Meta announces legs, Hulu raises prices, and Microsoft embraces DALL-E 2

Hi, friends! It’s time for another edition of Week in Review, the newsletter where we quickly recap the most read TechCrunch stories from the past seven days.

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LEGS: The company formerly known as Facebook held its Meta Connect conference this week, where it announced everything from a $1,500 VR headset to a work-focused partnership with Microsoft. Here’s the full roundup of all the news. The thing Zuckerberg seemed most excited about? His metaverse is getting legs.

Hulu’s price bump: Another year, another Hulu price hike. This week the ad-supported plan got bumped from $7 to $8 per month, while the ad-free plan went from $13 to $15 per month.

Microsoft x DALL-E: AI tools that can generate new images from text prompts are starting to go mainstream, with Microsoft announcing this week that it will integrate DALL-E 2 into at least two of its apps.

OG App gets KO’d: The “OG App” promised to provide an ad-free/suggestion-free Instagram experience more like that of yesteryear. Unfortunately, it didn’t have Instagram’s permission to do so. Instagram owner Meta quickly announced plans to take “all appropriate enforcement actions” against the app, which has now been pulled from both Google Play and the iOS App Store.

Google’s video calling booths get real: Last year, Google announced Project Starline, a wild, experimental “video-calling booth” that uses 3D imagery, depth sensors, and light field displays to make a video chat feel more like an in-person conversation. Until now, Starline booth prototypes were hidden away exclusively in Google’s offices; they’re now expanding that to include “the offices of various enterprise partners, including Salesforce, WeWork, T-Mobile and Hackensack Meridian Health.”

audio roundup

Been busy, and not the commuting/working out/doing housework kind of busy that lets you listen to podcasts while you get stuff done? Here’s what you missed in TC podcasts this week:

• On Equity, Natasha and Alex caught up with the incredibly insightful Sarah Guo, who recently launched a $100 million early-stage VC firm after being an investor/partner at Greylock for nearly a decade.
• Darrell and Jordan were joined on Found by Attabotics founder Scott Gravelle, who detailed how ant colonies inspired his approach to robotics.
• The Chain Reaction crew talked about why the SEC is investigating the company behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection and what it could mean for the crypto ecosystem.

techcrunch+

Here’s what subscribers were reading most behind the TC+ member paywall this week:

Supliful’s seed deck: “This is one of the best decks I’ve ever seen, despite being butt-ugly and riddled with mistakes,” writes Haje in the latest installment of his popular Pitch Deck Teardown series.

Growth hacking is really just growth testing: 10+ years after the term “growth hacking” was coined, what does it really mean today? Growth marketing expert Jonathan Martinez shares his insights.