Someone Give Musk The Spotlight

Elon Musk will say ANYthing to remain in the spotlight. Having bought Twitter, fired (or forced out) most of its workforce, and attempted to burn it into the ground out of pure spite, the eccentric billionaire and supposed visionary is now touting the idea of creating a new phone if Apple and Google were to ever ban his social media company from their app stores for not playing by their rules.

Musk clearly wants to trend over the internet, so much so that he'll say the most bizarre sh*t just to do so. For example, there really isn't any immediate reason to believe that Apple or Google would take down Twitter from their app stores. But that didn't stop Musk from flaunting the idea in response to a tweet by pro-conservative podcaster Liz Wheeler.

Not surprisingly, the media ate it up, with write-ups after write-ups of the world's richest man tweeting that he'll build a phone. Never mind the fact that Twitter's current predicament (and a supposed ban from app stores in the future) is of Musk's own causing, with advertisers pausing spending on the platform specifically because of all the changes he's making at the social media company.

One of those changes was letting users purchase Twitter's coveted 'verified' checkmark for $8 a month regardless of their identity, which turned out as well as you'd expect. Supposedly chastised by the experience, Musk is still interested in selling the 'verified' checkmark, but after a "manual" authentication, i.e. what Twitter was already doing before its new CEO decided to hand out the 'blue tick' like candies. The only difference this time is that anyone can apply for the checkmark (as long as they verify themselves), and Twitter will charge for the service — which not only defeats the purpose of the feature but isn't even a good way for the company to bounce back from consistent losses.

Musk insists that the Twitter purchase is a precursor to his 'everything app' X, but only time will tell whether the tech 'entreprenuer' will be successful in creating a software to rule them all.

Twitter ranked #51 in this week's tech company rankings, down seven spots from last week. As an additional note, it sucks that we have to keep reporting on Musk because he just won't stop trending all over the internet. We've already started to experience Musk fatigue, and the last thing we want is to turn this feature into the Elon Musk News Brief.

Black Friday Has Come and Gone..📱

.. yet many consumers could not get their hands on the iPhone. As we reported previously, the Chinese factory that produces the phones is dealing with COVID-19-related lockdowns, hurting iPhone production and causing deep discontent within its workforce. Just this past week, workers began clashing against security personnel, held mass protests and continued to flee the location despite promises of better pay and bonuses.

Both Apple and Best Buy have already __flagged __a scarcity of the iPhone 14s. We can only imagine the joy scalpers are experiencing, especially considering that Christmas is right around the corner and consumers are looking to snag a smartphone as part of their holiday shopping. In fact, just on eBay, some sellers are charging premiums of upwards of $1k+ for the phones, so good luck getting one!

Apple ranked #7 in this week's Tech Company Rankings.

Oh, How The Roles Reverse 🏛️

Until recently, FTX's former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (or SBF) was known for spending time in Washington, D.C., rubbing shoulders with the who's who of the U.S. government as part of his personal brand championing regulation in the crypto industry. All of that came to a halt after the downfall of FTX, yet calls for regulation remain, this time from an unlikely source: SBF's competitor and owner of now the largest crypto exchange in the world, Changpeng Zhao.

Zhao, the founder and CEO of Binance, recently told Tech Crunch: "Regulation is essential for the crypto industry and will go a long way towards building trust with consumers and institutions interested in the space."

Zhao then echoed those comments at a company event in Athens. By all accounts, Zhao and SBF were stark opposites of each other, but it's quite interesting to see how Zhao has taken up the mantle of regulation now that SBF is dealing with legal problems involving FTX.

Binance ranked #21 in this week's Tech Company Rankings.

In Other News..📰

• Amazon, which ranked #31 this week, has decided to discontinue two services in the world's largest democracy India: one related to food-delivery and another related to eLearning. 🧑‍🎓
• Russia's justice ministry has categorized Facebook-owner Meta as an extremist organization. Facebook and Meta ranked #1 and #13 respectively this week. 🔫
• If you're a World of Warcraft fan, there's a great YouTube video on why it's rude to suck at the game. Check it out here! 🏅

And that's a wrap! This has been the tech company brief, and you were reading Issue #26! See y’all next week. PEACE ☮️

— Sheharyar Khan, Editor, Business Tech @ HackerNoon