The 11th Hour Dispatch — Monday, July 16, 2018
YOUNG MONEY
Amazon Prime Day is also a prime day to own Amazon stock. The company’s price hit an all-time high of $1,830.99 this morning while your wallet hit an all-time low of $0.00 (or maybe more! I don’t know your credit situation). The 36-hour event is estimated to bring in $3.6 billion for Amazon, which is a substantial jump from last year’s $2.4 billion. Credit Suisse also upgraded Amazon’s price target to $2,000 in the next 12 months because of the initiative. Amazon’s stock is up a whopping 54% since the beginning of this year.
BINGE WATCH
The Washington Post has launched a news channel on Twitch. The esteemed publication’s first stream on the platform frequented by Mountain Dew-fueled homebodies was hosted by correspondent Libby Casey and covered President Donald Trump’s meeting with Vladimir Putin. The series Playing Games with Politicians hosted by political reporter Dave Weigel also aired. All jokes aside, this is likely a smart move, and it’s not The Post’s first rodeo on the service. Back when Mark Zuckerberg was cowering in front of Congress, the newspaper streamed the hearings and analyses, which according to Deputy Director of Video Phoebe Connelly proved “interest in news and analysis on the service.” As more users pour into Twitch by the day, more diverse programming is likely to pop up, and this move will put The Post ahead of the game.
BIG BUSINESS
It’s such a sad day to be a celebrity that’s drowning in money and social media followers. The so-called “Twitter Purge” — a decision to exclude “locked” accounts that had previously been deemed suspicious from follower totals — has removed “tens of millions” of accounts from the platform, most notably for accounts with high follower totals. Just last night, the top nine accounts on the platform (Katy Perry, Justin Bieber, Barack Obama, Rihanna, Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, Ellen Degeneres, Christiano Ronaldo, and the big bad YouTube) each lost more than 2 million. Twitter’s corporate account itself, the 16th most popular on the platform, lost 7 million followers. And while any number in the millions is definitely not insignificant, most are not a massive deal in comparison to the top accounts’ total follower counts. For example, Katy Perry, who pre-Purge had 109 million followers, only lost around 2.6% of her total. They’ll be fine. Us disgusting regular people, on the other hand, may have just lost 1–4 followers. Ouch.
NOTHIN’ BUT ‘NET
The New York Public Library announced its new Culture Pass, which allows you to visit “cultural institutions” (i.e. museums if you’re not an egomaniac) for free with a library card.
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