Daily Crunch: Less than a year after buying Heardle, Spotify will shut down the music game on May 5

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Happy Friday, our crunchiest friends!

Over the past few days, we’ve been telling you about all the cool stuff happening at Disrupt. Well guess what – we also get a hardware step! Hardware is in turn in the spotlight at Disrupt 2023… Exciting times!

— Christina And haje

TechCrunch’s top 3

• You heard it here: Christine thinks Heardle, the Wordle-like musical guessing game, was too difficult, so she gave up playing a while ago. However, it was a popular game with many people, peaking at 69 million monthly web visits on desktop and mobile in March 2022. Now Sarah writes that less than a year after acquiring Heardle, Spotify is shutting down the game. You get six guesses as to why, but at the rate of tears shed across the internet.
• Speaking of being closed: Talking, the social media network that emerged when former President Donald Trump was banned from other sites, has a new owner. No, not Ye, but digital media company Starboard. Oh, and Starboard intends to shut it down temporarily so it can be reorganized. Aisha see you.
• Zoom will see you now: To boost its asynchronous offers, Zoom acquires the Irish communication platform for employees Workvivo. Paul writes that Workvivo had the “remote work revolution” locked down, which is likely what attracted Zoom.

Startups and VCs

James Murdoch’s venture capital fund, Bodhi Tree, cut its planned investment in Viacom18 to $528 million, down 70% from the $1.78 billion committed, the pair said Thursday night as that the weakening of the global economy hammered the appetite of investors, pot holder reports. Viacom18, a joint venture between Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance and Paramount Global, did not explain why Bodhi Tree cut its pledged investment.

Meanwhile, PBS and a handful of other news outlets have joined NPR in moving away from Twitter, the social media platform once synonymous with breaking news, taylor reports. NPR announced it would exit the platform entirely last week after Twitter incorrectly attached a state-run media entity-only label to its account.

And we have five more for you:

4 SaaS Engagement Metrics That Attract Investors

Past performance doesn’t always predict future results, but this is the best place to find customer retention stats that attract investors.

According to Oleksandr Yaroshenko, head of investments and strategy at edtech startup Headway, existing customer engagement rates are “the best indicators of repeat business.”

In this article, he explores the gamification strategy and shares ideas for creating a “golden cohort” that represents your target audience.

Three others from the TC+ team:

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Big Tech inc.

Want to read a 10,000 character tweet? Neither did we – oh wait, you said yes. Alright, hang in there because Twitter now offers 10,000-character tweets for blue followers, reports Ivan. If you want to see what a 10,000 character tweet looks like, we got you, boo. How about a 10,000 character TechCrunch article? We found one for you from the archives.

Move to Washington State, where Uber and Lyft drivers have been granted paid family and medical leave. Rebecca writes that the state senate has passed legislation making it the first in the nation to offer this type of benefit to taxi drivers.

Here are five more for you: