# Microsoft Buyouts, X Cuts, Meta Account Shift, Beehive Growth

**Podcast:** TechCrunch Daily Crunch
**Published:** 2026-04-24

## Transcript

This is TechCrunch.
Deutschland's liebste Chaos-Familie ist zurück.
With the 5th episode of These Ochsenknechts.
Exclusively at WOW.
It's in every episode in Booman.
I believe I am this year.
With more drama, adventures and surprises.
At least I'll be able to do it as a mother.
We stream all the previous episodes of the successful reality show and other highlights like Euphoria and Wicked.
Now spend 70% on wow.
Streaming was never so wow.
Meta is revamping its cross-app management system.
I'm Imran Shaikh in your Friday Daily Crunch featuring three big tech headlines and some startup business news starts right now.
Microsoft is offering voluntary retirement buyouts for the first time in its 51-year history, per reports from CNBC and Bloomberg.
Now, according to an internal memo, employees will be eligible if their years of work at Microsoft plus their age totaled 70 or more, with some exceptions.
So, let's say someone's 52 years old and has had 18 years of service at Microsoft, they could qualify for the buyout.
This move gives Microsoft an opportunity to reduce its headcount in a manner less abrasive than mass layoffs.
Over the last few years, Microsoft has weathered several rounds of layoffs, affecting thousands of employees.
Most recently, the company cut 9,000 jobs last summer.
The company had an estimated 125,000 U.S.
employees as of June.
The buyout would reportedly apply to 7% of the U.S.
workforce, which amounts to about 8,750 employees.
TechCrunch has reached out to Microsoft for comment.
Launched way back in 2021, when the company was still known as Twitter, communities were meant to provide the social network's users with a place to connect with each other around shared interests.
Well, now, X is shutting down the feature for good, saying it was overrun with spam and a headache to manage.
Plus, noted X's head of product, Nikita Beer, hardly anyone was using them.
Communities had a great vision, but they were used by less than 0.4% of users, yet contributed to 80% of spam reports, financial scams, and malware on X, Beard wrote on X, explaining the company's thinking behind the removal of the high-profile feature.
Beard continued, Of the handful of communities that succeeded, most were user acquisition channels for Kik, or compensated Clipper communities.
In other words, communities often weren't being used for their original purpose.
Instead, they had become a place focused on driving, often paid, traffic to other online creators outside of X itself.
Beer often scoffed at X's failed communities project as a Timu version of subreddits, a reference to the groups found within the more popular interest-based social network Reddit.
He did, however, note that there were a few good communities in the mix that will have to migrate elsewhere, but largely suggested that the future wasn't worth maintaining given its overall low use.
Get ready to pour one out on May 6th because that's when communities on X will be shut down.
Until then, community admins can migrate their members to the newly revamped group chat experience.
On Thursday, Meta announced an improved Meta account system designed to make it easier for users to sign in and manage their Meta accounts and devices.
Today, the Meta ecosystem has become so expansive that it almost feels unwieldy.
Users might have various different accounts and logins for Facebook, WhatsApp, Meta AI glasses, and more.
While the account center already serves to streamline this experience, the Meta account system aims to simplify it even further.
The company says this new system will roll out over the next year.
With a Meta account, users can choose to set up a single password that applies to all of their accounts within the Meta ecosystem.
These logins can also be protected with passkeys, which use fingerprints, face recognition, or device passwords to access accounts.
Meta says that the Meta account will also come with security recommendations to help users stay up to date with multi-factor authentication, as well as login alerts across their devices.
The Meta account will also help parents more easily supervise teens' behavior across apps, so it's no longer necessary to switch among various apps.
From the Family Center dashboard on Meta account, parents will be able to manage settings for Instagram, Facebook, Messenger, and Meta Horizon all in the same place.
The Meta account setup doesn't force...
users into linking all of their accounts, though.
If a user wants to keep their login separate, they are able to do so.
Users can also choose to add or remove accounts from the overall meta account at any time.
And now over to producer Dennis for the latest in startup business news, all in about one minute.
Imran, thank you, and it's been clear for a while.
that Beehive wants to be more than just a newsletter platform.
The LA-based company announced a slew of updates on Thursday that make the ambition even more obvious.
The new features include webinars, AI analytics for podcasts, metered paywalls, and paid trials.
Taken together, the announcement is a clear sign that the nearly five-year-old company is trying to become an all-in-one hub for creators, reducing that hassle of juggling various tools and services.
to run their businesses.
With these additions, Beehive is positioning itself against platforms spanning newsletters, webinars, and podcasting, including Patreon, Substack, Zoom, Kit, and Ghost.
The webinar launches also probably the biggest signal of where things are headed.
Creators can now host live events for up to 10,000 people directly inside Beehive, complete with video, screen sharing, and chat.
They can charge for access in multiple currencies or just use it as a free offering to grow their audience.
The feature opens up new use cases for educational content, product demonstrations and community building.
And that'll do it for me.
Imran, back to you.
And folks, that's your Daily Crunch.
Today's stories were reported by Amanda Silberling, Sarah Perez and more awesome TechCrunch journalists.
We'll see you here tomorrow and until then, remember, you can find us at TechCrunch.com.
Stillstand.
Bei neuen Technologien setzen viele Banken auf Best Practices und bremsen damit echten Fortschritt.
Wie viel Stabilität ist zu viel und wann wird Sicherheit zum Risiko?
DKCFO Daniel Kapfer und Prof.
Silke Finken diskutieren, wie man das Mindset einer ganzen Bank verändert.
Ohne Kontrolle zu verlieren.
In der neuen Folge von Next Level Banking.
Überall, wo es Podcasts gibt.