Welcome to "#SocialStocks," The Fly's weekly recap of Wall Street's reactions to social media stock news.
EXECUTIVES VANISHING AT SNAP: On Thursday, January 17, Business Insider reported that Snap Inc. (SNAP) has lost 20 senior executives since it went public almost two years ago. In that time, it has lost two CFOs, multiple HR execs, and most of CEO Evan Spiegel's top lieutenants. The latest departure is CFO Tim Stone, who stepped down earlier this week after just eight months on the job. On Wednesday, January 16, The Financial Times reported, citing people close to the company, that Tim Stone’s departure was due to a "personality clash" with CEO Evan Spiegel, who bristled at Stone's more aggressive approach to his job. Also on Wednesday, January 16, Cheddar reporter Alex Heath tweeted that he can confirm, citing a person familiar with the matter, that Stone left due to clashes with CEO Spiegel. These reports contradict the company’s regulatory filing regarding Stone’s departure on January 15 which stated, “On January 15, 2019, Tim Stone, our Chief Financial Officer and principal financial officer, notified us of his intention to resign to pursue other opportunities. Mr. Stone has confirmed that this transition is not related to any disagreement with us on any matter relating to our accounting, strategy, management, operations, policies, regulatory matters, or practices (financial or otherwise).”
Wall Street's reaction to Tim Stone leaving was very negative, with RBC Capital analyst Mark Mahaney downgrading Snap to Sector Perform from Outperform and saying the resignation is a "material negative" that adds to his concerns over the company's management execution. Additionally, Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter said he believes the departure of Tim Stone as Snap CFO is a "clear loss" for the company and its investors, and Jefferies analyst Brent Thill called the departure a "clear negative" as two CFOs have now left the company within one year of each other without meaningful financial progress. For the week, Snap shares are down around 6% to $6.05.
YOUTUBE ENDING AUTOMATIC POSTING TO TWITTER, GOOGLE+: A Google (GOOG, GOOGL) employee on the YouTube team posted an answer to the YouTube Help FAQ page on Thursday January 10 with an update on Friday, January 11 explaining the removal of automatic posting of public YouTube activity on Twitter (TWTR) and Google+. “Many years ago, we introduced the option to automatically post your public YouTube activity with your social media followers on both Twitter and Google+. Since then, we’ve found that social sharing works better when the message is more customized and takes advantage of social media features, such as @mentions. Overall, this provides a better experience for both you and your followers vs automatically generated posts. After January 31st, the ability to automatically post your YouTube Activity on Twitter and Google+ will no longer be available. You can still share videos on social networks directly from YouTube via the Share button. Creators will also see an option to Share on social networks/platforms right after they successfully upload a new video. The options in YouTube Settings > Connected apps > “Share your public activity to Twitter” will be going away. This only affects sharing of public activity going forward, items already shared will remain on Twitter. You’ll also no longer see the option to automatically share your video on Google+ and Twitter via the upload flow in Creator Studio.”
FACEBOOK REMOVES 471 “INAUTHENTIC” PAGES: On Thursday, January 17, Facebook (FB) announced in a blog post that it removed "multiple Pages, groups and accounts that engaged in coordinated inauthentic behavior on Facebook and Instagram. The two operations we found originated in Russia, and one was active in a variety of countries while the other was specific to Ukraine. We didn't find any links between these operations, but they used similar tactics by creating networks of accounts to mislead others about who they were and what they were doing." It added: "Today we removed 364 Facebook Pages and accounts for engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior as part of a network that originated in Russia and operated in the Baltics, Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Central and Eastern European countries. Presence on Facebook: 289 Pages and 75 Facebook accounts. We did not find associated accounts on Instagram. Followers: About 790,000 accounts followed one or more of these Pages. Separately, based on an initial tip from US law enforcement, we also removed 107 Facebook Pages, Groups, and accounts, as well as 41 Instagram accounts, for engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior as part of a network that originated in Russia and operated in Ukraine."
YOUTUBE BANNING ‘DANGEROUS CHALLENGES AND PRANKS’: In response to a recent dangerous viral challenge, prompted by Netflix’s (NFLX) “Birdbox,” where people blindfold themselves, Google's YouTube made a change to its policies. In an update to their YouTube Help FAQ page, YouTube updated their external guidelines to make it clear that challenges like the Tide pod challenge or the Fire challenge, that can cause death and/or have caused death in some instances, have no place on YouTube. In reply to the FAQ "What exactly are you clarifying related to pranks?" YouTube's answer is "We've made it clear that our policies prohibiting harmful and dangerous content also extend to pranks with a perceived danger of serious physical injury. We don't allow pranks that make victims believe they're in serious physical danger - for example, a home invasion prank or a drive-by shooting prank. We also don't allow pranks that cause children to experience severe emotional distress, meaning something so bad that it could leave the child traumatized for life."
