1. TikTok, like a cat clinging on tooth and nail to survive in the U.S.
Like a cat on its belly, the Chinese video app TikTok is trying to avoid being kicked out of the United States (as eager as some people are to do so), and it has fallen to its own CEO to stick his neck out.
Shou Zi Chew went all the way to the U.S. Congress and tried to convince different lawmakers that they don’t pose a threat to national security.
“We need to have serious conversations about who uses it, what kind of value it brings to them, what would happen if you just take it out of their hands,” he said.
TikTok is in the crosshairs of many, including President Joe Biden himself. In fact, it is no longer available for download on Capitol Hill smartphones. In addition, two Republican lawmakers have introduced a bill to ban the app on U.S. devices.
Will this lobby serve TikTok well or will it have to pack its bags? We’ll have to see.
2. What a rascal you are, Elon!
How do you make your tweets more relevant in your own social network? Easy: you’re the boss and you order it.
Elon Musk ordered during the last Super Bowl between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles to adjust Twitter’s logarithm so that his writings would stand out more.
Why? Well, because a tweet from President Joe Biden supporting the Eagles was gaining notoriety over one of his own.
According to Platformer, Musk’s tweet, later deleted, had 9.1 million views (with 128 million followers), while Biden’s had 29 million (with 37 million followers).
Musk personally ordered some 80 engineers to reconfigure the algorithm. “Personally” means he flew all the way to San Francisco to order it.
He who rules, rules….
3. Airbnb finally got its economic “house” in order.
To make you realize that in the digital world not everything is “blowing and making bottles”, Airbnb, founded in 2008, only had its first profitable year in 2022. As in many things, you have to be patient.
The app that facilitates real estate rentals (or inflates real estate values in local markets, depending on your point of view) had net profits of $1.893 billion last year.
Airbnb’s growth came on the back of a recovery in international travel demand and growth in its supply.
Good news for those who benefit from its services.
4. Tesla workers: never go backwards.
Elon Musk is very “cool”, but not so cool as to allow a union to be formed in one of his companies.
A group of workers at the electric car manufacturer Tesla in Buffalo, New York, announced that they have taken the first steps to create a union without the approval of the tycoon.
The workers have the support of the Workers United union.
Tesla has in Buffalo the Gigafactory 2 plant, which produces solar cells and other products.
According to a statement posted on Twitter (will Elon alter the algorithm to make it look less?), the workers noted that the creation of the union “will advance the mission of sustainability and foster a progressive environment.”
We’ll have to see if Elon gives them the ball.
5. BUSD, with a red card… or at least a yellow one.
Despite all the red flags on the sidelines, everyone’s getting re-excited about cryptocurrencies, but wait a minute: there’s another red flag.
It turns out that the New York Department of Financial Services ordered the firm Paxos to stop issuing BUSD, the stable cryptocurrency of Binance, which in addition to being a sponsor of Argentina’s professional soccer league is the world’s largest cryptoasset platform.
The New York entity says that Paxos has “unresolved issues” referring to its relationship with Binance.
For its part, Paxos assured that as of next Tuesday it will stop producing new tokens of this stable cryptocurrency.
BUSDs are backed entirely with U.S. dollar-denominated reserves and separate from other digital assets.
The cryptocurrency tide is still strong.
6. A Huawei “investor” in Mexico
It is to be welcomed that technology giants are looking to Latin America to support local digital initiatives and that is why Huawei has allocated 1.6 million dollars in the Mexican market to encourage the creation and growth of new technology companies in the country.
This support will be provided through its Spark program and the assistance of the Mexican Agency for International Development Cooperation (Amexcid).
This program seeks to expand the opportunities that startups have to access technology and have resources in the cloud.
Huawei, with a significant presence in the region, intends to support 139 companies in the region.