Scott Nover

Pebble only has about 15,000 users, but that’s intentional. The co-founders of this new social media platform, known until earlier this week as T2, wanted to move slowly and build it right—not move fast and break things. That doesn’t mean Pebble’s ambitions aren’t grand. The company, which has raised $1.1 million in seed funding, according to Pitchbook, joins a legion of contenders vying to be the next Twitter. The company changed its name this week and began welcoming more users. The mission…

Twitter has never been a huge hit with advertisers. But under Elon Musk’s ownership, marked by a name change to X, a rollback of site rules, prioritized engagement for paying users, and Musk’s own edgy persona, the social media company’s outlook is bleaker than ever. In fact, now Musk claims that Twitter’s ad revenue is down 60%. While he blames a slew of enemies for his own failures—most recently the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish civil rights group—Musk has always been his own worst enemy w…

The husband and wife crypto hackers Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan pleaded guilty to federal money laundering conspiracy charges stemming from the 2016 hacking of the cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex. The guilty plea comes a year and a half after the couple was arrested and charged in February 2022 and seven years after the initial hack. The government alleged that Lichtenstein hacked into Bitfinex and purloined 119,754 bitcoins—then worth $72 million and now worth about $3.5 billion—for…

Threads had a triumphant debut. Meta’s new text-based social media platform may be a carbon copy of Twitter, but unlike previous rivals it quickly racked up 100 million registered users just five days after launching on July 5. Meta—the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp—is the latest in a series of companies to challenge Twitter with a lookalike app, but the company’s sheer size and wealth make it the most formidable attempt yet. With 3.88 billion monthly users, Meta counts a…

The European Commission charged Google with violating antitrust law in how it operates its suite of digital advertising technologies. Google controls both the buy-side and sell-side of the digital advertising market, European Commissioner on Competition Margrethe Vestager wrote on Twitter. She said the government believes that Google used its market control to favor its own platforms and push out competition. “Google is active on both sides of the market with its publisher ad server and with…

A day after Silvergate Bank said it’s closing, Silicon Valley Bank acknowledged problems of its own

The crypto bank’s share price halved after a dire warning from the company

In Gonzalez v. Google, the Supreme Court justices struggled with questions of algorithmic neutrality—because it doesn’t really exist

In a Q&A, Clarkesworld founder Neil Clarke discusses his publication’s futuristic dilemma

The Korean market leader is trying to buy up a 40% stake in rival SM Entertainment