*By Conor White*
After losing $136 billion in market cap in less than a week, Facebook is looking for ways to reinvigorate its outlook at a time of slowing ad revenue growth, [continued fallout](https://cheddar.com/videos/facebook-stock-crushed-after-disappointing-earnings) from the Cambridge Analytical data privacy scandal, and the [latest revelation](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/31/us/politics/facebook-political-campaign-midterms.html) Tuesday that it's detected attempts to influence this November's midterm elections.
"It's been a long 2018 for Facebook," said Madison Malone Kircher, an associate editor at New York Magazine. "Which brings us to the one thing Facebook is doing right, and that's the Stories platform. It works really well on Instagram, which Facebook owns, and they've really been trying to push to make it work on Facebook."
Instagram Stories has 400 million daily users, double the number of users of rival Snapchat, and Facebook has been trying to lure advertisers to the Stories platform.
Kircher said in an interview Tuesday with Cheddar that neither of the social media companies has figured out how to make user-generated stories on their platforms profitable.
"Snapchat, which is the creator of this style of posting, has also struggled with it," Kircher said. "They rolled out a new platform called 'Commercials' this week, which is similarly trying to figure out how to sell ads against this style of content."
In the end, Kircher said Facebook can push Stories to advertisers all it wants, but it won't be successful until it's popular with users.
"It's a two-fold problem Facebook has," Kircher said. "One, trying to convince advertisers to buy ads in this space, but first they have to figure out how to get us to use it."
For more on this story, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/facebook-pushing-stories-feature-to-advertisers).
Ed Butowsky, managing partner at Chapwood Investments, joined Wake Up With Cheddar to break down the disappointing takeaways from Spotify's Q4 earnings report, which sent the stock plunging.
Google parent company Alphabet saw yet another successful quarter reporting its final earnings report for 2021 on Tuesday. The tech giant beat Wall Street expectations across the board with much of that success owed to not only the growth of its cloud business, but also its multi-platform advertising. Joanna O'Connell, Principal Analyst at Forrester explains why advertising may be one of the keys to Alphabet’s future success.
Solid-state battery maker Factorial Energy recently raised $200 million in a Series D round led by Mercedes-Benz and Stellantis. Factorial says the funding will be used to accelerate commercial production and deployment of its solid-state battery technology, which the company says is safer, and offers up to 50% more driving range than current lithium-ion technology. Factorial also has joint development agreements (announced in late 2021) with Mercedes-Benz, Stellantis, and Hyundai, three of the top 10 global automotive manufacturers, to commercialize its batteries. Factorial CEO Siyu Huang joined Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
Google's parent company Alphabet reported blockbuster fourth quarter earnings, boosted by better-than-expected Google ad revenue and Google Cloud revenue. The results sent Alphabet's stock soaring, and the company could come close to hitting a $2 trillion market valuation similar to other tech giants Apple and Microsoft. The company also announced a 20-for-1 stock split, which would make shares more accessible to would-be investors. Mark Lehmann, CEO at JMP Securities, a Citizens Company, joins Closing Bell to discuss Alphabet's earnings report, whether the company will reach a $2 trillion market cap, its stock split, and more.
David Malott, founder and chief architect at AI PlanetWorks joins Cheddar News to discuss the release of its augmented reality NFTs for the metaverse called 'TERA.'
Jess Hunichen and Emily Ward, co-founder of Shine Talent Group join Cheddar News to talk about The BodCon conference and how it empowers men and women to feel confident.
