Ever asked yourself this question? : Is this picture Pinterest worthy?
The key to it, is when you ask ‘What is Pinterest?’ The answer lies in the question posted above. It is a visual search engine. Yes, you read that correctly. Many times, we mistake it for a social media platform that helps you connect.
It was co-founded by Ben Silbermann, Evan Sharp, and Paul Sciarra. Silbermann, the CEO, is a former Google employee in AdSense and studied at Yale. The application was launched back in March 2010.
The app now has more than 500+ employees, available on three platforms: Web, Android, and iOS, in 30+ languages. It is located in San Francisco, with headquarters in CA. And offices in New York and Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Berlin, and more, to name a few.
The app is based on the key message that:
It starts with a great idea.
Lets take a look at the interesting facts and stats about Pinterest:
The girlfriend of Silbermans came up with the name Pinterest and the site was first launched in 2010 as a beta. Gradually they opened up the site on an invitation-only basis.
Team go big, or go home, the app made it to TIME magazines, listing it as one of the best websites, among the top 50. Just a year after its launch! And since then, it has been breaking records.
It does not matter if you are a blogger, using the app for marketing or to drive traffic to your website. Pinterest has half of its traffic driven from mobile devices and the active 85% of pinners use the app to save their pins.
Tip: Creator’s alert! You all need to use and design layouts for your Pins that are more mobile friendly.
Pinterest is more popular than you think
The number of people under the age of twenty-five is rapidly growing. It has doubled since 2020. Snapchat has 280 million annual users and Twitter has 186 million. Pinterest has more monthly active users now than these two combined. It is gaining popularity and running ahead of Twitter and Snapchat in the long haul.
Pinterest taking it up a notch
Number of monthly active Pinterest users worldwide
Pinterest had around 320 million active monthly users in the last year. And now they have around 459 million of them. We are looking at a growth of almost 100 million users here. The app is really taking it a step up.
60% of the audience that uses Pinterest are women
60% of the audience that uses Pinterest are women, plus 4 in 5 moms in the United States look for products to buy, and ideas actively, Have a business that sells products that targets mums? You know what to do.
The International Community on Pinterest has a wider scope
Around 74% of the audience falls under the age group of 18-44 years. Not to forget it’s becoming popular among younger generations, too. Now that you know the secret, use it wisely. If you need to know the target group of your brand. But do not forget, the target audience always consists of both your loyal customers and your potential consumers too.
The platform has huge potential to reach a wider range of audiences. 50% of app users live outside the U.S. Curating content for the platform? Think again.
77% of active Pinterest users discover new products or brands on Pinterest
Pinterest ads are relatively 2.3× cheaper per conversion (when your audience takes an action, like contacting your organization or making an online purchase) compared to other social media ads. Adding to the benefits, the users on the app are 3× more likely to click through on your website to get to know more about it. Besides, 77% of active Pinterest users have discovered new products or brands through Pinterest.
The app has the potential to be a search engine
Pinterest search is a core element of Pinterest. Pinterest does not call itself a social network. Sounds strange, right, but it’s true.
The huge tech giant company continues to grow and thrive with its unique features.
The Clubhouse app has around 2.6 million users in India and has become a sensational social media platform during the pandemic. In the past few months, it has emerged as one of the most popular platforms. There are around millions of users who use the clubhouse and the discussion rooms to discuss over various topics. But India’s Digital Rights advocacy groups have raised concerns over privacy about the audio based social media platform. In this article let’s look at more information about it.
Internet Freedom Foundation has accused the popular audio-only platform of collecting excessive data and undermining the right to privacy based on information. The foundation added that the social media platform’s practices are against the principle of data minimization and informed consent.
In a blog post, the Internet Freedom Foundation has conveyed that it collects more data than the required amount in order to provide the services.
Information collected by Clubhouse according to IFF
The Internet Freedom Foundation has stated that the social media platform, Clubhouse collects information such as name, address, contact details, phone numbers, IP address, OS, device name, time, duration and the frequency on the people interact with and the duration of use. Other than these when people link other platforms to Clubhouse, the application also collects information that is shared on those platforms.
Based on certain authorizations the platform also collects phone numbers on the contact list even of those people who are not even part of the social media platform.
What does Clubhouse do with the collected data according to IFF?
IFF has stated that the social media platform collects the user data and shares them with third parties and the government and also stated that there is no policy that will prevent the platform from monetizing this information.
The group had also accused Clubhouse of failing to add a proper privacy policy in place which has led to a spread of wide hate, privacy violations and security incidents on the platforms. However, the social media platform claims to record all the conversations for investigation purposes and also claims to delete the audio immediately. There is no proper clarity provided around the entire process.
IFF’s Suggestion to Clubhouse
The Internet Freedom Foundation has asked Clubhouse to provide human rights policy and to volunteer themselves for an audit towards civil rights to make sure that the platform is respectful of the rights related to digital and to enable users to understand how the platform has accountability in regards to human rights in its governance of the platform.
IFF has laid down a suggestion in order to conduct a periodic audit in regards to civil rights to check on the efforts of the clubhouse to defend and respect the human rights on its social media platform and also to evaluate, How Clubhouse has complied with the guidelines of community and privacy policies.
IFF has conveyed that the organization believed that civil rights audits on social media platforms and entities are really important. They added that in this era these platforms and entities hold a really great power in relation to regulating speech and added that it is important to conduct an independent evaluation on how such regulation takes place.
An audit on the comprehensive human rights is the only way to mitigate the threat of hate and disinformation on one side and on the other side surveillance from the state or corporate. The IFF has also filed an advocacy group with the home ministry asking the law enforcement agencies in order to grant the permission to monitor clubhouse conversations such as the Intelligence and the Narcotics Bureaus.
Conclusion
The social media platform has a major power in relation to a lot of aspects in relation to politics and economics in a particular country. The privacy policy and the misusage of the collected data provide a huge concern for the users of a platform.
FAQ
Does Clubhouse have privacy?
You cannot record conversations on Clubhouse, But Clubhouse can, and does, record what you say. The app’s privacy policy says that Clubhouse rooms are recorded: Solely for the purpose of supporting incident investigations, we temporarily record the audio in a room while the room is live
Is Clubhouse app secure?
Researchers at the Stanford Internet Observatory discovered that Clubhouse user and chat-room IDs were being sent to servers unencrypted — considered a poor security practice for any app.
What is the valuation of Clubhouse?
The valuation of Clubhouse is $4 billion after its latest funding round.
The corporate world epitomizes the classic Tom and Jerry cartoon for me. Everyone is chasing someone and then the bigger Dog comes to take the prize away. The story is especially similar in the stock market, and it scripts the rise and fall of many major companies.
There is always history being created with the buying and selling of shares. The recent battle between modern-day online investors and multimillion-dollar hedge funds came to light with GameStop. Let us delve into this bizarre tale.
GameStop was officially born in 2000 while tracing its roots to Babbage’s Etc. founded in 1984. GameStop Corp. operates retail outlets specializing in selling video games. Electricals and gaming related merchandise. The company is headquartered near Dallas, Texas USA.
GameStop has the honor of being the largest video games retailer having shops across United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe. It was a successful business model, however with the advent of the online storefront and some failed investments, its fortunes have somewhat declined in the last decade. Also, it hasn’t been doing very well in the pandemic either.
So what happened that its share price skyrocketed? Well, that is the story.
However, we need to understand a bit more about the related parties that played major roles.
Are you on Social Media? Like Facebook or Twitter, well Reddit is also a social platform where users post content. This is then upvoted or downvoted and rankings happen. You can create your own community to discuss or share things that you like, for example, football, technology, or anything specific.
Any discussion or post also feeds into the main section of Reddit. So, in simplest terms, it is like a giant forum, divided into many sub-forums. Around 500 million people visit the site every month. It lives up to its motto “Front page of the internet” and is the sixth most commonly visited site on the internet.
How is Reddit related to GameStop?
Reddit and GameStop relationship
The important link in this story is a forum on Reddit called wallstreetbets. This community had more than four million members focused on discussing the share market, stock, shares, and investment.
It was this community that decided to challenge the big investing Hedge funds to create a short squeeze.
Getting too technical? Let us make it simple.
We know GameStop was not thriving and with the pandemic, people were more inclined to
do shopping online, so the position of GameStop was not great. The large traders in the stock market do betting on the performance of such companies doing well or failing. They then borrow shares in these companies and sell them promising to buy these back later. The premise here is that they would be able to buy back at a lower rate and return it to the owner. The investor (hedge Fund) would end up pocketing the difference as profit.
This would have been the case with GameStop if wallstreetbets had decided not to intervene.
The technical Terms
Let us learn the technical terms first and then discuss more details.
Hedge Funds: Hedge Funds are non-traditional or alternative investments using funds in one portfolio collected from different investors, (Pooled funds) that employ different strategies to earn a profit. They are aggressively managed to have leverage in domestic and international markets to earn high returns. The access is usually for accredited investors only as they are less regulated.
Short Selling: Short Selling is a way of profiting when the value of an asset i.e., Gold, Silver, Oil, or shares falls. A short Seller (mainly big investors) borrows stocks or assets from the owner for a token fee. Then, the seller sells it at market price with a promise to buy these back later. The short seller intends to buy it back later assuming these will fall in price. So, they will have to pay a smaller amount. Once bought, it is then returned to the original owner and the seller would have made a profit or loss depending on the value in the market.
Short Squeeze: A short squeeze occurs when the price of a stock increases unexpectedly especially when sellers expect it to drop. Thus, they have speculated against it and this forces the traders to buy back at a higher price to avoid losses. But this only creates upward pressure on the price, squeezing it even higher.
What happened: The story detail
GameStop was one of the companies that were expected not to perform well and many hedge funds had speculated upon this happening. The share price hit lows of $2.57 in 2020, rising only to about $18.84 by 31st December 2020 as large hedge funds backed the company.
However, there were many including Melvin Capital, Point72, D1 Capital Partners that were short-selling GameStop anticipating it not to perform well and lose a lot of value.
At this juncture, a flurry on amateur investors from the Wallstreetbet forum on Reddit called for people to stockpile these shares. And these small-time investors used their spare cash to buy GameStop shares. Thus, pushing the prices up, more than 1500% at one point, they put the value of the company in Fortune 500 List. The share price reached a high of $350 by 27th January.
This created a short squeeze in the market causing a loss of billions to Hedge Funds that had bet against GameStop. They had to buy back the shares, creating additional demand and pushing the price even higher. By Friday, hedge funds and other short sellers had made an estimated loss of $19 billion.
Not only this but other companies lagging in a performance like MC Entertainment, Koss Corp and BlackBerry, also saw sharp gains in their share prices. They were bolstered by day traders as larger investors bet against them.
The Aftermath
After the unexpected surge in trading of GameStop shares, many trading platforms like Robinhood and interactive brokers curbed the buying and selling of the US Games firm stocks and other similar stocks. These restrictions caused prices to go down by around 55%. This has caused the small investors to be disgruntled by limitations.
The Significance of the GameStop Rally
Short Selling is a common phenomenon in the share market. It is usually big funds and investors fighting over the future of a company. This was probably the first-time small investors have taken the battle to the doorstep.
This single act demonstrates the power of social media and an organized approach. There is free data available easily and it can be transmitted via social media. A united organized and planned approach by small investors was the cause of major losses to bigger fish in the market.
For the Reddit forum, it is being touted as their attempt to break teach a lesson to the large investors. A section of the masses states the aim was to create losses for stockbrokers and hedge funds. Many Reddit users are pointing this to be revenge for creating a financial crisis in yesteryears.
It is very important to remember that these small investors may end up losing funds as the price of GameStop starts downhill, which has already started.
The moral of the story
GameStop’s turbulent journey is a clear show of power that organizing and planning via social media can have and its significant reach among people. It may make the large investing houses think again about betting against a company.
Andrew Left, head of Citron Research admitted after the GameStop fiasco that there would be a change in how hedge funds and short-selling operate as his company made losses in this deal.
The concept of buying and selling stock was a niche to brokers for a long time. However, Share-dealing apps like Robinhood and easy access to information online about companies and trading strategies have opened the field for ordinary small-time investors as well. And They are a force that has to be reckoned with.
This also raises serious questions about the ethics, morality, and legality of collusion among investors to push prices up. While many people were happy seeing the downfall of giants, we have to remember that short term trading is a reality, whether done by small or big investor. Every penny gained by someone is at the cost of loss to someone.
Institutional investors have to be more aware of the mood of the small investor and will have to put in a lot more research into opinions expressed in the forums. Like one short-seller burned by GameStop deal has decided to stop short selling and instead invest in companies with potential for growth rather than bet against them.
Social Media has emerged as a new influence that can cause massive surges in the market, especially posts by influencers. However, critics warn that one would be wise not to follow these advisories blindly. There is a conflict of interest rife within the investment houses and the expert opinion usually are aligned to one of the companies.
There has been a surge in amateur investing during the pandemic as people were stuck at home and had time on their hands. They poured time and money into learning more about investing. This has a rippling effect as they trade in stocks and risks without understanding them fully.
The availability of apps for trading is another grave factor to be considered. While the savvy investor can earn a profit, but inexperienced and ill-informed investors may not only lose funds but also will not be protected by any legislation or law.
Similarly, hedge funds are also less regulated than other funds like mutual funds. The aggressive strategies used by them are not always completely transparent. GameStop incident was seen as a public way to punish the perpetrators of morally dubious practices. There is a clear need for more stringent rules to curb such trading practices.
The Tesla Boss enjoys tweeting and has been known to feud with short-sellers. And when he decides to tweet everyone takes notice. He threw in his gauntlet in the fray saying “Here come the shorty apologists. Give them no respect. Get shorty” and another on Tuesday “Gamestonk!!” was enough to send the price up again.
Niharika Kalyankar
