Twitter Just Got Smaller

Looks like billionaires looooove to copy each other. It started with Mark Zuckerberg giving his own spin to Elon Musk's "Let's make everyone pay for a Twitter subscription!" plan. Then, Musk decided he'll do one back: by laying off even more of the employees who decided to take a big bet and stay with the company.

Yes, Twitter let go of at least 200 employees recently, leaving it with a workforce of less than 2,000 — a far cry from the 7,500 that were a part of the (once?) social media titan before Musk became its owner and decided to flatten the organization.

The layoffs aren't a one-off isolated event in the tech space and are similar to the ones Zuck is expected to announce in the near future at Facebook-parent __Meta__as part of his "efficiency drive".

While employees are being let go, the billionaires still only have vague ideas as to how to turn their companies around — Musk specifically. The latest round of layoffs suggests that Musk is now relying on the one tried and tested method of protecting his $44 billion investment and having the business turn a profit: cuttin' those damn costs.

And while selling the verified checkmarks failed spectacularly during Twitter's first run, experts suggest it's not a bad strategy for social media companies. Analysts at Bank of America, for example, think that Facebook and Instagram could have 12 million paying subscribers by early 2024. Even at the baseline subscription of $11.99 a month, that's an annual revenue of $1.7 billion. *whistles*

And to not be overshadowed by the Microsofts and Googles of the world, Zuckerberg is also dipping his toes in the world of conversational artificial intelligence — having introduced his own service "LLaMA" to compete with bigger brothers ChatGPT, Bing AI, and Bard.

Anyway, enough about Musk and Zuck. If it's rankings you want, it's rankings you'll get.

Twitter was trending on the #81 spot in this week's Tech Company Rankings. Meta was further below at #87 though its subsidiaries were doing far better: Instagram on #1 and Facebook at #2.

Canada's Trudeau Tells Google to BTFO 🇨🇦

Imagine being a company so large that you have a near-monopoly over sections of the internet, make billions of dollars every year, and are one of the few businesses in the world that is valued at over a trillion dollars. And then imagine using that power to influence decisions in your favor.

That, in a nutshell, is Google. And Canada has decided it's gonna have none of it — at least when it comes to being more equitable to its publishers.

ICYMI: Canada is trying to pass laws that would force Facebook and Google to share the money they make via news shared on their platforms with the actual publishers who report on the news i.e. the journalists and the organizations they work for. The law would be pretty similar to the one passed by Australia, which, for the record, the companies agreed to after a series of amendments.

Well, looks like neither company has learned their lesson because, just like in Australia, they're threatening to block news sharing on their platforms — though Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has told the company to BTFO. "I think that's a terrible mistake and I know Canadians expect journalists to be well paid for the work they do," the Canadian premier was quoted as saying.

Google ranked #5 this week.

EU to TikTok: Uh.. No Thx 🙅 🇪🇺

The European Commission (which represents member states in the EU region) has barred its employees from using TikTok on its devices.

China's TikTok, which is popular like heck with young audiences, has been __accused__of siphoning off users' data to the Chinese government, though the company vehemently denies the charge. Unfortunately for the company, it is already banned from being used by lawmakers in the U.S. and India, and it looks like the EU is next.

In Other News.. 📰

• Finding it hard to get AI to do exactly what you want? Hire an AI Whisperer.
• Musk thinks US media is racist against Whites and Asians after Scott Adams was canceled by multiple newspapers in the U.S. The creator of the famous cartoon "Dilbert" was dropped from publication following a tirade against black people on his YouTube channel.
• NOKIA IS BACK, BABY!
• Digital payment firm Stripe is soon going to be rolling in a LOT of Mula, Benji's, Franklin's :)
• The metaverse: now coming to a court hearing near you.

And that's a wrap! Don't forget to share this newsletter with your family and friends!

See y'all next week. PEACE! ☮️