Trust and Profits

There is a deep corrlation between trust and profit.

It is often hard to see this correlation at work when things are going good. By the time you are in a place to realise it, the ship has sailed or rather sunk!

Facebook has been blamed for manipulating elections and propogating fake news for financial gains. They let advertisers run whatever messaging they wanted without any checks or balances in place. Just as long as the cash tills kept rolling. I read a couple of news reports yesterday that emphasised this further.

The New York Times has started making money again!

The New York Times Company posted expectation-beating earnings, bringing shareholders surprisingly high profits. The news sent Times’ stock up more than 10%, valuing it at more than $24 a share, a level it hadn’t seen since the summer of 2007.

Also, the greatest of all surprises - Twitter turned a profit! For the very first time since it listed in November 2013.

The social network reported its fourth-quarter earnings today, Feb. 8, and as expected, the company posted a modest profit, pulling in $91 million on $732 million in revenue. That’s a jump of 2% on the revenue it posted in the same period last year. It attributed the small rise to increased advertising revenue, stemming from the myriadupdates it made to its product over the last year, as well as video ad sales. (Annual revenue for the company was slightly down in 2017, however—it generated $2.4 billion, versus $2.5 billion in 2016.)

The advertising money is moving. And by the looks of it, it is moving fast. As the image of a company tarnishes, people start to move away from the company.

Facebook has an image problem and the numbers are reflecting that. The question is how far away are they from outright loss of trust.