Twitter’s ad-free subscription
Twitter CEO, Elon Musk, tweeted that a higher-priced subscription for the microblogging platform will not carry advertisements. He also added that ads are “too frequent on Twitter and too big,” and that steps will be taken to address those issues in the coming weeks.
While Twitter earns nearly 90% of its revenue from selling digital ads, a report from Pathmatics shared that despite an increase in spending by six of the top 30 advertisers on the platform, overall, advertising spending fell by 42% to an estimated $53.8 million for November and December combined.
Earlier in December, Musk announced that Twitter’s Basic blue tick will have half the number of advertisements and it will offer a higher tier with no advertisements by 2023.
Spotify layoffs
Spotify technologies is planning layoffs as soon as this week to cut costs, a report from Bloomberg news shared. The report, while citing sources, shared that the number of jobs being eliminated was specified and Spotify did not respond to requests for comments.
Over the last few weeks, Google parent Alphabet said it would eliminate 12,000 jobs, while Microsoft said it would eliminate 10,000. Amazon’s layoffs are also reported to affect more than 18,000 roles.
iPhone loses top spot in internet speed test
Apple’s iPhone 14 Pro Max lost out on its top spot as the smartphone with the fastest download speeds to Samsung’s Galaxy Fold4 and Google’s Pixel 7 Pro in Ookla’s latest mobile performance report.
While the iPhone 14 Pro Max came in third with 133.84 and the Pro logged 130.14 Mbps, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold4 took the top spot with 147.24 Mbps median download speeds and the Pixel 7 Pro took the second spot with 137.11 Mbps. Interestingly the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold4 won with the same performance figures that were earlier seen in the iPhone 14 Pro Max.
