Elon Musk’s Twitter acquisition, mass layoffs, the Rogers outage, and a push for clean tech.
With the new year coming to a close, it is time to take a look back at the top stories of the year. Welcome to Hashtag Trending, I’m your host, Sameera Balsara, and in this two-episode special, we list down the top eight tech stories unfolding in 2022.
Elon Musk Twitter Acquisition
Possibly one of the biggest stories of the year (and currently underway), is Elon Musk’s twitter takeover, Musk formally took ownership of the platform in late October after he fired Parag Agarwal, who had replaced co-founder Jack Dorsey as Twitter’s CEO, along with other top executives. Since their acquisition, it has been impossible to keep Twitter out of the limelight. From mass layoffs at the company to membership verifying accounts, the platform and the company have changed. Musk’s overall goal for the platform was to create a place that promotes free speech, although hate speech on Twitter spiked significantly in October, just 12 hours after Musk took office. In recent news, Musk faced intense backlash for suspending some journalists covering the social media firm. In addition, Musk has now asked users through a poll on Twitter whether he should step down as CEO. About 57.5 percent of the respondents in the survey voted yes. As we enter the new year, Twitter and Musk will most likely be making headlines one way or another.
mass layoffs
Tech companies big and small have been making changes to employees this year, leading to massive layoffs across the industry. The hiring freeze and layoffs have affected nearly every part of the tech industry. Top executives and fresh graduates from companies such as Tesla, Netflix, Coinbase and Robinhood have been affected. These companies have cited reasons ranging from rising inflation to a disastrous crypto market. Some of the biggest layoffs include Twitter where Musk laid off 3,750 employees—some of whom he asked to return days later, Netflix, which laid off nearly 300 of its employees, and Shopify, which cut nearly 10 percent. employees left. More recently, Cisco announced massive layoffs affecting 4,100 employees. an article from cnbc This time period was coined the era of “loud layoffs” after the Great Resignation.
rogers outage
Rogers Communications Experiences Massive Internet and Wireless Service This Summer outage on July 8 across Canada. People across Canada experienced problems early in the morning with 20,000 reports of problems with the network on DownDetector. TD Canada E-Transfer and other banks reported issues, and major businesses such as Starbucks and Rexall could not accept Interac payments. 911 calls were affected and Toronto police reported a slowdown in operations as a result. In addition, Canadian singer The Weeknd had to reschedule his concert at Rogers Center after the outage affected venue operations. After almost 19 hours of no service, the network was restored for most people the next day. However the major outage started talks about a Rogers monopoly. As a result, in September, the major telecommunications companies agreed to a settlement emergency outage deal. If one of the providers, including Bell, Shaw, Freedom and others, suffers a major network outage, the other companies will provide the necessary support to ensure 911 connections and business transactions are not affected.
The push for sustainability within tech
Calls for action to combat climate change within the tech industry were a common pattern this year among many companies. In early September 2022, Ericsson announced the launch of Radio 6646, a tri-area, triple-band 5G radio network that aims to reduce energy consumption by about 40 percent compared to a single-area, triple-band radio. have to cut. Other tech companies announcing sustainability initiatives include SAP, Capgemini, IBM and Microsoft. IBM was named Technology Partner of the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference at this year’s conference. In addition, IBM revealed new members of its Sustainability Accelerator program, which uses technologies developed by the organization to boost government and non-profit organizational efforts to protect people from the threats of climate change. In August 2022, Capgemini and SAP announced a collaboration to provide cloud services and products to enhance sustainability initiatives in the automotive industry.
And that was one of our top stories for 2022. Look forward to our second part in the coming days. Thanks for listening to the hashtags trending this year. Add us to your Alexa Flash Briefing or your Google Home Daily Briefing. Be sure to sign up for our daily IT Wire newsletter to get important news straight to your inbox every day. Happy new year!
