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Recently among all “Worldwide Trends” on Twitter, one trending topic about this blue bird itself can be pretty brutal. Twitter has been striving to sell itself to potential buyers, including several tech giants like Google and Apple. Unfortunately, Twitter’s final hope has vanished after Salesforce dropped its bid for this deal.

Founded 10 years ago in 2006, Twitter did not go public until 2013 winter. Once a super star to Wall Street, its stock opened at $26 per share on the New York Stock Exchange and was trading at $69 not long after. After reaching the peak, Twitter’s stock price has been slumping constantly and dramatically, trading at merely $18 per share this Friday. In less than three years, Twitter has lost more than 70% of its entire market capitalization, and is said to be targeting terrifying $10 per share in the near future.

Twitter used to be the one-of-a-kind online media platform and have a reputation for delivering breaking news 24 hours a day at an unsurpassed speed. Millions and millions of people used to rely on Twitter as their major source of information, while constantly contributing to this community as well. Nowadays, Twitter is still able to shape and create trends online through its 313 million active users. However, compared with Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, Twitter barely shows any superiority. It cannot catch up with multi-purpose Facebook which has 5 times more active users. Meanwhile, either Instagram or Snapchat has its own killer features and those are apparently more alluring than “tweets”. Twitter tries to advertise its live video streaming app Periscope, while it has to face the challenges from Facebook, YouTube and Snapchat. Additionally, according to the lastest report, Instagram appears to be equipped with live video feature soon as well — following the steps of its parent company, Facebook.

Another thing is that Twitter is often facing critics over its poorly regulated contents. For instance, racial and violent tweets can be seen every now and then but they are not well filtered and banned. Other inappropriate information and contents appear even more frequently and this cultural and content unfitness is considered as one of the major reasons that Disney has walked away from the bid.

After bids were closed, it is still unclear if Twitter has already hit rock bottom. In this post-fail-to-sell era, Twitter is striving to strengthen its live video streaming service and transfer itself into a more diversified media platform with more exclusive contents after establishing partnership with big players such as National Football League. Will this blue bird finally rise like a phoenix out of the ashes and fly high again?

 

 

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-twitter-m-a-salesforce-com-idUSKBN12E22Q
“Twitter charts solo path as Salesforce rules out takeover | Reuters”

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One piece of astonishing news came across the Atlantic this Friday — New York State Government has approved a new legislation, banning locals from renting out their places unless certain conditions are met. Aside from thousands of hosts, Airbnb itself is hit the hardest and will do everything in its power to fight against those lawmakers.

 

Airbnb has gained immense popularity across the globe since its founding in 2008. With over 2 million listed ready-to-rent properties in 191 countries, it open the door to a cozy, pleasant travel experience at a much lower price than ever before. Of all those alluring destinations, New York City is always one of the world’s’ most visited and beloved cities. Apparently “Airbnb x NYC” could have been a win-win set, a role model for how Internet revolution has shaped the traditional travelling/leisure business model as well as the city’s economic development.

 

Why are they suddenly locking horns in court?

 

Like other most populous metropolitan areas, New York City has been suffering from red-hot growth in home prices and passed countless housing regulations against this issue. However, Airbnb has nullified all their efforts as it creates a grey area for short-term renting. People are drooling to buy a house or a flat so that they could rent it out and make considerable amount of money. Therefore the real estate prices soar as buyers are willing to pay more to earn more in the future. This so-called “Airbnb Effects” has spread across the world, from New York to Old Amsterdam. This is the reason while Airbnb never owns or bids for a square foot of its listed rentals, it is criticized for the rapid, sharp house price growth.

 

However, numerous Airbnb hosts do make a living from their short-term renting business. For instance, some of them could never pay off their mortgage without this income. Meanwhile, without Airbnb, it will be very likely to cost visitors a fortune to experience the wonders in those major cities if they want to maintain their standard of living.

 

We can obviously see that Airbnb not only alters the business model for short-term renting and travelling, but even has huge impacts to worldwide real estate markets and city development as well as legislation. It means that those virtual online service providers no longer stay invisible but have become nearly a Rising Empire for real changes in our life. Then who will finally win this battle? Will the full-function Airbnb come back to the Big Apple soon?

 

 

 

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-airbnb-new-york-regulations-idUSKCN12L2JV

“New York governor approves new regulations on Airbnb | Reuters”