TikTok is testing letting people upload videos up to 30 minutes long…in an obvious move to go after YouTube. Bgr.com notes that this is triple the present 10 minute length. When a user gets ready to upload a video, a pop up announces “Introducing 30 minutes video — You can now upload videos up to 30 minutes long!” Of course, YouTube still allows much longer videos…actually up to 12 hours. The 30 minute time will be interesting, but I have several friends who do programs of 1 to 2 hours in length, so the 30 minute limit won’t be suitable for that sort of longer form programming. Most videos on YouTube aren’t over 30 minutes, though…so this is a big move for TikTok.

Facebook sued a data scraping company last year, and now a federal judge has tossed Meta’s breach-of-contract claim. According to arstechnica.com, this is because the defendant Bright Data obtained only public data from Facebook and Instagram.  Bright Data is an Israeli company that collects data from various websites and offers related products to businesses. Meta alleged that Bright Data violated Facebook and Instagram policies by developing and using “unauthorized automation software to scrape data from Facebook and Instagram, including users’ profile information, followers, and posts that users have shared with others.” The judge did let stand one claim…for tortious interference with contract. Us District Judge Edward Chen has scheduled a status conference May 5th to discuss litigation of that remaining claim by Facebook. 

Microsoft hit an historic milestone Wednesday as they briefly surpassed $3 trillion in market value. Bloomberg reports that a lot of the gain was due to optimism over AI. The Redmond firm wasn’t able to hold above that mark for long, but did close right under $3 trillion, with a valuation of $2.99 trillion. Microsoft joins a very exclusive corporate club now…Apple had previously became the first company to ever hit the milestone last summer. 

In some not so hot financial news, Tesla revealed its final quarter of 2023 results yesterday. On the plus side, arstechnica.com reports that they did hit the goal of delivering 1.8 million EVs to customers…but gross profits were down 23% year over year…even with a net income increase of 115% (although in large part, this was due to Tesla recording a “one-time non-cash tax benefit of $5.9 [billion] in Q4 for the release of valuation allowance on certain deferred tax assets.” Tesla also warned that vehicle growth rate may be ‘notably lower’ in 2024. 2025 could pick back up for them, though, with a leak to Automotive News that a compact crossover could be out in that model year. 

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.