The 11th Hour Dispatch — Thursday, August 2, 2018
YOUNG MONEY
Apple made history today, and no it wasn’t for selling the most products that look like they were ripped straight out of spaceships. The company officially became the first public company in the U.S. to hit a $1 trillion valuation this morning. After reporting better than expected earnings yesterday, the company saw a 6% bump in its stock price, pushing it to that magic number. If you’re looking for a new lucky number, consider it $207.04, which is the share price that pushed the company over the trillion dollar edge. Apple closed the day up 2.92% to $207.39 per share.
BINGE WATCH
Refinery29 and the indie film studio Neon have entered into a film acquisition and distribution partnership. The millennial-focused media brand and the studio behind films like I, Tonya and Three Identical Strangers (which I saw this weekend and was excellent) will focus on films starring women both in-front-of and behind the camera. Films developed from this partnership will likely find themselves on the upcoming Q4 streaming service Channel29, which Refinery29 announced at its Upfront presentation back in May. Refinery29 and Neon already have two films in their distribution slate: Assassination Nation, a reimagining of the Salem witch trials for modern day, and Little Woods, which spotlight middle American women working to overcome the struggles of the region.
BIG BUSINESS
The popular lipsync app Musical.ly has rebranded as TikTok. In case you’re not a preteen who loves to get the attention of their peers online, you may not know that Musical.ly was acquired by the Chinese company ByteDance in November 2017. TikTok was already an existing ByteDance app (and not the Ke$ha song I’m being told). Musical.ly has simply been absorbed into the previously existing app. Its function will more or less remain the same. This move is reportedly part of ByteDance’s U.S. expansion strategy — and given that TikTok was the world’s most downloaded iOS app in Q1, it’s likely not a bad wager.
NOTHIN’ BUT ‘NET
The now infamous IHOb campaign quadrupled the pancake chain’s burger sales.
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