Microsoft’s Teams service is now used by around 200,000 organizations in 181 markets and 39 languages, Venture Beat reports. That’s not bad considering the chat-based collaboration competes with Google’s Hangouts Chat, Facebook’s Workplace, and Slack. What’s more, “That’s up from 125,000 organizations as of September 2017 and 50,000 when it launched out of preview a year ago.”

Netflix is close to securing a major content partnership with Former President Barack Obama and the former First Lady Michelle Obama, The New York Times reports. “Under terms of a proposed deal, which is not yet final, Netflix would pay Mr. Obama and his wife, Michelle, for exclusive content that would be available only on the streaming service,” it writes.

Warner Music Group has finally agreed to a licensing deal with Facebook. The wide-ranging arrangement “covers all of Warner Music’s recorded and published music catalogs,” TechCrunch reports. “Music from these can now be used in ‘social experiences’ on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Oculus.”

In order to stop losses, Snap is embarking on an ambitious cost-cutting initiative, The Information reports. “Snap last year lost $720 million, before interest, taxes and charges like stock compensation expenses, due mostly to heavy spending on research and development and marketing,” it writes. “This year, analysts expect it to lose anywhere from $687 million to $912 million [while] analysts don’t project Snap turning profitable until at least 2021.”  

The Vatican is hosting a hackathon to encourage the convergence of technology, social inclusion, interfaith dialogue, and refugee and migrant care. “The event, VHacks, is bringing together 120 students for a 36-hour hackathon aimed at finding technological solutions for three global issues the Catholic Church hopes to address,” Wired reports.

Betting platform FanDuel is reportedly considering ways to go public without an IPO. “The fantasy sports site is likely to participate in a reverse merger with Platinum Eagle Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisition company formed earlier this year by veteran media executive Jeff Sagansky,” Axios reports. “Special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, are basically management teams that raise money from the public markets.”

Amazon claims to have corrected an Alexa glitch, which caused the virtual assistants to randomly laugh at users. As Bloomberg reports: “In rare circumstances, the voice assistant can mistakenly hear the phrase ‘Alexa, laugh,’ which under its normal programming would trigger it to chuckle.” A software update has now fixed the problem, Amazon insists.

Samsung appears to be having virtual assistant problems. Buried in a generally positive review for Samsung’s latest Galaxy smartphones, The Verge has some nasty words for the phone maker’s assistant. “It’s just as bad as it was when it launched last summer,” The Verge says about Bixby -- Samsung’s answer to Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, and other assistants. “It’s still way slower than Google Assistant and isn’t as good at parsing my voice commands.”

Like Rolling Stone in the States, the NME has long served as the leading voice on music and music culture in the United Kingdom. “The NME.com website will continue, replacing the print edition’s cover star interview with a new weekly digital franchise, the Big Read,” The Guardian reports.

For about two months, New York Times tech writer Farhad Manjoo used mostly print publications to get his news and information. The result? “Turning off the buzzing breaking-news machine I carry in my pocket was like unshackling myself from a monster who had me on speed dial, always ready to break into my day with half-baked bulletins,” he writes. “Most of all, I realized my personal role as a consumer of news in our broken digital news environment."