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Lakinya Francis is building a LinkedIn account, Haley Sanchez is expanding her email list and Michael Elefante plans to build out his website.

“We get so fixated on what’s working and that’s fine but we need to have a backup plan, especially when we’re relying so much on technology,” said Francis, who runs a consulting company that helps people make money through vending machines.

Influencers who have long relied on Instagram and Facebook to connect with fans, advertise and sell products, are rethinking where they post their content after suffering losses when the company’s platforms went offline for several hours on Monday.

CNBC spoke with 10 online creators and small business owners who use Facebook, its Instagram or WhatsApp services, or a combination of all three for this story. Each of their estimated losses during Facebook’s outage ranged from a few hundred dollars to over $5,000 from sales, affiliate links, sponsored posts and product launches.

It’s a demonstration of just how big Facebook’s influence is over the online economy. Even a small outage means losses for people who rely on Facebook services to do their work or advertise their products. But a record six-hour outage is even worse.

Zuckerberg’s investment in creators and small businesses

Facebook’s vice president of infrastructure Santosh Janardhan apologized for the mass outage in a blog post late Monday. Janardhan blamed “configuration changes on the backbone routers,” for taking services down, but did not specify what changes happened.

More than 200 million businesses actively use Facebook’s tools and numerous content creators rely on Instagram for sponsored posts, affiliate links, and sales revenue. And the outage occurred as CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook make an aggressive push to incentivize and woo creators from the likes of TikTok, Snapchat, and other social media platforms.

Last year, Instagram launched a short-length video feature called Reels to compete with TikTok, and Zuckerberg recently said the company would pay out $1 billion through 2022 to users who create content for both Facebook and Instagram. Facebook also said it won’t take a cut from creator features like online events and fan subscriptions until 2023, and announced new ways they could make money on Instagram in April.

“Investing in creators isn’t new for us, but I’m excited to expand this work over time,” he wrote on Facebook earlier this year.

Along with a refund, Facebook and Instagram should offer something like double exposure to those who prepaid for advertising on Monday, said Michael Heller, CEO and founder of Talent Resources, a marketing agency that deals with influencers.

Most companies and influencers with campaign posts planned for Monday pushed to Tuesday or even Friday in case of glitches, said Alexa Vogue, vice president of brand partnerships at TTPM Influencer Talent Management. An outage on YouTube or TikTok, where her clients get paid per view, would have caused more financial damage, she adds.

“Yes it was a wake-up call, but in the grand scheme of things influencers that are successful will always be successful,” she said.

The need to diversify

Many creators and small businesses say Instagram is the platform of choice. It’s easy to connect with users through direct messages and stories, and it offers a more focused community of dedicated followers that convert to sales.

Now, the majority said they would focus on building out their website and diversifying what platforms they are using, the influencers CNBC spoke with said. Some used Twitter, TikTok and email to beef up sales and connect with audiences during the shutdown.

Francis, who runs the consulting company, plans to utilize LinkedIn and email lists, a tool that helped her make some sales during Monday’s outage.

For Sanchez, who operates a small candle store, the outage came during a busy season gearing up for the holidays. She regularly uses Instagram to tag products, update customers through stories and divert people to her Shopify store.

“That’s where I’m making my business,” Sanchez said. “I’m not making hundreds of sales a day. I’m a smaller candle company but this is my full-time job. So even if I made three sales that I potentially lost, that’s important to me.”

She used Monday to reach out to customers and build up her email list in preparation for future outages so she can better communicate with customers.

Elliott Elkhoury, who sells resources for real estate investors, estimates he lost $3,000 to $5,000 on Monday between missing traffic to his platform and social media, and the inability to run ads.

Between advertising dollars and branded content, Heller suspects losses from Monday ranged in the hundreds of millions. The financial hit to clients likely spanned $3 million to $4 million dollars, he adds.

Michael Elefante, who runs short-term rentals, and teaches others how to run them, estimates the losses at $1,500 to $2,500 through affiliate links and paid mentorships. Now, he’s going to focus on direct mail messaging and his website.

John Eringman, a financial content creator with over 50,000 followers on Instagram and 1.2 million on TikTok, estimates he lost a few hundred dollars. That came from a combination of book sales and one-on-one coaching sessions through his Instagram.

Eringman has diversified his business by creating a following on TikTok and a website. But if the outage extended into Wednesday, he could’ve lost $2,500 on a sponsored post for Instagram and TikTok.

“There is a lifespan to social media,” he says. “Make sure you are owning your audience rather than letting Facebook or Instagram own your audience.”

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Broadcom CEO says generative AI will become a much larger part of global GDP

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Broadcom CEO says generative AI will become a much larger part of global GDP

The main competitor we have is merchant silicon, says Broadcom CEO Hock Tan

Broadcom CEO Hock Tan told CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Monday that artificial intelligence could become a larger part of global GDP as the technology spreads across industries.

Tan said the current global GDP sits around $110 trillion, with 30% of that figure “valued from industries related to knowledge-based, technology-intensive.”

“And you put in generative AI, you create intelligence in a lot of other aspects of society,” Tan continued. “That 30% say will grow to 40% of all GDP. That’s $10 trillion a year.”

If AI grows and becomes responsible for a larger piece of global GDP as Tan predicts, it would be a boon to the nascent tech sector and all the industries it relies on. Broadcom makes chips and networking equipment and has been a huge beneficiary of the AI boom as hyperscalers buy up its products. The stock is currently up 53.86%.

Broadcom and OpenAI announced their official partnership on Monday, saying they would jointly build and deploy 10 gigawatts of custom artificial intelligence accelerators. The move is part of a broader effort to scale AI across the industry. Broadcom shares surged in response to the news, up 9.88% by market close.

Broadcom and OpenAI’s deal is the latest in a slew of pricey partnerships among key Big Tech players related to AI.

Tan said OpenAI is “one of those few players in the forefront of creating foundation models,” and noted that even as a private company, the ChatGPT maker is worth about $500 billion. According to Tan, Broadcom’s “hard-nosed” approach to business doesn’t keep the company from looking several years in the future “at this phenomenon, this wave called generative AI.”

Broadcom is tight-lipped about its customers, but said earlier this year it was developing new AI chips with three large cloud customers. Management announced last month it had secured $10 billion in chip orders from a fourth unnamed client.

Tan told Cramer that Broadcom is working closely with “about seven players,” four of which he defined as “real customers,” or ones “who have given us production purchase orders at scale.”

“We feel very good about it,” Tan said of Broadcom’s partnerships. “Because each of these guys need a lot of compute capacity for them to basically play in this game and eventually win this game of creating the best foundation model in the world.”

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Musk calls for federal troops in San Francisco even as Benioff softens stance

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Musk calls for federal troops in San Francisco even as Benioff softens stance

Marc Benioff, chief executive officer of Salesforce, speaks during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Jan. 18, 2024.

Halil Sagirkaya | Anadolu | Getty Images

As Salesforce welcomes tens of thousands of people to San Francisco for its annual Dreamforce conference, CEO Marc Benioff has found himself in the center of local controversy on a national issue.

In an interview with The New York Times published on Friday, Benioff appeared eager for President Donald Trump to send federal troops to his company’s hometown, inserting himself into a national debate about whether the president should call the National Guard into various Democrat-led cities that Trump has maligned.

The Trump administration recently deployed the National Guard to Portland and Chicago, sparking protests and lawsuits.

“We don’t have enough cops, so if they can be cops, I’m all for it,” Benioff told the Times.

Benioff subsequently softened his comments, writing on X on Sunday that safety is “first and foremost, the responsibility of our city and state leaders.” But a heated online conversation was already well underway.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who moved to Texas from California, said federal intervention is needed to deal with crime in San Francisco. In posts on his social network X on Sunday, he said it would be “the only solution at this point,” and that “nothing else has or will work.” A day earlier, Musk, who has drawn criticism for his own drug use, characterized downtown San Francisco as a “drug zombie apocalypse.”

Musk still has big business in and around San Francisco. His artificial intelligence startup xAI, which owns X, has a sizable office in the city, and his brain computer interface company, Neuralink, recently leased a large property in South San Francisco. Tesla relocated to Texas, but the automaker’s engineering headquarters remains in Palo Alto, just south of San Francisco.

Musk’s call for U.S. troops came in response to social media posts by Tom Wolf, who describes himself as a “a formerly homeless recovering addict in San Francisco,” and an “advocate for addiction recovery.”

If you want to keep federal troops out of San Francisco, remove the organized drug dealers and 80% of the problem goes away,” Wolf wrote. “If you don’t, you reap what you sow.”

Musk shared Wolf’s post to his more than 227 million listed followers on X.

Neither Benioff nor Musk immediately responded to requests for comment. CNBC also reached out to Tesla, xAI and Salesforce for comment but did not hear back.

San Francisco rolls out Microsoft's Copilot to city staff

Local officials loudly opposed the idea of bringing in federal troops.

Brooke Jenkins, San Francisco’s district attorney, wrote on X after the Benioff interview that, “I can’t be silent any longer.”

Jenkins accused Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem of turning “so-called public safety and immigration enforcement into a form of government sponsored violence against U.S. citizens, families, and ethnic groups,” and said that if anyone is using excessive force or illegally harassing residents, “I will not hesitate to do my job and hold you accountable just like I do other violators of the law every single day.”

San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie, who defeated incumbent London Breed in November in part by promising to clean up San Francisco’s streets, wrote on X on Sunday that “crime is down 30% and tent encampments are at an all-time low.” He didn’t directly address Benioff or Dreamforce, but noted that tens of thousand of people are coming to the city for activities including concerts and Fleet Week, and that public safety is critical.

“San Francisco is on the rise,” he wrote

In Benioff’s follow-up comments after his interview with the Times, the Salesforce CEO praised Lurie’s efforts to increase police hiring and retain law enforcement.

Dreamforce, which launched in 2003, kicks off on Tuesday and runs through Thursday. The event is being held at the Moscone Center and occupies much of the surrounding area in downtown San Francisco.

Garry Tan, CEO of startup incubator Y Combinator, wrote on X that “We don’t need the National Guard,” but he used his post to go after a frequent local target for techies: Chesa Boudin and progressives.

Boudin was district attorney in San Francisco until 2022, when he was removed in a recall election after critics railed against what they viewed as his unwillingness to prosecute violent criminals. Now the judges are the problem, Tan said.

“We need new judges who are not hardcore Chesa Boudin-style activists who work to keep drug dealers out of jail even though the police, the district attorney and the people of SF want them locked up,” he wrote. “It’s shockingly that simple in SF.”

WATCH: President Trump to activate the National Guard in Washington, D.C.

President Trump to activate the National Guard in Washington, DC

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How Broadcom’s big OpenAI deal fits into the data center boom and what it means for the AI trade

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How Broadcom's big OpenAI deal fits into the data center boom and what it means for the AI trade

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