With effect from 29 April, the technology giant announced the shutdown in response to the trade body issuing an interim order that prevented data sharing between Threads and Instagram, a decision which Meta disagreed with.

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Meanwhile, the company claims it has complied with the Turkish legal standards and plans to appeal the decision.

In a blog post, the social media giant revealed there is no impact to Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp or any other Meta services in Turkey or Threads in other countries.

It also gave users the option to choose whether to deactivate but not delete their Threads profile, or to delete their profile. If a user decides to deactivate their profile, then their posts and interactions with other people’s posts will become visible again if Threads returns to the country.

Meta said: “The TCA recently issued an interim order prohibiting the sharing of data between Threads and Instagram. We disagree with the interim order, we believe we are in compliance with all Turkish legal requirements, and we will appeal.

“The TCA’s interim order leaves us with no choice but to temporarily shut down Threads in Turkey. We will continue to constructively engage with the TCA and hope to bring Threads back to people in Turkey as quickly as possible.”

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The new company, Flight Studio, is set to work across every component of podcast development from creation and growth to the monetisation process.

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At launch, the company revealed the first podcasters joining Flight Studio, which include Davina McCall, Kristen Holmes, Paul C Brunson and The Diary Of A CEO itself, which will exclusively be signed to Flight Studio.

Bartlett said: “I truly believe that we have every core component ready to redefine the global podcasting industry with this new company. We have done this in our own tiny way already with the Diary of a CEO, but I’m haunted by the potential that we see to scale this globally, for the people and the voices who will change the world.”

Flight Studio will have global production studios based in London, Manchester, New York, Boston and Los Angeles and will announce more details on these outstanding new show launches and more talent joining in the coming months.

Holt added: “Our ambition is to create the most valuable podcast brands and technology in the world at Flight Studio, we see that “value” as being measured by the opportunity to be able scale shows that make a positive impact in people’s lives on a global scale as fast as possible. To be able to do this with Steven, Christiana, our Flight Studio talent and the DOAC team is incredible. I believe we are about to collectively achieve something very special.“

Brenton concluded: “The launch of Flight Studio comes with the most compelling proposition to our partners in the entire podcast industry spanning video, social, live events, product and IP expansion.

“The DOAC team has become infamous for their relentless pursuit of scientific experimentation for 1% gains, a methodology we’re scaling across Flight Studio Commercials and one that enables us to deliver the most effective media partnerships in the world. I am beyond excited to be on this journey with Steven, Georgie, our new roster of phenomenal podcasters and the most talented team I’ve had the privilege to become a part of.”

The news comes as Bartlett recently announced his partnership with global freelance platform, Fiverr in a bid to support UK SMB growth.

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Bartlett will join various UK SMB owners, helping them to discover their desired breakthrough, whether that’s increasing revenue or entering a new markets.

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He will also help them identify this and then build a dedicated plan on how to get there with the use of Fiverr’s freelance experts via the platform.

Bartlett said: “One of the most common mistakes I see business owners make is trying to take on everything themselves.

“Discovering Fiverr was transformative for me, every time I needed an expert or professional specialising in digital services it became my default marketplace. Rather than attempting to do things that are not in my skill set, I hired experienced freelancers in their field.

“As a result, I was able to accomplish more, and focus on growing my business”.

The freelance platform has also launched a competition for UK residents above 18 years old giving them a chance to win an expert consultation with the Dragons Den star, with three grantees being awarded £10,000 in Fiverr Credits.

Fiverr UK Country Manager, Bukki Adedapo, added: “We’re thrilled to be continuing our long-term relationship with Steven. His inspirational mentorship style and drive to help fellow entrepreneurs align with our mission to connect businesses with highly skilled professionals.

“Following rough economic headwinds, skills shortages and rising costs, UK businesses continue to face hurdles that impact their growth. This competition enables SMBs to get first-hand access to a powerhouse entrepreneur and specialised freelance consultation.

“We’re excited to see freelancers become indispensable partners for these SMBs, helping them in their breakthrough journey.”

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The campaign, developed in partnership with Waste Creative and in-house production studio This Thing of Ours, is dedicated to its fans celebrating ‘Generation Boom’, a nod to the players that refer to themselves as ‘boomers’.

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As part of the campaign, the gaming giant has launched a 60-second animated film which showcases a miniature diorama, with a Boom Beach scene brought to life on a one-metre cake.

At first glance, the cake looks like a memento of ten years of player achievements, however, the film shows that the cake was created by Dr. T, the nefarious scientist who is the game’s primary antagonist, to celebrate ten years of player failures.

The push is running across social channels YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and X.

Supercell Game Resourcing Lead, Lasse Seppänen, said: “Reaching the ten-year mark is an incredible achievement, and it’s all thanks to our passionate and dedicated community of Boom Beach players.

“To honour their unwavering support, we’re thrilled to launch our latest campaign, which celebrates players and invites them to share their commander stories, cherish the past and anticipate the future.”

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As part of the acquisition, both companies will remain as standalone offerings for now, with no additional changes affecting customers planned.

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However, Sensor Tower added that as part of the deal, it is laying off several employees from Data.ai’s team.

Sensor Tower, CEO Oliver Yeh, said: “Beyond the platform infrastructure and customer integration, Sensor Tower’s leadership team will stay intact and manage the combined company.

“As we unite Sensor Tower and data.ai, we are eager to incorporate new team members. This merger also necessitates optimising our team structure. We are committed to providing assistance and resources to our departing colleagues during this transition.”

He added: “Today we celebrate the beginning of a new and exciting chapter, not only for Sensor Tower but for the digital marketing and mobile app intelligence industry.”

This comes as consumers are steadily increasing the amount of time they spend socialising, playing, watching and shopping across digital channels, with an increased activity on platforms such as Google, Meta, TikTok, Instagram, and Snap having heavily invested in user acquisition, retention, and monetisation.

Data.ai CEO Ted Krantz added: “Since 2010, data.ai has helped some of the finest brands and publishers globally to optimise their mobile performance. This evolution offers the best path to innovation, more insights across more channels, and ultimately, more value derived by clients.

“As we unite Sensor Tower and data.ai, we are eager to incorporate new team members. This merger also necessitates optimising our team structure. We are committed to providing assistance and resources to our departing colleagues during this transition.”

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Distad, who most recently served as an executive at Apple for a decade following six years at Hulu, will head up all aspects of the joint venture, including overall strategy, distribution, marketing and sales.

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At Apple, Distad was responsible for the business, operations and global distribution of Video, Sports and Apple TV+. Meanwhile, during his time at the technology giant, he launched the new Apple TV in 2015 and later led teams that launched and scaled the Apple TV app, Apple TV+, and MLS Season Pass.

Before Apple, he served as Senior Vice President of Marketing and Distribution at Hulu.

He was also part of the original launch team of the streaming platform, overseeing customer acquisition and retention, distribution and marketing.

Prior to Hulu, Distad worked in various technology and management consulting roles, including at McKinsey & Company, Calence (now Insight) and Andersen Consulting (now Accenture).

Commenting on his appointment, Distad said: “This is an incredible opportunity to build and grow a differentiated product that will serve passionate sports fans in the US outside of the traditional pay TV bundle.

“I’m excited to be able to pull together the industry-leading sports content portfolios from these three companies to deliver a new best-in-class service.”

The sports streaming offering is scheduled to launch in the autumn of this year and will be made available directly to consumers via a new app.

The platform would aggregate content to offer fans an extensive, dynamic lineup of sports content, aiming to provide a new and differentiated experience to serve sports fans.

ESPN, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery added the following joint statement: “Pete is an accomplished innovator and leader who has extensive experience with launching and growing new video services. We are confident he and his team will build an extremely compelling, fan-focused product for our target market.”

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The comments made by Epic Games Director of Public Policy, Leo Rees, follows Apple blocking the parent company of Fortnite, from launching a rival app store on iOS devices in Europe.

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He said: “Consumers should be able to download apps from where they want, just like on every other computing device.”

In a blog post, Epic Games shared several exchanges with Apple in which it outlined plans for its developer account, which included creating an Epic Games Store iOS app and a Fortnite native app for distribution via that store.

It said: “In terminating Epic’s developer account, Apple is taking out one of the largest potential competitors to the Apple App Store. They are undermining our ability to be a viable competitor and they are showing other developers what happens when you try to compete with Apple or are critical of their unfair practices.

“If Apple maintains its power to kick a third party marketplace off iOS at its sole discretion, no reasonable developer would be willing to utilise a third party app store, because they could be permanently separated from their audience at any time.”

However, according to the technology giant, one of the reasons they terminated Epic’s developer account within a few weeks of approval was because its CEO, Tim Sweeney publicly criticised its proposed DMA compliance plan, in an X (formerly Twitter) post.

Apple leadership faces some massive decisions in the coming weeks as the contradictions between their stated principles and the intended and actual consequences of their present policies are reckoned with: the app store monopoly, the digital goods payments monopoly, the tax, the… pic.twitter.com/mUxV5ypwcd

— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) February 26, 2024

Epic Games added: “Apple also claims that Epic is a threat to their ecosystem, but this is an entirely unjustified excuse to terminate one of our accounts.”

Meanwhile, Apple responded, claiming Epic’s “egregious breach of its contractual obligations to Apple led courts to determine that Apple has the right to terminate ‘any or all of Epic Games’ wholly owned subsidiaries, affiliates, and/or other entities under Epic Games’ control at any time and at Apple’s sole discretion.’”

It added: “In light of Epic’s past and ongoing behaviour, Apple chose to exercise that right.”

This disagreement is the latest in nearly five years of issues between the two firms, which started in 2020 when a Fortnite update allowed gamers to purchase digital coins via a direct payment feature, going around Apple’s rule that iOS games use in-app purchases.

As a result, Epic sued the tech giant, with California’s Ninth Circuit Court ruling in favour of the game developer.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court declined to take up the case, in which both companies appealed the ruling, with Epic Games claiming there were “legal errors” and that Apple had violated federal antitrust laws.

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The partnership follows the company’s commitment to empowering individuals to achieve their aspirations and dreams.

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As part of the collaboration, the payment giant will celebrate the values of dedication, perseverance, and excellence that define both the footballer and the brand itself.

Commenting on the partnership, Salah said: “Throughout my career, every step I have taken has propelled me to greater and greater opportunities, bringing me closer than ever to my dreams. I’m excited about the collaboration with Visa and its mission to expand what is possible for more and more people, empowering them to take a series of small steps forward to get to where they want to be.”

Visa CMO of Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East, and Africa (CEMEA), Tarek Abdalla, added: “As an icon in the Middle East and Africa, and a legend of the modern game, Mo Salah has become a beacon of hope and joy in households all around the world, uplifting people through the belief that everyone, everywhere can help shape the future.”

“We are proud to have Mo as an Ambassador, who is not only an inspiring athlete but reflects several of our guiding principles. Breaking barriers, superseding expectations, and aiming for best-in-class performance worldwide are all values that Visa deeply embodies, as it seeks to innovate and drive the future of commerce.”

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In a blog post the AI giant stated that despite the Twitter owner’s initial pledge of $1 billion, the company received less than $45 million from him since its founding in 2015.

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Meanwhile, it secured over $90 million from other donors to support its research, the company revealed.

This comes as Musk recently sued OpenAI and its Co-Founders, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, claiming they are putting profit before humanity by straying from their non-profit mission to develop beneficial and safe AI and instead pursuing profits by partnering with Microsoft.

The blog post, authored by OpenAI Co-Founders Brockman and Altman, alongside Ilya Sutskever, John Schulman and Wojciech Zaremba: “The mission of OpenAI is to ensure AGI benefits all of humanity, which means both building safe and beneficial AGI and helping create broadly distributed benefits.

“We are now sharing what we’ve learned about achieving our mission, and some facts about our relationship with Elon. We intend to move to dismiss all of Elon’s claims.”

It also revealed Musk wanted “absolute control” of the platform by merging it with Tesla, the company he is CEO of.

The blog post stated: “We couldn’t agree to terms on a for-profit with Elon because we felt it was against the mission for any individual to have absolute control over OpenAI.

“He then suggested instead merging OpenAI into Tesla. In early February 2018, Elon forwarded us an email suggesting that OpenAI should “attach to Tesla as its cash cow”, commenting that it was “exactly right… Tesla is the only path that could even hope to hold a candle to Google. Even then, the probability of being a counterweight to Google is small. It just isn’t zero.

“Elon soon chose to leave OpenAI, saying that our probability of success was 0, and that he planned to build an AGI competitor within Tesla. When he left in late February 2018, he told our team he was supportive of us finding our own path to raising billions of dollars. In December 2018, Elon sent us an email saying “Even raising several hundred million won’t be enough. This needs billions per year immediately or forget it.”

Meanwhile, OpenAI added it is making its technology broadly usable in ways that empowers people and improve their daily lives and is focused on advancing its mission as it continues to make its tools better.

Read the full blog post here.

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According to the Commission, Apple applied restrictions on app developers preventing them from informing iOS users about cheaper alternative subscription services outside the app.

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Illegal under the EU antitrust rules, the move comes as rival streaming service, Spotify, launched a formal complaint against the streaming giant, which dates back almost a decade, which Apple said it will appeal.

As a result of the fine, Apple will have to remove terms to prevent developers from informing subscribers about alternative subscription platforms.

The European Commission said Apple’s conduct may have resulted in many iOS users paying higher prices for streaming subscriptions due to the “high commission fee imposed by Apple on developers and passed on to consumers in the form of higher subscription prices for the same service on the Apple App Store”.

The European Commission’s Executive Vice-President in charge of competition policy, Margrethe Vestager, said: “For a decade, Apple abused its dominant position in the market for the distribution of music streaming apps through the App Store.

“They did so by restricting developers from informing consumers about alternative, cheaper music services available outside of the Apple ecosystem. This is illegal under EU antitrust rules, so today we have fined Apple over €1.8 billion.”

However, Apple released a statement claiming that the biggest beneficiary of the ruling, Spotify, “has the largest music streaming app in the world, and has met with the European Commission more than 65 times during this investigation”.

“The decision was reached despite the Commission’s failure to uncover any credible evidence of consumer harm, and ignores the realities of a market that is thriving, competitive, and growing fast,” Apple stated.

“That’s because Spotify – like many developers on the App Store – made a choice. Instead of selling subscriptions in their app, they sell them on their website and Apple doesn’t collect a commission on those purchases.”

“All told, the Spotify app has been downloaded, re-downloaded, or updated more than 119 billion times on Apple devices. It’s available on the App Store in over 160 countries spanning the globe. And there are many more ways Apple creates value for Spotify, at no cost to their company.”

“It takes continuous effort and a lot of investment for Apple to make the tools, the technology, and the marketplace that Spotify uses every day. We’ve even flown our engineers to Stockholm to help Spotify’s teams in person. The result is that when a user opens the Spotify app, listens to music on their commute, or asks Siri to play a song from their library, everything just works. And again — Spotify pays Apple nothing.”

Meanwhile, Spotify added that Apple’s “behaviour limiting communications to consumers is unlawful”.

In a statement, the streaming giant said: “This decision sends a powerful message – no company, not even a monopoly like Apple, can wield power abusively to control how other companies interact with their customers.

“Apple’s rules muzzled Spotify and other music streaming services from sharing with our users directly in our app about various benefits – denying us the ability to communicate with them about how to upgrade and the price of subscriptions, promotions, discounts, or numerous other perks.

“Of course, Apple Music, a competitor to these apps, is not barred from the same behaviour. By requiring Apple to stop its illegal conduct in the EU, the EC is putting consumers first. It is a basic concept of free markets – customers should know what options they have, and customers, not Apple, should decide what to buy, and where, when and how,” it concluded.

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