Welcome to "#SocialStocks," The Fly's weekly recap of Wall Street's reactions to social media stock news.
BOARD ADDITION: Mark Zuckerberg announced in a Facebook (FB) post that Tony Xu is joining Meta's (MVRS) board of directors. Xu is co-founder and CEO of DoorDash (DASH). Zuckerberg said: "I've always thought it's important to have great tech leaders on our board, and Tony has direct experience both running a tech company and solving complex challenges in commerce. I look forward to learning from Tony's perspective as we build towards the metaverse."
ANTITRUST LATEST: The U.S. judge hearing the Federal Trade Commission's antitrust case against Facebook issued an order denying the company's motion to dismiss the lawsuit, saying that the defendant will have to file its Answer to the amended complaint by January 25, 2022, according to a copy of the order released on Twitter by NPR tech reporter Bobby Allyn. In their opinion on the matter, the judge said that the FTC "has now alleged enough facts to plausibly establish that Facebook exercises monopoly power."
MINORITY INVESTMENT: Aleph Group announced that Twitter (TWTR) has made a minority investment in the company. The investment will help support the company's educational efforts worldwide including, building a proprietary educational tech platform, digital advertising education, training and certification to over 50,000 digital professionals in 90 countries across 5 continents, and efforts to create new digital jobs in underserved markets. The strategic investment closed in October 2021 and financial terms were not disclosed. Aleph currently serves as Twitter's exclusive advertising partner in 74 countries. The Company helps Twitter monetize their user base in emerging countries by providing dedicated local sales and support teams, proprietary technology to help advertisers maximize their Twitter investments, and a robust cross-border payment solution that helps Twitter efficiently generate incremental revenue in non-core markets.
DELAYED REOPENING: Meta Platforms said it intends to mandate COVID-19 booster shots for staff to work from its U.S. campuses and that it would delay fully opening such offices until late March, the Wall Street Journal's Chip Cutter reported. The social media giant said that, starting March 28, workers who meet eligibility guidelines to receive boosters would need to show proof of a booster vaccination to use its offices, the author notes. "Boosters provide increased protection," a Meta spokesman said. "Given the evidence of booster effectiveness, we are expanding our vaccination requirement to include boosters." While opening has been delayed, Meta has leased half of what will be Austin's tallest skyscraper, making the social media giant the latest major business to expand in the state, Bloomberg's Breanna Bradham reported. The company's 589,000 square feet across 33 floors will account for the entire commercial half of a 66-story tower under construction in the heart of Austin's downtown area, the Austin Business Journal reported this weekend.
FINED: France's CNIL said that, following investigations, it noted that the websites facebook.com, google.fr and youtube.com do not make refusing cookies as easy as to accept them. It thus fined Facebook EUR60M and Google (GOOGL) EUR150M and ordered them to comply within three months. The restricted committee, the body of the CNIL responsible for issuing sanctions, has noted, following investigations, that the websites facebook.com, google.fr and youtube.com offer a button allowing the user to immediately accept cookies. However, they do not provide an equivalent solution (button or other) enabling the Internet user to easily refuse the deposit of these cookies. Several clicks are required to refuse all cookies, against a single one to accept them. In addition to the fines, the restricted committee ordered the companies to provide Internet users located in France with a means of refusing cookies as simple as the existing means of accepting them, in order to guarantee their freedom of consent, within three months. If they fail to do so, the companies will have to pay a penalty of 100,000 euros per day of delay. These two decisions are part of the global compliance strategy initiated by the CNIL over the past two years with French and foreign actors publishing websites with a lot of visits and having practices contrary to the legislation on cookies.
REACTION VIDEOS: Twitter said that Tweet reaction videos can now start on the platform. The company said that the feature, which is currently in testing on iOS, allows users to tap the Retweet icon and choose "Quote Tweet with reaction" to create and customize a reaction video with the Tweet embedded.
TRADEMARK LAWSUIT: Snap (SNAP) is suing the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for spurning its application to trademark the term "spectacles" for its digital eyewear camera device, as the office has reiterated that "spectacles" is a generic word for smart glasses and that Snap's product "has not acquired distinctiveness," The Verge's Kim Lyons reported. Snap’s attorneys contended that “spectacles is an old-fashioned term popular in the 18th century,” and that it “is not often used today in the United States.”. “This indicates that modern-day usage of “spectacles” in the United States—especially among a younger demographic of consumers who are the relevant consumers of Snap’s SPECTACLES camera product—is not commonly understood to mean eyeglasses, and certainly not a wireless-enabled video camera product.”
Ticker changed to META
-1.61 (-0.48%)
Symbol now META
+
DoorDash
-2.13 (-1.48%)
-0.275 (-0.68%)
Alphabet
+36.41 (+1.30%)
Alphabet
+43.5 (+1.55%)
Snap
-0.35 (-0.81%)