It's All On Facebook, LinkedIn To Help The Social Media ETF

No, those were not the best batch of earnings out of the social media realm during Tuesday's after-hours session.

Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) reported Q2 EPS of $0.07 versus the Street estimate of $0.04 on revenue of $502.38 million, which was roughly $21 million higher than the Street estimate of $481.28 million.

Yelp Inc (NYSE:YELP) announced its second quarter results, which included an EPS of $0.12 versus the Street estimate of $0.01. Revenue came in at $133.9 million, which was slightly above the $133.48 million estimate, providing the company with what appeared to be an impressive quarter.

By the end of after-hours trading, Yelp and Twitter were down 16.6 percent and 11.3 percent, respectively. That is not good news for the Global X Social Media Index ETF (NASDAQ:SOCL), which allocates a combined 6.8 percent of its weight to those stocks.

Likely due to a lack of exposure to Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), which obviously is not a social media stock, SOCL has been lagging other Internet ETFs. For example, the social media fund is off two-thirds of a percent over the past month, but the First Trust Dow Jones Internet Index Fund (NYSE:FDN) is higher by 8.3 percent over the same period.

China has also been a problem for SOCL The ETF allocates 26.3 percent of its weight to the world's largest Internet market, but in recent weeks, most of SOCL's Chinese holdings not named Tencent (OTC:TCEHY) have been getting drubbed.

The opportunity is there for SOCL to get some of its groove back and that opportunity lies with some vaunted Internet behemoths. After Wednesday's market close, Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) steps into the earnings confessional followed by LinkedIn Corp. (NYSE:LNKD) on Thursday.

As of July 27, Facebook and LinkedIn were SOCL's largest and third-largest holdings, respectively, combining for 21.6 percent of the fund's weight. Said another way, either stock alone is a more important determinant of SOCL's price action than Twitter and Yelp combined.

Of course, the rub in that scenario is that if Facebook or LinkedIn (or both) pull a Yelp, SOCL is likely in for some savage repudiation. The ETF has $6.8 million in assets this month after bleeding $32.7 million during the second quarter. Russia's Yandex NV(NASDAQ:YNDX) is one of SOCL's constituents reporting earnings this week (Thursday).