Welcome to the Tech Mem Ride Home for Tuesday, May 3rd, 2022. I'm Brian McCullough.

Today, what do you know? Facebook got bored of something and left the market in a bit of a mess.

The SEC seems to be staffing up to get serious about crypto.

Apple accuses arrival of stealing trade secrets,

and it seems like Meta wants to start getting those Metaverse

enabling headsets into our hands sooner rather than later. Here's what you miss

today in the world of Tech. Almost exactly a year ago I titled an episode, I guess you should listen to this

episode on Facebook now, although I guess not. Facebook apparently plans to

stop letting users add podcasts to its

podcasting service this week and will begin removing all

podcasts from its platform on June 3rd and will discontinue SoundBes and its central audio hub, which, if you'll recall, about a year

ago Mark Zuckerberg was all hot on, quoting Bloomberg.

Facebook announced various audio efforts last April during a hot market for

podcasting and audio in general but the company's interest has waned

Bloomberg News reported last month and it's now focused on other initiatives

disappointing some providers.

We're constantly evaluating the features we offer so we can focus on the most meaningful experiences,

a meta-spokesperson said in an email.

The person added that they didn't have a specific date on when SoundBites and the audio hub would shut down,

but it will be in quote the coming weeks. In the note to partners, Facebook said it doesn't plan to alert users

to the fact that podcast will no longer be available,

leaving it up to the publishers to decide how they want to disclose that information.

...