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Slack Technologies, Inc. (WORK)
| Previous close | 41.40 |
| Open | 41.70 |
| Bid | 41.23 x 1400 |
| Ask | 41.34 x 1000 |
| Day's range | 41.19 - 41.73 |
| 52-week range | 24.09 - 44.57 |
| Volume | 2,159,405 |
| Avg. volume | 5,386,690 |
| Market cap | 23.981B |
| Beta (5Y monthly) | N/A |
| PE ratio (TTM) | N/A |
| EPS (TTM) | -1.77 |
| Earnings date | 02 Jun 2021 - 07 Jun 2021 |
| Forward dividend & yield | N/A (N/A) |
| Ex-dividend date | N/A |
| 1y target est | 42.69 |
- Bloomberg
Twitter Has ‘Scary Amount of Power,’ Co-Founder Biz Stone Says
(Bloomberg) -- Twitter Inc. co-founder Biz Stone believes the social media company made the right decision when it banned then-President Donald Trump from its service in January, but that doesn’t mean he’s comfortable with it.“It’s a scary amount of power,” Stone said during an interview for the Collision Conference on Thursday. “The CEO of a company in San Francisco can quiet the president of the United States. He is not elected, nothing like that, and yet that had a major impact.”Stone, who co-founded Twitter with Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey in 2006, is the latest tech executive to publicly question whether social media companies have too much power when it comes to policing people online.Shortly after the Trump ban, Dorsey himself questioned Twitter’s power. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told U.S. lawmakers last month that he was worried about his company’s role in suspending Trump from its service. “Many people are concerned that platforms can ban elected leaders,” he said during a March 25 hearing. “I am, too.”Stone said he wasn’t involved in the formal decision-making process on Trump, although he did send his views to Dorsey and agreed with the decision.“It was a good decision for Twitter I think,” he added. “But it’s also a little bit frightening to know that maybe there’s that much power in one person’s decision.”Stone has been uncharacteristically quiet since he returned to Twitter in 2017. In the company’s early days, he was a visible spokesman, often speaking in the media or traveling to other countries as a kind of Twitter ambassador, a role Dorsey and Twitter’s other co-founder Ev Williams weren’t interested in.He was supposed to become “entrepreneur in residence” at the venture capital firm Spark Capital in 2017 when Dorsey persuaded him to return to Twitter instead. Stone’s position at Twitter was perhaps even more vague. “Somebody mentioned I’m just filling the ‘Biz shaped hole’ I left,” he wrote in a blog post at the time. “You might even say the job description includes being Biz Stone.”That blog post now makes him cringe, and Stone said he came to help make Twitter a place where people actually wanted to work again. At the time, the company was in a financial and cultural mess. Having just tried and failed to find a buyer, Twitter cut costs, laid people off and closed its video app Vine.“When I came back, the main reason was ‘let’s improve morale,’” Stone said. He created short films about different teams inside the company to highlight their efforts. He also worked with Dorsey to create the company’s purpose statement, “We serve the public conversation,” which is often repeated by executives on investor calls and press events.“It worked way better than I thought it would,” he said. “It highlighted all the stuff that wasn’t serving the public conversation and brought up the question ‘why are we even working on these things?’”Now Stone is transitioning again. He said he moved into a part-time adviser role at Twitter earlier this year, and has shifted some of his focus to outside projects, including philanthropy and venture investing. “It’s almost kind of eye-rolly,” he joked in a subsequent interview of his new focus on investing, a common path for tech executives who make it big as part of a startup.He started a new venture capital fund called Future Positive with an old business partner, Fred Blackford. The pair unsuccessfully tried to buy Polaroid Holding Co. in 2016, but many of Stone’s other deals have been more successful. He invested early in companies including Pinterest Inc., Slack Technologies Inc., Square Inc. and “fake meat” company Beyond Meat Inc., where he’s still a board member.Despite his experience building technology products, Stone said the fund won’t have a specific focus. “Great ideas can really come from anywhere, and so we’re not just focused on typical Silicon Valley,” he said.Stone said he isn’t stepping away entirely from Twitter. He wants to see how plans to let employees work remotely after the Covid-19 pandemic ends will affect the culture he helped build. There are a lot of benefits to remote work, he said, but it has trade-offs.“You lose the serendipity and you lose the time that you’re talking when you’re waiting for the conference room to open,” he said. Those spontaneous moments will eventually need to be replaced for people who aren’t physically in the office.“If you completely lose that you lose a big element of company culture,” he added, “which, if company culture is done right, it can be a massive benefit to the success of the whole company.”For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.
- Bloomberg
Facebook Pushes Into Audio to Compete With Clubhouse, Twitter
(Bloomberg) -- Facebook Inc. is moving more aggressively into audio products, trying to compete with rivals such as Twitter Inc. and popular upstart Clubhouse.The social network on Monday is building a series of new audio-focused products, including virtual rooms where users can host live discussions, and a feature called “soundbites” that lets users post short audio snippets to their feed like they would a photo or video, according to Fidji Simo, head of the Menlo Park, California-based company’s main service.Facebook will also create a podcasting feature so users can download and listen to podcasts directly from the main app, which will give the company a chance to compete with existing players like Apple Inc. Recode reported earlier on Facebook’s plans.“We have seen a massive rise of audio experiences” during the pandemic, Simo said, including an increase in voice calls and audio messages on Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, which spurred the company to build the new products.Audio has become an important format with many people stuck at home due to the pandemic. Clubhouse, which lets users host live audio discussions, has been a big hit in Silicon Valley, and just raised money at a $4 billion valuation after Twitter tried to buy the startup for around the same price, Bloomberg News reported. “Clubhouse has done something phenomenal,” Simo said. “I’ve been working at Facebook for ten years so I know how hard it is to create a new social format.”Twitter is also pushing aggressively into audio. It has a Clubhouse competitor, called Twitter Spaces, which exists within its app, and launched an equivalent to Facebook’s soundbites product called voice tweets last summer. Microsoft Corp.’s LinkedIn and Slack Technologies Inc. are also working on audio rooms competitors.U.S. lawmakers have accused Facebook of copying competitors and the company is under antitrust investigation from state and federal regulators.Simo said Facebook is trying to put its own spin on these products. On Clubhouse and Twitter, for example, audio rooms are ephemeral and disappear after a room is closed. On Facebook, users can save their room discussions and let people download them as a podcast, she said. Facebook’s artificial intelligence technology will eventually recommend the most popular parts of a live discussion to be shared as soundbites, she added.Facebook will also enable tipping in audio rooms as a way to help content creators make money from their fans, something the company has done in the past with live videos.Many of these products are still weeks if not months away. Facebook said it hopes to launch its live rooms product by summer.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.
- Bloomberg
Facebook to Soon Announce Social Audio Products, Recode Says
(Bloomberg) -- Facebook Inc. will announce on Monday a suite of new audio products, including its own take on Clubhouse, as well as a push into podcasts aided by Spotify Technology S.A., Recode reported, citing sources it didn’t identify.Some products won’t be available until later this spring, Recode said. The plan includes an audio-only version of Messenger Rooms, the video chat feature Facebook introduced last year to compete with Zoom Video Communications Inc.Facebook will also add a Clubhouse-like product that allows users to talk on a virtual stage, and a feature that lets users post voice messages on their newsfeeds. Furthermore, it will launch a podcast discovery product in connection with Spotify, Recode said.The plans come just as Clubhouse closed a Series C funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz. Bloomberg News reported earlier that the round would value the one-year-old startup at about $4 billion, quadruple the estimate from January.Multiple social media giants are working to create their own versions of the popular Clubhouse product. Twitter Inc. introduced one called Spaces. Microsoft Corp.’s LinkedIn and Slack Technologies Inc. have also said they’re working on similar features for their networks.Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive officer, appeared live during a Clubhouse discussion this year, and the company ordered multiple teams to research audio-related chat products that could rival Clubhouse, people familiar with the efforts have said.“We’ve been connecting people through audio and video technologies for many years, and are always exploring new ways to improve that experience for people,” Facebook told Recode.Separately, Apple Inc. is preparing a subscription podcast service it may announce as early as Tuesday, Recode reported, without specifying how it obtained the information. Apple declined to comment to Recode.(Updates with background throughout)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.
