FB - Facebook, Inc.
| Previous Close | 188.08 |
| Open | 188.09 |
| Bid | 188.29 x 1100 |
| Ask | 188.30 x 2200 |
| Day's Range | 186.85 - 189.08 |
| 52 Week Range | 123.02 - 208.66 |
| Volume | 4,689,704 |
| Avg. Volume | 14,810,098 |
| Market Cap | 536.269B |
| Beta (3Y Monthly) | 1.28 |
| PE Ratio (TTM) | 31.79 |
| EPS (TTM) | 5.91 |
| Earnings Date | Oct 28, 2019 - Nov 1, 2019 |
| Forward Dividend & Yield | N/A (N/A) |
| Ex-Dividend Date | N/A |
| 1y Target Est | 235.55 |
- Yahoo Finance Video
Facebook, Ray-Ban partner to create smart glasses
For years, Facebook has had trouble developing augmented-reality glasses. The social media giant is now reportedly turning to Ray-Ban parent company Luxottica to create the glasses. The company is hoping to release the smart glasses no later than 2025.
- Yahoo Finance
Facebook, Google, and Twitter to address mass violence and extremism online at Senate hearing
On Wednesday, U.S. Senators are questioning officials from those three companies at a hearing on extremism online — the latest in a string of inquiries on Capitol Hill that focuses on Big Tech.
- MarketWatch
Facebook is auto-generating pages glorifying Islamic State, al-Qaida
U.S. senators on the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation will question representatives from Facebook including Monika Bickert, who heads Facebook’s efforts to stop extremist messaging.
- Barrons.com
Congress Asked Facebook to Turn Over a Trove of Emails. Here’s What It’s Looking For.
A key focus of the House Judiciary Committee’s request for a huge range of documents from Facebook is if the social media giant used the data it had collected from users to undermine its rivals, according to Evercore.
- Investor's Business Daily
Facebook Expands Streaming Wars, Takes A Bite Out Of Roku
Facebook has unveiled its video-streaming Portal TV and Comcast plans to offer its Xfinity Flex set-top box for free to internet customers. Roku stock dived while Facebook was flat.
- Investor's Business Daily
These Are The 5 Best Stocks To Buy And Watch Now
Superior fundamentals and technical action, and buying at the right time, are all part of a shrewd investing formula. Check out Apple, Lululemon, Teradyne, Copart and Ally Financial.
- Reuters
U.S. social media firms say they are removing violent content faster
Major U.S. social media firms told a Senate panel Wednesday they are doing more to prevent to remove violent or extremist content from online platforms in the wake of several high-profile incidents, focusing on using more technological tools to act faster. Critics say too many violent videos or posts that back extremist groups supporting terrorism are not immediately removed from social media websites. Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, said social media firms need to do more to prevent violent content.
- Reuters
Facebook met UK officials three times before Libra announcement
Facebook met British finance ministry, central bank and regulatory officials in the weeks before making public its plans for the Libra digital currency, responses to Reuters freedom of information requests show. The details of the meetings suggest a concerted effort by the world's biggest social network to try to win support for its plans ahead of the June 18 unveiling of Libra, a cryptocurrency that will be backed by major currencies and other assets. Despite this, Libra has drawn a sceptical response from regulators and politicians in Europe and the United States, with concerns centering on its potential to upend the world financial system, harm privacy and foster money laundering.
- Quartz
Facebook is launching new Portal smart displays. But why?
Facebook, which has had a patchy record on user privacy, is launching even more products that require you to have the company’s cameras and microphones in your living room. The new lineup adds to Facebook’s range of Portal smart displays, which let you make video calls, stream TV, and play music. Facebook is now introducing a mini 8-inch version, as well as Portal TV, a webcam-like device that can be attached to a television to make high-quality video calls on a bigger screen.
- Market Realist
Is Facebook Redefining Libra’s Role to Clear Regulatory Hurdles?
Has Facebook developed a workaround to its Libra opposition? It appears ready to narrow Libra’s scope in order to get past regulatory hurdles.
- Barrons.com
Facebook’s Portal Lineup Grows—and Reaches Into Your TV Set
Facebook extended its push into hardware, announcing updates to its Portal video chat devices and a new Portal TV box that connects to television sets.
- Bloomberg
Facebook Contractors Have Been Listening to ‘Hey Portal’
(Bloomberg) -- Facebook Inc., which last month said it stopped using humans to review and transcribe users’ voice messages, will resume that practice for some audio collected from its Portal video-calling device.Facebook “paused human review of audio” around August. Bloomberg reported at the time the company hired contractors to transcribe private voice messages sent via its Messenger app. In that case, users had not been alerted to the possibility that their communications might be subject to human review. It was also unclear at the time that some of the clips Facebook had been collecting were coming from Portal.Facebook confirmed Wednesday that it was indeed collecting audio from Portal users who make a request from the device using the command “Hey Portal.” By default, those commands were recorded and stored on Facebook servers, and some of them were transcribed by contractors working with the company to improve the software algorithms used to understand the commands, according to Andrew Bosworth, Facebook’s head of hardware. That practice was paused last month at the same time Messenger stopped using humans to transcribe messages.Facebook Paid Contractors to Transcribe Users’ Audio Chats“We paused human review of the ‘Hey Portal’ voice interactions last month while we worked on a plan that gave people more transparency and control, including a way to turn it off,” Bosworth said in a statement.Portal is now reinstating human audio transcriptions but will offer consumers an option to turn off that service in a new version of its Portal software, which will be distributed to existing devices and its updated Portal lineup shipping in October.The Messenger transcriptions are separate, Bosworth added, and that program is still on pause.“The reason they’re separate isn’t because the back-end systems are separate, it’s because the data is coming in from a different place,” he told Bloomberg in an interview Tuesday. “And therefore you have a different kind of user expectation.”Facebook shares were little changed at $187.49 at 10:34 a.m. in New York.Apple Suspends Listening to Siri Queries Amid Privacy OutcryThe controversial practice of transcribing user audio clips has gotten a lot of attention in recent months because of privacy concerns. Apple Inc. and Google have both suspended similar human transcription programs, and Bloomberg first reported in April that Amazon.com Inc. was transcribing some commands from its Alexa voice assistant without people’s knowledge. Amazon now lets users opt out of that human review.Facebook decided to reinstate this practice because it’s important for training the company’s software programs to accurately understand requests, Bosworth says. He’s also aware that the idea of having humans review user audio is unsettling to many people.“The consumer reaction the last several months to these practices, not just at Facebook but other companies, gave us insight into the fact that this was something people weren’t entirely comfortable with or weren’t sure about,” he said when explaining the new privacy setting.Facebook will still collect and transcribe “Hey Portal” commands if users don’t change the default settings. Portal’s data usage policy states that the company does collect “voice queries and commands” after a user wakes the device with “Hey Portal.” The policy does not say that those audio clips may be reviewed by third-party contractors.Facebook Quizzed by Watchdog for Listening to Users’ ChatsThe importance of audio transcriptions and recordings has increased alongside the rise of digital assistants like Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Assistant. Tech companies improve the accuracy of their software by transcribing millions of clips, which help the machines learn language and speech patterns. The practice has, however, served up a new privacy trade-off: users want the help of smart assistants but not the threat that strangers might be listening to their private conversations or messages.Facebook does not yet have an advanced standalone audio assistant to compete with the other tech giants, though its Portal device can carry out some basic commands after users wake it by saying “Hey Portal.” For more complicated requests, Portal also comes equipped with Amazon’s Alexa software.Bosworth says that while Facebook is working to improve and further develop its “Hey Portal” software, it doesn’t have any plans to completely replace Alexa on Portal devices with its own proprietary software, and Alexa is indeed present on Facebook’s newly announced set of devices.The new Facebook Portal and Portal Mini will open Facebook’s distribution of the video-calling platform beyond the U.S. and into Europe, where higher privacy standards have already saddled the social media giant with increased regulator scrutiny.(Updates with Facebook shares. An earlier version of this story corrected the spelling of executive’s name in sixth paragraph.)\--With assistance from Sarah Frier.To contact the reporters on this story: Kurt Wagner in San Francisco at kwagner71@bloomberg.net;Mark Gurman in San Francisco at mgurman1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Jillian Ward at jward56@bloomberg.net, Vlad Savov, Edwin ChanFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- MarketWatch
Roku stock falls amid new competition in streaming from Comcast, Facebook
Roku Inc. shares are off 8% in Wednesday trading after the company got some new competition in streaming video. Comcast Corp. announced that it would be giving internet-only customers a free Xfinity Flex device, which lets them watch their streaming services on a TV set. Also on Wednesday, Facebook Inc. announced its $149 Portal TV device, which supports video calls that get streamed to a TV set and also allows users to watch various programs. Roku shares have gained 356% so far this year, while the S&P 500 has risen 20%.
- American City Business Journals
These 20 Bay Area companies pay the highest total median salary in the nation
The salary totals are yet another example of the bruising battle Bay Area employers face for talented workers, especially in the tech industry.
- MarketWatch
Facebook launches new line of Portal TV devices for streaming and video calling
Facebook (FB) is slashing the price and the size of the Portal, its screen and camera-equipped gadget for making video calls with friends and family as it attempts to get the device into more homes. A new screenless Portal device that attaches to a television set will be $149. Facebook isn’t saying how many Portals it’s sold since it launched the first models last fall.
- Benzinga
Facebook's Portal TV Gives Roku Investors Pause
Facebook, Inc. (NASDAQ: FB ) is preparing to launch Portal TV, a clip-on camera accessory for video calling, AR gaming and content co-watching. The news sent Roku Inc (NASDAQ: ROKU ) shares lower. Roku ...
- Bloomberg
Mark Zuckerberg Struggles to Keep Libra Alive
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Mark Zuckerberg’s cryptocurrency project, Libra, has become the regulatory equivalent of a pinata: Everyone is lining up to hit it with a stick. France’s finance minister Bruno Le Maire calls it an assault on sovereignty and a risk to financial stability, an attack backed up by his German counterpart Olaf Scholz who dubbed it a “parallel currency.” You can see their point.Across the Atlantic, U.S. Democrats and Republicans — including President Donald Trump — have called for tough scrutiny of the Facebook Inc. payments system, whose potential 2-billion strong user base could threaten the U.S. dollar’s supremacy.Facebook’s attempt this week to debunk the argument that it’s encroaching on government turf, via a Twitter thread from its blockchain boss David Marcus, won’t allay these fears. Marcus’s depiction of Libra as a system “running on top of” existing currencies rather than supplanting them — that is, a digital token backed by a basket of assets including dollars, euros, yen and the like — is exactly what has spooked politicians and central bankers. Libra is a so-called “stablecoin,” meaning its value will be anchored to the hard currencies that back it — similar to Singapore’s currency peg and unlike Bitcoin with its wild swings in value. But that doesn’t mean Libra’s rise would be good for those underlying currencies. If it took off, Libra would have a bigger potential user base than the combined populations of China, the U.S. and the EU. A mighty, privately-backed cryptocurrency would have all sorts of consequences on the enforcing of economic sanctions or regulation of global trade, as well as on central banks’ ability to respond to crises or recessions. Libra could gain great influence over countries with weak or unstable currencies that might otherwise lean toward the dollar or euro. That this would all be led by a tech industry that has frequently trampled consumer privacy underfoot is another worry, even if safeguards were put in place to keep the social media behemoth at arm’s length.Rather than debate with Zuckerberg, some central bankers seem to be mulling the idea of grabbing the Libra idea for themselves and setting up an alternative. If the problem with such a currency is Facebook, why not make one yourself that’s Facebook-free?The Bank of England governor Mark Carney floated last month the idea of a “Synthetic Hegemonic Currency,” one backed by a basket of reserve currencies but without the “fundamental” problems raised by Libra. This week Benoit Coeure, a European Central Bank executive, called on other central bankers to join forces and look into issuing digital currencies to fend off the private stablecoins. You can see why this might be preferable to digital coins run by Facebook, Amazon.com Inc. or Apple Inc. Ideally, central bank cryptocurrencies would have the convenience of digital cash and would probably do a better job of reining in illicit transactions and money laundering. They would let a central bank keep a tighter grip on financial stability too. And the risk of “digital dollarization,” in which countries find themselves falling under the sway of powerful digital tokens, is lessened.There are, nonetheless, trade-offs with any digital currency whomever issues it. National sovereignty might be protected but at what cost? A more efficient payments system may look cheaper but it would put central banks in a new role, one that would require more staff and better cyber-defenses. These are not things you naturally associate with cash-starved public institutions.The “sovereignty” of citizens could be eroded too as cash became more traceable. And we have no idea how it would perform in a financial panic. A digital bank run might be very ugly.These are political and social questions. It’s good for regulators to be grappling with them now rather than letting Facebook do what it likes. It doesn’t make the answers any easier, though. A central banker’s Bitcoin is no magic bullet.To contact the author of this story: Lionel Laurent at llaurent2@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: James Boxell at jboxell@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Lionel Laurent is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Brussels. He previously worked at Reuters and Forbes.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Investopedia
Snap Breaks Out From Downtrend After Analyst Upgrade
Snap shares broke out from key resistance levels, but the stock's valuation continues to be a headwind.
- Market Realist
Big Tech Breakup: Bill Gates Sides with Facebook
Bill Gates shares Facebook’s view that there is no need for breaking up America’s big tech companies as some politicians have proposed.
- Reuters
Facebook unveils new Portal video chat, TV streaming devices
The launch comes as Facebook is trying to pivot toward more private forms of communication, after years of slowing user growth, data-sharing scandals and calls for change to its hands-off approach to content moderation. It is keeping the focus of its new Portal line on video calling, adding the capability for WhatsApp calls along with improvements to a wide-angle camera that keeps users in focus as they move about a room. Facebook is also expanding Portal sales into countries including the UK, France and Australia, while lowering prices to more closely compete with industry-leading smart speakers from Amazon and Google that sell for under $100.
- Bloomberg
Facebook's Bosworth on New Generation of Portal Devices
Sep.18 -- Facebook Inc. has unveiled a new generation of portal devices that have lower prices and the ability for users to opt-out of the company reviewing voice recordings collected by the hardware. Facebook's Vice President for Augmented and Virtual Reality Andrew Bosworth, who also oversees hardware at the company, speaks with Bloomberg's Taylor Riggs.
