Good morning Austin, and Happy Friday!
Here's all the tech news from the last 24 hours that is worth gossiping about with your co-workers:
Everyone is on Snapchat now, apparently. Bloomberg reports that the messaging app has 150 million people using the service daily up from 110 million users in December.
That makes Snapchat more popular than Twitter, which has 140 million daily users. The story gets into some of the reasons why Snapchat is more popular.
Gawker CEO Nick Denton spoke at Recode's conference yesterday, saying Silicon Valley billionaires deserve just as much scrutiny, if not more, than members of Congress because they are more powerful.
Gawker is the target of a series of lawsuits funded by Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, who is angry about how the Gawker-owned publication Valleywag has covered him.
Denton had actually challenged Thiel to debate him publicly at this conference and in a nod to that offer, the conference organizers kept an empty chair on the stage.
As part of an effort to refocus its energies around digital content, the 150-year-old Tribune Company, owner of the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, is rebranding itself "tronc" and will be listed on the Nasdaq instead of the New York Stock Exchange.
Tronc stands for Tribune Online Content. This is a fascinating move in light of a recent decision by its board to reject a Gannett Co. buyout offer.
(Click here to see the online reaction to the name change, which the Guardian describes as "swift and merciless.")
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