The Daily Crunch 12/2/16

Can a new product exec turn things around for Twitter? What's going on with Android Wear? Is football more important than Star Trek? The Daily Crunch for December 2, 2016 tries and fails to answer all of those questions — and more.

PS Darrell and I are both in London this week for Disrupt, but we'll keep bringing the news to your inbox at the regular time.

1. Twitter buys a startup, gets a new VP of product

It looks like a classic Silicon Valley acqui-hire, or talent acquisition, or neologism of your choice: Twitter has acquired a seven-person mobile app startup called Yes, Inc., with Yes CEO Keith Coleman becoming the larger company's vice president of product development. The role has been empty since June, when Jeff Seibert returned to a position with Twitter's Fabric development platform back.

The job is particularly important now, since Twitter still needs to find a way to kickstart user growth. However, Coleman may have to do some catching up first, since he'd only tweeted 143 times when the acquisition was announced yesterday.

2. Four elements added to the periodic table

Yep, I'm talking about the official periodic table, which grew by four elements this week, thanks to the addition of Nihonium, Moscovium, Tennessine and Oganesson. All four of them were synthesized between 2002 and 2010, and recognized by International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry last year, but there was an additional waiting period before they made it into the table. The elements are named for the Japanese word for Japan, the city of Moscow, the state of Tennessee and the Russian scientist Yuri Oganessian, respectively.

3. NFL games are coming to CBS All Access

Personally, a new Star Trek TV series seems like more than enough reason to subscribe to CBS All Access, but I (grudgingly) accept that not everyone shares my priorities. So the service should be a lot more appealing to football fans now — starting this Sunday, it will include all NFL games broadcast on CBS. The big caveat is that you won't be able to watch the games on your smartphone or tablet, because Verizon already has the mobile streaming rights. (Verizon owns TechCrunch, by the way.)

4. Motorola says it's not building a new smartwatch anytime soon

Motorola's head of global product development Shakil Barkat discussed the Moto 360 smartwatch at a press event, saying, "We don't see enough pull from the market at this point to put out a new product."  That's bad news for fans of the 360, and it doesn't bode particularly well for the broader Android Wear ecosystem, either. To be clear, though, Barkat said there are possibilities further down the road, because the "wrist still has value."

5. WeChat stops telling users when it censors their messages

Some degree of censorship seems to be the price of admission for Internet services operating in China. In the past, the users of WeChat (the most popular messaging app in China) knew when they were being censored — they got notified if a message they sent wasn't delivered because it was too controversial. Now, according to research group Citizen Lab, the app just blocks messages without telling the sender.

6. Didi's CTO talks data and machine learning

Uber seemed to take the "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" attitude earlier this year when it pulled out of China, with Chinese competitor Didi Chuxing taking over Uber's business there, and with Uber taking a stake in Didi. TechCrunch spoke to Didi co-founder and CTO Bob Zhang this week about how the company's data gives it a competitive advantage. Apparently, the Didi network is processing more than 30,000 requests per minute, with drivers transmitting their location and speed every three seconds. Zhang also confirmed that the company plans to expand beyond China next year, though he didn't say which markets are being looked at.