Reddit acquires contextual advertising company Spiketrap to improve its ad quality scoring and boost prediction models for auto-bidding (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Mark Cuban’s interactive streaming app Fireside acquires streaming platform Stremium and plans to launch on smart TVs, Amazon Fire TV, Roku, and other devices  —  Mark Cuban-backed streaming app Fireside, which today offers podcasters and other creators a way to host interactive …

Ryan Mac / New York Times:
As Twitter’s problems mount, Elon Musk is on pace to tweet over 750 times in November, or more than 25 times a day, up from around 13 per day in April  —  The new owner of Twitter has embarked on a tweeting spree to push back, spar and justify his actions.  —  Ryan Mac, who is based in Los Angeles …

Fortune:
How Reddit’s blockchain-based Collectible Avatars, which avoid the NFT label, became popular; Polygon data shows the total sales volume was $10M+ by November 2  —  At 2:59 p.m. ET on Oct. 20, when Reddit announced its second generation of collectible avatars, Ethan Clark was ready, phone in hand.

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Reddit’s chief product officer says 3M+ users created Reddit Vault wallets, including 2.5M to buy NFT avatars that can be used as profile pictures on the site  —  In July, Reddit jumped on the NFT train, launching an NFT-based marketplace that allows users to purchase blockchain-based profile pictures for a fixed rate.

Billy House / Bloomberg:
In a letter to Mark Zuckerberg, 35 House Republicans request communications between Facebook and the FBI in a probe relating to the NY Post’s Hunter Biden story  —  House Republicans are demanding that Meta Platforms Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg hand over FBI warnings …

Paul Sawers / TechCrunch:
Mozilla acquires Pulse, which made an automated status updater for Slack before shuttering, and plans to use its ML tech to improve personalization in Pocket  —  Firefox developer Mozilla is making a rare foray into the world of mergers and acquisitions, with news that it has snapped …