate 200 jobs in the U.S., citing “current economic conditions,” cutting about 7% of its overall workforce. “Due to the current economic conditions in our industry, we have made the difficult decision to reduce Roku’s headcount expenses by a projected 5%, to slow down our opex growth rate,” the

Celebrity promoters of now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX — including Larry David, Tom Brady, Giselle Bündchen, Shaquille O’Neal and Stephen Curry — have been named in a class-action lawsuit accusing FTX and its “brand ambassadors” of deceptively encouraging consumers to invest in the company. In a complaint filed Nov. 15 in Florida federal district court, Edwin

Elon Musk’s chaotic tenure running Twitter continues apace, less than three weeks after he closed the $44 billion deal for the social network. After firing Twitter’s senior management team, laying off 50% of the company’s workforce and terminating some two dozen employees who criticized the tech mogul in private and on Twitter, Musk sent an

The Try Guys are looking to grow their audience off YouTube via a multiyear deal with Jellysmack, a company that optimizes video content distribution on platforms like Facebook and Snapchat. In addition, Jellysmack has secured multiyear pacts with Kris Collins (Kallmekris), who has more than 47 million TikTok followers, making her one of the top

Netflix is giving customers a new way to lock down their accounts, marking another step in its larger efforts to curtail illicit password sharing. Starting Tuesday, the company is rolling out Manage Access and Devices, a new feature in Netflix’s Account Settings that lets customers view all the recent devices that have streamed using their

The crush of fans flocking to Ticketmaster to try to nab presale tickets for Taylor Swift’s upcoming 2023 “Eras Tour” in the U.S. caused the site to become inaccessible for thousands on Tuesday morning. “We are aware fans may be experiencing intermittent issues with the site and are urgently working to resolve,” Ticketmaster’s customer support

TikTok’s second annual Discover List is here. This year, the app is spotlighting global creators who are making a positive impact, both on and off the platform. Divided into five categories — changemakers, foodies, icons, innovators and originators — each of the 50 nominated creators has something unique to share with the world. Take Dylan

Longtime media executives David Levy and Chris Weil are launching a marketing agency alongside Horizon Media, one aimed at capitalizing on the shift they see already underway for sports advertising. Horizon Sports & Experiences (HS&E) plans to focus on marketing beyond TV commercials and in-stadium signage, which Levy called “table stakes.” Instead, it will look

Facing a slowdown in sales, Amazon plans to lay off about 10,000 employees in corporate and technology positions, starting as soon as this week, the New York Times reported. Citing anonymous sources, the Times reported that the layoffs will be concentrated on Amazon’s devices group, including the Alexa voice assistant, along with its retail and

Apple is hitting the pitch for the 2022 FIFA World Cup with “After the Whistle,” an exclusive podcast hosted by Brendan Hunt, co-creator and star of Apple TV+ series “Ted Lasso,” and NBC Sports’ Rebecca Lowe. Apple says “After the Whistle,” produced in partnership with Meadowlark Media, will provide “an entertaining and informative take” on

SiriusXM inked a three-year contract extension with TV/radio host and producer Andy Cohen, under which the pop-culture maven’s “Andy Cohen Live” will expand from a weekly to a five-days-per-week show — and his Radio Andy channel will expand its programming lineup with shows from other personalities. Cohen, the creator and content curator of SiriusXM’s Radio

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said in an interview with CNN that he plans to donate most of his wealth to charity within his lifetime, the first time he’s made such a pledge. Bezos is currently the fourth richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of $124.1 billion, per Forbes. In an interview

Mila Kunis, Debra Messing and Mayim Bialik are among more than 200 celebrities and entertainment executives who have signed an open letter calling on Amazon and Barnes & Noble to remove the antisemitic documentary and book, “Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America,” from their respective platforms. The letter was released by Creative Community for

Elon Musk is planning to dismantle Twitter’s decade-plus-old verification program, designed to increase trust in the social network by providing a visual signifier that high-profile accounts are, in fact, who they say they are. Going forward, Musk’s $7.99/month Twitter Blue subscription will the only way to get the “verified” blue check-mark — except that the

Jordan Peele, the filmmaker behind hit thrillers “Get Out,” “Us” and “Nope,” is taking his penchant for horror to his first audio-only series. “Quiet Part Loud,” the first fictional audio series from Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions, is slated to launch exclusively on Spotify on Tuesday, Nov. 15. The show, produced by Monkeypaw and Spotify’s Gimlet Media,

A week into owning Twitter, billionaire tech titan Elon Musk fired half the company’s employees, leaving the task of carrying out his aggressive plans to generate new subscription revenue to the remaining 3,700 or so Tweeps. And that’s while many advertisers have frozen spending on Twitter over concerns about exactly what kinds of “free speech”

After Elon Musk took over Twitter and introduced a surge of new policies regarding verification and impersonation, Mark Cuban is giving the fellow billionaire advice on how to fix the app. With Musk’s new $8 per month Twitter Blue subscription, anyone can buy a blue check mark and become verified on Twitter. For Cuban, this

Audio Up Media and WME have formed a new strategic partnership to support the development of artists from Audio Up’s podcast slate. Under the partnership, WME will advise Audio Up on touring and content opportunities across film, TV and digital. In addition, WME will provide the company access to its network across music, entertainment and

Amagi, a provider of infrastructure for delivering streaming video content and ads, announced that it raised more than $100 million in funding, including $80 million in primary capital, from private-equity firm General Atlantic. New York-based Amagi said it plans to use the funding to bolster its support infrastructure for customers and invest in AI-driven personalization,

It’s another day at Elon Musk’s Twitter — and with it, another swift change in plans. Musk abruptly nixed Twitter’s launch of “official” labels for verified real accounts, such as government accounts, commercial companies, business partners, major media outlets, publishers and some public figures. The company began rolling those out Wednesday before Musk, a few

Facebook’s parent company Meta is set to lay off 11,000 people and reduce its workforce by 13%, founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Wednesday. The news was shared around 3 a.m. PST with staff access “to most Meta systems” removed effective immediately. In a company-wide memo that was all posted on the company’s public

Netflix has released the teaser trailer for “The Lying Life of Adults,” a six-episode adaptation of the eponymous novel by Elena Ferrante which will drop globally on the streamer on Jan. 4, 2023. “Lying Life,” which is directed by Neapolitan helmer Edoardo De Angelis (“Indivisible”), stars Valeria Golino in the role of the crass and enigmatic Neapolitan

The shortest videos on YouTube are coming to the biggest screen in the house — in a player purpose-built for HDTVs. YouTube Shorts, first introduced in the fall of 2020, was originally developed and optimized for mobile creators and viewers. While users have been able to watch Shorts in the YouTube TV app’s regular video

As Elon Musk prepares to roll out his $8 per month Twitter Blue program, which includes blue check marks for users who subscribe, Mark Cuban and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey are giving the app’s new owner some advice on how to run the platform. After Musk tweeted, “Twitter needs to become by far the most

“Sonic Frontiers” was supposed to release in 2021, but it was delayed to 2022 in order to improve its quality. After the two “Sonic the Hedgehog” movie adaptations did well at the box office and received generally positive feedback, it makes sense that SEGA would like the next big “Sonic” game to exceed commercial and