*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).
From Wall Street to Silicon Valley, these are the top stories that moved markets and had investors, business leaders, and entrepreneurs talking this week on Cheddar.
Samsara, one of the hottest tech startups in the freight and logistics space, is raising $100 million in fresh funding, Cheddar has learned. The new round will value the three-year-old startup at about $3.6 billion, or more than double the valuation it achieved through its last round of funding just nine months ago.
As 2018 dwindles, we're reviewing the year's most extravagant fails as part of Cheddar's Hall of Shame.
With oil prices nearing 18-month lows, John Hofmeister, former president of Shell Oil, is worried about the negative impact of lower prices. In fact, he says, if prices drop below
$40 a barrel, the cost of production will exceed the revenue it brings. That said, Hofmeister noted that lower oil prices are having a big impact on the consumer. People are driving more, and the impact hits everything from plastics to clothing and air fares.
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Friday, Dec. 28, 2018.
Instagram accidentally released an update to its app on Thursday, enraging users and igniting a firestorm on social media. The social media platform, which hit 1 billion users in June, modified how users view their main feeds ー switching from a vertical scroll to a horizontal swipe, à la popular dating app, Tinder.
When U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions moved to undermine Obama-era marijuana industry protections in January, there was little indication how pivotal 2018 would prove to be for the cannabis industry. As 2019 approaches, Cheddar is now looking ahead to next year and forecasting what's in store for the U.S. marijuana industry.
Body-care brand Busy Beauty wants over-taxed women to spend less time on primping. "We developed a full line of products that let women completely skip the shower if they either don't feel like it or don't have the time," said Jamie Steenbakkers, the company's co-founder and COO.
The chief strategist of Bubba Trading is casting doubt on the demand for Tesla's Model 3. "I don't know that I necessarily agree with there's demand there," Bubba Trading's Todd Horwiz told Cheddar Wednesday. "I think it's a great car. I think it's a great concept. I think it's an extremely overvalued company, and I think the CEO has got some issues that he's got to deal with."
Roughly five years ago, Detroit made history as the largest city to ever file for municipal bankruptcy. But in 2018, the Motor City is teaching itself how to transform from America's factory into an engine for innovation. According to start-up incubator TechTown CEO and president Ned Staebler, adjustments to the city's economy and the value of its labor supply could begin a tech-based rebirth, a future when automobiles are not just considered vessels of transportation, but rather as pieces of the revolution.
