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☆ Social Media Platforms Are Asking Users for Money. They Probably Don’t Mean You.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-24 | by ( Laura Forman | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Social-media companies are finally asking users to pay up. As of last month, the option to pay for Facebook’s new subscription service will run you nearly $12 a month in some countries despite co-founder Mark Zuckerberg’s 2010 declaration that his social-media network will always be free. Facebook parent Meta Platforms is also rolling out an optional subscription service for its photo sharing app, Instagram. Snap Inc. has added a subscription service for Snapchat. Elon Musk’s Twitter, bleeding cash, recently upgraded its legacy subscription service, Blue, and LinkedIn has had subscription offerings for well over 15 years.

☆ This Cruise Line Can’t Turn You Down
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-09 | by ( Laura Forman | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Norwegian Cruise Line says it can trim marketing spending while maintaining the momentum it has gained. The “Great Cruise Comeback” is complete, Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Chief Executive Frank Del Rio declared last week. Yet, his business still hasn’t arrived at the destination that matters most to investors: a positive bottom line. In December, Norwegian said in a filing it would be undergoing a broad and continuing effort to improve operating efficiencies to attain sustained profitable growth. That initiative started with big-ticket items like a 9% head-count reduction in current and planned shoreside roles.

☆ Uber Might Need to Stow Its Freight Train
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-07 | by ( Laura Forman | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber, said freight needs to grow to appeal to investors. Uber Technologies has amassed a nearly $7 billion business in a different kind of transportation that investors never talk about but should at least be thinking about. Uber Freight functions much like Uber Rides or Uber Eats in digitally connecting available carriers with shipments. Carriers get upfront pricing, and shippers can track shipments from pickup to delivery.

☆ AI Has Its ‘iPhone Moment’
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-02 | by ( Laura Forman | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Elon Musk may be losing sleep over artificial intelligence and he is hardly alone: Big tech is ready to move fast and break anything to artificially serve you. Setting aside the “existential angst” that Mr. Musk has complained about, there is suddenly a very real investment risk to big tech companies that fail to strike while the AI iron is hot.

☆ Warren Buffett Wannabes Lose Luster
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-25 | by ( Laura Forman | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Warren Buffett’s slow-and-steady approach to investing wasn’t popular in recent years with younger investors, who often sought advice from influencers and pundits. Warren Buffett , who has earned Berkshire Hathaway investors over 35,000% since 1978, once said that “the stock market is designed to transfer money from the active to the patient.” Now many younger investors who had been seeking shortcuts are coming around to his way of thinking. In 2008, just as the seeds of the recent tech boom were being sown in the ashes of the financial crisis, Tim Ferriss, bestselling author of “4-Hour Workweek,” which told readers how to “join the new rich,” snagged a coveted microphone at Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting. With a shaky voice, he asked Mr. Buffett and his business partner, Charlie Munger , how a 30-year-old with his first million dollars in the bank should invest.

☆ Facebook Parent Meta Plays for More Pay
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-23 | by ( Laura Forman | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says the company’s new subscription plan is aimed at ‘increasing authenticity and security’ across its platforms. With Elon Musk’s Twitter tangled up in blue, Facebook and Instagram parent Meta Platforms once again looks as if it is lip-syncing a smaller rival. The social-media company turned metaverse maker attracted ridicule last weekend when Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said via a Facebook post that his company would start charging users for account verification and enhanced customer service. Dubbed Meta Verified, the new subscription plan is being rolled out in Australia and New Zealand this week, according to the company.

Big companies are announcing layoffs, home and stock prices are wobbling, inflation is squeezing household budgets and the Federal Reserve is still raising interest rates. Not surprisingly, Americans have been hearing the “R” word a lot. It’s the wrong one. The U.S. could still skirt a recession, but it is already in a richcession. That’s when, amid economic uncertainty, the well-off feel more of the bite.

☆ Zillow Signals More Pain Ahead in Online Real Estate
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-16 | by ( Laura Forman | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Zillow is telling investors that housing affordability challenges remain ‘front and center’ this year. Investors in online real estate platforms probably could waste a lot of energy figuring out how low home prices will go or whether mortgage rates have topped out, but common sense beats all that number crunching. U.S. home purchases fell more than 40% in the fourth quarter from a year earlier, Redfin reported this week. Meanwhile, online real-estate stocks including Zillow Group , Redfin, Opendoor Technologies and Compass are up an average of more than 90% this year so far. That is probably wishful thinking.

☆ DoorDash Delivers Some Second Helpings
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-16 | by ( Laura Forman | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Food-delivery platforms seemed like pandemic winners, and then they didn’t. DoorDash , at least, has been showing some signs of an appealing second act. The food-delivery company said Thursday that its fourth-quarter revenue increased 40% year to year—its best growth on that basis since the third quarter of 2021. It also logged its eleventh straight quarter of positive adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, generating a quarterly record of $117 million.

☆ Airbnb Puts Worries to Bed for Now
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-15 | by ( Laura Forman | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +1 min

Airbnb is forecasting that daily rates will ‘face increasing downward pressure’ this year. In travel, the winners were homestay platforms such as Airbnb . Domestically, average daily rates were up more than 30% in December versus the same period in 2019. But with inflation slowing and a possible recession looming, homestay pricing dynamics appear to be changing. Average daily rate growth in mountain and lake destinations was up less than 1% year on year in December, and the company forecasts pricing growth could turn negative in future months.

☆ Lyft’s Defensive Driving Stalls Out
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-10 | by ( Laura Forman | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Lyft said its active riders were still down about 11% in the fourth quarter from prepandemic highs. When Lyft says it is taking aggressive steps to better compete in ride-hailing, all investors hear is that the service is losing. Lyft’s shares fell 30% in after-hours trading Thursday after its fourth-quarter results suggested that—compared with competitor Uber Technologies, at least—its business is now running on fumes. Lyft, whose single-lane focus relative to Uber’s more diversified and global business helped it achieve the holy grail of (adjusted) profits before its competitor, is now scrambling to play catch up.

☆ Social Media Gets Even Less Pinteresting
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-06 | by ( Laura Forman | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

The Grinch may not have stolen all of Pinterest’s business this past holiday season, but he didn’t exactly bring a bounty of gifts, either. Shares of the image-sharing platform fell around 10% in after-hours trading Monday after the company reported revenue growth of just 4% from a year earlier in the fourth quarter—slowing from more than 8% growth on that basis in the third quarter and coming in slightly less than Wall Street’s muted expectations. Pinterest guided to low-single-digit revenue growth for the first quarter, further disappointing analysts who had been forecasting growth of roughly 7%. The company also announced Chief Financial Officer Todd Morgenfeld would be leaving in July, with no successor yet to be named.

☆ Meta Gets Back to Reality
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-02 | by ( Laura Forman | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Meta has said it would devote 80% of its total investment dollars to improving its legacy business. Hindsight is always 20/20 but, looking back, it was all there in not-so-fine print. Facebook-parent Meta Platforms’ surged 18% in after hours trading Wednesday following an earnings report that included a first quarter outlook that was better than feared. It came just one day after social media competitor Snap, Inc. painted an ominous picture of its own near-term business prospects, noting revenue was down about 7% quarter to date year on year.

☆ Snap Is Stuck in the Darkroom
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-01 | by ( Laura Forman | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

If you can’t hold users’ attention with a good ol’ face swap, flower crown or puking rainbow, are you even still in the game? Fourth-quarter revenue, reported Tuesday afternoon, was essentially flat year on year—Snap Inc.’s worst growth on that basis as a public company. No formal guidance was given for the first quarter, but Snap did say revenue had fallen 7% versus last year quarter-to-date. If that trend continues, it will mark the first period of year-over-year revenue losses reported by the company, falling well shy of Wall Street’s forecast for low-single-digit growth. Snap’s shares fell by about 14% in after-hours trading following its report.

☆ Meta Turnaround Could Trap Bears
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-31 | by ( Laura Forman | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Meta’s Instagram and Facebook platforms are said to be starting to see a path to recovery in terms of engagement. Snap’s results have been a popular bellwether for investors trying to bet on Meta Platforms’ quarterly earnings reports. This week, investors may want to ignore them. Meta will report fourth-quarter earnings Wednesday afternoon, following Snap’s report after the bell Tuesday. The social-media-giant-turned-metaverse architect had an abysmal 2022 in the stock market, logging a 64% decline in its share price to shed some $600 billion in market value.

☆ Why Lyft Is Headed for Its Own Recession
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-28 | by ( Laura Forman | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Lyft asserts that its focus on ride-share will eventually pay off relative to Uber’s more diversified business, which includes food delivery. After losing around three-quarters of its market value last year, Lyft ‘s shares are up almost 47% this month. Lyft, which historically has been dusted by more global competitor Uber Technologies , isn’t suddenly gaining ground. In an initiation report in early January, Jefferies analyst John Colantuoni estimated the ride-hailer ended last year with around 29% U.S. market share to Uber’s 71%. His estimates show Lyft exiting the pandemic in arguably worse shape than it entered it, having lost around 3 percentage points of market share over the last three years.

☆ The Price Is Wrong in Online Dating
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-24 | by ( Laura Forman | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Financial analysts are estimating Tinder’s revenue grew only single-digits last year, down from 43% growth four years ago. Match Group is betting you can’t put a price on true love. The dating giant will be launching a new premium tier for its relationship app Hinge this quarter, a spokesperson for Match confirmed to The Wall Street Journal on Monday. The spokesperson also confirmed Match is testing subscribers’ interest in a new superpremium tier for its most popular dating app, Tinder. Bloomberg reported last week the new Hinge subscription, dubbed “HingeX,” would run as much as $60 a month, while the new Tinder subscription could cost a whopping $500 a month.

☆ Germaphobic Travelers Come Down With Sticker Shock
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-23 | by ( Laura Forman | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

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☆ Stitch Fix’s Unraveling Should Sow Broader Tech Doubts
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-17 | by ( Laura Forman | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +1 min

A business often starts with a relatively modest desire to solve one problem for a specific group of people. Somewhere along the way, it becomes tempting to try to be everything to everyone—especially once it has achieved a supersize tech valuation. The retail styling company went public just over five years ago led by founder Katrina Lake at a valuation of around $1.4 billion. Back then it was a company mixing some data and human judgment to curate personalized boxes of new clothing for customers. That combination earned it a somewhat rich tech-like multiple, even though more than 80% of its employees as of its public offering filing were either human stylists or fulfillment workers.

☆ Big Tech Stops Doing Stupid Stuff
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-14 | by ( Laura Forman | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

This year tech companies are taking a more earthly approach. The tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 33% last year—its worst performance since 2008. Big tech, which spent the past several years spending on big dreams, is starting to think smaller. Last year more than 1,000 tech companies laid off employees, resulting in over 150,000 lost jobs, a tally by layoffs.fyi shows. It is an eye- popping number that could actually get worse: More than 23,000 tech workers have already been let go this year as of Jan. 13, the same tracker shows.

☆ Why Our Love Affair With Tinder Might Never Quite End
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-12 | by ( Laura Forman | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Tinder has been the world’s number one dating app in terms of revenue for nearly a decade. There is a classic “Seinfeld” episode where Jerry thinks he has found the love of his life in a woman who is exactly like him: “Now I know what I’ve been looking for all these years—myself!”Decades later, dating app companies have seized on research fostering that same “perfect” match. Two behavior-based studies published in 2017 concluded that romantic partners, like friends, often have similar personalities. Another study first published in 2008 found participants’ ideal romantic partner had personality scores similar to their own.

☆ Why Our Love Affair with Tinder Might Never Quite End
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-12 | by ( Laura Forman | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

☆ Elon Musk and Cathie Wood Are Almost Right About the Fed
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-29 | by ( Laura Forman | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Some of tech’s biggest losers this year, including Elon Musk and Cathie Wood , haven’t exactly been poster children of successful investing lately. But, especially as tech stocks are starting to look pretty cheap, investors might want to heed at least some of their advice. Both Mr. Musk and Ms. Wood have publicly blamed rising interest rates for their assets’ poor performance. Ms. Wood published an open letter to the Federal Reserve back in October warning that the central bank’s hawkish stance raised the risks of a “deflationary bust.” Replying to an investor’s gripe in a tweet earlier this month over Tesla ‘s recent stock drop, Mr. Musk similarly called the Fed “the real problem.” As the return on risk-free Treasurys rises, he explained in another tweet, the value of owning more-risky equity assets drops.

☆ Turo IPO Won’t Stay Parked Forever
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-27 | by ( Laura Forman | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Tech investors looking to explore a new lane of the ride-share market will get their chance. But first, they will want to be a little patient. Nearly 12 months after car-share platform Turo filed for its initial public offering, the company has yet to pull the trigger on its listing. Competitor Getaround has lost over 90% of its value since closing its merger with special-purpose acquisition company InterPrivate II Acquisition Corp. earlier this month. The Nasdaq is down 34% this year, and fellow tech companies like Instacart have also delayed highly anticipated public offerings.

☆ Etsy Looks Crafted to Last
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-26 | by ( Laura Forman | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Internet companies are scrambling to refashion themselves in a frenzied market. Etsy , it seems, just woke up like this. Once a fringe online marketplace for crafters, Etsy gained widespread popularity during the pandemic. But unlike many Covid beneficiaries in the e-commerce space, Etsy has achieved gains that have thus far proven durable. Etsy reported more than 94 million active buyers as of the end of the third quarter—down less than 2% from its peak at the end of last year and roughly double the number it counted prepandemic.

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