Twitter might be acquired within the next year, says one top analyst, but it must turn its product around first.
“This is about a better product that advertisers feel more comfortable buying, with more brand-safe video inventory, that Matt Derella and team are selling,” Rich Greenfield, analyst and managing editor at BTIG, told Cheddar, referring to the company’s VP of revenue. “This is set up to work very well in 2018.”
Twitter’s stock has risen about 37 percent in the last year, but news that COO Anthony Noto resigned his post sent shares down more than two percent on Tuesday.
Still Greenfield says that CEO Jack Dorsey will be able to propel growth at the company. He dismissed concerns that Dorsey, also CEO of Square, may be distracted by his other obligations.
“Jack is still very much invested, and very much a believer,” he said. “I think he has benefited from Noto’s ability to help focus the company on the core Twitter product and get rid of some of the distractions that were problematic for the company 18 months ago, two years ago.”
Noto, a former Goldman Sachs investment banker who joined Twitter as its financial chief in 2014, took over the COO role in November 2016. He will take over as CEO at digital lender SoFi in March.
For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/what-anthony-noto-out-at-twitter-means-for-company).
Joe Cecela, Dream Exchange CEO, explains how they are aiming to form the first minority-controlled company to operate an exchange in U.S. history. Watch!
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
