Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, as seen on an HTC First smartphone using the new Facebook ‘Home’ interface.
Making you feel comfortable didn’t get Facebook to a billion users. It had to push your limits of “open and connectedness.” That’s why so many of its product launches are initially met with outrage, or apprehension. But Zuck is convinced the amount we share will double each year. So if you don’t want “Home” yet, fine. It’s designed to handle how we share in 2016 so no one steals Facebook’s future.
“If you asked people what they want, they would have said faster horses,” Henry Ford supposedly said about building the car. That’s because our minds think incrementally. Mark Zuckerberg is thinking exponentially. That’s made him a pariah in the short-term, but one of the world’s most influential people nine years after he started Facebook Inc. (FB).
Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP HTC CEO Peter Chou, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph De La Vega embrace as they show joint products at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., on Thursday.
By PETER SVENSSON
NEW YORK — Facebook Home, the new application that takes over the front screen of a smartphone, is a bit of a corporate home invasion. Facebook is essentially moving into Google’s turf, taking advantage of software the search giant and competitor created.
Facebook Home will operate on phones running Google Inc.’s (GOOG) Android software and present Facebook status updates, messages and other content on the home screen, rather than making the user fire up Facebook’s app. The software will be available for users to download on April 12 and will come preloaded on a new phone from HTC Corp., sold by AT&T Inc. in the U.S.
Google gives away Android, the most popular smartphone software in the world, in the hope that it will steer phone users toward Google services, such as Maps and Gmail, and the ads it sells. Compared to ads targeting PC surfers, mobile ads are a small market, but it’s growing quickly. Research firm eMarketer expects U.S. mobile ad spending to grow 77 percent this year to $7.29 billion.
With Home, Facebook is inserting itself between users and Google, diverting them to the social network’s own ads and services. It’s taking advantage of the fact that Google places few restrictions on how phone manufacturers and software developers modify Android. By contrast, Facebook Home would not work on the iPhone without approval from Apple Inc., and close collaboration with the company.
“Facebook Home can only reside on Android because only Google was daft enough to allow it,” said independent phone analyst Horace Dediu, via Twitter.
At the launch event Thursday, Facebook Inc. (FB) CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Google was aware of the project, but Facebook didn’t work them to create Home. Asked if he believed Google could change tactics and restrict apps like Home, he said it was theoretically possible, but highly unlikely for Google to do a “180-degree change” in its stance on Android’s openness.
It’s not the first time a big Internet company has co-opted Android: Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) has gone much farther with its Kindle Fire tablets. They run a version of Android that strips out all Google services, replacing them with Amazon’s equivalents. Barnes & Noble Inc. does the same thing with its Nook tablets. These devices lie outside the Google system, whereas phones running Facebook Home still come with Google apps like Maps and the Play Store for music, movies and applications.
The Play Store has many examples of downloadable applications that modify the Android home screen — so-called “launchers.” Home, however, represents the first time a major …read more
A Chicago-based social media company called Timelines Inc. can sue Facebook Inc. over allegations that it violated the smaller firm’s trademark on the word “timeline,” a federal judge ruled. …read more Source: FULL ARTICLE at Phys.org
Regulators approved on Monday a plan to compensate market makers who lost money in a botched Facebook Inc. (FB) public offering on Nasdaq OMX Group Inc’s Nasdaq exchange.
The decision from the Securities and Exchange Commission was in response to a series of high-profile glitches last year that shook the market, including the handling of Facebook’s long-anticipated initial public offering on May 18.
(Reporting by Jennifer Saba in New York; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick)
March 21 (Reuters) – Google Inc’s YouTube said 1 billion unique users were now visiting the video-sharing website every month, or nearly one out of every two people on the Internet. “If YouTube were a country, we’d be the third largest in the world after China and India,” YouTube said in a blog post on Wednesday. () Expanding high-speed data networks across the world and increased availability of internet-enabled smartphones have helped to connect billions of people to the Internet, fuelling growth in social media and video-sharing websites. Facebook Inc reached 1 billion active users in September, a level of global penetration that has made its quest for sustained growth more challenging. The popularity of music videos such as South Korean singer Psy’s “Gangnam Style” has contributed to an explosion in viewership on YouTube. The video has so far clocked up 1.45 billion views. () YouTube was an instant success after its founding by three former PayPal employees in 2005, adding millions of users in its first year. Google bought it for $1.65 billion in 2006. The fast-growing video site, which had about 800 million unique monthly users a year ago, now represents one of Google’s key opportunities to generate new sources of revenue outside of its traditional internet search advertising business. Google does not break out revenue from advertising on YouTube, which is a free site, but its contribution in terms of Google’s overall revenue is relatively small. AdAge reported in January that Google planned to offer paid subscriptions to some content later this year. YouTube had reached out to several video producers, asking them to submit applications to create for-pay “channels,” AdAge said, adding that the first such channels could be available by the second quarter for between $1 and $5 a month.
A Florida investment adviser has been charged in New York in an $8 million securities fraud scheme that capitalized on enthusiasm for Facebook Inc. shares.
Craig L. Berkman was arrested Tuesday at his home in Odessa, Fla.
He was charged with claiming to own Facebook shares before the company went public last year when he did not directly own shares. Prosecutors say he pocketed much of the $8 million he received from more than 50 investors.
The Securities and Exchange Commission announced separate civil charges against Berkman.
Prosecutors say Berkman began falsely claiming to investors in December 2010 that he owned Facebook shares. The government said he operated a private company called Ventures Trust II LLC.
It was unclear Tuesday who will represent the 71-year-old businessman.
A 1994 Oregon Republican gubernatorial candidate, Craig Berkman, was charged with fraud today by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for a “Ponzi-like scheme” around last year’s initial public offering of stock in Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB). An associate of Berkman’s was also charged with aiding and abetting in the violations.
Berkman, who now lives in Florida, raised $13.2 million from 120 investors by selling shares in limited liability companies he owned that he claimed would either acquire pre-IPO shares of social media companies, acquire pre-IPO shares of Facebook, or acquire a company that already owned pre-IPO shares of Facebook.
Berkman did invest about $600,000 in an unrelated fund that had acquired pre-IPO Facebook stock, but Berkman’s investment did not provide him or any of his company’s with ownership of those shares. The rest of the cash went to pay off an earlier fine, pay off early investors in the Facebook IPO scheme, and for his own personal use.
This is such a run-of-the-mill scheme that it seems incredible that anyone would fall for it. Facebook’s insistence on a $100 billion IPO valuation — which lasted for about one day — was a far more inventive way of separating investors from their money.
Filed under: 24/7 Wall St. Wire, Law, Regulation Tagged: FB
Internet jobs site Glassdoor has released its list of the top 50 U.S. CEOs, based on employee feedback, for the past 12 months through February 27. The company asked the question, “Do you approve of the way your CEO is leading the company?” and received more than half a million responses.
The top-ranked chief executive officer this year is Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB). Others in the top five are SAP A.G. (NYSE: SAP) co-CEOs Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe, McKinsey & Co. CEO Dominic Barton, Ernst & Young’s Jim Turley and Northwestern Mutual’s John Schlifske. Turley is the only repeater in the top five.
Last year’s top-rated CEO, Tim Cook of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL), fell to 18th this year, although the decrease in his score was relatively small, from 97 to 93. Larry Page, CEO at Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG), fell from fifth place a year ago to 11th place, but improved his score from 94 to 95.
Glassdoor’s CEO noted:
The CEOs who are most successful in gaining employee approval are those who paint a clear vision of what the company is setting out to achieve and how it’s going to get there. To be recognized by your employees as a strong leader also comes as a result of having a solid company culture that helps employees foster the skills necessary to move business forward and meet the needs of customers.
Facebook Inc. Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg has sparked debate after she said women need to be more aggressive in their careers. A Pew Research Center study released Thursday shows a big spike in the share of working mothers who said they’d prefer to work full time. (Gregory Bull/AP)
By JENNIFER C. KERR
WASHINGTON — Working mothers increasingly want full-time jobs, and tough economic times might be a big reason, according to a national survey.
In the Pew Research Center study being released Thursday, researchers saw a big spike in the share of working mothers who said they’d prefer to work full time; 37 percent said that was their ideal, up from 21 percent in 2007.
The poll comes amid a national debate on women in the workplace ignited by top Facebook Inc. (FB) executive Sheryl Sandberg, who writes in a new book about the need for women to be more professionally aggressive.
In “Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead,” Sandberg argues that women have not made true progress in the workplace over the past decade and that they need to raise their hands more and “lean in” if they want to land more senior positions in corporate America.
The shift toward full-time work in the Pew poll, however, coincides with the recession and may have less to do with career ambitions than with financial realities.
“Women aren’t necessarily evolving toward some belief or comfort level with work,” says study co-author Kim Parker, an associate director at the center. “They are also reacting to outside forces and in this case, it is the economy.”
Among women who said their financial situations aren’t sufficient to meet basic expenses, about half said working full time was best for them. Of the women who said they live comfortably, only 31 percent said full time was their best situation.
Melody Armstrong, 34, of Hampton, N.H., works full time and says she wouldn’t have it any other way.
“It works better for my family, and for our finances,” Armstrong said in an interview. “It helps pay the bills and we can enjoy the lifestyle we have. We need to have two incomes.”
Armstrong and her husband have six children between them, a blended family with one child off to college and a baby at home. She works for Double Black Imaging, a Colorado-based company that sells medical monitors. Armstrong says her company gives her the flexibility she needs to work her sales position from home.
“I do some work early in the morning or after dinner,” Armstrong says, and can adjust around her children’s school and sports schedules.
Mothers’ attitudes — both for those who work outside the home and those who don’t — have changed significantly. Among women with children under 18 years old, the proportion of …read more Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance
Boeing Co. (NYSE: BA) gets permission from the FAA to test fly its troubled 787. (Reuters)
Job openings rose in January, according to the Labor Department. (Reuters)
President Obama will meet with CEOs on the subject of cyber security. (Reuters)
IDC expects sales of Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) Android-powered tablets to pass the Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPad this year. (Reuters)
Dean Metropoulos and Apollo Global Management LLC (NYSE: APO) will buy some of the Hostess brands. (Reuters)
The FTC wants standards for traditional ads to apply to those on Twitter and Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) sites so that certain disclosures about the marketers are clear. (WSJ)
Samsung spent more than Apple to market smartphones in 2012. (WSJ)
Audi’s sales pace may allow it to challenge BMW and Mercedes for market share. (WSJ)
Regulators approve a deal for T-Mobile to combine with MetroPCS Communications Inc. (NYSE: PCS). (WSJ)
Sudan agrees to begin new shipments of crude oil, which had been suspended recently. (WSJ)
China steel output rose 9.8% last month, largely due to domestic construction. (WSJ)
Discover Financial Services (NYSE: DFS) enters the mortgage business. (WSJ)
Google presses into the cloud computing market now dominated by Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT). (NYT)
West Texas Intermediate crude nears a two-week high as U.S. supplies drop. (Bloomberg)
The new Samsung Galaxy IV will target sales of Apple’s iPhone. (Bloomberg)
A new study by Cambridge University professors shows that “undisclosed” private data that Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) might collect could be used to predict extremely sensitive information about members. Does Facebook use systems identical to those set by Cambridge experts? Probably not, but the social network almost certainly has related ones, whether its uses the information to make money or not.
It remains a constant wonder that privacy experts, researchers, the media and Facebook members for some reason believe the social network, and most other large Internet sites, do not collect reams of information about user behavior. Many of these Internet businesses do not sell the information to marketers, but the data most likely are used to improve site content, navigation and the introduction of features. The data collection might even be considered a benefit to users, to the extent that it betters how users benefit from the sites.
For every accusation that Facebook misuses data for purposes beyond member experience there are solutions. The New York Times recently ran an article about how Facebook users can protect their identities in the face of the social network’s latest search features that could be co-opted by outsiders to track Facebook user habits. The paper went so far as to report about the new “personal vault” tool:
It can be scoured by police officers, partners and would-be employers. It can be mined by marketers to show tailored advertisements.
Still, Facebook has the data, no matter how much of the outside world has access to it. So, the data is almost certainly not “safe” from the social network itself. That is a risk that goes with the reward of the use of Facebook without fees or membership charges.
The most well-known public charge against Facebook collection of personal data can be found in the large settlement with the Federal Trade Commission over the issue. The agreement showed that Facebook had “deceived” its members about “telling them they could keep their information on Facebook private, and then repeatedly allowing it to be shared and made public.” Facebook likely still has access and does analysis about the same kind of information, even if it is no longer shared with the outside world. That does not mean the information is not used to allow marketers to narrowly target users, even if data on individual users remains hidden.
Privacy issues are the toll people pay to use a service with one billion members. Facebook would be a poorly run business if it did not use data about it members, to the extent it is legal and does not go over the line of its own privacy policies, which are too complicated for most users to decipher.
The Cambridge study offers nothing new.
Filed under: 24/7 Wall St. Wire, Internet, Research Tagged: FB
By Tim Worstall, Contributor One way of looking at this claim is to adopt a phrase from Wall Street: the man’s talking his own book. For it would indeed be more interesting if someone who didn’t own a large amount of Facebook stock claimed that the company was going to last 100 years. At least we would be more likely to think of it as a disinterested opinion. But that is indeed the claim, that Facebook is going to last for 100 years: Yuri Milner, the Russian investor whose early bet on Facebook Inc. made him a billionaire, sees the social network as one of three websites that will endure for 100 years. …read more Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
In a move that was probably inevitable, the Nasdaq OMX Group Inc. (NASDAQ: NDAQ) today announced a joint venture with SharesPost Inc. to create a larger marketplace for private company shares. Nasdaq OMX will hold a majority stake in the venture, but terms of the deal were not revealed.
SharesPost and SecondMarket Inc. are among the exchanges that match early investors, founders and employees wishing to sell shares that are not yet listed on regulated exchanges with buyers who want access to shares in a company that has not yet held an initial public offering. SharesPost, for example, traded pre-IPO shares of Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) and currently includes trading in Spotify and Violin Memory.
The Nasdaq Private Market (NPM), as the new joint venture is to be called, is intended to provide liquidity to investors and employees of privately funded companies that are now staying private longer before holding an IPO. The new marketplace is expected to launch later this year. pending regulatory approvals.
Those approvals might be a bit tricky to come by. About a year ago, Bloomberg reported that the SEC was looking into the trading practices of SharesPost and another firm, Felix Investments Inc. No action appears to have been taken, but now that pre-IPO market is going mainstream, regulatory scrutiny is likely to be more intense.
Everyone knows that if a company or product shows up on the first page of results from a search engine query, the chances that the company or product will get noticed, or even better get a click, go way up. But how far up can a company expect to go?
According to the latest data from Experian Marketing Services, the top five sites capturing search activity are Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB), with about 8.5% of clicks, Google Inc.’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) YouTube, 5.6% of clicks, Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) with 2.6%, Wikipedia with 2%, and Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) with 1.4% of clicks. These top 5 account for 20% of all search activity and the top 500 sites account for about 50% of all search activity.
The results for paid search are similar: the top 5 sites get 16% of the clicks and the top 50 sites get 56%. The top site is Amazon.com with 4.2% of clicks, followed by Ebay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY), Demand Media Inc.’s (NYSE: DMD) eHow, Best Buy Co. Inc. (NYSE: BBY), and Yahoo! Shopping.
Google serviced about 3 billion searches a day in 2011, which means that Facebook gleaned about 255 million clicks every day from Google searches. Even at a 1% rate, that’s 3 million clicks a day. Amazon is paying for around 126 million clicks a day, given its 4.2% activity rate.
Even at click-through rates that are lower than 1%, the top sites get a lot of traffic from searches, free and paid. Big changes at the top are not likely.
Filed under: 24/7 Wall St. Wire, Internet, Research Tagged: AMZN, BBY, DMD, EBAY, FB, GOOG, YHOO
(Reuters) – Apple Inc computers were attacked by the same hackers who targeted Facebook Inc, but no data appeared to have been stolen, the company said on Tuesday in an unprecedented admission of a widespread cyber-security breach.
Facebook revealed on Friday that unidentified hackers traced to China had staged a sophisticated attack by infiltrating its employees’ laptops, but no user information was compromised.
Apple, which is working with law enforcement to track down the hackers, told Reuters that only a small number of its employees’ Macintosh computers were breached, but “there was no evidence that any data left Apple.”
BOSTON/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Apple Inc computers were attacked by the same hackers who targeted Facebook Inc, but no data appeared to have been stolen, the company said on Tuesday in an unprecedented admission of a widespread cyber-security breach. Facebook revealed on Friday that unidentified hackers traced to China had staged a sophisticated attack by infiltrating its employees' laptops, but no user information was compromised. …
By Tim Worstall, Contributor We’ve a rather breathless report designed to stir up outrage over the manner in which Facebook isn’t going to pay the corporate income tax on the $ billion or so of profits that it has announced for last financial year. Not only won’t it not pay taxes on that amount it appears to have a tax refund from previous years. Sadly the story is simply an example of how some people just do not understand the taxation system: Earlier this month, the Facebook Inc. released its first “10-K” annual financial report since going public last year. Hidden in the report’s footnotes is an amazing admission: despite $1.1 billion in U.S. profits in 2012, Facebook did not pay even a dime in federal and state income taxes. …read more Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
Last year saw more acquisitions of closely held technology companies than any year since at least 2009, with social-media giant Facebook Inc. (FB) tying Google Inc. (GOOG) for most deals completed in the space, according to a report released this week by PrivCo LLC. …read more Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox Business Headlines
