Weekly News Roundup February 5-9

 

Authors: Steffanie Agnew & Nicole Avalos

Broadcom Raises Its Qualcomm Offer to $121 Billion- NY Times

Broadcom increased its takeover bid for rival chip maker Qualcomm to around $121 billion on Feb. 16, 2018, further pressuring Qualcomm to agree to what would be the technology industry’s biggest-ever takeover and one that could affect the future of smartphones.

— NYTimes Tech (@nytimestech) February 6, 2018

 

Twitter Reports First Quarterly Profit, Despite User Stagnation- NY Times

Twitter reported its first ever profit on Thursday. In spite of the constant criticism over thousands of fake accounts populating their platform and the increasing doubt of its long-term growth. This is the first time Twitter has ever reported a profit since going public in 2013. Since the news of Twitter’s profits, company shares have already risen more than 22 percent.

— The New York Times (@nytimes) February 8, 2018

Snap Reverses Slide as User Growth and Revenue Jump- NY Times

After a not so great first year as a publicly traded stock, Snapchat is finally turning things around. On Tuesday, Snapchat reported a 72 percent revenue increase from this time last year. Additionally, since shifting their focus to increasing the retention rate of Andriod users, Snapchat has seen a 20 percent increase in retention over the past year. Overall, daily users also rose from nine million to 187 million, the biggest growth in over a year. While Snapchat seems to be heading in the right direction, only time will tell if this increase is due to Facebook’s recent troubles.

— NYTimes Tech (@nytimestech) February 8, 2018

Dow Drops By More Than 1,000 Points Twice in Week- BBC News

The Dow Jones is down 1000 points as of Thursday, Feb. 8. The stock market plunge took a dive due to fears over inflation and rising interest rates in the bond market. Global markets are also down for the fourth day, seeing across the board losses. Fears are being caused by U.S. Senate reaching a bipartisan deal to boost spending limits by $300 billion over the next two years, and that–along with tax cuts–could cause the federal budget deficit to rise to $1.07 trillion for the 2019 fiscal year. To fight off inflation, it’s feared the Federal Reserve will aggressively raise interest rates as Treasury yields will rise to levels that make stocks unattractive.

— BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) February 8, 2018

 

Amazon Is Now Delivering Whole Foods Groceries for Free. Here’s How It Works- Time

Amazon Prime users living in Austin, Cincinnati, Dallas and Virginia Beach can add Whole Foods items to their shopping list and get them delivered within two hours. Amazon announced on Thursday they will start delivering groceries from the chain, and will expand to the rest of the U.S. later in the year. Similar to Prime’s other delivery requirements, orders can be placed between 8 a.m. and 10 p.m., and must be $35 or more. Two-hour deliver is free, but people can upgrade to one-hour delivery for $7.99.

— TIME (@TIME) February 8, 2018

Facebook is testing a downvote button- BuzzFeed News

Facebook has started experimenting with a downvote button, releasing the feature to five percent of their Android users in the United States. Choosing to downvote a post prompts the user to choose why they downvoted it, such as they found it offensive or misleading. Facebook said downvoting a comment doesn’t affect how it’s displayed on Facebook, and that the test gives the company feedback about comments on public page posts.

— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) February 9, 2018

 

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