Wheelhouse’s Weekly Top 5 | July 23 – 27
Industry Report July 23 – 27
Top 5 Marketing, Advertising, Social Media & Life Happenings This Week
Facebook Scandals Hit Wall Street: I’m not much of a stock market person, like, at all, but I do feel like a drop of 20 percent in one day for a company as big as Facebook is *kind* of a big deal. After months of scandals regarding the company’s failure to protect users’ privacy and their recent changes to rules for advertisers, the social media giant is seeing some kickback.
Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that the company’s shares fell the most in its history as a public company, wiping out more than $120 billion in market value. BILLION. That is so much money. It also marks the largest ever loss of value in one day for a U.S. traded company. Let’s see now how Zuckerberg and his team handle this going forward – there isn’t much they can do now but keep talking to Congress and make sure they don’t lose most of their investors.
If you’re interested in seeing how to weather these changes, Entrepreneur put together a helpful video to make sure your ads are still being seen on Facebook.
Chick-fil-A Eases Into the Meal Kit Industry: Great news – starting August 27, the city of Atlanta will be the lucky recipients of a Chick-fil-A testing project for meal delivery service.
Anyway, they announced on Monday in a press release on the “Chicken Wire” that they’re going to be asking Atlanta-area customers to test a brand-new meal delivery concept. The kits will include a rotation of five meal recipes: Chicken Parmesan, Chicken Enchiladas, Dijon Chicken, Pan Roasted Chicken and Chicken Flatbread. CHICKEN, CHICKEN, CHICKEN! Each meal kit serves two people and will cost you a whopping $15.89. If you’re familiar with Home Chef, Hello Fresh or Blue Apron, you know that Chick-fil-A’s option is WAY cheaper. We shall see how this goes but I am definitely interested in making some of that chicken at my house!
Waymo Partners with Walmart to Bring Customers in to Pick Up Their Groceries: As if grocery delivery wasn’t already convenient enough, Waymo, who’s parent company is Google’s Alphabet, announced on Wednesday that it’ll begin a pilot program to shuttle customers to and from Walmart stores to pick up their groceries, reports The Washington Post. Waymo is looking to work with more and more companies to offer convenience to customers while driving business to their company partners.
This pilot program will take place in Phoenix for customers who order from Walmart.com and they will even receive a 15 percent discount – sounds pretty peachy, eh? Car rental companies, repair shops and hotels are getting in on the action too – loaning people Waymo cars instead of regular rental cars, for example. This is one giant step for mankind in the autonomous car world, this is something that could absolutely take off if executed correctly.
Snapchat to Shut Down ‘Snapcash’ Payment Service: Venmo, Chase Pay, Zelle, Paypal, Square Cash…these are just a few brands that come to mind when my friend says, “hey can you please pay me for that pizza we ordered last week?”. From the beginning, Venmo has made a name for itself in mobile payment app marketplace and is widely one of the most popular peer-to-peer money transfer services. One that did not fare so well, however, is Snapcash. It was rolled out back in 2014 as a peer-to-peer money transfer service when the messaging app was at its peak of popularity, The Verge reports. The service was backed by Square and will be ending on August 30. Snapchat is now saying they will be focusing on making the app easier to use, especially since their re-design a few months back infuriated most users, some even quit using it altogether.
If you even knew this was a possibility (I did not) then I am sorry to tell you you’ll have to move on, but luckily there are other fish in the mobile payment system sea.
LinkedIn Adds Voice Message Feature: If you’re a frequent user of LinkedIn, this message is for you: you can now send voice messages to your biz contacts. Though only available on your phone for now, these may move over to the desktop/tablet space should this new venture work out. Personally, I think this is really awkward and also random for the platform that has made a name for itself based solely on being professional (and for helping people get new jobs). The upside to it would be that you can send a potential employer a voice message as opposed to cold-calling and letting them know a little more about you.
I’ll probably try it out, but mostly just with my friends to mess with them because honestly, I don’t use LinkedIn for much but their daily rundowns which help me write this blog every week!
*We will be taking a hiatus next week for this blog because I will be on vacation at the beach getting a lot of sun and not focusing on work!
