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Completely happy Friday, our crunchiest of pals!

Over the previous couple of days, we’ve been telling you about all of the cool stuff that’s taking place at Disrupt. Properly, guess what — we’re getting a {hardware} stage as nicely! Hardware gets its turn in the spotlight at Disrupt 2023…Thrilling occasions!

— Christine and Haje

The TechCrunch High 3

• You Heardle-d it here: Christine thinks Heardle, the Wordle-like music guessing sport, was too laborious, so she gave up on taking part in some time in the past. Nevertheless, it was a well-liked sport with a number of individuals, peaking at 69 million month-to-month desktop and cell net visits in March 2022. Now Sarah writes that lower than a yr after buying Heardle, Spotify is shutting down the sport. You get six guesses as to why, however to the tune of tears being shed throughout the web.
• Speaking of being shut down: Parler, the social media community that emerged when former president Donald Trump was banned from different websites, has a brand new proprietor. No, not Ye, however digital media firm Starboard. Oh, and Starboard has plans to close it down quickly in order that it may be revamped. Aisha has extra.
• Zoom will see you now: To spice up its asynchronous choices, Zoom is buying Eire-based worker communications platform Workvivo. Paul writes that Workvivo had the “remote-work revolution” on lock, which might be what attracted Zoom to it.

Startups and VC

James Murdoch’s enterprise fund Bodhi Tree slashed its planned investment into Viacom18 to $528 million, down 70% from the dedicated $1.78 billion, the 2 mentioned late Thursday because the weakening world financial system hammers traders’ urge for food, Manish stories. Viacom18, a three way partnership between Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance and Paramount World, didn’t say why Bodhi Tree slashed its pledged funding.

In the meantime, PBS and a handful of other news organizations have joined NPR in stepping away from Twitter, the social media platform as soon as synonymous with breaking information, Taylor stories. NPR introduced that it could depart the platform altogether final week after Twitter misleadingly hooked up a label reserved for state-run media entities to its account.

And we’ve got 5 extra for you:

4 SaaS engagement metrics that entice traders

Previous efficiency doesn’t all the time predict future outcomes, but it surely’s the most effective place to search out buyer retention stats which have investor enchantment.

In accordance with Oleksandr Yaroshenko, head of investments and technique at edtech startup Headway, engagement charges for current prospects are “the most effective predictors for resubscription.”

On this publish, he explores gamification technique and shares concepts for constructing a “golden cohort” that represents your audience.

Three extra from the TC+ group:

TechCrunch+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup groups get forward of the pack. You can sign up here. Use code “DC” for a 15% low cost on an annual subscription!

Large Tech Inc.

Do you wish to learn a ten,000-character tweet? We don’t both — oh wait, you mentioned sure. Okay, nicely buckle up as a result of Twitter now offers 10,000-character-long tweets for Blue subscribers, stories Ivan. In the event you’d prefer to see what a ten,000-character tweet appears to be like like, we got you, boo. How a few 10,000-character TechCrunch article? We rustled up one for you from the archives.

Transferring over to the state of Washington, the place Uber and Lyft drivers won paid family and medical leave. Rebecca writes that the state’s senate handed a legislation that makes it the primary within the nation to supply this sort of profit for ride-hail drivers.

Now right here’s 5 extra for you: