Welcome back! The Musk v Twitter saga spilled into the public domain with the release of Elon Musk's glorious text exchanges. Gotta love Elon's grand idea of making Twitter users pay "0.1 Doge per comment". Meanwhile, sending my prayers to the poor PMs in charge of Twitter Blue, after Elon described the product as an "insane piece of shit".

Wait... They shipped what!?

TikTok is massively expanding the length of video descriptions.

Details: Video descriptions on TikTok are increasing from 300 to a whopping 2,200 characters. For context, this entire email is ~2,500 characters.

Why it matters: The move underscores TikTok's growing ambitions of becoming a search engine, as Gen-Z increasingly uses TikTok instead of Google. Larger video descriptions will kick off a wave of creator SEO that'll make TikTok even better at delivering on search.

What to watch: Will TikTok's SEO play drive user acquisition in older demographics?

If Google's new Discussions & Forums feature indexes TikTok, Googling obscure problems may display compelling TikTok videos, which would funnel new users to the product. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Features & products hot off the press

Big tech

• Twitter is launching a TikTok-like scrollable video feed

• Adobe launches a host of new editing features for short-form video

• YouTube TV users can subscribe to networks without a base plan

• Apple is working on a feature to send SOS messages via satellite

• Amazon debuts roadside assistance

• Twitter rolls out podcasts to Blue subscribers on Android

• Google will launch a tool that notifies you if your personal info is searchable

General and early-stage

• Twitch tests letting users pay to make their chat messages more visible

• Anker's new Liberty 4 earbuds include heart-rate tracking

• Brave will start blocking cookie consent banners on it's browser

• Arcade launches a product for spinning up interactive demos

• Stark gets it's accessibility app on the Mac App store

Getting 1% better at building product

• 0 to 1 - Why new product initiatives at successful companies fail, by Shreyas

• Execution - The nature of product, with Marty Cagan

• Behavior change - UX and the Hook (for habit forming), by UX Mag

Other tech happenings

• F1 level. Waymo's autonomous vehicles beat a virtual superhuman driver

• Are we legit? Headspace puts out an RFP for researchers to test its efficacy

• It's Meta's turn. Meta announces hiring freeze and plan to cut costs

• 3 too many.Truepill conducts its fourth round of layoffs for the year

• Fast follow. New York joins California in 2035 zero-EV vehicle mandate

Courtesy of mindless Twitter scrolling

@superfast

@ericzhu105

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

- Amol