Twitter, Inc. Hit A New All-Time Low Share Price On Friday

The social media website has hit a new all time low yet again after its initial all time low share price back in August 2015.

On January 8, 2016, Twitter Inc.’s stock dropped by as much as 2% hitting its new all-time low at $19.76. In the past five trading days, the stock has managed to drop by 15% due to poor user growth. Investors have been quite unhappy because of the sluggish user growth of the social media network. Ever since ex-CEO and co-founder of Twitter, Dick Costolo stepped down from his position in June; the company has been constantly going through a rough patch.

The investors at Wall Street have continuously questioned the strategic direction of the micro-blogging company while others have pointed their fingers at the slow user growth for the decline in the stock. Ever since its one year high of $53.49 back on April 7, 2015 Twitter stock has fallen by as much as 60%. In October, the social media website reported better than expected earnings for the third quarter for fiscal year 2015. For upcoming further quarter, investors and analysts are predicting revenue to be somewhere between the range of $695 to $700 million.

For the latest quarter, 320 million active users were reported by the organization which shows that the monthly active users have just increase by 4 million since its last report. The fourth quarter earnings for the current fiscal year are expected to come out on February 10, 2016. The stock, at this point in time, is in a crisis situation.

In other news, Jack Dorsey stated that he has been looking for different ways in which Twitter users can post tweets specifically something that lets the users make longer tweets. He added that the customers of the social networking website are already doing that by posting the screenshots of the text but he said he would like the tweets to be short, sweet and conventional. According to the announcement, the tweets will now be of 10,000 characters per person from an initial 140-character limit.

It could mark as the end of Twitter when other smaller rivals such as Snapchat and Vine are giving its users more attractive features and options through which they are able to attract a good audience. Back in November 2013, when the company went public it was trading at a share price of $26 per share on the NYSE. The first fall that it witnessed was back in August when it dropped below its initial public offering price and this was the second hit.

Stock of the micro-blogging website is down 22% since it went public but it is not the lowest performing stock; in comparison Square stock is as low as twitter’s as well. It has fallen about 13.8% this week.

Tesla Motors To Roll Out Model 3 Sedan In 2017

The CEO plans to roll out the new electric vehicle in 2017 - as its major competitor General Motors shows off the new Chevrolet Bolt.

At the Consumer Electronic Show, General Motors showed off its high technology electric vehicle, ‘Chevrolet Bolt’. Comparatively it is putting a lot into this new automobile while will start production sometime next year. The idea behind the latest Bolt is to compete with Tesla Motor’s Model 3 Sedan, which is also expected to roll out sometime in 2017.

According to GM, the new Bolt will be offered for $30,000 with a 200 mile range (after income tax reduction). The chairman of GM, Mary Barra talked about Tesla’s ‘limited retail network’ however she emphasized of the novelty of the auto maker along with the value that is created by the company for its customers.

In the United States, automobiles are mostly sold with the help of auto dealerships while the largest automotive and energy storage company has its exclusive stores. The independent auto-dealer revealed the Model 3 Sedan’s prototype earlier in March which according to the company will cost about $35,000. In the past the automobile organization has had no trouble in working and manufacturing cars that can be driven by drivers but making an entirely electrical car will mainly highlight the areas where the motor giant has always struggled.

One of the areas where the auto maker mainly struggles is with its production capability. Earlier last year, during the third quarter’s earnings call, Elon Musk, the CEO stated that the novel vehicle will be made available in a time span of two years. That being said, only about 507 vehicles of the Model X were produced by the fourth quarter whose idea/concept was unveiled three years prior to the production. For the Model 3, Tesla will need to increase its pace in terms of production since increased competition is on its way. On the other hand, it will have to sell its Model3 for a profitable and competitive price, since it only sells luxury cars.

Additionally, Tesla Stock has been trading up by as much as 1.50% at $218.88. During the session on January 8, 2016, the stock was seen hit a high of $286.65 and a low of $181.40; and kept fluctuating between the two throughout the day. The earnings per share was reported to be at $-5.32. Currently the market capitalization is at $28.24 billion.

Subsequently, it has planned to roll out over 500,000 cars per year by the end of 2020 and the sole thing that will be helping the company maintain its position in the EV market will be the Gigafactory is building in Nevada. Along with providing batteries to the automobile maker, it will help with the economies of scale that will ultimately lead to increased profits.

Netflix, Inc. Makes A Surprise Entry In Various Asian Market

Netflix, Inc. shocked the world with its latest release – unless you are sitting in China, Syria, North Korea or the Crimea, you are blessed enough to access the video streaming media service. There was an unprecedented global expansion into 130 countries on January 6, 2015. The original content by the media giant had made its services available in all over the world however the categories might vary from country to country.

Earlier on Wednesday, the video streaming service was launched in India and Russia but not China, catering to over 70 million potential customers in those regions. So the total countries that the service is now available in is 190; now it just need to be in 20 more countries by the end of 2016. This news was revealed at the CES 2016 conference held in Las Vegas, where the media giant had planned to announce the entry into the Indian market.

Along with making the expected announced, it added to it the launch in Russia as well as Indonesia. It is safe to say that the on demand video subscription service is now available in some of the largest countries of the world. Initially in 2015, the company was in talks with Alibaba Group Holding regarding a potential partnership but soon after the Chinese e-commerce giant launched its on video streaming service in the country.

The chief executive officer of one of America’s largest media companies, Reed Hastings stated that it hopes to enter the Chinese market in the near future, as per a blog post by Variety’s Live Blog. Another official announcement was made by the company suggesting that the service will most likely not be available in North Korea, Crimea as well as Syria due to restrictions by the U.S. government.

In the new market, Netflix, Inc. has planned to keep its same pricing strategy. In India, the pricing starts with 500 Indian Rupees which is $7.49 per month for the basic, single user, non-HD package. The standard and premium packages come in about 650 Indian Rupees ($9.75 per month) and 800 Indian Rupees ($11.99). At this point, the customers of the new market are only able to make payments via credit and debit cards. It is highly expected that it might get into partnership with various mobile carriers so that the millions of users who do not own a credit or a debit card are able to make payments easily.

Oculus Rift Virtual Reality Headset Starts Shipping In March

The social media network's Oculus Rift's major deals have surfaced the tech world, finally and will be in the hands of customers by March of 2016.

On Wednesday, the social media giant announced that it will be taking pre-orders for its much anticipated Oculus Virtual Reality headset. When the announcement came out of the launch of the product, the two most important aspects were not specified; these included price and availability, however the company has finally disclosed these details as well.

The shipping will start from March and the Rift is priced at $599. Any pre-order that currently takes place has been given a delivery date somewhere in April. The order includes the Rift Headset, an Xbox One Controller, Two games, Oculus Remote and a sensor. It is essential to highlight that just the Rift is for $599 whereas to make it working properly the use will require to purchase a high-end gaming PC which is able to work with Rift.

According to a number of analysts, the sales of the latest virtual reality could be as low as hundreds – thousands while some experts are expecting it to be above 1 million. On the other hand, a whole lot of people have decline to present estimates as they believe this is not a big deal for Facebook, Inc.

One of the analysts who refused to estimate the sales of the product, Brian Wieser, analyst at Pivotal Research stated that the launch was this product would just be a rounding error inside of Facebook at this point in time. Additionally, another analyst from Piper Jaffray, Gene Munster stated that it is a “non-event in 2016” and is also expecting the company to sell a few units of the product at a loss.

However, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of the social media network, believe that the headgear will be more popular amongst hardcore gamers, during its initial quarter and then go from there. For the first quarter, at least, they have kept the bar quite low for the latest product. According to estimations by Nvidia Corporation, the purchase of over 13 million PCs worldwide next year would be sufficient enough to run the VR provided it has the graphics capabilities.

According to MarketsandMarkets, the virtual reality market will be worth as much as $16 billion. Even though the start seems to be quite low for the Oculus Rift but the future seems quite bright for the virtual reality device. Facebook is not the only company that is working on getting a share from the pie of the lucrative market; many others are directing their resources towards developing this technology as well including Alphabet, Inc., Google Glass and Microsoft’s HoloLens.

Fast Food Burger Chains Cheap Deal On-Going Wars

A year earlier it was McDonald’s Corporation and Taco Bell who were in for a fast food breakfast charge war but this year it’s the country’s largest burger chains McDonald’s and Burger King. These two biggest fast food burger chains are introducing their very own dollar menus.

This war started when another fast food chain, Wendy’s launched its “4 for $4deal” back in 2015; this meal included a junior cheese burger, chicken nuggets, fries and a drink. Additionally, Burger King made an announcement on Tuesday, which makes it evident that it has officially entered the fast food war. It stated that the giant will be offering 5 items for a price of $4; basically to tackle McDonald’s McPick 2 offer and of course, Wendy’s offer of 4 items for a price of $4.

This promotion by the hamburger giant includes small French fries, cheese burger, 4 piece chicken nuggets and a warm chocolate chip cookie. The officials from the company have not yet disclosed the span of time that this promotion will be carried on for. However these chains do acknowledge the fact that they are basically in for the cheapest of deals that the customers will opt for.

The president of the fast food hamburger organization stated that this strategy is mainly to attract and bring people to the restaurant and offer them great tasting food at an affordable price point. At this point it is not just these fast food chains that are fighting amongst themselves and selling food for little money but Pizza Hut, earlier on Monday launched a similar deal in which there were seven items for a price tag of $5 each if the customer orders two or more.

Burger King Worldwide, Inc.’s parent company is Restaurant Brands International (also parent company for Tim Hortons) collectively it owns over 18,000 restaurants all across the globe. Currently, the stock of the company is being traded at a share price of $33.51 indicating a decline of 1.99%. During the latest trading session that took place on Tuesday, the stock was seen trade at a higher end of $34.11 and at a lower end of $32.96. The trade commenced at a share price of $33.80.

The 12 month high of the share price is at $45.71 and the 52-week low of the share price of the fast food chain was seen at $32.96. The market cap of the fast food giant is 6.92 billion with earnings per share of $-2.40.

Apple Launches Another Store In China

Apple will launch its 25th Store in Shenyang, China

As reported by Mac Rumors, the tech behemoth Apple Inc. desires to come up with a new outlet in the Shenyang region of China. The opening of the store is scheduled for January 9 and will be on the Qingnian Street. This is said to be the 25^th store launched by the company in China.

As per the reports suggests, the outlet in Shenyang will become operational on Saturday at 10 a.m (local time) and will then remain in function on everyday basis. The aim of this outlet is to lure the crowd that comes to the MixC Shopping Mall. The decision by the iPhone maker is to come up with an outlet situated in the heart of the shopping hubs in Shenyang with the agenda to penetrate its products amongst a wider audience. Moreover, the company is also devoted to reign over the Chinese market as it has ample growth prospects along with a massive user base.

The Apple Store will cater to the company’s core features like the Genius Bar, Joint Venture, workshops and other services that make the company’s offerings standout. The project is headed by Angela Ahrendts, the chief retail officer along with Mr. Jony Ive, the chief of design, the company has spent good amount of time brainstorming ideas and coming up with the layout of the store.

The company has an edge in comparison to its competitors since it spends a good amount of time to ensure that the architecture of its stores is top notch and remains consistent throughout. Moreover, the company might also offer modern display tables in China in the future. This will be part and parcel of the experiment the company did by coming up with touch compatible display tables with the launch of the Apple iPhone 6.

The company has an aim to establish its outlets all over the Chinese market and has succeeded in getting traction after it established its stores in Nanning (Green City), Hong Kong, Beijing, Nanjing and Dalian in 2015. Apple considers China to be the market with immense potential thus the company is devoted to achieving its target of establishing 40 stores in the region by October 2016. It is also speculated that the new store present in Liaoning’s capital will assist in serving as a marketing boost for the company along with strengthening its position in China.

Hence, the company knows about the potential of China and will try its best to conquer it.

Twitter Makes Efforts To Combat Hateful Behavior and Controversial Content

Twitter revises and changes its policies regarding abusive and hateful content posted online so that it can be removed as much as possible.

Twitter is revising its policies regarding hateful content and abusive behavior online in order to combat racism, hatred and many other social media problems faced nowadays. The rules are now even stricter, prohibiting offensive content online and push extremists away from sharing their unethical and abusive language on the global social media platform.

Twitter Inc. is changing its policies in terms of abusive behavior, because some people have passed on threats, hateful comments and even worse through it. With an organization being on such a scale, a massive audience takes anything posted on the blogging site into consideration, which can play a very negative role if the hateful content is not removed.

The social media network seems to be very well aware of what needs to be done and is taking action to combat such issues in the future. Its new policy will not modify the criteria as to what is allowed to be posted, however it will help it to answer such critical comments from politicians and the public to some extent, who claim that militant extremists are taking advantage of the platform to promote the abusive and violent ideas.

An associate of the Digital Terrorism and Hate Project in LA, Rabbi Abraham, said, “The new rules are definitely an improvement, but the question is: will they be accompanied by a more proactive attitude toward making sure repeat offenders are identified and permanently removed?”

A spokesman for the social media business declined to comment on this issue, but a blog was posted by the company stating, “The updated language emphasizes that Twitter will not tolerate behavior intended to harass, intimidate, or use fear to silence another users voice. As always, we embrace and encourage diverse opinions and beliefs – but we will continue to take action on accounts that cross the line into abuse.”

Twitter’s changed policy is warning its users to not promote or show any favor towards violence and hateful content or directly attack/threaten another user’s gender, race, nationality, religion, etc. This policy is going to ban users from having numerous accounts on Twitter, so that extremists are not given the option to use other accounts if one is blocked.

This is beneficial worldwide, as the social media platform has a very solid presence globally, and millions of users around the world interact on this platform. This new policy will also enable the company to ask the users to delete the tweets that are violating the terms and conditions of the company’s policies.