6 Most Important Things in Business Today

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 12, 6:32AM EST · Published Nov 8, 5:25AM EST

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Snap Inc. (NYSE: SNAP) shares fell almost 20% after the social media company missed earnings forecasts badly. The drop is another setback for the firm, which had a highly anticipated initial public offering less than a year ago.

The Wall Street Journal reports that a corruption investigation by Saudi Arabia could be a financial windfall for the government. Reporters wrote:

The Saudi government is aiming to confiscate cash and other assets worth as much as $800 billion in its crackdown on alleged corruption among the kingdom’s elite

Alphabet Inc.’s (NASDAQ: GOOGL) Waymo self-driving car unit has advanced to the point where its technology can operate a vehicle without anyone at the wheel. In a blog, management announced:

After more than eight years of development, we’re taking the next step toward unlocking the potential of fully self-driving technology. Starting now, Waymo’s fully self-driving vehicles — our safest, most advanced vehicles on the road today — are test-driving on public roads, without anyone in the driver’s seat. To date, Waymo vehicles have been operating on public roads with a test driver at the wheel. Now, in an area of the Phoenix metro region, a subset of our fleet will operate in fully autonomous mode, with Waymo as the sole driver

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China social chat company Weibo Corp. (NASDAQ: WB) has posted explosive user growth, passing Twitter Inc. (NYSE: TWTR). According to Bloomberg editors:

Weibo Corp. reported on Tuesday that it had 376 million global monthly active users during the third quarter. That’s 46 million more than its U.S. rival Twitter Inc. On the company’s earnings call, executives attributed the growth to partnerships with Chinese smartphone makers, successful marketing to the nation’s college campuses and the release of Weibo light to accommodate users in “lower tier cities” with slower Internet speeds.

China’s trade surplus with the United States recently narrowed, according to the Reuters:

China’s trade surplus with the U.S. fell to $26.62 billion in October from $28.08 billion in September, the Customs department reported on Wednesday ahead of President Donald Trump’s visit to the country.

China’s trade surplus with the U.S. was $222.98 billion in the first 10 months of 2017, Customs added.

Twitter has increased the number of characters people can use in a tweet. According to editors at CNNMoney:

Twitter rolled out a 280 character limit for most of its users Tuesday, and, predictably, lots of people are unhappy.

That doubles the original 140 character limit that Twitter has maintained since it launched in 2006.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.