Facebook tries out third-party Marketplace deals from eBay, an automated news aggregator, and veteran executive Andrew Bosworth in the leading role of its new consumer hardware department. Plus, in light of sinking stock prices, Forbes says long-term investors should be very optimistic, and Seeking Alpha sees enormous potential for Asia-Pacific growth.
Facebook Does Deal With eBay
Facebook has teamed up with eBay to introduce Daily Deals within the Marketplace section of its mobile app. What began as a user-driven, community-based virtual swap shop has grown into a more centralized “buy and sell” locale that the platform is really pushing. Notice that big Marketplace button on the mobile app homepage?
Marketplaces will continue to connect buyers with sellers in their vicinity, but now with the added opportunity to get a great deal on a third-party offering. Users can shop in the Facebook app, but they are redirected to eBay for checkout if they choose to make a purchase. The social media giant says it is testing the feature with hopes of rolling it out fully in the future, maybe with deals from other third parties too.
It Was The Best Of Stocks; It Was The Worst Of Stocks
Facebook stock traded at an all-time high ($175.50) after the company’s Q2 earnings call July 26, but four weeks later, it’s dipped to nearly a historic low ($167.74 at market close on Friday). Forbes, however, has done the math and finds the numbers attractive, predicting that growth could catapult shares to $237 – a 41 percent increase over the last closing price. Forbes notes that Facebook has consistently beaten Wall Street estimates and is likely to outperform again.. Long-term investors, take note.
Growth Potential
The real growth isn’t coming from the U.S., says Seeking Alpha. The platform has already reached its “slow and steady” phase there, and in Europe as well. The real growth potential lies in the Asia-Pacific region: home to 4.45 billion people as of 2016. Internet penetration in India, for example, is just over one=third today but stands to nearly double over the next half decade. That’s a lot of new Facebookers.
Hello, Aloha
As Facebook forays into consumer hardware, the social media giant has appointed veteran executive Andrew Bosworth, who has been with the company since 2006 as VP of ads and business and as a core contributor to newsfeed upgrades, to head efforts in the realm. That includes ventures by Facebook’s experimental labs, Building 8 and Oculus, such as its rumored home smart speaker and “Aloha” video chat device. Featuring a large touchscreen, the Aloha chat device will function most like Amazon’s Echo Show, though at more of an Apple price point – TechCrunch reports a retail price of $499.
“News” News
After getting slammed for the liberal bias driving its Trending News aggregation, Facebook replaced its editorial team and introduced an automated aggregator that displays news stories based on how much engagement (i.e. likes, comments, and shares) they’re seeing. Lest the Trending News list get buried under the “More” tab, the platform is reportedly trying out a display where the top three trending stories are pinned to the top of users’ newsfeeds. The new approach solves the partisan bias, but the other news-related problems remain: how to limit the spread of fake news and hoaxes.
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