Notizie

Snapchat's disappearing market cap.

How Snap went from golden child to sinking sister is one of the abiding mysteries of the digital-media industry. But its combustible mix of promising technology, teen adoration, "olds" mystification, management missteps, and stockholder disaffection has sent share prices to all-time lows and speculation about the company's future to all-time highs.

Early last week, Snap announced a notable partnership with Amazon: Point your app at a product or bar code, and Amazon will serve up information on the Snapchat screen. It's easy to imagine the promising directions this could take: in-app purchases through Amazon, with affiliate-marketing fees for Snap and creators; new kinds of branded and sponsorship deals; augmented-/virtual-reality shopping malls. Snap also rolled out three other shoppable-ad features last week.

But Snap's shares kept flagging after the announcement, dropping to a miserable $8.41 per share by Friday morning (it closed at $8.48). That's down...

Major Hollywood and technology investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal has been freed from detention by the Saudi government. He had been held since November on somewhat nebulous corruption charges, along with several other prominent Saudi royalty and business people. Alwaleed bin Talal and his fellow detainees weren’t doing hard time. They were ensconced at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh, a luxury hotel that serves as an international business hub. Alwaleed is the…...

Major Hollywood and technology investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal has been freed from detention by the Saudi government. He had been held since November on somewhat nebulous corruption charges, along with several other prominent Saudi royalty and business people. Alwaleed bin Talal and his fellow detainees weren’t doing hard time. They were ensconced at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh, a luxury hotel that serves as an international business hub. Alwaleed is the…...