Author: Tim Frederick

Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB)’s decision to begin testing the use of Satire tags on satirical articles has been an issue of heated debate over the past few days. That debate was continued on Bloomberg today, where analysts discussed the necessity of such a tag. “I think Facebook’s trying to clear up for the large universe of billions of people who don’t quite know what they’re getting into, what they’re actually seeing,” said Nieman Journalism Lab Director Joshua Benton. Benton went on to describe a recent article on Clickhole about tragedies that had been predicted ahead of time by Adam Sandler in…

Rackspace Hosting, Inc. (NYSE:RAX) shares have jumped 2% today on a fresh round of rumors that Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE:HPQ) is interested in purchasing the cloud services company; rumors which HP has subsequently denied according to re/code. Rackspace Hosting, Inc. (NYSE:RAX) shares also spiked briefly in early July on rumors that Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE:HPQ) had made an offer to buy the company valued at $43 per share; rumors which also turned out to be false. At the time, International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM) was thought to be another potential suitor for Rackspace that had made a bid for the company. Rackspace Hosting,…

Intuit Inc. (NASDAQ:INTU)’s President and CEO Brad Smith spoke with Jon Fortt on CNBC today and discussed the company’s most recent earnings report and their organizational shift to a cloud and mobile-based service company. “[…] We are accelerating to the cloud, we have over 30 million of our 45 million customers already in the cloud, and quarter over quarter it continues to grow. In small business this quarter we grew 40% in terms of subscriber growth, up from 36% the prior quarter. And outside the United States the growth was over 150%,” Smith said. Intuit Inc. (NASDAQ:INTU) is the accounting…

Family Dollar Stores, Inc. (NYSE:FDO)’s rejection of the $8.9 billion takeover offer made by Dollar General Corp. (NYSE:DG), in favor of the $8.5 billion one made earlier by Dollar Tree, Inc. (NASDAQ:DLTR) is likely to initiate a bidding war for the discount retailer. According to Kleinberg Kaplan attorney Christopher Davis on Bloomberg today however, Family Dollar Stores, Inc. (NYSE:FDO) may be setting themselves up by completely disregarding price in the matter. “Greater certainty of consummation, which is one of the things a board is entitled to look at, and should be looking at to protect its shareholders, but they’ve also…

Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR)’s Engineering Blog released a new post yesterday detailing their new menace to spam tweets, BotMaker. The spam fighter (not to be confused with the Nippon Ham Fighters) monitors billions of tweets daily, many of them in real-time as they’re being written, as its use thus far has resulted in a 40% reduction in one of the metrics Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) uses to track spam. Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR)’s real-time spam detection is called “scarecrow”, and runs in low latency so as not to interfere with the speed with which tweets appear in users’ feeds, a far more important consideration than it is…

Gilead Sciences, Inc.(NASDAQ:GILD) came under the spotlight of Jim Cramer’s Stop Trading segment today on CNBC, and the investor showed confidence in the company and stock, despite the potential threat of increased competition in the Hepatitis C treatment market from AbbVie Inc (NYSE:ABBV). “It [Gilead Sciences, Inc.(NASDAQ:GILD)] could be selling at ten times earnings. If the insurers pay, and there is no competition; and the FDA doesn’t like to approve me-too drugs, when they’ve got a drug that’s working. So just keep this in mind as you see Gilead go higher, there’s a lot of growth money in it, and…

Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC)’s most recent quarterly results were largely impressive, as the chipmaker beat expectations with revenue of $13.8 billion and net income of $2.8 billion. However, one glaring weakness was the company’s mobile division, whose revenue fell to just $51 million, a steep 83% drop from the year-ago quarter. As Investors.com reports, RBC Capital Markets’ analyst Doug Freedman has a solution for Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC)’s lagging mobile division: purchase Taiwan’s MediaTek. The analyst made his comments/recommendations yesterday in a research report, which showed that Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) would create more than twice as much shareholder value ($27 billion) through…

Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA)’s stock, which currently values the company at $30 billion, continues to be the subject of much debate. Proponents believe the electric automaker will change the world, while detractors believe the company’s stock has blown well past a reasonable point that can be justified by anything but rose-colored glasses. As Michael Santoli said today on Yahoo! Finance, the optimism in Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA)’s stock is like a perfect storm comprised of many factors, the most notable of which is Elon Musk himself. “I think there’s a really tiny number of companies out there that are run by this…

Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) has been no stranger to dabbling in various niches and creating new products that at times raise eyebrows and even skepticism. The tech giant has a clear focus behind each product launch, though, as was discussed on Bloomberg West yesterday, and that is to build firstly a product that many people will love, and worry about monetization later. “[…] I think part of what’s interesting about Google’s business is that you really can’t make an interesting business unless you have scale; unless you have a product that people use, because you’re monetizing at pennies per ad click here…

Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC)’s stock has had a banner 52 weeks, rising more than 50% over the last year to begin the day at $34.23. Those gains are no fluke, and according to TheStreet Ratings team, the stock is poised to continue rising even further, achieving a rating score of A+ and a “Buy” rating from them. What makes Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) so attractive? There are a few key points their analysis lists as determing factors in why Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) should continue to trend upwards for the foreseeable future. Firstly is their massive earnings growth, a 40% surge to $2.8 billion…

eBay Inc (NASDAQ:EBAY) has recently taken the step of lowering the charges on their take rate from tickets sold through StubHub, a move they felt was necessary after their competitors did so during the second quarter this year. As Market Realist wrote in an article on Yahoo! Finance, the move will lead to lower margins and presumably lower revenue (in lieu of unaccounted for higher sales) for the ticket reseller, which eBay Inc (NASDAQ:EBAY) purchased for $310 million in 2007. eBay Inc (NASDAQ:EBAY) has also made the move to a new, more transparent pricing model for StubHub this year, called…

With the 10-year anniversary of Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL)’s IPO upon us, there has been a good deal of reflection upon the technology giant’s exploits and growth over the past decade, as well as what the next decade will bring. David Vise, author of 2005’s The Google Story, is well positioned to discuss both, and did so on CNBC earlier today. “[…] As you look towards the future, you’ll see Google with the operating system that we’ll be using in cars, it’ll be providing information there. You’re going to see Google doing a mammoth job in health care, where it’ll be possible…