Tech

What a whacked-out couple of weeks this has been! When I began writing this editor’s letter about the onslaught of news, I wasn’t even planning to mention Elon Musk’s pursuit of Twitter because a deal looked dead in the water. Then we got whiplashed this past weekend when suddenly the acquisition appeared imminent. Sure enough,

Elon Musk, who’s sealed a $44 billion deal to become Twitter’s sole owner, is prohibited from posting tweets that “disparage” the social network or its employees. But that didn’t stop Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and the world’s richest person, from criticizing Twitter’s 2020 decision to freeze the account of the New York

After years of companies spending like drunken sailors on streaming video, some are now suffering hangovers. Netflix, in the first quarter of 2022, lost customers for the first time in more than a decade. It could shed 2 million more in Q2. The streaming giant is scrambling to find new sources of revenue growth, with

GeekWire co-founder and chairman Jonathan Sposato has launched JoySauce Network, a new ad-supported multimedia platform aimed at the “American Asian” audience and its allies, Variety has learned exclusively. The site, which went live Wednesday morning, boasts “multiple channels of vibrant digital programming dedicated to celebrating both new and established American Asian talent.” JoySauce Network notes

Comcast and Charter Communications, the two biggest cable operators in the U.S., are joining forces in the streaming wars. The two companies on Wednesday announced a 50-50 joint venture to develop and offer a next-generation streaming platform on a variety of branded 4K streaming devices and smart TVs to reach customers in major markets across

Spotify topped guidance for total monthly listeners in the first quarter of 2022, despite the loss of 1.5 million paid subscribers in Russia and a roiling controversy over Joe Rogan’s podcast that had elicited calls for a boycott. The audio streamer’s monthly average user base grew 19% in Q1, to 422 million, representing a net

YouTube advertising sales for the first three months of 2022 grew 14%, to reach $6.87 billion — missing Wall Street expectations by more than $600 million and representing a major cooling off from the torrid pace the video giant had seen during the COVID pandemic. By comparison, YouTube’s ad revenue was up 49% in the

Variety.com, the digital arm of the legendary entertainment trade Variety, scored record-breaking traffic in March 2022. Some 36.9 million unique users visited the site in March, officially making it the biggest month in the brand’s history, according to Comscore. Additionally, March was the seventh consecutive month that Variety placed No. 1 for readership among entertainment trades,

Twitter is now in Elon Musk’s hands. What his successful maneuver to buy the company means for its 200 million-plus users — or for media and entertainment companies that use the platform to reach global audiences — is anything but clear. In the space of three weeks, Musk went from disclosing a 9.2% stake in

Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey commented on Elon Musk’s acquisition of the social media platform on Monday night, kicking off his thread with Radiohead’s song “Everything In Its Right Place.” “I love Twitter. Twitter is the closest thing we have to a global consciousness,” he wrote. After stepping down from Twitter in November

The debut of Netflix’s “Heartstopper” was the talk of Twitter over the weekend, catapulting over the competition and landing in the No. 1 spot on Variety’s Trending TV chart for the week of April 18 to 24. The series pulled in 929,000 engagements with its eight-episode debut, as viewers zipped through the 30-minute installments.  The

Donald Trump confirmed to Fox News that he will not return to Twitter, despite the company’s sale to Elon Musk. Trump plans to use his own social media platform, the recently-launched Truth, for all of his social media needs moving forward. The Truth app launched earlier this year to several glitches, but it did hit

Elon Musk is set to become the new owner of Twitter, after a fast flurry of negotiations left the company’s board with no choice but to accept the multibillionaire’s $44 billion takeover proposal. Under the terms of the deal, Twitter stockholders will receive $54.20 in cash for each share of the company’s common stock that

Toni Reid, after 24 years at Amazon, is joining YouTube as VP of product management to lead the video platform’s Emerging Experiences and Community team. In the role, she’ll oversee YouTube Shorts — the TikTok-like short-form video format YouTube has seen gain major traction — as well as YouTube Gaming, livestreaming and community products. Reid,

Magazine publisher and media company Condé Nast has bolstered its global communications leadership team with the appointments of Thrive Global’s Monica Lee as senior VP of communications and Vice Media Group’s Nina Joyce as VP of communications for the U.K. Lee (pictured, left), who oversees the U.S.-based communications team, will help to lead strategic brand

The 11-member Twitter board met on Sunday to consider billionaire Elon Musk’s $43 billion takeover offer for the social media company, according to reports. Musk “wooed many of the social media company’s shareholders with financing details on his $43 billion acquisition offer,” according to Reuters which quoted people familiar with the matter. “The company’s decision

PODCAST British critic, writer, producer, commissioner and director Catherine Bray and film acquisitions executive and festival program advisor Paul Ridd have launched a weekly podcast dedicated to J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings.” “Not Another F–king Elf” is a character guide podcast that takes an hour-long deep dive into each “The Lord of the

UPDATED: Hulu experienced broad technical difficulties Thursday for more than two hours, as thousands of users spanning the U.S. logged complaints about problems with streaming video and accessing the Hulu app. At about 10:45 p.m. ET, a rep for Disney Streaming Services, which operates Hulu, said in an email, “We have resolved the technical issue

Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, fell just short of Wall Street forecasts for the first quarter of 2022 — and its net loss increased by 25% — with CEO Evan Spiegel citing a “challenging operating environment.” The messaging and media app company gained 13 million average Snapchat daily active users worldwide for the period,

Tech billionaire Elon Musk is moving forward with his potential bid to acquire Twitter, revealing that he has lined up $46.5 billion in financing for a possible tender offer for the company. The financing was disclosed in an SEC filing Thursday. According to Musk’s filing, the financing includes commitments from Morgan Stanley and other financial

Amid the massive sell-off of Netflix stock triggered by the streamer’s Q1 misfire, billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman liquidated his entire holdings in the company citing new uncertainty about Netflix’s long-term business. Ackman’s Pershing Square Holdings had acquired about 3.1 million Netflix shares in January, previously worth around $1.1 billion. On Thursday, less than

Higher Ground, President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama’s media company, is ending its exclusive podcast deal with Spotify and is shopping for other partners in the podcasting space, Variety has confirmed. The Obamas are exiting their exclusive pact with Spotify, originally inked in 2019, after being frustrated with the company’s exclusive terms — primarily, they

The finale of CNN+’s “Land of the Giants: Titans of Tech,” titled “The Netflix Effect,” launches Thursday, perfect timing for an entertainment industry that is both reeling amid Netflix’s shocking Q1 subscriber miss, poor second-quarter outlook and the wait to see if CNN+ can find its groove as quickly as it might need to in

HBO Max, now under the newly created Warner Bros. Discovery, will be part of Verizon’s upcoming +Play streaming-aggregation platform. Scheduled to launch commercially later in 2022, Verizon +Play is designed to let the telco’s customers discover, purchase and manage subscriptions across entertainment, audio, gaming, fitness, music and lifestyle. HBO Max will join the roster of

Elon Musk weighed in on Netflix’s subscriber loss in the first quarter of 2022 by claiming “the woke mind virus” is making the streaming platform “unwatchable.” Netflix announced Tuesday that it had lost 200,000 subscribers, marking the first time in 10 years the streamer has reported a decrease in subscribers. Following the news, Netflix’s stock

UPDATED: Netflix shares plummeted to their lowest point since January 2018 as investors reacted to the streamer’s first subscriber loss in more than a decade — bringing years of booming growth to a screeching halt. The stock was around $222 per share in midmorning trading Wednesday, down 36% from the previous closing price and sinking

YouTube, the Google-owned video streaming platform, has removed the account of John Lee Ka-chiu, the policeman-turned-politician who is poised to take over as Hong Kong’s next leader. All content on Lee’s YouTube page has been removed. In its place is a message that reads: “This account has been terminated for violating Google’s Terms of Service.”

Netflix, after years of insisting it would stick solely to subscription-only plans, is finally open to offering lower-cost, ad-supported packages, co-CEO Reed Hastings said on the company’s Q1 earnings interview. The company expects to nail down its ad-supported streaming strategy over the next year or two, Hastings said, “but think of us as quite open

Colin Decker, who just officially became CEO of Sony’s Crunchyroll — after merging Funimation’s anime streaming catalogs into a single offering — is leaving the company. Decker is exiting the post after more than three years at Sony, originally joining the conglomerate with its 2019 purchase of Funimation. Sony bought Crunchyroll for $1.18 billion in

There’s a whole lot of password-sharing going on across Netflix’s customer base — and the streaming giant is eager to pocket a big chunk of change from the freeloading masses. In reporting a huge subscriber miss — with a net loss of 200,000 for Q1 and a projected drop of 2 million for the second