Facebook Says Haters Gonna Hate, Likers Gonna Like
Facebook knows what’s best for you, sometimes before you do. That’s the meaning of a new “Likers Gonna Like” inspirational mini-poster printed by the Facebook Toronto Office. If you don’t approve of something Facebook’s doing, fine, there’s millions of other people who do. And just as with the launch of the news feed, if you hate some change to the Facebook interface, wait a few months, and you’ll probably end up Liking it too.
It’s a cavalier statement, one based on several old hip-hop songs including “In Da Club” by 50 Cent, where he raps “If [they] hate then let ‘em hate and watch the money pile up”. It’s a mentality that has gotten the company into privacy trouble. But the idea that Facebook and its visionary CEO Mark Zuckerberg should push forward with bold ideas because “Likers Gonna Like” is what’s let Facebook move faster than its older rivals, and kept it from being disrupted these last eight years.
http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/18/likers-gonna-like/
Facebook IPO: Live Updates On FB’s Big Day
Eight years, 900 million users, and several Winklevoss lawsuits later, Facebook isgoing public in what will be the third largest IPO in history.
Facebook, which will begin trading on the Nasdaq under “FB,” will raise over $18 billion and will be worth more than $100 billion when it makes its stock market debut. By comparison, Google raised $1.67 billion in its 2004 IPO, which valued the company at $26.4 billion.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/18/facebook-ipo-live-updates-fb_n_1526829.html?1337343820#1_rise-and-shine-hackers
Reticent Rich: Preferred Style in Silicon Valley
Wealth is here if you know where to find it.
Fabulous home theaters are tucked into the basements of plain suburban houses. Bespoke jeans that start at $1,200 can be detected only by a tiny red logo on the button. The hand-painted Italian bicycles that flash across Silicon Valley on Saturday mornings have become the new Ferrari — and only the cognoscenti could imagine that they cost more than $20,000.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/18/technology/a-start-up-is-gold-for-facebooks-new-millionaires.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all
Zynga, LinkedIn, Yelp All Down After Facebook IPO Debut
Facebook‘s long-awaited IPO appears to have dragged down other social media stocks.
A few minutes after Facebook’s shares started trading, shares of Zynga, LinkedIn, Yelp, Renren and Pandora Media were all tanking.
http://mashable.com/2012/05/18/zynga-linkedin-yelp-all-down-after-facebook-ipo-debut/
GM ad move followed failed Facebook pitch: sources
Facebook may only have itself to blame for why General Motors rained on its IPO parade this week.
GM announced the decision to drop Facebook paid ads on Tuesday in what was the first highly visible crack in Facebook’s strategy and illustrated doubts about its perceived advantage over traditional media.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/18/net-us-gm-facebook-idUSBRE84H03S20120518?irpc=932
2012 Venture Capital Funding to Facebook Mafia Up 137% vs. 2011. Greylock is Most Active VC FB Mafia Investor So Far.
The Facebook Mafia isn’t waiting for an IPO to strike out on their own as company alumni have already raised $271 million of venture capital funding since 2006. And the Facebook Mafia’s momentum appears to be accelerating with the group pulling in $130 million in just the first 5.5 months of 2012, a 137% increase over all of 2011, and the highest total in the last 6.5 years (graph below). For those unfamiliar with the term, the Facebook Mafia refers to alumni of Facebook who’ve gone on to found new startup companies.
http://www.cbinsights.com/blog/venture-capital/facebook-mafia-greylock
Mark Zuckerberg Worth $21B on Facebook IPO Debut
In less than an hour, Mark Zuckerberg has jumped from number 29 to number 24 — and then back to 29 — on the list of wealthiest people in the world.
Facebook set an opening share price of $38 on Thursday evening, which valued Zuckerberg’s 503.6 million shares and options at about $19.1 billion. Trading opened on Friday at about $42.
http://mashable.com/2012/05/18/mark-zuckerberg-rich/
Facebook hit with $15B class-action suit over user privacy
Just hours before Facebook opened on the public market today, a group of Facebook users sued the company in a $15 billion class-action lawsuit over privacy, according to Bloomberg.
Facebook has attracted scrutiny for quite some time when it comes to user privacy and how well it protects the data of its users. The new lawsuit, which was filed in Federal Court in San Jose, Calif., contends that Facebook improperly tracked users even after they were logged out of their personal accounts.
http://venturebeat.com/2012/05/18/facebook-ipo-day-lawsuit-user-privacy/
Nasdaq Delayed Facebook IPO for 30 Minutes
Although Facebook was scheduled to go public at 11:00 a.m. ET on Friday, it didn’t officially hit the stock market until a half an hour later. A rep from Nasdaq declined comment on the issue.
The IPO caused a series of issues for finance sites, including Nasdaq.com and etrade.com.
http://mashable.com/2012/05/18/facebook-ipo-delay/
The Facebook IPO: What it looked like inside the company’s headquarters
Facebook began trading on the public markets for the first time today, and at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., excitement levels were high.
After an all-night hackathon designed to send the message that Facebook cares more about coding and shipping products than it does about the public markets, Facebook held a bell-ringing ceremony early in the morning. Using a specially-hacked remote-control NASDAQ button, Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg simultaneously rang the bell on the trading floor of the stock exchange, 3,000 miles away, and updated his (and his company’s) Facebook status.
http://venturebeat.com/2012/05/18/the-facebook-ipo-what-it-looked-like-inside-the-companys-headquarters/#s:facebook-ipo-opening-bell-3
UK government staff caught snooping on citizen data
Don’t worry about hackers illegally accessing government systems. It turns out government workers and civil servants who are trusted with private citizen data are more likely to access your data illegally.
The U.K. government is haemorrhaging data — private and confidential citizen data — from medical records to social security details, and even criminal records, according to figures obtained through Freedom of Information requests.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/london/uk-government-staff-caught-snooping-on-citizen-data/4716
iHeartRadio Hits 10 Million Users Faster Than Facebook or Twitter
Digital radio platform iHeartRadio announced its user stats for the first time ever on Thursday, citing growth in an eight-month period that was faster than other popular services including Facebook and Twitter when they first opened up registration.
http://mashable.com/2012/05/17/iheartradio-stats/
Exclusive: Yahoo Finally Set to Strike Alibaba Share Deal — Half Now, Then Half of What’s Left After Eventual IPO
Yahoo is in the final stages of selling a large chunk of its stake in the Alibaba Group back to the company — in a complex deal that is set to include a multibillion-dollar share buyback to investors of the Silicon Valley Internet giant and an eventual IPO of the Chinese company — according to multiple sources close to the situation.
http://allthingsd.com/20120517/exclusive-yahoo-finally-set-to-strike-alibaba-share-deal-half-now-then-half-of-whats-left-after-eventual-ipo/
