Dance baby dance

Great news! If you're single, you no longer have to borrow your friends dog to update your profile picture on Tinder. The Match Group subsidiary announced that it's partnering with dog rescue shelters to allow users to add filters of real shelter dogs. Get more matches while helping pups find a new home - what's not to love?

Wait... They shipped what!?

Disney+ goes big on live entertainment by hosting 'Dancing with the Stars' (DWTS), it's first ever live streamed TV show.

Backstory: Underneath a Mickey Mouse-shaped disco ball, Season 31 of DWTS premiered on Disney+ last night. Disney+'s move signifies a deeper dive into live TV, after testing live streaming with the Oscar nominations and 'Harmonious Live'.

Why it matters: Disney+ is second streaming service to launch a major live video event in the space of a week, after Amazon Prime Video kicked off it's Thursday Night Football offering.

Amazon's NFL offering showed promising early signs as the company reported it's "biggest three hours for U.S. Prime sign-ups ever". Compared to Disney+, Amazon wins big by attracting new streaming users, as those who signed up for Thursday Night Football get funneled into the broader Prime offering.

Nonetheless, Disney+'s move shows how streaming companies are tweaking their strategies in order to drive growth after running into pandemic "subscription fatigue". 

That Disney+ chose DWTS as its first show is instructive. The median age of DWTS is 63.5 years old, whereas only 9% of Disney+'s subscriber base is over 55 years old. Hosting DWTS suggests Disney is testing out the possibility to expand it's TAM by broadening its appeal to an older cohort.

Features & products hot off the press

• Spotify launches audiobooks, with over 300,000 titles (Variety)

• Nasdaq is planning to launch an crypto custody product (The Block)

• Salesforce ships a real-time data integration platform (TechCrunch)

• YouTube lets creators make money while licensing music (Mashable)

• Peloton announces it's a $3,200 rowing machine (CNBC)

• Hinge adds video prompts and polls to its dating app (TechCrunch)

• Augment launches a personal AI assistant (TechCrunch)

• Flowhub builds an updated cannabis POS terminal (TechCrunch)

Getting 1% better at building product

• Influence - How to get better at building influence (Lenny's Newsletter)

• Pricing - It's price before product, period (First Round Review)

• Jobs to be done - Why Craigslist looks the same after 25+ years (PC Mag)

Other tech happenings

• Tim needs his cash. Apple raises prices for in-app purchases in Asia and Europe (TechCrunch)

• Meaningless clicks. YouTube's 'dislike' and 'not interested' buttons don't really change recommendations (Wired)

• FYP news reel. 33% of US TikTok users regularly get their news on the app (TechCrunch)

• Digital padowan. Baby Yoda has become a Tamagochi (Verge)

• You did what? Congress demands notifications of crypto payments made by the State Department (CoinTelegraph)

Courtesy of mindless Twitter scrolling

@shreyas

@chrisbakke

@lennysan

And that’s a wrap for today. Stay tuned for more!

-  Amol