Twitter Is Coming Up With New Ways To Combat Online Harassment

Twitter’s periscope is working on tools that in the future will be able to monitor and take actions when it comes to online harassment automatically

Twitter Incorporation is coming up with new ways to combat online harassment which is becoming widely common and harming the social media platform. Sometimes freedom of speech is not as good as one hopes it would be, the micro blogging company’s periscope is making efforts to construct a tool that will automatically monitor accounts for any content of harassment and take the necessary actions to erase the content and in some case, the account, not just tweets but live videos shared by accounts will also be given a check.

Twitter Inc. is battling with users who comments regarding religion, race, gender, ethnicity and other differences, negatively. Freedom of speech can sometimes lead to individuals saying what pleases them without caring about the feeling or impact it plays on the social media platform where millions of people can see the content.  The business’s periscope can be expected to come up with solution soon for this as it is working on an automatic tool to monitor such offensive content and take actions against it.

The social media network is widely popular, some users have made multiple accounts on the platform, and in case one gets blocked they use the other accounts and keep publishing offensive content. This is damaging for the business and even the people who use the social media service, hence the company is coming with a solution to combat harassment. The told will consist of an algorithm that will spot offensive posts and will inform the operators of the app in order to handle the matter with more confidentiality. The CEO of Periscope, Kavyon Beykpour informed the public.

The social media giant recently removed the check symbol off of an account of a user who is quite popular due to some of his posts being offensive, rather than banning the user entirely from the platform. The check symbol is verification of mostly accounts of people that have been verified telling other users that the account is legit, as celebrities would have multiple accounts but only one of them would actually be theirs, mainly the ones with the check symbol.

Periscope was introduced by Twitter only last, it is live video sharing service through an individual’s smartphone.  The CEO of the service said, “You will see a series of improvements from us that help address the problem, there will be a variety of consequences, including banning from commenting, depending on how severe the crime is.”  Periscope was bought by Jack Dorsey last year in order to increase user growth, and is now introducing a new option where users will be able to save the videos they watch.

 

Jack Dorsey To Take The Biggest Hit of Declining Stock Prices

The CEO of Twitter and Square is no longer a billionaire as the share price of the payment solutions company drops below IPO.

It has been a rough couple of month for Twitter Inc., the social network website and Square, a payment services company, both run by Jack Dorsey. It’s becoming clearer to the CEO and Co-founder of the micro-blogging site just how difficult it is to become the chief executive officer of a company and run it. The decline in the share price of both the public trading companies affected the wallet of Mr. Dorsey a bit too much than expected.

As the CEO’s wealth was largely tied up with Square’s stock, the payment services organization went below its initial public offering –IPO on Wednesday. Mr. Dorsey, who was once a billionaire has now officially added to the list of the multimillionaires of the world. The net worth of Jack back in September was at $2.2 billion, according to the calculations at Forbes 400 however how his worth has fallen to $944 million. Times have not always been dark for Mr. Dorsey; back in September, 2012 he was on the list of FORBERS Billionaires, according to which the CEO’s net worth back then was $1.1 billion. He has a stake of 3.2% in the networking organization, making him the sixth largest shareholder.

For the first time ever since the payment solutions organization went public in November, 2015 the shares dropped below $9 indicating a drop of 35% since it went public. Subsequently, the social media network also hit its all-time low at the start of 2016, and in a year’s time is down by 57%. After about an hour and a half into the trading session on Wednesday, Twitter stock fell by 6% at $17.39 and Square stock fell by 11% at $8.46.

Additionally, a fake rumor has also surfaced overnight, according to which News Corp, a media giant, was about to buy or had already bought stake in Twitter. Surprisingly, this rumor surfaced on the media company’s own Marketwatch Site. A representative for the company informed Fairfax that this news was in fact untrue and no such stake has been bought or will be bought by the media organization.

This news might not be implausible since the publication giant back in 2005 did invest $580 million on the then social media website, MySpace – which was sold for only $35 million in the year 2011. After this investment the media network claimed that it was a huge mistake on their part.

Jack Dorsey was appointed the CEO of the micro-blogging site on October 5, 2015 after being the interim CEO for four months. He took over from Dick Costolo hoping to work on the user base of the social media.

 

Twitter Appoints Former Apple Director As New Diversity Chief

The social media website has hired a former Apple Director to promote a diversified workforce.

Twitter, Inc. has been widely criticized for not having a diversified workforce but this is about to change as the social media service has officially hired Jeffrey Siminoff. The newly appointed worker has been appointed as the micro-blogging website’s Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion, according to a Twitter post by Ms. Van Huysse, the previous owner of the position.

Mr. Jeffery was previously a Director at Apple, which is also criticized for its lack of diversified culture. He was also the co-founder of a gay, lesbian and transgender organization, called ‘Out Leadership’. Twitter has always promoted an egalitarian culture but has never actually lived up to it, like many other companies in the industry. This is considered as a major step by a technology company to go against the perception.

A civil rights leader has often brought this issue up in meetings in Silicon Valley, in order to encourage hiring of diversified staff and furthermore, asked for such organizations to post reports of their workforce and leadership teams. The Silicon Valley giant, Apple, has even started posting reports of its workforce but it has also stated that even though the business has made progress, it still needs improvement.

At the trading session on December 29, Twitter Stock was traded at a share price of $22.47 indicating a decrease of 0.27%. The trade commenced at share price of $22.63, seen at a high price of $53.49, and a low price of $21.01. Presently, the market capitalization of the social media network is 15.69 billion.

In the coming year, the social media organization is expecting an increase of 61.97% growth in the earnings per share. For the current year, the EPS growth rate was reported to be 71.80%. Investors have been blaming the sluggish user growth for the low share price of the stock in comparison to other social media giants, such as Facebook, Google, etc.

Without a good user base, Twitter will not have a big audience for its platform like Snapchat or Instagram. If the micro-blogging organization works on getting more audience and a sufficient user base, it will be able to attract more businesses towards itself. The strength of the website currently lays in the fact that it lets businesses interact with its customers, which makes it easier for businesses to monitor topics and provide customer support to the users.

Corporate management is concerned about the declining share price and user growth.

 

 

 

UBS Reduced Target Price On Twitter Stock

The stock price target was reduced from $48 to $40 at UBS, as it showed sluggish growth.

Twitter, Inc. has reported surprisingly healthy results for the third quarter fiscal year 2015. Once the micro-blogging company announced its result, in the after-market trading session, the stock fell by 13%. Additionally the company reported weaker-than-expected revenue, as it generated $569 million which represented a growth of 39% in comparison to the same quarter of Fiscal Year 2014.

The stock analysts at UBC, a financial services firm, have reiterated a rating of Buy on Twitter’s stock and have also provided a downward revision of the price target from $48 to $40. The financial and research services company has also stated that they are fairly careful with the stock of the mice-blogging company but certainly believe that it will show good growth and sustainability from the revenue that it will generate from the ads.

The adjusted earnings per share (EPS) of Twitter’s stock were at $0.10 which outperformed the estimated earnings of $0.05. Even though, the results shared by the company were fairly good, the shares of the social media network fell immediately after the earnings call. This dip was merely due to the dreary user growth. In the recent quarter, the social media website was able to add up to 3 million MAU – monthly active users, generating a total MAU of 307 million. These numbers do not include the SMS fast followers, which would increase the monthly user count.

The analysts at one the premier investment banks Cantor Fitzgerald also commented on the stock of the social media website suggesting a rating of Buy. The analysts also lowered the target price as well, to $45. Over 44 analysts cover the stock of the micro-blogging media company. Out of these 44 experts, a Buy rating was recommended by 17 of them and a Hold rating was suggested by 24 of them. They also suggested a 52-week consensus target price which was $34.22. From the Dow Jones Index, the stock fell by over 16% and currently is being traded at $30.25 which is a decrease of 3.39%.

In other news, Jack Dorsey was made the permanent chief executive officer of Twitter as the board of directors believed that he was the man to turn around the luck of the company. According to an analyst Mark May, the major product Project Lightning since Dorsey has been “a bit of a disappointment” and further added that the social media company’s ‘fire hose approach’ isn’t working quite well for them while Facebook’s “lean back approach” has worked quite well for the social media giant. He explained that it was be a good sight to see the social media website glom onto that model.

Jack Dorsey Gives 1 Percent Of His Twitter Stocks To The Employees

Jack Dorsey tweets to give away 1 percent of his shares to the employees of Twitter Inc.

The CEO of micro blogging giant has announced on his website that he will be giving away one-third of his share to the workforce which is 1% of the company showing his generosity.

Jack Dorsey was recently announced as the CEO of the company once again and had made major changes for future success of the company, He tweeted on Thursday, “I’m giving around one-third of my Twitter stock to our employee equity pool to reinvest directly in our people.” The chief executive and co-founder of the company clearly mentioned his decision in the tweet that he wants his employees to have the share leading to the conclusion that he has no interest in keeping a bigger share and is more than okay with having a smaller one, he said that he is sure the company can get even bigger through combined efforts.

After giving 1% of shares he will be left with 2.23% shares in the social media network, even after giving 1% up he will still be the seventh on the list as the largest shareholder after Microsoft’s former CEO, Steve Ballmer has 4% of shares in the company. Recently the micro-blogging service cut its workforce by almost 8% globally, which did play a negative role between the relationships of the company and the employees. Jack Dorsey sent a personal e-mail to the entire workforce mentioning that he would help the fired employees get another job as well as other services in order to compensate but that evidently did not help so he made this huge announcement through the platform with a hope of improvement in the cold relationship between the two.

He has been the CEO for just 100 days since July when Dick Costolo resigned, second quarter earnings were not good of the company with concerns of user growth or monthly active users. This was also one of the reasons why Dick Costolo reigned. Since Dorsey has been re-assigned as he has been making changes to counter the problem and speed up the user growth, hence he is trying to keep employees happy and motivated to get better output since the company is going through a tough time. He released lighting project called as moments on the social media. Morgan Stanley downgraded twitter stock on Wednesday from Equal weight to underweight since he has no expectations that the firm will be able to reach Wall Street estimates in the coming quarter.

Twitter stock news shows that the stock currently stands at $31 currently.

 

Former CEO Of Microsoft Buys 4% Twitter Stocks

Microsoft’s former CEO, Steve Ballmer, now owns 4% stake in Twitter.

The social media giant has good news when it comes to its stocks. According to Bloomberg reports, ex-CEO of Microsoft’s, Steve Ballmer, has managed to attain 4% of stocks of Twitter, which is even more then the company’s own chief executive, Jack Dorsey, who has 3% of shares and another co-founder Ev Williams has 6.8% of shares.

The former CEO of Microsoft tweeted, “Good job @twitter, @twittermoments innovation, @jack Ceo, leaner, more focused. Glad I bought 4% past few months. Like @alwaleedbinT move too”, on October 16, early morning, which was a clear statement and evidence of him being happy for buying the shares. He even appreciated the recently re-appointed CEO, Jack Dorsey for making the company better and, according to him, ‘more focused’.

Mr. Ballmer appreciated the fact that the social media giant has been making remarkable attempts to keep users motivated and even get attention of new users by launching new products on site recently. He mentioned the Project Lightning or the new Moments feature in his tweet, which is similar to Snapchat’s live stories, so that users can get more insight on what is happening around the world.

An unverified account of Mr. Ballmer tweeted about the 4% shares. Hence, the claim has not yet been verified if he actually has 4% of shares in the company. There are speculations about the account being hacked as well but a tweet by the ex-chief executive earlier this month leads to the conclusion that the account does belong to him.

The 4% of shares, which is approximately $800 million, of the company might have made a good impression on its market altogether and given it a boost of much-needed confidence. Twitter Inc. also made the announcement not so long ago about trimming its workforce down by 8%.

Steve Ballmer’s intentions on buying the shares are being speculated. The microblogging platform has lost in the game of keeping its users attracted and has been attempting to change that. Bloomberg reported that an analyst, Kames Cakmak, said that Microsoft’s former CEO might be interested in becoming a part of Twitter’s board of directors and since he is the owner of the LA Clipper basketball team, he thinks he can provide Twitter important sports-related insight and business by getting authentic information regarding events. According to Bloomberg, Steve Ballmer has a net worth of $21.4 billion.

Twitter stock closed at $31.15 on October 16.

 

Merrill Lynch Not Happy With Twitter Restructuring

 

The article highlights why Merrill Lynch is unhappy over Twitter’s intended restructuring while most analysts consider it a positive

On Wednesday, in a research note, Merrill Lynch reaffirms a Neutral rating along with $34 target price on the stock of Twitter. The sell side firm thinks that the social media giant’s recent declaration regarding restructuring is a head scratcher and possibly can be a substantial drag on the stock growth.
Twitter Inc. has announced recently that it is going to lay-off roughly 336 employees which are around 8% of its total workforce the main idea behind this is to streamline its engineering and product teams. Most of the analysts are in restructuring favor, as they look at it as an effort on financial discipline under Jack Dorsey, new Chief Executive Officer. While, Merrill Lynch thinks that these layoffs might not send a positive signal to the workers in a reasonable engineering workers marketplace.
The sell side firm also highlighted that the layoffs announcement represents slightly over a quarter of the recruitment, as Twitter hired nearly 225 workers every quarter since the past six quarters. However, employees’ layoffs still indicate that the social media giants’ revenue or user growth guidance is not as strong as earlier, which makes the firm view it as an adverse development.
Together with the restructuring of Twitter also shared its opinion of the financial results for the third quarter of FY15. The company feels that its third quarter EBITDA and revenue to come inline or beyond the high end of its earlier provider estimation of $110 to $115 million and $545 to $560 million, respectively.
The firm notes that the Twitter stock after the layoffs announcement closed up by 1 percent, which displays an optimistic view on the probable gross margin in the coming quarters. Merrill Lynch thinks that monthly active users and revenue are more significant at this point of time of company’s life cycle.
Most of the analysts on the Street having coverage on the company stock have a neutral viewpoint on the stock. Almost 16 analysts suggest a Buy rating while 26 recommend a Hold and just one gave it a Sell rating. The average twelve month target price on the stock stands at $37.52, which signifies an upside return potential of 29.5% compared with present stock price.
In a memo to employees, Mr. Dorsey labeled the layoffs as a path to progress in the efforts of the company. He wrote: “We are in charge with the utmost respect for each and every person.Twitter will go to great lengths to deal with each individual by providing generous exit packages and help finding a new job. This isn’t easy. But it is right. The world needs a strong Twitter, and this is another step to get there,”