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🤖 eCommerce news:

🎶 TikTok begins blocking links to app store pages from creators’ bios "TikTok has begun blocking links to app stores in creators’ bios, TechCrunch learned and the company confirmed. The block, which will have significant impact on CPI (cost per install) campaign deals between creators and brands, also extends to third-party link-in-bio solutions like Linktree.The change was first spotted by Sendit’s co-founder David Tesler, who remarked on Twitter he and others had tested the functionality across a range of accounts and found the links no longer worked to redirect clicks to the App Store. Instead, when clicked, the links displayed a message reading “action cannot be completed.”"

📺 Roku partners with Best Buy and its advertising business to get first-party shopper data “We’re bringing together our entire business to build the future of entertainment and advertising — making the TV experience simpler, offering the right marketing, data, tech, and scale to drive real results, and helping win the entire streamer’s journey together with Best Buy,” Julian Mintz, co-head of U.S. brand sales for Roku Media, said in a statement. The companies claim that combining the data will make TV advertising more performance-driven. Brands can target, optimize and measure their ads on the streaming platform using Best Buy shopper data, ensuring Roku viewers see ads that interest them, Roku and Best Buy explained. Roku recently surpassed 70 million active accounts."

🐦 Duolingo launches new subscription tier with access to AI tutor powered by GPT-4 "The Roleplay feature unlocks an AI chatbot that allows users to practice real world conversation skills with characters in the app. Users will be chatting with an AI that is both responsive and interactive, thanks to GPT-4. The feature guides users through different scenarios. For instance, you can pretend to order coffee at a café in Paris or discuss future vacation plans with a certain character in the app. After users are done with the conversation, they will get AI-powered feedback on the accuracy and complexity of their responses, as well as tips for future conversations."

🔎 Google Expands Local Service Ads to Five More Categories Google has announced an expansion of its Local Services Ads offering, which enables businesses to better highlight their services in local queries. As explained by Google: “With Local Services Ads, you can advertise your services at the top of Google Search results pages and receive quality phone calls, messages and appointment bookings in the areas you choose. Plus, you can easily track performance and manage your leads, including listening to call recordings with potential customers.”

👩‍💻 LinkedIn Launches New ‘Podcast Academy’ to Expand its Podcast Network As per LinkedIn: “The LinkedIn Podcast Academy is a 6-month incubator pilot, which will connect emerging business podcasts with exclusive programming, coaching, tools and LinkedIn co-branding to expand and better reach their audience. This inaugural group of professional voices cover a wide range of topics in the professional arena: From leadership and entrepreneurship to human resources and technology.”

📉Y Combinator cuts nearly 20% of staff, scales back growth stage investments 

Y Combinator will be writing fewer checks for late-stage companies, a scale back that also cost 17 team members — or roughly 20% of the accelerator’s employees — their jobs, according to a statement released on Monday. The accelerator told TechCrunch that Silicon Valley Bank’s failure was not a factor and that they have been strategizing about the shift “well before” the collapse; over 30% of Y Combinator’s startups are exposed to SVB.

🎶TikTok Partners with Dentsu on New Campaign Performance Tracking Solution "As per TikTok:“Dentsu Digital’s X-Stack Connect is a server-side measurement platform that helps advertisers measure online behaviors on websites using server access logs with user consent. Profiles can be built around actions like website visits, logins, and form entry information.” Essentially, the integration will enable greater response tracking to measure the effectiveness of your TikTok campaigns, even as cookie tracking is phased out."

💰Social music streaming startup Stationhead launches new live commerce tool Social music streaming startup Stationhead announced today that it’s launching a new live commerce tool that allows select artists and hosts to sell digital tracks to fans during livestreaming parties on their stations. The startup says artists including BlackPink, Niall Horan, TXT and 5 Seconds of Summer have already used the feature during live release parties on the platform.

👀 SCOOP: Stripe Is Raising $6 Billion to Resolve Taxes & Expiring Employee Shares, Delaying Public Listing "The funding round is one of the largest venture rounds in a private technology startup ever. OpenAI’s Microsoft deal, if it ends up totaling $10 billion, would be larger, but it’s a different sort of animal. This Stripe round is humongous by any standard. The money is going toward helping early Stripe employees exercise their restricted stock units before they expire and then toward organizing a tender offer for employees to sell shares. While the tax bill has been estimated to total about $3.5 billion, much of the excess money will be used to allow employees to sell their Stripe shares. The funding round is not intended for Stripe’s corporate coffers."

BONUS! Incredible podcast episode:

Meta and True Classic: Zero to 9 Figures in Two Years, Powered by Meta Advertising

"Today we have an all time classic episode that features Meta’s Director of Marketing Science for the Small Business Group (and 10 year FB veteran) Helen Crossley, along with Ben Yahalom, President of True Classic, which might just be one of the fastest growing apparel brands of all time, going from 0 to 9 Figures in JUST TWO YEARS."

📈 Top trends:

OpenAI releases GPT-4, a multimodal AI that it claims is state-of-the-art

"OpenAI has released a powerful new image- and text-understanding AI model, GPT-4, that the company calls “the latest milestone in its effort in scaling up deep learning.” GPT-4 is available today to OpenAI’s paying users via ChatGPT Plus (with a usage cap), and developers can sign up on a waitlist to access the API. Pricing is $0.03 per 1,000 “prompt” tokens (about 750 words) and $0.06 per 1,000 “completion” tokens (again, about 750 words). Tokens represent raw text; for example, the word “fantastic” would be split into the tokens “fan,” “tas” and “tic.” Prompt tokens are the parts of words fed into GPT-4 while completion tokens are the content generated by GPT-4."

Google goes all-in on bringing AI to Workspace

"Google and Microsoft are locked in a head-to-head competition to bring as much generative AI to their productivity services as possible. Only days ahead of Microsoft’s “Future of Work” event, Google today announced a sweeping update to Workspace that will bring its generative AI models to virtually every part of its productivity suite, in addition to new developer solutions that will make Google’s foundation models, including its 540 billion-parameter PaLM large language model for multiturn chats, available to developers through an API and new low-code tools."

🐦 Twitter thread of the week:

Link to read thread here

Bonus for the AI lovers out there:

Link to thread here

🤝 Hot jobs:

✅ Digital Silk - Growing Brands Online 

"We are first and foremost a great team full of ambitious and proactive individuals whose goal is to become the best professionals they can be and make Digital Silk a globally renowned digital agency. Our quest for excellence has resulted in our company’s growth and continuous need for outstanding team members.

We are seeking to hire a hands-on senior level Marketing Director with the following attributes..."

✅ ALDI - Marketing Director

"We are on the lookout for an experienced Marketing Professional to join our award-winning team as a Marketing Director.

Being the 4th largest supermarket in the UK and one of the biggest advertisers in the UK Grocery market, Voted Which? Cheapest Supermarket of the Year 2021 & 2022 plus Marketing Weeks' 'Marketing Team of the Year', Aldi has consistently raised the bar on its communications to be the most talked about Grocery retailer, with a brand power rating far ahead of our market share.

This is an exciting time to join the team where you will lead on the development of Aldi's marketing strategy and support in developing company sales, increasing brand awareness and driving customer traffic."

✅ Tonies: Content Manager

"Join the tonies® family. We are tonies® - the leading, award-winning audio system for kids. We are on a mission to bring the magic of stories and music to children, without a screen in sight. So far we have sold more than 4 million Tonieboxes and 50 million Tonies worldwide - and this is just the beginning of our journey. With triple-digit growth rates, we are expanding fast and looking for exceptional talent to join our amazing team in London.

We’re looking for a Content Manager with a customer mindset to help develop & implement our UK content strategy, promoting a consistent & memorable brand identity across all touchpoints. This person should have a strong creative & strategic flare, and previous experience of successfully communicating a company’s brand voice to customers. Additionally, this candidate will have excellent copywriting & video production experience, an action-oriented mindset and feel comfortable challenging the status quo to get the best business outcome."

😂 Meme of the week:

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