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🍪 The cage match is here

🍪 The cage match is here

Good morning, friends. It’s July 13th, aka - the day when you remember all the stuff you forgot to buy during Prime Day yesterday.

AJoey from friends remembering something

Ya hear that? It’s the sound of regret ringing in these ears.

Alright, alright, let’s get to the good stuff.

In the oven this week:

🧵 The cage match is here
🍪 Cookie crumbs: 6 bite-sized headlines
🗳️ Poll of the week: is the AI hype dying?
💬 Tweet of the week: the kinda friends we want
🍫 Chocolate chips: 3 of our favorite finds
😂 Snickerdoodles: memes for the weekend

FRESHLY BAKED

THE CAGE MATCH IS HERE

You know when it’s time to watch your friend do his presentation to the class and you just know he cobbled together some junk at 2am the night before?

You wanna look away, but ya just can’t.

Well, we wanted to finally turn the page on this whole Zuck/Elon gobbledygook, but it’s just too good to ignore.

What can we say, we love a good circus. Sign us up!!!

Also, why did people ever stop saying, “gobbledygook?” We are dying laughing rn.

Ok anyway, get your ice creams ready - here’s the scoop:

So last week, Zuck announced Threads, right? Seems like it’s been going pretty well, ‘cause he’s been on Threads shouting his stats all day long:

Guy’s acting more surprised than Taylor Swift at an awards show:

Elon was probably getting kinda agitated at this point, especially ‘cause Twitter only has about 250M daily active users to begin with.

So what does he do?

He sends Zuck a letter.

Not the kind you’re sending to your pen pal, but more like a cease and desist.

He says Meta is stealing Twitter trade secrets because they’ve hired a bunch of former Twitter employees to work on Threads.

Meta’s response?

“That’s just not a thing.”

Pure gold.

At the same time, Zuck’s out here responding to Threads, and ends up kinda taunting Elon:

And of course, Elon takes the bait and goes on the offensive:

@fentasyl I propose a literal dick measuring contest 📏
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk)
Jul 10, 2023

Billionaires, they’re just like us when they can’t think of a good comeback!

With Threads blowing up, reports start surfacing that Twitter traffic is down.

SimilarWeb reports Twitter's web traffic was down -5% WoW and -11% YoY, sending Elon and Twitter’s new CEO on the defensive:

Cumulative user-seconds per day of phone screentime, as reported by iOS & Android, is hardest to game. I think we may hit an all-time record this week.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk)
Jul 10, 2023

Someone’s pushin’ fake news out here… 🧐

Still, the jury’s out on whether Threads will be a hit.

Even if it is, it’ll take time for Threads to bootstrap a new ecosystem and build novel features. But, unlike Twitter, Meta is known for being an execution machine - so if anyone has a real chance at dismantling Twitter, it’s them.

Looks like the billionaires’ cage match has started, and we are here for the entertainment. LFG!!

COOKIE CRUMBS

BITE SIZED HEADLINES

ChatGPT traffic is declining as the novelty wears off. Traffic is down 10% month over month. It’s summer and the kids are officially out of essays to write.

Google is finally coming after Calendly: in Gmail, you can now send other recipients open slots from your Google calendar. When people get the email, they can tap into one of the available times to set up a meeting automatically. At long last!! I can practically hear the VCs scrambling to their laptops.

Remember the Reddit blackout? Well, in their latest act of protest, moderators are marking their subreddits as NSFW, since this makes the subreddit ineligible for advertising and hurts Reddit's business. Reddit is pissed and now threatening to kick mods off the platform if they don’t reinstate their subreddits. The saga continues, and we are just waiting with the popcorn 😂

Microsoft just beat the FTC in court, with the judge ruling that they can go ahead with their $75B Activision Blizzard acquisition. Still looming later this month: a hearing with UK regulators, who rejected the merger in April….

Mercedes Benz is adopting Tesla's EV-charging standard, bringing Tesla even closer to being the mainstream EV charging standard. Ford, GM, and Rivian have also hopped on the Tesla bandwagon.

TikTok is letting their employees cash out on stock by allowing them to participate in future stock buyback programs. Pretty sweet for employees that have been in the trenches for years just waiting for that IPO.

POLL OF THE WEEK

IS THE AI HYPE DYING?

Let’s hear it, are people tired of AI or is SimilarWeb just trippin’? How often are you using AI chatbots this month vs previous months?

Sound off 👇🏽

FROM THE COOKIE JAR

TWEET OF THE WEEK

A great heuristic to figure out who to spend more time with - who's giving you energy and who's draining it away from you?

CHOCOLATE CHIPS

OUR FAVORITE FINDS

SNICKERDOODLES

THURSDAY MEMES

Elon is a product manager making up metrics just like me fr fr
— Alex Cohen (@anothercohen)
Jul 11, 2023

😂

That's all we got for ya this week, folks. See ya next Thursday!

If you enjoyed this, we'd love it if you'd fwd to a friend! We don't gate keep here - spread some of these sweet treats. 🙏🏾

Reviews of the week

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