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Facebook, Inc. (FB)
| Previous close | 259.89 |
| Open | 258.97 |
| Bid | 0.00 x 800 |
| Ask | 0.00 x 1100 |
| Day's range | 259.57 - 265.16 |
| 52-week range | 137.10 - 278.89 |
| Volume | 17,373,970 |
| Avg. volume | 26,177,034 |
| Market cap | 744.397B |
| Beta (5Y monthly) | 1.21 |
| PE ratio (TTM) | 31.95 |
| EPS (TTM) | 8.18 |
| Earnings date | 28 Oct 2020 - 02 Nov 2020 |
| Forward dividend & yield | N/A (N/A) |
| Ex-dividend date | N/A |
| 1y target est | 280.83 |
- Editor's pickTechCrunch
Facebook users are pretty bad at telling how much time they spend on it
A lot of studies and discussion of social media use time spent on the platforms as evidence for various theories and conclusions — but it turns out that people are actually super bad at telling how long they spend on them, according to research from Facebook. If you were conducting a study that was looking at how social media use potentially affected or was affected by mood, for instance, you would likely rely on self-reported statistics for both measures. Everyone understands that these self-reported numbers will have error, and some studies have demonstrated it, but this meta-study from Facebook, comparing self-reporting with actual server logs, shows that the connection is possibly not reliable enough to use for serious scientific work.
- Bloomberg
Kamala Harris’s Indian Connections Spark Social Media Frenzy
(Bloomberg) -- When Democratic Party presidential nominee Joe Biden picked Kamala Harris to be his running mate, it sparked a frenzy on the other side of the globe to track down her connections to Chennai, the southern Indian city where her mother was born.On Twitter and Facebook, a flurry of users chronicled every minute link including her grandparents’ home in the Besant Nagar neighborhood, from where her mother Shyamala Gopalan set off as a teenager to pursue a doctoral degree at the University of California Berkeley. Undated photos surfaced of Kamala and younger sibling Maya in saris, smilingly posing with their grandparents during a visit. Many saw Harris a step away from the White House, and the de facto Democratic Party front-runner in four or eight years.Writer Cauvery Madhavan captured the hysteria in a tweet: “If you’re wondering what that loud windy up sound is - it’s all of Chennai cranking the SixDegreesOfSeparation machine!! Any moment now my mother is going to triumphantly reveal that her pharmacist’s father was @KamalaHarris’s grandma’s preferred tailor.” Another Twitter user, Priya Ravichandran, jested, “I was asked to Google and find which relative lives in besant nagar. People are this close to renting party bus and do drive by near their house and celebrate kamala.”Senator Harris is the first person of Indian descent and the first Black woman on a major ticket in a U.S. presidential election. Indian media outlets, analyzing the geopolitical impact of her rise, argued a Biden-Harris win would further shore up a U.S.-India relationship that had already improved markedly under Narendra Modi.The closer ties between Modi and U.S. President Donald Trump culminated in two giant stadium events in front of tens of thousands of supporters -- one in Houston last September that saw the two leaders walking hand-in-hand to a rock-star like reception, and the other in Modi’s home state of Gujarat in February. Still, the warming relations have not yet led to a long-anticipated U.S.-India trade deal, although New Delhi is now purchasing more weapons from the U.S., including a new defense agreement worth more than $3 billion signed during Trump’s visit to India earlier this year.Chasing AuntsLocal outlets and TV crews raced to hunt down an assortment of Harris’s aunts and even a great-uncle who detailed her visits to the sprawling metropolis and her strolls on its humid beaches discussing democracy and equality with her grandfather, a retired government official.A prominent local newspaper, The Hindu BusinessLine, carried the headline: “Kamala Devi Harris and the destiny-changing coconuts from Chennai.” The story described Harris’s aunt praying for her victory in the California Senate elections nine years ago by breaking 108 coconuts, a popular religious ritual, at the local temple. The paper quoted Harris phoning her aunt to say, “Chithi (aunt), please pray for me and break coconuts at the temple.”Twitter users highlighted her Indianness beginning with the name Kamala, which means lotus in several Indian languages. CNN’s local partner tweeted that “Kamala Harris loves idlis. And, sambhar” -- fluffy rice cakes and spicy lentil stew often eaten for breakfast in India.The fuss over Harris’s political elevation this week far outstripped the excitement over the rise of other Chennai-connected personalities such as actor Mindy Kaling and Alphabet Inc. Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai.While hundreds of Twitter users in India posted laudatory messages, some rued that Harris’s nomination would inflate the already lofty expectations of Indian parents for their kids. Indian lawmaker and prominent opposition Congress Party member Shashi Tharoor tweeted, “‘Beta (son) what are you doing these days? Oh, just a Harvard Professor? Not even Mayor yet?’”Harris, whose father is of Jamaican ancestry, has downplayed her family’s India ties although she has spoken of how the deep conversations with her grandfather during India visits helped shaped her political views. But social media users were quick to appropriate her as completely Indian. A video from last year in which she’s seen with Mindy Kaling cooking a masala dosa, a south Indian savory crepe filled with spicy potatoes, is circulating wildly on WhatsApp groups in India.(Updates with detail on U.S.-India ties in fifth paragraph)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
- Bloomberg
Game Makers Give Apple the Antitrust Grilling Congress Didn’t
(Bloomberg) -- Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook sidestepped most of the criticism two weeks ago when he appeared before Congress at an antitrust hearing with his peers at Alphabet Inc., Facebook Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. taking the heat.Over the past several days, however, video-game developers ranging from Epic Games Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Facebook, have ensured that Apple doesn’t dodge scrutiny over its App Store practices and policies.Last week, Microsoft criticized Apple for barring its Xbox Game Pass service from the iPhone and iPad. “Apple stands alone as the only general purpose platform to deny consumers from cloud gaming and game subscription services like Xbox Game Pass,” the Redmond, Washington-based software maker said in a statement. “And it consistently treats gaming apps differently, applying more lenient rules to non-gaming apps even when they include interactive content.”Apple has said it doesn’t let cloud-based gaming services on the App Store because it needs to review all games individually before they can run on the platform.Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg echoed Microsoft’s complaint after Facebook was forced to launch its new gaming service on iPhones without any games. Users can watch live streams of people playing games and be part of a social network of gamers, but can’t play themselves.“We had to remove game-play functionality entirely in order to get Apple’s approval on the standalone Facebook Gaming app -- meaning iOS users have an inferior experience to those using Android,” Sandberg said.Gaming is a key area for Apple as its seeks to generate new revenue sources. Last year, it launched Apple Arcade, a $4.99 monthly subscription that gives access to a library of premium games across its devices. Purchases inside games as a broad category -- of which Apple typically takes a 30% cut -- are one of the biggest sources of App Store revenue, bringing in $22.2 billion for developers in the first half of 2020, according to Sensor Tower.Epic Games, whose CEO Tim Sweeney has been a vocal critic of Apple’s App Store practices, raised the pressure on Thursday. The gamemaker added an option in its popular game Fortnite on Apple devices to pay Epic Games directly, circumventing Apple’s rules and working around the iPhone maker’s fee. Hours later, Apple removed the game, citing the rule violation. Google also removed Fortnite from the Android Play Store later in the day. Minutes after Apple’s removal, Epic Games sued Apple, saying its App Store violated antitrust law.Game installations on iOS were up nearly 20% year over year in the second quarter, driven in part by the global pandemic keeping people home and topping 2.5 billion downloads. Fortnite was one of the most downloaded games in the period, topping 9 million installations, Sensor Tower said. Apple would lose tens of millions of dollars if Epic bypassed Apple’s payment system for Fortnite.“Apple has become what it once railed against: the behemoth seeking to control markets, block competition and stifle innovation,” Epic Games said in its lawsuit. “Apple is bigger, more powerful, more entrenched and more pernicious than the monopolists of yesteryear.”The gaming industry, perhaps, has the loudest voice in the antitrust argument against Apple because App Store rules are often the most strict on games.In addition to barring cloud-based gaming services, which have been popularized by Google, Nvidia Corp. and Microsoft, Apple doesn’t let gamers subscribe outside the App Store and then use the subscription on an iPhone and iPad. Such an exemption is made for music, video, news, cloud and business apps.That exemption has led other App Store critics, including Spotify Technology SA, to push users to subscribe on their websites, then log in on the iPhone. That lets customers use the app on the iPhone, without providing a revenue share to Apple. While Spotify has long publicly complained about Apple’s practices, it has never pulled its app or violated Apple’s rules to cause the iPhone maker to remove it -- marking the Epic Games confrontation as an escalation of tensions between Apple and service providers on its platform.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
