Facebook Busts New All-Time High — With Help From Twitter?

Courtesy Facebook Inc.Social media giant Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) has posted an all-time high share price in the early afternoon on Thursday and it’s a little difficult to figure out why. There’s no news and the stock is not being…

Published February 13, 2014, 1:04pm ET · 2 min read

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Courtesy Facebook Inc.
Social media giant Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) has posted an all-time high share price in the early afternoon on Thursday and it’s a little difficult to figure out why. There’s no news and the stock is not being traded in heavier volume.

The company could be getting a boost from a report at Bloomberg News that Twitter Inc. (NYSE: TWTR) has released data showing that Twitter users are twice as likely to buy a new car than an average U.S. household. According Datalogix Inc., 6% of households with Twitter users bought a new car in the six-month period from April to October of 2013.

What that means for Twitter, and potentially for Facebook, is a bigger share of the automobile advertising pie of more than $15 billion annually. Twitter users who favorite, click, reply, or retweet a promoted tweet from an automaker are 32% more likely to buy a new car than an average Twitter user. Facebook started chasing automakers’ advertising dollars in 2012.

Although the Datalogix research has nothing to say about Facebook, it’s not much of a stretch to conclude that what’s good for one social media company is probably good for the other. Especially when both are doing their best to duplicate the other’s most popular features.

Facebook’s shares are trading up 3.8% at $66.88 after posting a new high of $67.11. The stock’s 52-week low is $22.67.

Twitter is trading up about 2.2% at $54.07 in a post-IPO range of $38.80 to $74.73.

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Paul Ausick

Paul Ausick has been writing for 247Wallst.com for more than a decade. He has written extensively on investing in the energy, defense, and technology sectors. In a previous life, he wrote technical documentation and managed a marketing communications group in Silicon Valley.

He has a bachelor's degree in English from the University of Chicago and now lives in Montana, where he fishes for trout in the summer and stays inside during the winter.

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