Here’s what we have for you today:
• The middleman
• Asian tech powerhouse
• Meta’s security harvest
Middle East fueling with oil
Oily situation: In a decision that preempts a meeting of OPEC members, as well as nonmember allies such as Russia, 9 members of the group unveiled plans to cut a further 1.66 million barrels of oil from its total daily output.
Small cut: The agreement means OPEC+, which includes Russia, is taking nearly 3.4 million barrels of crude from the market each day. That’s equivalent to around 3.7% of daily global demand.
Head honcho: The cuts will begin in May and extend until the end of 2023, with Saudi Arabia leading the group by reducing its supply by 500,000 barrels per day.
The group: Algeria, Gabon, Iraq, Kuwait, the UAE, Oman and Kazakhstan were also named as OPEC members that followed the Saudi lead.
Dancing Asian tech giant joins the crew
Large Leap: At the $80 billion mark, ByteDance’s revenue figures are now almost on par with Tencent, which amounted to 554.6 billion yuan/$80 billion in year 2022.
Survival of the fittest: ByteDance joined the likes of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Tencent to implement unprecedented cost curbs during a year of endless regulatory crackdowns and Covid restrictions.
Current valuation: The Asian social media behemoth was valued at around $220 billion in a recent private-market investment by Abu Dhabi AI firm G42.
Meta’s security is now a premium choice
The breakdown: After laying off over 20,000 people, Meta’s client support, customer experience and communities teams were affected and contributed to poorer user experience.
Users: In some cases, “nobody responded” from customer support when problems were reported.
Security fee: As Meta Verified is being rolled out (a paid verification subscription service) which will reportedly provide extra security like “proactive monitoring” will be available for those that pay up.
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