Twitter’s verification chaos continues – even the dead now have blue ticks

Over the weekend, most celebrities got their blue tick back for free, including those who had died. Also: Financial investor Silver Lake wants to take over Software AG and layoffs at Lyft.

Good morning! Even during the weekend, work in the digital scene continued in many places.

The top topics:

on the weekend Twitter U-turned celebrity blue ticks and restored them for free. However, the decision to reinstate the “verified” status without distinguishing between paid and free users again led to harsh criticism.

In fact, the social network ended its old verification system on Friday, removing the blue ticks that indicated an account was “real.” Users should pay for this in the future. At the same time, however, it turned out that not every user with a blue tick pays for it himself. Musk revealed on Friday that three had received one for free: Stephen King, LeBron James and William Shatner. Then, over the weekend, that number skyrocketed, with almost every celebrity user with more than a million followers receiving a new blue tick (with one notable exception: Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter). In addition, several dead celebrities also received blue ticks: actor Paul Walker, who died in 2013, celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain, who died in 2018, and Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered in the same year, were all verified as “paid”. [Mehr bei The Guardian und Bloomberg]

On Founder Scene: When the 49-euro ticket goes into effect on May 1st and consumers can use public transport throughout Germany, there is hope too Rene Brown upon lively demand. “The new mobility offer could become a major catalyst for our business,” believes the founder of the Berlin startup Rydes. Editor Daniel Hüfner wrote down exactly what the company is working on and why investors are now investing millions in the idea. [Mehr bei Gründerszene]

And here are the other headlines of the night and the past few days:

Die Software Inc has a takeover bid. The financial investor Silver Lake wants to buy the ailing software company from Darmstadt for 2.2 billion euros. This corresponds to EUR 30 per share – a premium of around 50 percent on the current price. The company itself is positive about the deal. [Mehr bei Handelsblatt, Wirtschaftswoche und Bloomberg]

Lyft wants to cut jobs again: According to information from the “Wall Street Journal”, at least 1,200 of the approximately 4,000 employees should have to leave the US transport service provider. “We will significantly reduce the size of our team,” the new CEO David Risher is said to have told the workforce on Friday. In order to achieve “profitable growth”, expenditure would have to be further reduced. Lyft already tightened its belt in November and cut around 13 percent of its jobs. [Mehr bei Handelsblatt, Wall Street Journal und Techcrunch]

AlphabetCEO Sundar Pichai made $226 million last year. A share allocation that takes place every three years contributed to this. The sum made him one of the highest paid CEOs in the world last year. The stock portion of his salary was $218 million, according to a statement from Google’s parent company filed on Friday. In 2021, he earned a total of $6.3 million. His base salary has been relatively constant at $2 million for the past three years. [Mehr bei Bloomberg]

Google has put construction on hold for its proposed 80-acre campus in San Jose, California. According to information from the US broadcaster CNBC, the company has no plans to revive the project in the near future. CFO Ruth Porat said on the company’s most recent conference call that Google expects to incur costs of about $500 million in the first quarter from reducing its global office space. [Mehr bei CNBC]

SAP-Boss Christian Klein seems to have managed the turnaround. The software group was able to increase its sales in the first quarter compared to the previous year by ten percent to 7.4 billion euros. This exceeded analysts’ expectations. The Walldorf-based company owed the positive development to its business with cloud services. Adjusted for special effects, the operating profit also increased in double digits in the first quarter. [Mehr bei Handelsblatt]

Our reading tip on Gründerszene: The Munich serial founder Max-Josef Maier has admitted several employees at a company party of the car subscription startup Finn to have been sexually harassed. Many knew about it, there were only limited consequences. How is the Munich startup scene dealing with this? [Mehr bei Gründerszene+]

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Your Gründerszene editors