NASDAQ: Facebook stumbles on 1st trading day as shares

Facebook stumbled on its first trading day on Friday as shares ended barely above the starting price after a glitch-plagued market debut on the Nasdaq that failed to live up to its enormous hype.

The stock, priced at $38 on Thursday in the largest-ever initial public offering (IPO) for a technology firm, eked out a gain of just 0.61% to end at $38.23, amid record volume of more than 575 million shares traded.

Shares in the social network titan saw roller-coaster action in what was one of most keenly awaited stock issues in history. The day began with a 30-minute delay in trade, an incident which regulators are still reviewing.

Shares jumped 12% to $42.55 in opening trade but within minutes fell back to the offering price. A midday rally failed to sustain its momentum and the price tailed off before the close.

"The negativity in the market overall has put a damper on the IPO," said  Darren Hayes, a Pace University professor and former investment banker.

"It's not uncommon in an IPO to see a big rise and then for the price to come back down, but I'm a bit surprised after all the hype to see such a small gain."

A report on the Business Insider financial blog said the price held at $38 because of a large number of standing orders at the offering price. The Wall Street Journal said the underwriting investment banks stepped in to support the price.

"It's hard to know what would have happened if the banks hadn't stepped in," said Lou Kerner of the Social Internet Fund, raising questions about what will happen to Facebook's share price when the Nasdaq reopens on Monday.

James Hughes, chief market analyst at London's Alpari, said "the real value of Facebook is not likely to be known until the hype of the IPO has died away and investors have been able to digest how the company is going evolve to be the money-making machine many expect it to be."

Investors were expected to be hungry to get a piece of Facebook, which has become a global phenomenon since its humble beginnings in 2004 as a project of then-Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg and his classmates.

Zuckerberg, 28, wearing his trademark hooded sweatshirt, remotely rang the bell to open the Nasdaq, marking the start of trade.

He told the crowd at the company's new campus in Menlo Park, California, that going public is a "milestone" but added: "Our mission isn't to be a public company. Our mission is to make the world more open and connected."

The market debut was disappointing compared with some recent tech IPOs. LinkedIn, a business-oriented social network, doubled its share price on its first day, and Groupon, a discount deal aggregator, jumped 30%.

Others have not fared so well. Pandora, an Internet radio site, rose a more modest 8.9% and online gaming site Zynga lost five% on its first day.

Trip Chowdhry, who follows Facebook for Global Equities Research, said the "lackluster" opening was because the company had failed to answer crucial questions about how it will boost revenues and adapt to the mobile Internet.

"Management cannot sing and dance around the key issues," he said.
There are concerns about Facebook's long-term ability to generate ad revenues, fueled by General Motors' decision earlier this week to pull its advertising.

GM had been spending about $10 million on paid advertising and $30 million on unpaid marketing on Facebook.

Another shadow hanging over Facebook is privacy.

Some consumer and privacy advocates say Facebook has been too loose with user data and hope that as a publicly traded company it may change its tune.

The IPO gave Facebook a dizzying value of $104 billion at its market debut.

It raised more than $16 billion, making it the richest after that of financial giant Visa in 2008, according to Renaissance Capital. The addition of a possible stock "over-allotment" could boost the total to $18.4 billion.

With its current market value, Facebook is now among the most valuable US companies, ahead of sector giants Amazon ($96 billion) and Cisco ($89 billion), and more than twice the value of Ford Motor Co. ($38 billion).

But it remains behind Google ($196 billion) and Apple ($496 billion).

Under the share plan, Zuckerberg holds 55.8% of the voting power of Facebook shares, and over 18% of the value of the company.

Despite the lingering concerns, some still see huge potential for growth.

"Facebook is a business that can succeed with far fewer employees than the technology behemoths of old," said Victor Basta of London-based Magister Advisors.

"Facebook's IPO filing implies a value per employee for its own business of $33 million. Microsoft, by contrast, has a value per employee of $3 million, reflecting the fundamental structural differences between the businesses."

Facebook posted a profit of $668 million last year as revenue vaulted to $1.06 billion.

 

YouTube Cofounder Steve Chen Explains What He's Doing With His New Company

About a year ago, YouTube cofounders Steve Chen and Chad Hurley bought bookmarking service Delicious from Yahoo, and used it as the basis to form a new company called Avos Systems.

We haven't heard much from them since. Until today, when Avos announced its first round of outside funding. (PDF here.)

The company isn't saying how much it raised, but it got a group of pretty big names on board, including Google Ventures, NEA, and Madrone Partners, and Kai-Fu Lee, who previously set up Chinese research offices for both Google and Microsoft. (Lee's incubator, Innovation Works, was an investor.)

We talked to Chen today, and he explained a little more about what the company wants to do.
Basically, it's all about helping users make sense of the flood of new content coming on to the Web every day.

"Having worked with YouTube, there were already about 40 hours of video being uploaded every minute. That's doubled. There are now 60 to 80 hours of new video content being uploaded every minute -- on one web site. There's new content on Twitter, it comes from RSS feeds, from blogs, from Facebook, from social networks.... There are lots of new products and new services making adding content easier. But there's not many people on the other side, helping users digest that content."

Delicious and a Chinese-language equivalent, mei.fm, are parts of the equation. Those products are still about "people manually adding bookmarks and sharing sites in their social network. We want to try to make that process easier, more fun."

But Avos is also building a mysterious product called Zeen.  It sounds like a personalized collection of content arranged in a magazine-type format.

There are lots of other services doing similar things, from Flipboard and Zite on the display side, to Wavii and Trap.it, which focus on different ways of making sense of all the new content showing up online.

Chen said that Zeen would be similar to Flipboard "on the UI level" but different on the publishing side --  "We want to make sure you don't have to call our head of business relationships to strike a relationship before you publish something. Every user has something to say."

Sounds cryptic, but we'll hear more in the coming months, Chen told us.
The company currently has about 30 developers spread between San Mateo in Silicon Valley, Dunedin in New Zealand, and Beijing. The new round will be used to hire more talent, as well as to leverage connections from Google Ventures and NEA.

San Francisco 49ers president -- and former CFO of Facebook and YouTube -- Gideon Yu has also joined the board

FarmVille Christmas Save the Children Campaign: Everything you need to know

This week marked the launch of Zynga's "A Very Merry Christmas" holiday video in FarmVille, which gave us just a taste of the game's "Save the Children" charity event for this year. Now that the event has actually launched in your game, you'll be able to give yourself the warm and fuzzies by knowing that you've helped those in need through one of three programs (or a combination of the three).

The next time you login to FarmVille, you'll be greeted with a window like the one below, asking you to consider donating one of three dollar amounts ranging from $10 to $20 to the Save the Children charity, which works to help impoverished children across the United States. You'll see exactly which area of the program your donation will benefit, with 100% of the proceeds going to support Save the Children's efforts.

At the $10 level, you'll receive a Teddy Bear Tree, with your $10 going to provide "Healthy Snacks" to children. At the $15 level, you'll help stock a Library and will receive a Holiday Pony. Finally, at the $20 level, you'll receive a permit to plant the Green Peppermint Crop, a limited edition crop that will be yours for a week. You'll be able to plant as many Green Peppermints as you like, with each rewarding you with 2 XP and 120 coins when harvesting after their 8-hour growing time. That contribution goes to fighting poverty in general, giving children a chance to participate in after-school activities or early learning programs (as two examples).

There's no time limit listed currently for how long you'll have to donate, but we'd assume the promotion will end shortly after Christmas. If you'd like to help those less fortunate, and receive something in your own game in the process, make sure to login to your game and check these options out in the store.

How Far Google+ Has Become Social Compared to Facebook?

Google+ shows tremendous potential when compared to Facebook popularity. And, to all of our educated guesses, people are excited about this cold war.

Questions I am stuck with:

Who wins? Who looses? What is going to happen next? How this is going to influence our social media marketing plan? Is it good or bad for everyone related to internet world? How great and different it is from Facebook applications? Is it safe enough for users like Facebook is?

Looking for answers:

I am stuck with so many questions. While trying to find the root of these discussions I got a mixed bag response. Some are talking about identity issues, social security and some are discussing about Alexa rankings, popularity, user-friendliness and feature-rich displays. As of now, I can’t help but be a silent spectator. Hope coming days will throw some light into it for me.

Well, I am sure that Zuckerburg too is thinking about some new ideas to integrate.

Before, we go into the detailed analysis of Google+ Vs Facebook here a few things to know about Google+. I am sure you all are pretty aware of Facebook. So no more updates on it. We will proceed with Google+.

What Google+ came up with?

Google+ takes pledge to connect people every single day. It wants you to experience better relationships and interests. If you are a part of Google family, you will enjoy a gamut of new features.

These are as follows:

+Circles – Now you can make a circle of friends who matter the most to you. You can add new people, share news and do anything you like.

+Sparks – Now you can access to contagious content like hyped articles, vibrant photos, funny videos and stuffs that attract everybody. You just need to add your interest and the content will delivered to you on time that you can watch, read and share.

+Hangouts – Now you can avoid the conventional ping method (as you do in instant messaging) to let people know about your entry. The method was awkward and annoying for starters. Because unintentional pinging may interrupt other’s plan and you may end up with no response.

With +Hangouts you can combine casual meetup with live multi-person video.  You can chat with friends in circle when you are free. It is not embarrassing.

+Mobile – Google+ is perfect for sharing mobile experience.  GPS, cameras, Instant Messaging – these mobile features are compatible with Google+.

+ Instant Upload – Now you can upload photos to a private album in the cloud. They are ready to share across any devices.

+ Huddle – Enjoy a new experience of group messaging. Now coordinating with friends in circle has become real-time. Everyone knows what is going on right this moment. No need to exchange text message or phone calls.

It all seems pretty conducive.

But all is not well! There are negative feedbacks too.  Those who started with Google+ struggled a lot.

Here are the examples how?

1. As you log in you will find all your default circles of friends, family, and acquaintances dropping into your contact list. You are yet to decide who is a friend and who the lesser acquaintance. So, there should be boundaries and filtration scheme in place, which is not there currently.
2. You may explore yourself in an unwanted circle, just because you have a folk who is a part of undesirable social circles. So, the name for these circles should remain private.
3. As soon as you connect Google+ to your email accounts, it will spread its tentacles into all your Google connections.
4. You may notice all Google+ conversations appearing on Gmail account. Even you will be seeing notification for every new connection in Gmail Inbox. This is irritating for sure.
5. You may not share images on Google + that are taken from Blackberry. Though, you could do it through Twitter (that connects to Facebook account).

Comparative analysis:

So, there are grey areas which we hope Google+ will solve ASAP. Google+ has to do something like Farmville (Facebook gaming application) to draw new members.

When compared to Facebook, Google+ rocks in many parts. For example Vide Hangouts where you can have instant “face-to-face” group meetings and lots of communal YouTube video sharing.  Now even Facebook plans to introduce some sort of Skype integration very soon.

Indeed we want to see more developments in areas where Facebook users still strive. To best of my knowledge, Google+ is yet to finish its R&D. So, we can always expect more and better from Big G.

Never mind, Google still rocks as a Search Engine to most of us and Facebook a social media giant. Google to reach that place will take some time for sure, if it can.

New Missouri 'Facebook bill': Let school districts make their own rules

The Missouri legislature wants to limit 'improper communications' between students and teachers, but its first 'Facebook law' was blocked by the courts. Now, it's trying a toned-down version.

 

Lawmakers are considering a simplified version of Missouri’s so-called “Facebook law,” which was blocked last month by a state judge for being too broad in its restriction of social media contact between teachers and students.

The new version would drop controversial requirements, such as the ban on teachers using websites that enabled “exclusive access” between a staff member and a student. The provision would have prevented students and teachers from "friending" each other on Facebook, because communication between "friends" is private.

Instead, the revised bill would leave it up to districts to come up with policies to “prevent improper communications” between school employees and students, including on electronic media. It also gives districts an extended deadline – March 1, instead of Jan. 1 – to adopt the new policies.

The original social-media restrictions, which were a section of the broader Amy Hestir Student Protection Act targeting sexual abuse, were so broad and vague that they would have prevented even normal contact between a student and his or her own parent, if the parent was a teacher, free-speech advocates and educators say.

Vodafone launches special Facebook phone

The second largest mobile operator Vodafone today launched a Facebook-integrated phone 'Vodafone Blue', which allows its customers to access Facebook free of cost for a year.

The new phone, targeted at the youth and priced Rs 4,950, has a designated 'f' button that lets the customer to upload pictures, visit profiles, update status, and chat on the Facebook. The phone has a 2.4-inch screen, a QWERTY keypad and works on 2.5 G Edge network.



At present, only HTC's ChaCha and Salsa phones boast of a dedicated Facebook button to access the popular social networking site.

"Mobile Internet plays a central role in the daily lives of millions of our customers, many of whom are avid Facebook users. We have a fairly detailed plan to reach to the top 75-80 cities or 85-90 percent of this smart phone business," Vodafone Essar Chief Marketing Officer Kumar Ramanathan told reporters here.

To increase penetration of this new device, Vodafone, which has over 143 million customers, is working on the language settings to cater to the diverse population in the country.

The telco also has an exclusivity pact with Facebook for the device.

"There is an exclusivity arrangement in place. I don't know the width of the exclusivity arrangement," Vodafone Essar Vice President for Brand Communication & Insights Anuradha Aggarwal told PTI.

"This phone has been designed with Facebook. We are co-creating everything," she added and pointed out this association will also help in future if Facebook decides to launch its own phone in this market.

"It will be a win-win situation if they come with their own phone. We believe there is great leverage through usage and association of the phone. Making Vodafone and Facebook synonymous will work for both of us," she said.

It has been reported by global media that Facebook is working to integrate deeply into the contacts list and other core functions of smartphones and that senior Facebook employees, Joe Hewitt and Matthew Papakipos, who have operating system experience, are said to be working on this phone project.

However, Vodafone clarified that it is not a device manufacturer and it has no intention to be one in association with Facebook.

"We have merely teamed up with Facebook to create a hardware product along with TFT-Alcatel which manufactures the phone. The smartphone's operating system is a proprietary one, and its intellectual property rights are owned by Vodafone and TFT-Alcatel," Vodafone Group Services Director for Terminal Marketing Peter Becker-Pennrich said.

He refused to take specific questions if there are any clauses in the Facebook-Vodafone deal that would prevent the operating system from being sold to any other company.

"I cannot answer that question. We do not talk about specifics of our commercial deals," he said.

He also parried a query on the revenue side of the deal.

"Facebook wants to make every phone social and we have taken the integration of Facebook to the next level with the Vodafone Blue," Facebook Mobile Business Head Henri Moissinac said.

Blogs vs Twitter vs Facebook. Where the World Thought about Google's Motorola Acquisition

Was Google’s (GOOG) acquisition of Motorola Mobility a good thing or a bad thing? Obviously it depends on what criteria you are using. Google and Motorola were presumably delighted. The folks at Netbase, a company that collates online opinion and sentiment, sent me a couple of graphics on overall reaction and what surprises me is not the positive-negative split, though that is interesting. The real surprise is where people talk.

The graph shows the positive sentiment on the acquisition growing steadily though not dramatically. Negative sentiment is also increasing.
On the chart below however you can see where people express their opinions.  Is it surprising that only 10% of all the opinions expressed online about the acquisition are from news organisations? Or is 10% quite high? Are we able to truly dimensionalize (bad verb I know) how opinion functions?

The data shows almost as much action on forums as in news sites but overwhelmingly the distribution mechanism of choice is Twitter at 45%. Surprising to me is that blogs hold up quite well with 25% of messaging.
Where are we headed with opinion and how we choose to communicate with each other?
Clearly Twitter is out there as a news accelerator. But people still want to articulate their viewpoints in substantial numbers (blogs), and engage in dialogue (in forums).
The low use of Facebook (social networks) as a place to express a view is also surprising. It only takes a like button. The world’s most visited site only accounts for 7% of views expressed.

What does it mean about how opinion forms and settles?

That’s something we need to think more on. As someone from a news background originally I look for a dominant influence, a reference point.

But clearly there is no dominant environment for discussing major stories, though the ability of blogs to hold out against social networks and Twitter is heartening. The articulate technorati continues to thrive.

Facebook is the new cause of divorce

The number of divorces occurring because of Facebook and other social networking sites has been on the rise since these sites have become increasingly popular, research claims. These sites are being utilized more and more by unhappy individuals to seek out and have an affair and cheat on their partner.
Facebook is being cited in almost one in five of online divorce petitions, lawyers have claimed.
People will post just about anything on social networking sites. And the information can be used against them. David Randall and Victoria Richards report.
In the judicial backwater of a New Jersey federal court, a case is being heard that nominally affects two families but should also make millions of Britons think twice about something they do every day: put highly personal information on Facebook, MySpace or Bebo.
The social networking site, which connects old friends and allows users to make new ones online, is being blamed for an increasing number of marital breakdowns.
Divorce lawyers claim the explosion in the popularity of websites such as Facebook and Bebo is tempting to people to cheat on their partners. Suspicious spouses have also used the websites to find evidence of flirting and even affairs which have led to divorce.
One law firm, which specialises in divorce, claimed almost one in five petitions they processed cited Facebook.
Mark Keenan, Managing Director of Divorce-Online said: “I had heard from my staff that there were a lot of people saying they had found out things about their partners on Facebook and I decided to see how prevalent it was I was really surprised to see 20 per cent of all the petitions containing references to Facebook.
“The most common reason seemed to be people having inappropriate sexual chats with people they were not supposed to.”
An American insurance company, in defending its refusal to pay out a claim, is seeking to call in evidence personal online postings, including the contents of any MySpace or Facebook pages the litigants may have, to see if their eating disorders might have “emotional causes”. And the case is far from a lone one. Suddenly, those saucy pictures and intimate confessions on social networking sites can be taken down and used in evidence against you in ways never dreamed of.
Flirty emails and messages found on Facebook pages are increasingly being cited as evidence of unreasonable behaviour. Computer firms have even cashed in by developing software allowing suspicious spouses to electronically spy on someone’s online activities.
One 35-year-old woman even discovered her husband was divorcing her via Facebook. Conference organiser Emma Brady was distraught to read that her marriage was over when he updated his status on the site to read: “Neil Brady has ended his marriage to Emma Brady.”
Last year a 28-year-old woman ended her marriage after discovering her husband had been having a virtual affair with someone in cyberspace he had never met. Amy Taylor 28, split from David Pollard after discovering he was sleeping with an escort in the game Second Life, a virtual world where people reinvent themselves.
Around 14 million Britons are believed to regularly use social networking sites to communicate with old friends or make new ones. The popularity of the Friends Reunited website several years ago was also blamed for a surge in divorces as bored husbands and wives used it to contact old flames and first loves.
The UK’s divorce rate has fallen in recent years, but two in five marriages are still failing according the latest statistics. Mr Keenan believes that the general divorce rate will rocket in 2010 with the recession taking the blame.
In the US, a sex assault victim seeking compensation faces the prospect of her MySpace and Facebook pages being produced in court. In Texas, a driver whose car was involved in a fatal accident found his MySpace postings (“I’m not an alcoholic, I’m a drunkaholic”) part of the prosecution’s case.
From Los Angeles to Lowestoft, thousands of social network site users have lost their jobs – or failed to clinch new ones – because of their pages’ contents. Police, colleges and schools are monitoring MySpace and Facebook pages for what they deem to be “inappropriate” content. Online security holes and users’ naivety are combining to cause privacy breaches and identity thefts. And what all this, and more, adds up to is this: online social networking can seriously damage your life.

Facebook, Skype to launch video chat service

HOUSTON: Just as Google's next big thing ' Google Plus' is all set to launch, Facebook and Skype are about to strike a deal that would bring the video chatting service to the social networking site.


With Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg promising an "awesome" new feature on July 6, Skype, which was recently purchased by Microsoft for a whopping USD 8.5 billion, could become a fixture on the world's largest social network.

The beta version of Google's social network, Google Plus, debuted last week to rave reviews, especially for its +Hangouts feature that allows for multi-user video chat.

At present, Facebook users update message and status through their profile, and share photos but the addition of video chat will bring an interesting change to their account.

Editor of Tech Crunch, Michael Arrington stated in the Next Week that Facebook, in collaboration with Skype, will unveil its video chat option which will be powered by Skype.

This move will strengthen Facebook's position in the social networking market.

Facebook at present is the most influential and one of the biggest social networking sites in the world having over 500 million active users.

This isn't the first time that Skype has been linked to Facebook.

Back in September 2010 the same rumour reared its head and this March it was reported that talks had resumed between the two companies.

Citing an insider source, Techcrunch announced the news, describing the powered-by-Skype Facebook video chat: "The product has been built on Skype and will include a desktop component".

"It's not clear to me whether that means it will just work if a user has Skype already installed on the computer, or if additional software will need to be downloaded even if the user already uses Skype.

"But it's clear that there's very deep integration between the products, and from the user's perspective, the product will be an in browser experience".

Official word will come out tomorrow when Facebook holds an event at its Palo Alto headquarters.