Less than a year after buying Heardle, Spotify will shutter music game on May 5

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Happy Friday, our crunchiest friend!

We’ve spent the last few days telling you about all the cool things happening in Disrupt. A hardware stage is also provided. As hardware takes center stage at Disrupt 2023…it’s an exciting time!

— Christine and he came

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• you heard it here: Christine gave up playing Heardle, a musical guessing game like Wordle, a while ago because she thought it was too difficult. However, in March 2022, the number of monthly desktop and mobile web visits reached her 69 million, making it a popular game for many. Sara Less than a year after acquiring Heardle, Spotify wrote that it was exiting the game. He has six speculations as to why, but tears have been shed on the internet.

• Speaking of shutdown: Parler, the social media network that emerged when former President Donald Trump was banned from other sites, has a new owner. No, it’s Starboard, a digital media company, not Ye. Oh, and Starboard plans to shut down temporarily. Aisha There are more.

• zoom sees you now: Zoom is acquiring Ireland-based employee communication platform Workvivo to power its asynchronous service. Pole wrote that Workvivo had a “remote work revolution,” and that’s probably what attracted Zoom.

Startups and VC

James Murdoch’s venture fund Bodhi Tree has cut its planned investment in Viacom18 to $528 million, a 70% cut from the $1.78 billion promised, the two said late Thursday. mannish report. Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance and Paramount Global’s joint venture, his Viacom18, has not disclosed why Bodhi Tree has cut its promised investment.

Meanwhile, PBS and several other news organizations joined NPR after leaving Twitter, the social media platform once synonymous with breaking news. taylor report. NPR announced last week that it was leaving the platform entirely after Twitter misleadingly labeled its account reserved for a state-owned media company.

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In addition, there are five

4 SaaS Engagement Metrics That Will Attract Investors

Image credit: Tetra Mage (opens in new window) / Getty Images

While past performance doesn’t always predict future results, it’s a great place to find attractive customer retention stats for investors.

According to Oleksandr Yaroshenko, head of investment and strategy at Edtech startup Headway, existing customer engagement rate is “the best predictor of re-subscription.”

In this post, he explores gamification strategies and shares ideas for building a “golden cohort” to represent your target audience.

Three more from the TC+ team:

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Big Tech Co., Ltd.

Want to read 10,000 character tweets? Neither do we — wait a minute, you said yes. Well, Twitter now offers 10,000-character-long tweets for Blue subscribers, so hang tight. IvanIf you want to see what a 10,000 character tweet looks like, we got you, booHow about a 10,000 character TechCrunch article?

Moving to Washington state, Uber and Lyft drivers get paid family and medical leave. Rebecca The state Senate has passed the nation’s first law to provide benefits of this kind for ride-hailing drivers, it wrote.

Here are five more.