Twitter to revamp user profiles with About tab, support for pronouns, ‘confirmed’ status and more

Alongside news that Twitter is relaunching its account verification system to the public, the company previewed a slate of changes that will soon come to Twitter profiles. In addition to your name, photo, banner, bio and other features available today, the new Twitter profile will include an “

Twitter opens account verification applications to the public under new guidelines

The coveted blue badge may soon be within your reach. Twitter announced today it will begin rolling out its new verification application system, which allows public figures and other accounts of high public interest to distinguish themselves with a checkmark that indicates they are who they say the

Firefly Aerospace’s lunar lander will fly to the moon on a SpaceX Falcon 9 in 2023

Firefly Aerospace may be developing rockets of its own, but it’s also simultaneously building Blue Ghost, its first lunar lander. Blue Ghost will hop a ride with a rocket from a different launch company — SpaceX — in 2023, the companies announced today. While Firefly Aerospace is in the p

Spotify expands into the audiobooks market by partnering with Storytel

Spotify is further expanding into audiobooks — but not in the way you may think. The company today announced a new partnership with audiobooks platform Storytel, which will allow existing Storytel subscribers to connect their account through Spotify to access their audiobooks within Spotify&#

OMG is Canada's startup answer to the local news crisis

Local news has been battered over the past two decades. The rise of the internet shredded some of the long-held monopolies of newspapers and local TV stations on news and classified ads, while social networks like Facebook, Nextdoor and Citizen have increasingly pulled in reader attention for neigh

Chasing hype is human nature: The tyranny of startup trends

I think it's important that we explicitly discuss something that every VC instinctively knows: The hype around a given business or category has become a form of bias for investors and founders when vetting ideas to pursue. At any point in time, you can find FOMO-flavored bad business decisions

Workrise, once known as RigUp, raises $300M at a $2.9B valuation

Workrise, which has built a workforce management platform for the skilled trades, announced today that it has raised $300 million in a Series E round led by U.K.-based Baillie Gifford that values the company at $2.9 billion. New investor Franklin Templeton joined existing backers — including

Kleiner spots Spot Meetings $5M to modernize walk-and-talks for the Zoom generation

Trees, those deciduous entities you can occasionally see outdoors when not locked down or strapped down at a desktop ruminating on a video call, have long been the inspiration for fresh new ideas. Stories abound of how founders built companies while walking the foothills in Silicon Valley or around

Ford and SK Innovation announce battery manufacturing joint venture BlueOvalSK

Ford Motor Company and Seoul, South Korea-based SK Innovation signed a memorandum of understanding to establish a joint venture to domestically manufacture batteries for electric vehicles, the two companies said Thursday. The new venture, dubbed BlueOvalSK, will produce around 60 GWh annually start

Pitch, a platform for making and sharing presentations, raises $85M on a $600M valuation

PowerPoint may still dominate the landscape for presentations in many people’s minds, but some might say that legacy status also makes Microsoft’s software ripe for disruption. Now, a startup out of Berlin called Pitch has just picked up a substantial Series B of $85 million to take it

a16z bets millions on Maven, a platform for cohort-based courses

Maven, a startup that helps professionals teach cohort-based classes, has raised $20 million in a Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz. The round places a16z general partner Andrew Chen on Maven's board — and is his latest lead check in a creator-focused company, similarly pouring mi

HP outlines ambitious diversity goals

HP today announced a series of ambitious goals aimed at driving “a more diverse, equitable and inclusive” tech industry. The tech giant, of course, is not the first company to have made strong claims about its intentions around diversity. As former TC reporter Megan Rose Dickey reported extensi

Ex-Square execs launch Found to help the self-employed, raise $12.75M from Sequoia

If you've ever been self-employed you know what a pain it is to keep up with the hassles of running a business. From bookkeeping to invoicing to paying taxes — it's one big headache. Freelancers and self-employed people often turn to a number of different solutions to try and address

So long, Internet Explorer, and your decades of security bugs

"attachment_2155260" aria-describedby="" style="width: 2575px">Image Credits: Louis Douvis / Getty Images Pour one out for Internet Explorer, the long-enduring internet browser that’s been the butt of countless jokes about its speed, reliability and, probably most notable of all, security, whi