Kylie Jenner Helped Erase $1.3 Billion off Snap Value in Just One Tweet

Kylie Jenner Helped Erase $1.3 Billion off Snap Value in Just One Tweet
Fotolia

Celebrities are powerful magnet on social networks, but can also cost them a lot of money as well. According to Bloomberg, Snap, parent company of Snapchat, lost a lot of market value thanks to just one celebrity tweet.

Snap’s shares sank as much as 7.2 percent Thursday, wiping out $1.3 billion in market value, on the heels of a tweet from Kylie Jenner, who said she doesn’t open the app anymore. Whether it’s the demands of her newfound motherhood, or the recent app redesign, the testament drew similar replies from her 24.5 million followers. "Still love you tho snap," Jenner hedged in a later tweet.

Wall Street analysts too, have begun to notice, citing recent user engagement trends noticed since the platform’s redesign. Citigroup analyst Mark May downgraded the stock to sell from neutral earlier this week after seeing a “significant jump“ in negative reviews of the app’s redesign. He expects the reviews could cause user engagement to fall, hurting financial results.

Meanwhile, as the app takes criticism, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel may become one of the highest paid executives in the U.S. After the company’s IPO last March, Spiegel got a $636.6 million stock grant that will be payable through 2020.