Facebook has hired MTV executive Mina Lefevre to lead development of scripted and unscripted content, according to The Verge.
Why now?: After years of saying it wasn't interested in becoming a buyer of content, Facebook announced in December that it would begin buying original programming to build a pipeline for the site, per Hollywood Reporter. CEO Mark Zuckerberg told investors the site is looking at short-form content before moving to longer projects to compete with other streaming services like Netflix.
Why it matters: Facebook wants to increase the amount of video on the site to keep its users more engaged, therefore increasing the time they spend on the social network. Also, having its own content gives the company more inventory to sell ads against. Bringing on a seasoned TV executive will jumpstart operation.
Lawfare thought it was the right decision: "The Ninth Circuit is correct to leave the TRO in place, in my view, for the simple reason that there is no cause to plunge the country into turmoil again while the courts address the merits of these matters over the next few weeks."
And Trump missed the money quote at the end: "...the incompetent malevolence with which this order was promulgated."
Because he didn't read the whole thing: Per HuffPo's Ethan Klapper, he saw an excerpt on Morning Joe.
Let's face it: most of us are more distracted and more frazzled than ever. We are prisoners to our phones: tweeting our every thought, or snapping our every emotion, or Facebooking our every fantasy, feeling or family moment. We scroll, click and swipe our days away, better connected than at any point in humanity — but not necessarily better informed.
We've been hit with more technological innovations than we are capable of responsibly handling.
Privacy advocates are worried that President Trump and his appointees could expand the government surveillance apparatus.
Why it's on the radar: Trump told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that he tends to "err on the side of security" when it comes to debates over NSA surveillance. New Attorney General Jeff Sessions and CIA Director Mike Pompeo both opposed surveillance reforms while they were serving in Congress.
Snap's latest updated paperwork for its IPO includes this detail: The company has a $1 billion deal with Amazon for cloud services.
The details: The deal — first inked in 2016 — was updated this week to commit the company to spending more money each year with Amazon for five years, culminating in $350 in 2021. Amazon will provide Snap with "redundant infrastructure support of our business operations."
In context: Amazon isn't the only cloud provider Snap is relying on as it heads toward going public. The company also has commitments to Google worth $2 billion. That relationship is significant enough to get a mention in the company's list of risk factors for the IPO. Snap said in its filing that "disruption of or interference with our use of the Google Cloud operation would negatively affect our operations and seriously harm our business." That agreement is also notable for Google's business.
Facebook is making the majority of its revenue off U.S. users, and it's not because of scale.
While the number of monthly active users in the U.S. is relatively low compared to other countries, the average revenue per user in the U.S. is 1314% higher. See the dark purple boxes below compared to the light purple.
Fair or not, the two companies are increasingly being compared to each other as Snap prepares to go public and Twitter looks for a big bounce in value:
Both rely on convincing people they can massively grow their user.
Both rely on ads alone to make money.
Both are money-losers.
Recode: "Twitter's advantage is that it has a proven business. Sure, Snap is hot and exciting and young. But Twitter likely brought in more than $2.5 billion in revenue last year. The company has survived for a decade, and President Trump's obsession with the product means it has never been more culturally significant."
But then there's the business: "Even Donald Trump Can't Save Twitter," which released earnings earlier today, per the Wall Street Journal's "Ahead of the Tape" column: "[A]s has been made clear by Twitter's recent results and its battered stock price, there is a clear distinction between publicity and profitability. Monthly active-user growth continues to slow. Twitter is still losing money ... It has had constant churn in the C-suite."
Bloomberg reports one of the most painful regulatory thorns in the side of the banking industry is a consumer complaint database maintained by the CFPB, which tracks not only complaints against financial services firms, but the firm's response and the customer's satisfaction therewith. Watchdogs argue that the database is an essential tool in providing restitution for banking errors and alerting authorities of violations of law. But banks hope the Trump Administration and Congress will eliminate or reform the database so that it doesn't contain "unverified and potentially false information."
Jose Cuervo's big IPO: The spirit distiller on Tuesday sold roughly $790 million in shares in Mexico's biggest IPO in more than three years, per Bloomberg. The firm's success is evidence that some companies will be able to largely avoid the repercussions of a U.S.-Mexico trade war. Though Cuervo's dollar-denominated sales would fall if broad tariffs were put on Mexican goods, the decline in the peso's value from a trade war means that the remaining U.S. sales would be worth more in peso terms.
Earnings to watch before the bell: Viacom and its new CEO Bob Bakish hope to put the Sumner Redstone-succession drama behind them, and are planning to announce a new turnaround strategy Thursday morning. Twitter hopes to show progress on key metrics like monthly active users, and the market will be looking for any clues as to the veracity of recent takeover rumors.
