KYLIE WIPES OUT $1.6B IN A SNAP 1 tweet rocks tech stock
Kylie Jenner just knocked $1.6 billion off the stock-market value of Snapchat — with a single tweet.
The app’s stock plummeted 8.4 percent on Thursday after the reality-TV star — one of the app’s most influential users — tweeted that she has lost interest in the photo-sharing platform.
“Sooo does anyone else not open Snapchat anymore? Or is it just me... ugh this is so sad,” Jenner tweeted to her 24.5 million Twitter followers Wednesday.
She added: “still love you tho snap ... my first love”
Her comments came on the heels of an unpopular redesign of the Snapchat interface, which has inspired more than 1.2 million users to sign a petition demanding it go “back to basics.”
Jenner didn’t specifically tie her rebuff to the makeover — which is supposed to make the app easier to navigate for new users — but she has expressed ambivalence about it before.
“Mm just saw the new Snapchat.. I don’t know how i feel about it! What do you guys think?” she tweeted earlier this month.
Experts say the redesign was fuel for the stock’s fall — and Jenner lit the match.
“We believe this is an overreaction, as Wall Street is hypersensitive to the app redesign,” Daniel Ives, chief strategy officer and head of technology research at GBH Insight, told CNN.
“With roughly 25 million followers, [Jenner] carries a loud mouthpiece that speaks to today’s knee-jerk reaction in shares.”
And Jenner, 20, the half-sister of fellow “Keeping up with the Kardashians” star Kim Kardashian, had some famous company in slamming Snapchat’s new look in recent days.
After one fan told Chrissy Teigen of being disappointed at how celebrities’ posts have been separated from those of users’ actual friends on the app, the model responded, “I liked that you guys felt like we were friends. I’m sad it doesn’t feel like that anymore. How many people have to hate an update for it to be reconsidered?”
Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel seemed to respond to Teigen at a Goldman Sachs panel on Thursday, quipping, “People are saying, ‘I used to feel like this celebrity was my friend and now they’re not my friend anymore.’ Exactly. They’re not your friend.”
Jenner isn’t the only star who has managed to rock Wall Street with a single tweet.
Fashion brand Guess Inc.’s shares tanked by a whopping 17 percent earlier this month when a Kate Upton tweet suggested its co-founder had engaged in some sketchy behavior.
“It’s disappointing that such an iconic women’s brand @GUESS is still empowering Paul Marciano as their creative director #metoo,” she wrote.
Marciano has denied Upton’s allegations.