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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 would be forced to. darrell has more on that. Also, Ivan writes that the legacy checkmark it has will expire on 4/20… we think. We’ve heard that before, but now some colleagues are watching them go. And in case you missed it, amanda reports that NPR is leaving Twitter and that Twitter, Inc., has a new name.
- Who’s there?: Truecaller is bringing live caller ID to iPhone for its premium tier subscribers, but there’s a bit of user work involved. jag reunion has more.
- give me a hit: Music makes everything better, and a new Spotify integration gives Strava users a soundtrack to their activities, reports Aisha.
Startups and VCs
The early days of the pandemic proved to be a boon to the home fitness crowd. Gyms closed indefinitely, and even when they began to reopen, many members seriously questioned whether the model would continue to fit into her life in the future. One of the companies that saw early gains and then a lot of turmoil was Tonal. Brian reports that the company just raised $130 million in fresh funding and coined 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 Smoakland spokesperson said in an email to The wine. Oh!
Further? Do you want more? Great, we have more:
Ask Sophie: How many employment green cards are available each year?
Dear Sophie,
I am trying to find out how long I have to wait to get a green card.
I have two questions for you: How many employment green cards in each category are available each year? How do I make sense of the Visa Bulletin?
— On hold in San Jose
Three more from the TC+ team:
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big tech inc
Are we alone in assuming that 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 protecting your identity for other reasons, of course. Either way, you probably want to keep it strictly business on LinkedIn. Good, Aisha writes that LinkedIn launched a free feature to verify your identity and employment so you can tell if you’re the real person. Now, whether or not you want to provide a government ID and phone number to a social networking site is up to you.
Meanwhile, Kyle tells you all about the new open source model from Databricks that has a super cute name, but also some glitches.
And we have five more for you: