CNN – Social Media/Technology

By Clare Duffy, CNN Business Amazon is raising the price of its annual Prime subscriptions from $119 to $139 per year in the United States, the company announced along with its earnings report Thursday. The price of a monthly subscription will also increase from $12.99 to $14.99. The company said it is increasing the price

By Jennifer Korn MacKenzie Scott has donated $133.5 million to educational nonprofit Communities in School, an organization that helps students navigate issues inside and outside of the classroom. The billionaire philanthropist’s donation is the largest unsolicited gift in the program’s history. Communities in School works in 2,900 schools in America, supporting students at risk of

By Sara Ashley O’Brien, CNN Business Wag, a dog-walking startup that once received $300 million from a single investor only to stumble in executing its strategy, is set to go public in a deal valued not much higher than that one investment. Wag said Thursday that it has entered an agreement to go public through

By Jennifer Korn, CNN Business Melinda French Gates may be shifting her approach to how she gives away her vast wealth following her high-profile divorce last year from Microsoft founder Bill Gates. French Gates is said to have decided not to give the bulk of her estimated $11.4 billion fortune to the Bill & Melinda

By Michelle Toh, CNN Business Two of the world’s biggest video game companies are feeling the pressure as the console wars heat up. Shares of Sony and Nintendo, the makers of the PlayStation and Switch respectively, stumbled Thursday as the two Japanese giants cut their forecasts for sales of the consoles. The fall comes as

By Clare Duffy, CNN Business Facebook rattled investors on Wednesday by posting a rare profit decline, driven by the company’s heavy spending on its vision for a so-called metaverse while simultaneously confronting advertising challenges on its existing services. The company, formerly known as Facebook, posted net income of nearly $10.3 billion in the final three

By Samantha Murphy Kelly, CNN Business Aaron Hommell bought his 3G iPhone 5 in 2014 and kept it for more than seven years, holding onto it even after the screen cracked and a long list of faster models hit the market. Then a year ago, AT&T began sending him emails that the company would be

By Brian Fung, CNN Business Sony is acquiring Bungie, the video game studio that created hit franchises such as “Halo” and “Destiny,” in a $3.6 billion deal that further centralizes the rapidly consolidating game industry. In a blog post, Sony (SONY) said the acquisition would help take its PlayStation platform “beyond the console” and flesh

By Jennifer Korn, CNN Business The world’s first all-electric passenger aircraft is preparing to take flight. The Alice, a plane developed by Israeli company Eviation, went through engine testing last week at Arlington Municipal Airport north of Seattle. According to Eviation CEO Omer Bar-Yohay, the Alice is just weeks away from its first flight. With

By Brian Fung, CNN Business A few days after Christmas, Aaron Worley and his wife began feeling ill. Fearing they may have contracted Covid-19 over the holidays, Worley, a 32-year-old quality assurance tester from Las Vegas, joined millions of other Americans in a desperate search — “rush mode,” he called it — for rapid test

by Reuters Facebook’s parent company Meta Platforms Inc has paused new users from joining its social media tracking tool CrowdTangle due to staffing constraints. Meta, which disbanded the CrowdTangle team last year, has been under pressure to provide greater transparency into its platforms. CrowdTangle founder and CEO Brandon Silverman left Facebook last year. The tool

By Samantha Murphy Kelly, CNN Business Just a day after Spotify agreed to remove Neil Young’s music from its service, Apple Music trolled its streaming rival by giving the musician some rock star treatment. In a tweet sent late Thursday, and later pinned to the top of the official Apple Music Twitter account, Apple called