Erin Woo
@erinkwoo
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covering twitter, tiktok & snap @theinformation . board member @aajasf . previously @nytimes et al. tips: erin @theinformation .com or erinkwoo.07 on signal
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Joined August 2014
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Pinned Tweet
New: Snap is turning off its paid friend-ranking feature, known as "Solar System," by default, citing concerns about its impact on the wellbeing of users.
The Information was the first to report on the feature's mental health impacts in January.
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I am told that as the 5 p.m. deadline approaches, someone is playing "The Final Countdown" in Twitter's NYC office.
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scoop: as of mid-January, Twitter only had around 180k paid subscribers in the US, less than .2% of its monetizable monthly active users. with around 290k paying subscribers globally, this would imply just ~$28m in annual revenue — 1% of Twitter's total
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scoop: over 500 of Twitter's top advertisers have paused advertising since Musk took over, a Twitter senior manager told employees on Tuesday
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New: X is cutting half of its team focused on threat disruption and elections integrity, including the team’s head, after saying it would expand it
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SCOOP: Twitter intentionally suspended Tweetbot and other third-party apps, per internal Slack messages viewed by The Information.
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🚨JOURNALISM TIP🚨
Q: How do you get sources to call you back?
A: Start making lunch
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some personal news: Friday was my last day as a
@nytimes
fellow!
In a few weeks, I’ll start as a reporter at
@TheInformation
, covering startups and venture capital. I’m thrilled to keep writing about tech alongside reporters and editors I really admire.
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At least hundreds of employees appear to have left, based on the number of farewells in Twitter's Slack channel.
I however will still be covering this beat! Send me tips at erin
@theinformation
.com (email me for my Signal #)
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all of the little reporters eating our little starbucks cheese boxes at the elizabeth holmes trial
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Scoop: For months, Twitter delayed paying its AWS cloud bill. So Amazon threatened to stop paying its ad bill, staff was told.
in which an unstoppable force (Elon's cost cuts) meets an immovable object (Amazon), and the unstoppable force pays up in part:
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NEW: Bolt, Ryan Breslow’s $11 billion payments start-up, often overstated its technological capability and misrepresented the number of merchants using its service in a rush to show growth,
@maureenmfarrell
and I found.
Our investigation for
@nytimes
:
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An interesting aspect of Twitter/X’s edit feature is that it allows users to see the edit history of a tweet.
Linda Yaccarino edited her tweet about X’s opposition to antisemitism three times after posting it, over a ~20 minute time period:
X opposes antisemitism in all its forms. Antisemitism is evil and X will always work to fight it on our platform. And X is also always open to proactively working together in that fight with all groups.👇
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I also want to highlight the work of
@travisbrown
, a researcher who's been doing the best job of externally tracking the number of Twitter Blue subscribers. These internal numbers are really close to what he's been reporting.
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friday evening scoop: new details on the checkout startup Bolt's financials, including burn ($60m in q1 of 2022) and revenue ($7.2m over the same period). Bolt now aims to cut $200m in operating costs.
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it's my first day covering startups and venture capital for
@theinformation
!!!
send me tips: erin.woo
@theinformation
.com (or dm for signal)
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in line outside the Elizabeth Holmes trial, and a spectator has set up shop:
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In the 36 hours since users started reporting outages, there has been no communication from
@Twitter
,
@TwitterSupport
or Elon himself, leaving developers like Tweetbot creator Paul Haddad in the dark.
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BREAKING: The verdict in the Elizabeth Holmes trial will be read at approximately 4:10pm today.
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New: Twitter/X's head of brand safety, Elyana Thierry, has left the company, per her LinkedIn, just months after being elevated to the role after the resignation of the previous head of brand safety
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excited to have my first front page byline for the
@nytimes
today (and grateful to
@puiwingtam
for shepherding this story to publication)!
online here, on newsstands near you:
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this seems to be happening now on mobile, one day after Elon Musk tweeted that links don't get as much attention. certainly one way to decrease attention to links is make it difficult/impossible to know what a link goes to...
Twitter/X has officially removed article headlines on links shared to the platform, now just displaying the image and website.
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some personal news: I’ve been scooped on my own job announcement 💫
after four months covering Twitter, I’m excited to announce that I’m officially moving to the social media beat! I’ll be covering Twitter, TikTok and Snap.
send tips: erin
@theinformation
.com or DM for Signal
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Scoop: Twitter has told employees that it will change the price of Twitter Blue to $7 on the web and $11 for iOS, after Musk complained about Apple's 30% fee for in-app purchases.
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New: Elon Musk's X shut down a tool used to identify misleading media as part of the company's drive to reduce expenses, showing the real-world impacts of Musk's cost-cutting push as organized misinformation now proliferates across X
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officially graduated from
@stanford
! starting tomorrow, i'll be reporting on startups
@nytimes
— send tips and sf restaurant recommendations to erin.woo
@nytimes
.com
(📸: kelli santos, ujwal srivastava and
@RandyVMedia
)
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our coverage of the Elizabeth Holmes verdict is on the front page of today's NYT!
with
@eringriffith
:
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Musk's CEO search is putting a spotlight on the inner circle members who could take the job.
.
@beckpeterson
and I profiled one of them: Steve Davis, Boring Company CEO and a Musk lieutenant so loyal he slept at Twitter HQ *with his partner and infant*
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@elonmusk
@EricRWeinstein
Hi! I'm a reporter at The Information. Can you explain what the "prior doxxing action" is? Thanks.
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so honored and excited to announce that I'll be editor-in-chief
@StanfordDaily
starting Feb. 1! on that note, if you have any thoughts, ideas, concerns or criticisms on how The Daily can best serve the Stanford community, my DMs are open — please don't hesitate to get in touch
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“good” morning from what could be the last day of closing arguments in the elizabeth holmes trial. it is 2:40am and I am the 11th person here 🙃
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hmm
The NLRB alleges X illegally fired Yao Yue, a principal engineer, after a tweet standing up to Elon Musk post- acquisition:
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delighted to inform you all that a literal fire alarm went off at the OpenAI celebration party, fire trucks showed up, and firefighters declared it a false alarm. (a smoke machine from the party triggered it.) we love a metaphor!
more here from the team:
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listen to teenage girls!!! it's important that Facebook's own research found that Instagram is toxic for teen girls, but the girls themselves (and their advocates) have been saying this for YEARS.
grateful to everyone who spoke with me for this piece:
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In my Iatest for
@nytimes
, I talked to the people impacted by ivermectin misinformation: ranchers, farmers and vets, who’ve been forced to ration their supplies of the animal drug or can’t get it at all. As
@KolinaKoltai
put it: “It’s affecting horses.”
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editors: were you aware of [this development on your beat]?
me:
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@TitterTakeover
in the article you link: "Twitter has said nothing, either publicly or in communications to the affected developers, so your guess is as good as mine whether this is an unintended outage from Twitter’s skeleton crew staff or a strategic decision"
so, actually, new news!
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SCOOP: OpenAI's chief strategy officer, Jason Kwon, told employees in a memo just now he was "optimistic" OpenAI could bring back Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and other key employees. There will likely be another update mid-morning tomorrow, Kwon said.
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women around the bay area are about to discover that the guy they liked is a top listener to the all-in podcast. keep them in your prayers today
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I profiled
@IfeomaOzoma
— one of the two Pinterest whistle-blowers from last summer, who went on to co-sponsor a CA law for whistle-blower protection and create a handbook for tech workers thinking about speaking out — in my latest for
@nytimes
:
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so excited to announce that I’ll be joining the
@nytimes
technology desk as part of the 2021-2022 fellowship class! I’m so grateful to
@puiwingtam
for the opportunity, and I can’t wait to start working with her and the rest of the team this summer
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wrote about the start-ups trying to capitalize on America’s shift toward hybrid work, in my first (!!!) for
@nytimes
:
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Musk said that Twitter has lost $40m after "two pretty big advertisers" had Community Notes appended to their ads. Musk told them to go on Twitter and refute the Notes, which...seems to not have worked
Twitter has lost some advertisers due to Community Notes, Elon Musk said on a Twitter Space just now
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succession s4 just dropped
Elon Musk is at the Super Bowl sitting next to Rupert Murdoch
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The judge in Anoke v. Twitter just granted Twitter's motion to file its list of shareholders under seal. Twitter had previously argued that disclosing the shareholders "would result in injury" — raising the obvious question of who they are.
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Elon Musk's exchange today with Haraldur Thorleifsson, who until last week was a senior designer at Twitter:
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meanwhile:
New: Twitter/X has hired Linda Yaccarino’s son, Matt Madrazo, to work on sales for political advertisers, per sources. Elon Musk also has several relatives working at the company. w/
@RMac18
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shit on cities all you want, but today without walking more than 15 min from home I went to: my doctor’s appointment, a bakery, the plant store, two grocery stores, and cvs. good day in the doom loop 🫡
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tiktok's nyc office had a bed bug (scoop!)
after finding a bed bug in dec. and multiple floors testing positive this month, employees are asking tiktok to temporarily close the office, reimburse bed bug expenses and pay for meals at home (no to all three)
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if you’re the assistant who has to buy elon the gizmo, dm me
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some news: I'm switching beats to cover Twitter for the time being!
if you're a current or former Twitter employee (or advertiser, advisor, etc!), I'd love to talk. you can reach me at erin
@theinformation
.com or email/DM me for phone/Signal.
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new: Twitter laid off more engineers in its infrastructure org on Friday night, days after some leaders were fired and engineers from Musk's other companies were brought in
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Protesters are walking through Stanford right now delivering a petition that calls for defunding of campus police, among other actions.
@StanfordDaily
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Scoop: Tesla has signed a lease for one of Twitter's former Sacramento data centers and has had talks to sublease the other as well. This is after Elon Musk called Sacramento "possibly the worst place to have a data center."
with
@beckpeterson
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don’t know what’s the worst hit to stanford’s reputation lately: ftx, the daily investigating mtl, the university failing to catch TWO imposters, the guy from white lotus
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Earlier this year, I started seeing QR code menus nearly every time I went out. Because of COVID, QR codes are now fixtures in restaurants, bars, retail and marketing — but they also raise red flags for privacy experts.
I wrote about it for
@nytimes
:
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i’m at the bank run, i’m at the last of us finale, i’m at the combination bank run last of us finale oscars
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succession s4, cold open: Logan Roy tweets, "Should I step down as head of Waystar Royco? I will abide by the results of this poll."
In the background, Kendall lunges for a phone.
cut to credits
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it's my first story for
@theinformation
!!! now back to vacation 😎 (but please keep sending me tips!)
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turns out they DID end finsta (and facebook, and instagram, and whatsapp)
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NEW: Elon Musk just told employees on Twitter's all-hands that the company may lose billions next year and that bankruptcy isn't out of the question.
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scoop: brands will likely have to pay $1,000/month (+$50/month for affiliated accounts) if they want to keep their gold verification checks, per internal messages
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SCOOP: Bolt's layoffs affected around 25% of the company.
Bolt's CEO didn't tell employees how many jobs were cut, but those left at the company spent today watching the main Slack channel dwindle from roughly 900 employees to around 660.
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the front page of the stanford daily, exactly two years ago. absolutely insane!
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I’m in San Francisco and Silicon Valley this morning, talking to recall voters for
@nytimes
. First stop: Chinatown, where all five voters I talked to said they voted no on the recall. Voters expressed support for Newsom’s handling of Covid and thought the alternatives were worse.
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news: Twitter has agreed to acquire Laskie, the recruiting tech startup run by prolific tweeter
@ChrisJBakke
, in a deal that valued the company in the low tens of millions. Both cofounders and five Laskie employees now work at Twitter.
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i'll be in LA next week from aug. 17-21 for
#LATechWeek
! if you're a founder or investor who wants to meet up (or invite me to your event!), shoot me a dm or email me at erin
@theinformation
.com ☀️
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made a new friend while waiting in line outside the elizabeth holmes trial this morning
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Here’s my story on this week in the Elizabeth Holmes trial. We’ll be doing weekly recaps with key takeaways from the trial, as well as stand-alones on key witnesses and other big moments. This week: scientists testified about problems w Theranos’s tests.
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🩸Sunny Balwani has arrived in San Jose for the first day of jury selection in his criminal trial.🩸
I’ll be writing (and tweeting!) from the courtroom for the trial’s major moments. Here’s the preview of the case from me and
@DavidStreitfeld
:
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foho, the daily, mint magazine, the review
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for 18 (!!!) weeks, 12 jurors + 5 alternates turned their lives upside down to serve on the jury for the Elizabeth Holmes trial.
here's one last trial story from me on what it was like (bagels! puzzles! 541 pages of notes! james mattis!):
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got to team up with the expert herself,
@TaylorLorenz
, to write about how investors are funding the creator economy! my latest for
@nytimes
:
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scoop: new details on
@bolt
's finances as it lays off ~10% of staff. burn has decreased to ~$6m a month (down from ~$20m/month in q1 2022), but the company is only projecting $35-40m in 2023 revenue, which means it hasn't grown much since 2021
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this week and for the next three months potentially!! settle in folks
💉
@erinkwoo
is covering the Theranos trial this week, and a great person to follow in general🩸
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ilya follows only two accounts on twitter. you will never guess which ones
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in a way, this was the moment I became a twitter reporter
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Friends With Benefits has been compared to a “decentralized Soho House” and a group chat with a bank account. Last year, investors also declared it was worth $100 million.
I flew to LA to find out what was behind the hype.
with
@kevinroose
:
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I profiled Gopuff, the oldest + biggest of a fleet of rapid-delivery start-ups that buy and deliver goods instead of acting as middlemen.
In Jan., it was poised to go public.
It now faces an uncertain market — and 20+ years of failed delivery ventures.
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"this meeting is being recorded" is the new "please close the door to secure the building"
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NEW: Twitter has slashed its public policy team, potentially hampering its ability to deal with regulators and politicians amid an FTC investigation and EU threats over content moderation
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me: let's go to cantor arts center!
stanford: you have cantor arts centor at home
cantor arts center at home:
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today i told someone i covered startups and vc and he responded “a startup? like a small pop-up business?”
ignorance, truly, is bliss
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A fifth note from the jury: The jury has reached a unanimous verdict.
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on Wednesday morning, Twitter’s most senior ad exec gave sales and marketing staff more details about the company’s revenue, providing the most complete accounting yet of how far advertising revenue has fallen at Musk’s Twitter
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