Business: Oprah Buys Weight Watchers Stock
On Monday, the “most-inspiring” person in America (aka Oprah) announced that she has taken a 10% stake in Weight Watchers. With years of piling debt for the weight-loss company, many are wondering whether or not Oprah can be the saving grace that she’s proven to be for others in the past:
From our end, we see a lot of signs that point to YES.
Spending $43 million on the investment, Winfrey’s loyal following was quick to take note:
According to Forbes, “With the stock changing hands for around $18, Winfrey has single-handedly generated $700 million in stock market value in two days, given that the company has 63.6 million shares outstanding following the Winfrey deal.”
And it is not only Weight Watchers shares that are on the rise. Mentions of the company have been spiking all week long, as stories about Oprah’s investment have been spreading across media outlets:
Clearly, the Weight Watchers windfall is a great foundation for the company’s comeback—this story stands to have a long lifespan as it has gained more and more traction throughout the whole week. Still, in order for them to stay on track, Weight Watchers will need to sustain this trend of gaining media attention. Perhaps with Oprah on board, the company won’t have trouble maintaining buzz around their aging brand.
Politics: The Democratic Pool Gets Smaller
We may still be a year out from the 2016 election, but we have yet to find ourselves short of headlines.
On Tuesday, the small collective of Democratic candidates got even smaller, as Jim Webb announced that he was dropping out of the presidential race. Unsurprisingly, “out” was at the center of his #realtime word cloud once the news broke:
Additionally, mentions of the former Virginia Senator spiked, pulling in more mentions than he’s seen in days:
The next day, Joe Biden made a move that basically solidified Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders as the top Democratic White House contenders. During a press conference live from the White House Rose Garden, the current Vice President announced that he would not be participating in the presidential election.
We tracked the announcement, in #realtime, which we shared in full detail on Wednesday.
#TopHashtags around the press conference included the following:
And major news outlets like the AP, CNN, and The New York Times were the ones who drove the conversation, generating hundreds (thousands for the AP!) of retweets within the first minutes of the news breaking:
All in all, both Jim Webb and Joe Biden proved this week that interest in political candidates always spikes during big moments, regardless of their past individual popularity (or lack thereof) in the media.
Tech: #NEWEMOJIS!
On Wednesday morning, Apple rolled out the iOS 9.1 update, delighting emoji enthusiasts (like me) around the world.
Aside from support for Live Photos, new wallpapers, and the ability to disable photos for contacts in the Messages app, there are dozens of new emojis!
From unicorns to tacos, emoji offerings continue to be ever-growing, and people are pleased. Overall, the release has been overwhelmingly well received—86% of the conversation is positive.
And the most popular tweets around the new emojis reflect this sentiment:
Our takeaway? Humans love emojis. As emoji marketing proves to be more and more prevalent, it comes as no surprise that Apple continues to release new faces, food, and random objects. It will be interesting to watch how companies continue to respond to the emoji revolution, and incorporate them into business strategies like Domino’s and Chevy already have.
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