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Week in Review

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Saturday, May 16, 2020 By Lucas Matney

Hey everybody, welcome back to Week in Review. Last week, I wrote about how Facebook’s copycat playbook hadn’t worked on TikTok.

If you're reading this on the TechCrunch site, you can get this in your inbox here, and follow my tweets here.

The big story

The past few weeks have involved a flurry of tech companies surfacing details about their plans to return to offices in the coming months, which made Twitter’s announcement this week that they would be allowing employees to permanently work from home — even after the COVID-19 crisis — quite the development.

Twitter’s note to TechCrunch detailed that this would depend on an employee’s role at the company.

We were uniquely positioned to respond quickly and allow folks to work from home given our emphasis on decentralization and supporting a distributed workforce capable of working from anywhere. The past few months have proven we can make that work. So if our employees are in a role and situation that enables them to work from home and they want to continue to do so forever, we will make that happen. If not, our offices will be their warm and welcoming selves, with some additional precautions, when we feel it's safe to return.

Many remote work advocates have kind of theorized this as a lingering trend form shelter-in-place, but Twitter’s early commitment cements the advance as something to watch.

Silicon Valley wisdom has largely asserted that there’s an incalculable advantage to “being here,” something that has come to the dismay of workers keen point out skyrocketing cost of living in the Bay Area. Twitter’s exit may not kickstart an exodus but it is an interesting data point that should push Bay Area real estate firms to sweat and startup leaders to ask themselves some questions.

The big story image

Trends of the week

Facebook acquires Giphy
Facebook confirmed Friday that they were buying Giphy in a deal that’s reported value was between $300-400 million. Giphy was last valued at $600 million. The company will keep its branding and with integrate with Instagram. Read more here.

Uber to require masks for drivers and passengers
Uber is revamping its health and safety guidelines to protect its passengers and drivers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Read more here.

Facebook to pay up $52M in settlement
Facebook has agreed in principle to pay $52 million to compensate nearly 11,000 current and former content moderators who developed mental health issues on the job. Read more about it here.

Trends of the week image

COVID-19 advances

 

COVID-19 advances image

Image Credits: Cesar Rodriguez / Getty Images

Extra Crunch

Investors and entrepreneurs are shifting their chats to Zoom, so we're taking note and hosting live Q&A discussions for our Extra Crunch subscribers with some of tech's most visible figures. We'll be hosting these Extra Crunch live chats over the next several weeks.

Announcing the Extra Crunch Live event series

  • This upcoming week, we'll be talking with Niko Bonatsos of General Catalyst and Alexia Tsotsis Bonatsos of Dream Machine
    Tuesday, May 19 at 11:00am PT / 2:00pm ET

Niko Bonatsos is the managing partner at General Catalyst, with a portfolio that includes Livongo, Snap, Wag! and ClassDojo. Alexia Tsotsis Bonatsos is former co-Editor at TechCrunch and now runs her own early stage fund called Dream Machine. We'll chat venture appetite, adaptation strategies during coronavirus, and which industries they're taking a closer look at for investment.

Extra Crunch image

Image Credits:

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