After a week of bad news, it’s not surprising that stocks are trending lower. At this point, let’s hope for better news next week.
“The S&P 500 dipped in volatile trading on Friday, after a disappointing November jobs report, as the market nears the end of a roller-coaster week driven by Covid omicron variant developments,” write Maggie Fitzgerald and Hannah Miao of CNBC. “The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell about 70 points, dragged down by a 2% loss in Boeing. The S&P 500 fell lost 0.5%. The technology-focused Nasdaq Composite dipped more than 1%. The major averages are on pace for a losing week.”
Analysts expected that the economy would add 573,000 jobs in November. Meanwhile, the U.S. economy added just 210,000 jobs.
Twitter CTO to Replace Dorsey as CEO
Parag Agrawal, Twitter’s chief technology officer, will replace Jack Dorsey as the company’s CEO.
“Agrawal, 37, will have to meet Twitter’s aggressive internal goals. The company said earlier this year it aims to have 315 million monetizable daily active users by the end of 2023 and to at least double its annual revenue in that year,” write of Jessica Bursztynsky and Lauren Feiner of CNBC. “Agrawal, who’s served as CTO since 2017, has been with Twitter for more than a decade. He had been in charge of strategy involving artificial intelligence and machine learning and he led projects to make tweets in users’ timelines more relevant to them.”
Square Changing its Name to Block
In an effort to consolidate its product offerings, Square will officially become Block.
“The fintech giant Square is changing its name to Block, effective December 10. The name change, which has been in the works for over a year, is intended to house the company’s various products — including music streaming service Tidal, Cash App, TBD, and of course, Square — under one brand,” writes Amanda Silberling of TechCrunch. “This announcement comes just days after Square founder and CEO Jack Dorsey stepped down from his CEO role at Twitter, which he also co-founded.”
Facebook says Belarusian KGB Using ‘Deepfakes’ to Roil Tension in Border Crisis
The Belarusian state security agency has apparently been using fake social media accounts to worsen a border crisis in Eastern Europe.
“Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, says it has evidence the Belarusian KGB used fake accounts to pose as journalists and activists to stoke tensions about the crisis at the border between Belarus and Poland,” writes Donie O’Sullivan of CNN Business. “To make the fake personas convincing, some of the accounts likely used profile pictures of fake faces generated using artificial intelligence, so-called ‘deepfake’ technology, Meta said. In total, Meta said it had identified and removed 41 Facebook accounts, four Instagram accounts, and five Facebook groups linked to the Belarusian KGB.”
We’ve been working to make this change for over a year, and it only represents a change of our official corporate name; not our purpose, our vision, our structure, or how we operate. Shareholders: we aren’t changing our ticker symbol, we’re still $SQ. pic.twitter.com/RdLXgZXkSO
