Hungry but don't know what to eat? A Swedish grocery delivery startup launched a physical button that when pressed, randomly selects a recipe and delivers users the ingredients within 10 minutes. Never thought I'd see loot boxes take over dinner.

Wait... They shipped what!?

Twitter shipped its new Blue subscription offering.

Details: The talk of the town update is finally out. Highlights include:

• $7.99 monthly fee

• Blue verified checkmark

• Priority notifications sent to other users if you engage with their tweet

• v1 rollout is US-based, limited scale, and iOS only

The update also included a separate 'Official' badge for certain accounts, however Musk killed the feature a few hours post-launch 🤦

Why it matters: If you're on Twitter, you've likely seen the resulting chaos as users widely impersonate accounts with their new verified checkmarks. I've personally found it difficult at times to know whether tweets were sent from real accounts.

Some funny verified-but-fake examples include:

• Lebron James requesting a trade

• Nintendo having Mario flip off Twitter

• Valve unveiling a new gaming platform

• Twitter's corporate account spouting random crypto thoughts

If Twitter doesn't get a grip, misinformation will get a lot worse real quick.

Nonetheless, I can't help but feel for team Twitter. Their poor PMs can't even run a small-scale A/B test without the entire world losing its mind. Having said that, this is exactly what Musk wants - converting his unhinged persona into free press & traffic.

It's working.

Features & products hot off the press

Big tech

• Twitter ships the new Blue subscription with verified checkmarks 

• Twitter kills it's new 'official' badges after a few hours

• Google starts rolling out its newly designed Home app 

• Spotify revamps its Apple Watch app 

• Google launches a VPN app for macOS and Windows 

• Microsoft rolls out Windows 11 iCloud integration 

• Discord ships voice channel reactions

• Apple to launch Emergency SOS via Satellite feature

General and early-stage

• Podcast Search ships a podcast audio search tool

• Substack launches mentions and cross-posts 

• Ahrefs unveils Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) comparison tool 

• Carvana ends its dealer marketplace program

• Serif ships a new Affinity creative suite 

• Redfin shuts down its home flipping business

Getting 1% better at building product

• Strategy - Reinventing product strategy for a downturn, by Andrew Chen

• Collaboration - Making your ideas stick, by Aakash Gupta

Broader tech happenings

• Yikes. Amazon is first-ever public co to lose $1 trillion of market cap

• Musk coin. Twitter files paperwork to allow it to process payments

• Branching out. Netflix explores investing in sports leagues

• It's the season. TikTok slashes revenue targets by $2b

• Madness. Binance backs out of deal to buy FTX 

Courtesy of mindless Twitter scrolling

@ChrisJBakke

@gainzy222

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

- Amol