During its earnings call, Snapchat's parent company announced the upcoming roll out of Snap Pro, which will enable celebrities and brands to broadcast organic content to followers, get analytics, and manage advertising on the app.
Why it matters: Unlike other social media services, Snapchat long resisted giving brands and celebrities additional tools for organic content, instead encouraging them to use its ad products. This announcement builds on Snap's move in February to provide analytics to some popular accounts.
Steve Ballmer, former CEO of Microsoft and current owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, told Bloomberg TV that he sold his stake in Twitter because "[t]he price looked pretty good," and being an investor was "probably not for [him]."
The big picture: Despite the drama surrounding social media giants in the last few months, Twitter shares "have more than doubled over the past two years," Bloomberg reports. Ballmer, who acquired a 4% stake in the company in 2015, per Bloomberg, told CNBC: "I think Twitter will succeed and it will move forward, but I simplified my life and I got out at a very nice price."
Apple CEO Tim Cook told investors Tuesday that the iPhone X was the best selling iPhone for each week during the last quarter.
Why it matters: There have been reports that Apple had slashed production in the wake of weak demand. Cook's remarks, made on a conference call with analysts, appear designed to ease those concerns.
The encrypted messaging app Signal said Tuesday it had been threatened by Amazon's cloud division after disguising Signal traffic as an Amazon site.
Why it matters: The Signal app, like most apps, used a trick called "domain fronting" to circumvent censorship measures by countries like Iran. Amazon banned domain fronting on Friday, leaving Signal and countless protesters worldwide in the lurch.
Despite concerns over iPhone demand, Apple on Tuesday reported financial results that largely matched what analysts had been looking for. The company sold 52.3 million iPhones last quarter, slightly less than some predictions, but earnings came in slightly ahead of consensus estimates, as did Apple's outlook for the current quarter.
The bottom line: While not necessarily cause for celebration, the results show Apple's business hasn't fallen off a cliff. Investors seemed relieved, sending shares higher in after-hours trading. Apple also announced a new stock buyback and increased dividend.
More than 60 conservative leaders are demanding an end to what they see as "censorship" from "liberal-leaning" Silicon Valley companies, such as Facebook and Google.
Why it matters: The group's joint statement, which Axios obtained in advance, is a sign of surging anti-Silicon Valley rhetoric among the right, and follows up on a congressional hearing last week featuring the pro-Trump YouTube personalities Diamond and Silk.
Parliament has issued an ultimatum to Facebook: make Mark Zuckerberg available to testify voluntarily in front of its Digital Culture Media and Sport Committee or face a summons next time he enters British territory, according to a letter Tuesday from committee chairman Damian Collins.
Why it matters: Facebook is facing heat from regulators in Europe who want Zuckerberg to answer questions about data privacy just as he did in the U.S. Facebook isn't commenting for the record, but a company official noted that its chief technology officer, Mike Schroepfer, already testified for five hours last week and said Facebook plans to answer the other questions the committee still has.
Shares of Match Group fell more than 18% on Tuesday after Facebook announced it plans to expand into online dating.
Why it matters: Facebook already has a gigantic user base and knows a ton about people so it comes at this with some natural advantages. That said, it's doing so at a time where people's trust in the service has been shaken.
Facebook's F8 developer conference is just yet started, but CEO Mark Zuckerberg has already announced an upcoming feature for users to have more control over the data about them the company stores.
Why it matters: It's a sign of what we can expect from the company's announcements — new features centered around privacy and security. It remains to be seen what Facebook will offer developers, who in general have been losing options as Facebook cracks down in the name of protecting users.
Facebook said Tuesday that in the coming months it would let users see and wipe the data fed into its ad targeting system by outside websites and applications.
Why it matters: Facebook is grappling with a data privacy reckoning after the Cambridge Analytica scandal focused a spotlight on its relations with external developers.
Web trackers, on average, make some of the most-trafficked websites load twice as slow compared to when trackers are blocked, according to a new study published by Ghostery, a web tracker extension, and its parent company Cliqz.
Why it matters: A privacy reckoning around data collection from social media platforms has Americans paying more attention to how web trackers collect data, but this study shows that trackers aren't just a privacy problem. They can also cause terrible user experiences.
The two sides of the encryption debate are so dug in that it's become hard to publicly discuss a compromise.
The issue: Law enforcement groups insist they need access to encrypted data lest criminals go free; security experts posit that providing such access invites global security disasters and mass hacking. No one wants to to suggest to peers that maybe some criminals should go free — or that some amount of security disasters would be A-OK.
After skittish comments from several companies that supply iPhone components, everyone is keen to hear what Apple itself has to say about demand when it issues its financial earnings results later today.
The big picture: Apple shareholders are eager to hear promised details on how much money the company plans to return to shareholders through dividends and stock buybacks, especially after Apple brings back all its overseas cash.
A whopping 361,000 people watched all nine episodes of the second season of Netflix's Stranger Things on its premiere date, according to data shared by Nielsen at its annual NewFronts breakfast in New York.
By the numbers: At 52 minutes per episode, that's 7.8 hours of content consumption on premiere day per person.
