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Speculation has been swirling all month that Twitter (NYSE: TWTR) might jump on the subscription bandwagon, following many of its tech peers into the realm of high-margin, recurring revenue. A job listing vaguely referenced a subscription platform that the company was building.

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Technology firms were slipping premarket Friday. The Technology Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLK) was over 1% lower and the SPDR S&P Semiconductor (XSD) was down more than 3% in recent trading.

U.S. stock index futures fell on Friday following heightened tensions between the United States and China, and as Intel's shares slumped after reporting a delay in a developing new chip technology.

Snap (NYSE: SNAP), the parent company of Snapchat, recently posted its second-quarter earnings. Its revenue rose 17% annually to $454 million, beating estimates by nearly $10 million.

With the year more than half over, the coronavirus continues to dominate the never-ending news cycle. Yet in the face of high unemployment and an uncertain future, Wall Street continues to press on, with the major indexes shaking off the bad news and climbing higher with each pa

A much-anticipated deep dive into antitrust allegations against four of America's largest tech companies and recommendations on how to tame their market power could be released by late summer or early fall from the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee's antitrust panel, senior committee aides said.

A U.S. congressional hearing scheduled for next week to question the CEOs of Facebook Inc, Amazon.com Inc, Google parent Alphabet Inc and Apple Inc is set to be delayed, according to sources familiar with the matter.

A U.S. congressional hearing scheduled for next week to question the CEOs of Facebook Inc, Amazon.com Inc, Google parent Alphabet Inc and Apple Inc is set to be delayed, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Asian markets are set to open mostly lower on Friday as China vowed to retaliate against a U.S. order to close one of its consulates, and the American equity markets fell on gloomy data about its labor market.

Once again, social media giant Facebook (FB) has found itself embroiled in controversy. This time, the negative sentiment surrounding the company is related to its inaction when hate speech was used on the platform. Now, as part of the “Stop Hate for Profit” campaign, hundreds of companies have hopped on the boycott bandwagon and pulled their advertising from the platform.

While this turn of events is certainly concerning, how much of an impact will the boycott actually have on the top-line? Five-star analyst Colin Sebastian, of Baird, recently participated in a virtual presentation from Pathmatics, a marketing platform that provides insights related to the digital ad performance of brands and industries, in order to get a sense of the damage. Even though he acknowledges that the data is most likely an indicator and not a “pin-point estimate,” the analyst argues that so far, the effects are relatively in line with expectations.

Expounding on this, Sebastian stated, “While there was a clear drop in spending from some major brand advertisers, we view the update as suggesting the impact from the boycott on the overall Facebook platform will likely be modest, although it is still unclear if more advertisers will join the boycott and/or if it will extend past July. We have noted that Facebook has a long tail of millions of advertisers, and well-known brand advertisers represent a small slide of platform spend.”

Digging a bit deeper into the data itself, Pathmatics reported the leading 500 advertisers trimmed ad spending on Facebook by approximately $80 million from July 1–17, compared to the same period last year.

If this is representative of the boycott as a whole, and the trend continues for the whole month, it would result in a $200 million hit. However, this would account for only 1% of quarterly revenues. Sebastian added, “Separately, Pathmatics data shows a slight uptick in FB/INST pricing (CPMs) in Q2, consistent with our prior field checks.”

Who exactly is part of the boycott? Sebastian tells investors that brands are cutting ad spend the most, although Target has also reduced its spending considerably. According to Pathmatics, 90 of the top 500 advertisers slashed their Facebook ad budgets. The names with the largest drops in spend are Hershey, Mondelez, Diageo, Clorox, Hulu and Samsung.

Additionally, while Facebook has been trying to mitigate the damage, its competitors have been counting the boycott as a win. “... YouTube and Twitter, and to a lesser extent Amazon, are benefiting in July from the boycott. For example, Hulu, Geico and Samsung are allocating more to YouTube; Target, Best Buy and Geico are each increasing spend by 2x or more on Twitter in July,” Sebastian explained.

That said, Sebastian is “constructive on shares as the digital ad market continues a gradual recovery.” To this end, he keeps an Outperform rating and $300 price target on the stock. Shares could appreciate by 29%, should the analyst’s thesis play out in the coming months. (To watch Sebastian’s track record, click here)

Judging by the consensus breakdown, other analysts also like what they’re seeing. 29 Buys and 5 Holds add up to a Strong Buy consensus rating. Based on the $258.78 average price target, the upside potential comes in at 11%. (See Facebook stock-price forecast on TipRanks)

To find good ideas for stocks trading at attractive valuations, visit TipRanks’ Best Stocks to Buy, a newly launched tool that unites all of TipRanks’ equity insights.

The S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) lost 40.4 points, or 1.2%, on July 23, breaking a streak of positive days in the second half of the month. Today's sell-off came after the Department of Labor reported that 1.42 million people filed for unemployment last week. That's 100,000 h

In this episode of Motley Fool Answers, Alison Southwick is joined by Motley Fool contributor, Dan Kline, and Personal Finance Expert, Robert Brokamp, to talk about privacy and scams. They discuss privacy concerns around apps and social media, a recent hacking, and how it could

The dollar slipped to an almost two-year low and gold rose further on Thursday as a gauge of global equities retreated on concerns about a potential probe of Apple Inc, which knocked the wind out of the high-flying tech sector.

Senators Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren and five other Democratic senators on Thursday urged the Justice Department to be cautious in reviewing Google's planned purchase of Fitbit, saying the tech giant had already cemented its dominance in some areas through acquisitions.

The dollar slipped to an almost two-year low and gold rose further on Thursday as a gauge of global equities retreated on concerns about a potential probe of Apple Inc took the wind out of the high-flying tech sector.

The chief executives of four of the largest U.S. tech companies plan to deflect criticism next week in a Congressional hearing into their use of market power to hurt rivals by saying they themselves face competition and by debunking claims they are so dominant.

Not so long ago, advertising executives were banking on the start of an industry recovery as early as the third quarter after the global coronavirus pandemic decimated marketing budgets this year.

Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) launched Hobbi, an app for curating interests and activities, to challenge Pinterest (NYSE: PINS) back in February. However, the app was only downloaded about 7,000 times in the U.S., according to Sensor Tower, and Facebook quietly killed it off on July 1