Category: Company News

Twitter Chief Executive Jack Dorsey said his microblogging site is mulling a new feature that would let users edit their tweets.

In an interview with comedian Joe Rogan, Dorsey said Friday that the firm was “looking at” letting users edit their tweets, while still keeping the original version of the post publicly viewable.

Explaining how it would work, the Twitter chief said: “You could build it such that maybe we introduce a five-second to 30-second delay in the sending, and within that window you can edit.”

He added that letting users edit tweets for longer than that window “takes that real-time nature and the conversational flow out of it.”

In 2017, Twitter bumped up the number of characters that could be typed in a tweet to 280, from a signature 140-character count that Dorsey said was viewed as “sacred” internally.

Dorsey explained that the reason editing tweets isn’t currently a feature is due to the fact that he and his fellow co-founders were “born on SMS.” He said that, as the number of characters Twitter permits increases, users will increasingly want to be able to edit their posts.

“If you can’t edit 140 characters, you’re going to be really p—-d off if you write a million characters and can’t edit those things,” he said, when asked by Rogan about the prospect of upgrading the character count to 1 million.

Dorsey didn’t expand further on how the edit feature would work or indicate when — or if — it would be launched.

Twitter has been testing a new version of its desktop website that lets users bookmark tweets and removes a column on the left that would show how many tweets and followers a person has.

General Electric just had its best month ever.

Shares rose just over 34 percent in January — the largest monthly gain in the company’s 127-year history. January’s jump was in large part due to the company’s fourth-quarter revenue beat, boosted by strong performance from the aviation business.

But January’s performance notwithstanding, it hasn’t exactly been smooth sailing for the company, to put it mildly. The stock is down 64 percent in three years, after getting hit hard by struggles in the power segment and GE Capital, as well as a lack of investor confidence in the company’s management team. In 2018 alone, the company lost almost $90 billion in market value.

As the Street watched the stock tick lower, investors began to ask just how far the stock needed to fall before it would be a buy.

That point may have finally been reached.

With the stock off its lows but miles from its high, and a new management team in place that’s provided clarity on a turnaround plan, Point View Wealth Management strategist John Petrides and Newton Advisors technician Mark Newton say now could be the time to buy shares of GE.

“If you’re looking at the next six months, GE’s going to have to do a lot fundamentally to convince investors … but if you’re looking out 12 months to 18 months I think the worst is in,” Petrides said Friday on CNBC’s “Trading Nation.”

Lawrence Culp took over as chairman and CEO in October following John Flannery’s short-lived tenure at GE’s helm. Petrides views this as a key positive catalyst that could unlock value in the stock.

“The ball is now in Larry Culp’s hands to turn the company around from a fundamental standpoint. I mean GE had a fundamentally broken story with a black box for a balance sheet. That’s not a good look for the stock. And what we got out of this past earnings call was that the black box balance sheet is hopefully behind us because there are no more write-offs in GE Capital. So now the faith goes into Culp’s hands to be able to turn the company around,” he said.

Like Petrides, Newton believes the stock could be a long-term buy. But in the near term, he advises caution since he thinks it’s still in a sharp downtrend.

“Near term I still see the potential for a bit more on the upside, but I think that’s going to be capped out near $12 … You know unfortunately GE still has a very strongly negative momentum on a weekly and monthly basis,” he said.

For now, he argues that traders should sell the pops and buy the drops.

GE sank to a nine-year low of of $6.66 on Dec. 11, a move that Newton called “monumental” since it was almost exactly where the stock “bottomed out in 2009, within a few ticks.” While the stock has bounced off that low, he doesn’t see a significant positive base building. In Monday’s premarket, it was at $10.26.

“Technically speaking it’s still very much in a downtrend, so you use a first rally to sell into and you look to buy dips,” he said.

— CNBC’s Michael Sheetz contributed reporting.

Thinking about retiring somewhere exotic but worried about how much of a bite it will take out of your savings?

Never fear: You can still pack your bags and take that leap — as long as you know where to look.

In fact, there are some amazing places around the world where you can live quite well on less than $30,000 a year, according Jennifer Stevens, executive editor of International Living. The overseas retirement website recently released its Annual Global Retirement Index for 2019, a ranking of the best countries for retirement.

“It’s a little counter-intuitive — people always assume that to retire on a tropical beach, for instance, you have to have millions in the bank,” she told CNBC.

However, “in the right places, expats find that they can live comfortably — even luxuriously — on a Social Security income alone,” she said.

For example, in some spots, a budget of $2,000 a month can get you luxuries like a housekeeper, dining out on a regular basis and vacations. And if you have more to spend, on the order of $3,000 to $5,000 a month, you can live “like royalty” and enjoy perks like a penthouse apartment, a housekeeper and even a chef, Stevens said.

However, grabbing the passport and heading abroad to spend retirement years overseas may not be the right move for everyone. There are several things to consider, such as the health-care system in the country you’re bound for and how an international relocation will affect your taxes.

Stevens suggests having a clear idea of your priorities when considering a move, such as cultural offerings, cost of living, weather or proximity to home.

“Once you have a clear picture of what you’re really looking for, then it’s easier to pinpoint the spots that might make the most sense for you — and eliminate the ones that don’t,” she said.

Then, visit for a while to take it for test run, she added.

If you have the travel bug — but don’t want to move full-time — you can always take a month or more a year to enjoy some of the advantages of living in a foreign country.

With that in mind, here are the five cheapest locations to consider spending your retirement in 2019, according to International Living.

Super Bowl Sunday is a night when the commercials get almost as much attention as the football on the pitch and advertisers will be hoping the millions of dollars they spent will pay off.

If Twitter mentions are anything to go by, PepsicCo and brewer Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev) both did pretty well out of their marketing investments during Sunday’s game.

Bud Light (owned by AB InBev) got the top spot in terms of mentions on Twitter, with just under 22,500, ahead of Pepsi with almost 17,800, according to an analysis by Salesforce emailed to CNBC.

AB InBev also took third place with Budweiser, which had around 12,800 mentions, while PepsiCo-owned Doritos got about 10,200. In fifth place was Avocados From Mexico, with just below 10,000 mentions.

AB InBev bought five-and-a-half minutes of airtime at the Super Bowl, its biggest media spend for the event to date. With commercials costing around $5 million for 30 seconds, that could mean the brewer spent more than $50 million on Sunday. Budweiser brought back its famous Clydesdales, while Bud Light chose to criticize its competitors for using corn syrup in their brews, an ingredient that has been blamed for causing obesity. The ad caused a row on Twitter between Bud Light, the National Corn Growers Association and the beers mentioned in the commercial.

Meanwhile, halftime show sponsor Pepsi ran a commercial during the game featuring Steve Carell and rappers Lil Jon and Cardi B. It directly took on Coke, which is headquartered in Atlanta where the Super Bowl was played. A diner in a restaurant asks for a Coke and the waiter asks: “Is Pepsi okay?” before the three stars intervene.

Doritos also used celebrities, with Chance the Rapper and the Backstreet Boys appearing in a music mashup promoting its new Flamin Hot Nacho flavor.

In terms of Twitter hashtags, after “superbowl” and “sbliii,” the most-used hashtag was “halftimeshow,” followed by “spongebob,” referring to cartoon character Spongebob Squarepants’ appearance during Maroon 5’s performance. The band paid tribute to the show’s late creator Stephen Hillenburg with a clip of “Sweet Victory,” a song that featured in a 2001 episode of Spongebob — which paid tribute to the Super Bowl itself.

“Avocadosfrommexico,” “forthethrone” and “superbowlsunday” were also popular hashtags, with “forthethrone” referring to Bud Light’s ad.

Most Mentioned Super Bowl Advertisers 2019

Source: Salesforce

1. Bud Light – 22,479

2. Pepsi – 17,767

3. Budweiser – 12,834

4. Doritos – 10,179

5. Avocados From Mexico – 9865

Top 5 Hashtags during the Super Bowl 2019

Source: Salesforce

1. #superbowl/#sbliii

2. #sbliii/#superbowl

3. #halftimeshow/#halftimeshow

4. #spongebob/#avocadosfrommexico

5. #forthethrone/#superbowlsunday

Microsoft is one of Wall Street’s most obvious turnaround stories in recent history.

The company has added almost $500 billion to its market cap since Satya Nadella took the CEO position five years ago today. Internally and externally, the company is viewed more favorably than it was under Nadella’s predecessors.

But Nadella has not yet joined the ranks of the world’s most valuable individuals. Meanwhile, Microsoft co-founder and original CEO Bill Gates is the second-richest person on the planet, with a net worth of $95.7 billion, and the company’s second CEO, Steve Ballmer, is worth approximately $39.2 billion, according to data from Bloomberg.

In the most recent fiscal year, which ended on June 30, Nadella received $25.8 million in total compensation, according to Microsoft’s most recent proxy statement. That’s up 29 percent year over year. His pay was higher than many other CEOs of companies in the S&P 500. But it’s lower than the chiefs of companies with lower stock growth over the past five years, like Oracle’s Mark Hurd ($108.3 million), Walt Disney’s Bob Iger ($65.6 million) and 21st Century Fox’s Rupert Murdoch ($50.3 million).

Taking into account a recent stock sale and his Microsoft holdings, Nadella is likely worth more than $320 million. But not much more.

“Whatever they’re paying him, it’s not enough,” former Microsoft executive Brad Silverberg told CNBC.

Nadella once worked for Silverberg, who left the company in 1999 and is a founding partner at venture capital firm Ignition Partners. He provided input for the selection of Ballmer’s replacement. Silverberg took into consideration the qualities he remembered about Nadella — that he was humble, and that he recommended strategies that were in the best interest of the company, not himself. He thought Nadella, then a 22-year company veteran, would make a great CEO, and today he feels Nadella exceeded his expectations.

“I’m really happy with his contributions to the company,” Silverberg said. “Obviously the stock price is one metric, but if you look at the internal culture of the company, people are happy there. People are really proud to work for Microsoft. I think he’s done a lot to make that happen.”

Investors are happy with Nadella as well: Microsoft’s stock has risen nearly 182 percent since Nadella took over, according to FactSet.

“If you look at the stock’s more than doubling in value, clearly one could argue he’s underpaid relative to the wealth creation he’s been able to do in the stock,” said Brent Bracelin, managing director at KeyBanc Capital Markets.

“They have been able to transform one of the legacy client-server models, and they’re now becoming the leader in cloud across IaaS [infrastructure as a service] and SaaS [software as a service], and he’s done it, yet, look at his comp.”

Microsoft’s perception has improved in Silicon Valley, too.

When Nadella took the helm, Steve Herrod, a former VMware executive and now managing director at venture capital firm General Catalyst Partners, didn’t have any Microsoft apps on his phone. Now Herrod has nine Microsoft apps on his phone, and he believes Microsoft has the best mobile email app: Outlook.

One start-up Herrod invested in, Impira, chose Microsoft’s Azure cloud because the team thought Microsoft’s cloud-based artificial intelligence capability was better than what was available from the Amazon and Google clouds, Herrod said.

“From all perspectives, he’s done an outstanding job, and a top-five CEO should have a commensurate package,” Herrod said of Nadella.

The company is more open and flexible now, and assets like LinkedIn and GitHub have given Microsoft meaningful data, said Gordon Ritter, founder and general partner of venture firm Emergence Capital.

“If I were on the board of Microsoft, I would say, ‘Did he really look at things differently than those that came before and actually interrupt the natural processes that were going on?’ And my answer is yes, compared to the interruptions Tim Cook did do or didn’t do. I would say he interrupted and changed the course of Microsoft in fundamental way.”

Given that, Ritter said Nadella would be deserving of some kind of additional grant.

“I think everybody feels good about Satya as CEO of the company — Bill and Steve and the company’s board of directors,” Silverberg said. “They should thank their lucky stars that that’s who they hired as CEO.”

Microsoft didn’t respond to a request for comment.

WATCH: Microsoft CEO: We’re in the midst of a massive transformation