*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).
Apple says it will build a $1 billion new campus in Austin, Tex. that would almost double the size of its current footprint in the city, with the room to house as many as 15,000 new jobs.
2018 was a year of serious advancement in tech. It brought us more driver-less cars, Bitcoin adoption, and more A.I. But as the year dwindles, we're looking to the future, not the past. As we gaze into Cheddar's Crystal Ball, here are our top five picks for the technology that is most likely to advance even further in 2019.
The e-scooter market is steadily growing more competitive, but Spin's leader isn't fazed ー he's got Ford on his side. "We've got a great capital backer, a company that believes in the long-term vision that we have," Euwyn Poon, co-founder and president of Spin, told Cheddar Wednesday. "And I think we're the company that's going to be here to stay."
Ray J has built an unconventional career to say the least, but the musician and television personality-turned entrepreneur ー and new father ー says he has turned over a new leaf in his personal and professional life, thanks to a leader who once inspired him: Elon Musk.
Big beverage and big tobacco may be seducing some players in the burgeoning marijuana market, but Canada-based Aurora Cannabis is not one of them. In a Tuesday interview with Cheddar, CEO Terry Booth said it's just too soon for his company, one of the world's largest medical marijuana producers, to jump in bed with a major name in alcohol or tobacco.
As ride-hailing companies Uber and Lyft rush to debut on the public markets, the pressure is on. "You can falter out of the gates, because people don't know how to value a ride-share company," Phil Haslett, founder and chief revenue officer of EquityZen told Cheddar on Tuesday.
Gene Munster isn't worried about Apple. The managing partner of Loup Ventures and venture capitalist told Cheddar Tuesday that the tit-for-tat with Qualcomm over iPhone sales in China is insignificant for Apple's long-term value.
If forced to choose between putting their child in a driverless car or in a vehicle driven by a stranger, the majority of parents, Ford reports, would prefer a non-human to take the wheel. "When we talk about trust, that's somewhere where we see something really jumping out at us," Sheryl Connelly, futurist at Ford, told Cheddar Monday.
Tally is on track to expand its product offering in 2019, Cheddar has learned. “With 2019 ahead of us, we’re laying the foundation for being able to automate beyond credit card debt,” CEO and founder Jason Brown said, potentially referring to savings and investing, or other kinds of debt like student and auto loans.
Apple filed an appeal on Monday to overturn a court-ordered ban on the import and sale of some iPhones in China. Chipmaker Qualcomm requested an injunction against Apple ($AAPL), alleging patent violations on a particular feature that allows users to adjust the size and appearance of photos, and another that manages applications with a touchscreen.
