Brands can take a page from lululemon athletica’s playbook and hold a dupe swap to show consumers what they’ve been missing or use social media to give a behind-the-scenes look at how a product is made. Other strategies include leaning into secondhand and adding less expensive alternatives.

TikTok promotes learning and automation at product summit: Simplicity is a big buzzword for TikTok this year, with automation at the heart of simplifying the ad creative process.

Regulatory pressure mounts in EU: The European Commission is following in the footsteps of various US agencies, states, and schools by banning the TikTok app on devices. Will the rest of Europe comply?

Tech layoffs hit Twilio, LinkedIn, Ford, and Yahoo: We could be facing a secondary wave of cost-cutting in the tech field. The good news is opportunities are open in other industries.

Year of the chatbot: Google’s Apprentice Bard is among many chatbots we’ll see released by the tech industry this year. Investors are excited, but performance and monetization are market hurdles.

Chatbots are AGI stepping stones: DeepMind might release a ChatGPT competitor called Sparrow sometime in 2023. Chatbots are part of a much bolder vision to alter society with artificial general intelligence.

Startups find investors on Twitter: We attend TechCrunch’s Disrupt 2022, where throngs of startups pitched to investors, judges, and potential new hires. Major trend: Founders are adapting to leaner economic conditions post-pandemic through social media—read on for more takeaways.

Google tackles AI’s biggest challenge: Under its Everyday Robots subsidiary, the tech giant is building bots that understand what humans really want. But internet data could steer the project off-course.

Just as consumers are adjusting to life during the pandemic, B2Bs are figuring out how to stay in business, operate and recover. Just as consumers are adjusting to life during the pandemic, B2Bs are figuring out how to stay in business, operate and recover.

Once the pandemic ends, consumers are likely going to continue doing things that they've become accustomed to doing while sheltering in place.

Millennial men don’t live down to the stereotype as their generation’s losers, not least because they make more money than their female counterparts. But many have lots of debt and little wealth, and they lag behind the women in earning college degrees.