WASHINGTON POST - May 24 - In mid-May, as Facebook prepared for IPO, an analyst at Morgan Stanley began advising clients orally that Facebook profits would probably be lower than previously estimated. The investors who received and took note of these warnings may have saved lots of money. The value of Facebook stock rose briefly on its first day and has since plunged 16% from its original price. Morgan Stanley, the IPO’s chief underwriter, is planning to make price adjustments for investors.
Facebook Named In A Third Of Divorce Filings In 2011
NY DAILY NEWS - May 25 - Facebook was implicated in a third of all divorce filings last year, according to Divorce-Online, a survey by a British legal service. U.S. divorce attorneys agree that Facebook is increasingly becoming a factor in marriage crack-ups. In 2009, Facebook was named in 1 in 5 divorce cases in the U.S.
Rumors Swirl About Eons.com
BOSTON BUSINESS JOURNAL - May 24 - Eons.com, a social networking site aimed at baby boomers originally launched by Monster.com founder Jeff Taylor, has been down for a week, causing scores of users to take to Facebook to speculate about what's going on. CEO Lori Bitter said that work is ongoing to restore the site. "We have a business/technological issue to solve and I am working at this as hard as I can for you," Bitter wrote. Taylor launched the site in 2006, and it had attracted funding from investors including General Catalyst Partners, Sequoia Capital and Charles River Ventures. The site was acquired for undisclosed terms by Continuum Crew.
TurnTo Networks Announces New Marquee Customers
PRESS RELEASE - May 24 - TurnTo is adding three new marquee brands to its customer list, Quidsi, L’Oreal USA, and Vitamin Shoppe. TurnTo provides Q&A system for online merchants, enabling shoppers to get advice directly from stores' real customers. TurnTo increases conversion rates, generates fresh content for SEO, builds customer loyalty, and reduces call center load.
MySpace Relaunching By End Of 2012
TOM'S GUIDE - May 24 - MySpace is expected to undergo a complete brand relaunch by the end of 2012. MySpace is currently talking with ad agencies about promoting the relaunch later this year. Currently MySpace is trying to pull away from focusing on pure social media, and connect people with the artists and their content. Timberlake is reportedly playing a major role in developing the site's creative direction and strategy.
by Kevin Parrish
See full article at Tom's Guide
WhosHere App Launches Video Chat
MARKETWIRE - May 24 - WhosHere, the location-based mobile social discovery app, launches video chat so its members can verify that they are talking to the person they expect to be talking to. WhosHere with video chat is now available for download at http://whoshere.net/download/ on iOS devices and will be coming soon to Android.
How Catherine & Geoff Cook Founded myYearbook
INC MAGAZINE - May 24 - myYearbook is one of the 25 most-trafficked site in US. It was founded in 2005 by siblings Catherine and Geoff Cook. In 1997 Geoff started two sites EssayEdge.com and ResumeEdge.com. He sold the sites to Thomson Corp. in 2002. At that time Catherine came up with her idea putting school's yearbooks online. Geoff left Thomson, invested 250K and became myYearbook's CEO. After the launch, 400 people signed up in 1 week. They started thinking of ways to engage users with games and quizzes that appeal to teenagers. By mid-2006 myYearbook had one million users, mostly due to viral growth, but they weren't making any money at all. They raised $4.1M in 2007. In 2010, myYearbook generated $23M revenue, but 85% of users were in North America. Winners tend to be global brands, so they started looking for ways that myYearbook could span the world. In 2011, they we were approached by Quepasa to be merged with myYearbook. It was a $100M deal - $18M in cash, the rest in stock. Geoff is now Quepasa's COO. Since yearbooks don't matter much outside of the U.S., they just announced a new name: MeetMe.
by Liz Welch
See full article at Inc Magazine
See all posts on myYearbook
See all posts on Quepasa
See all posts on MeetMe
Facebook, Morgan Stanley Face Class-action Suit Over IPO
LA TIMES - May 23 - A class-action lawsuit was filed Wednesday against Facebook, Morgan Stanley & Co., and the other Wall Street banks that underwrote the Facebook's IPO, alleging they misled most shareholders about revenue projections for the social network. Many people who bought Facebook stock when it began trading Friday lost money as the price of the shares tumbled in recent days. Facebook stock was up about 3% in early trading Wednesday. But its price of about $32 a share was well below its initial offering price of $38. Morgan Stanley said that after Facebook released a revised securities filing on May 9 "providing additional guidance with respect to business trends," a copy was forwarded to all of the bank's institutional and retail investors and "was widely publicized in the press at the time."
OoVoo Introduced Multi-Person Video Chat On Facebook
MASHABLE - May 22 - Video chat company ooVoo has rolled out its service to Facebook, allowing up to 12 friends to chat face-to-face at once. It is similar to Google Hangouts, which allows users to video chat in groups of 10 on Google+. ooVoo quietly rolled it out on Facebook over the past few months. Since then, ~350K people have been using the service. ooVoo boasts ~46M users, up from 19M in 2010.
Faceporn A Trademark Infringer? Facebook Has No Case
CNET NEWS - May 22 - Facebook claims that Norwegian site Faceporn infringed on its good name. However, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White declared that there was no evidence that Faceporn has attempted to corrupt anyone in California with its product. Therefore, he said, Facebook had no case. Facebook pleaded that Faceporn should simply give its good name to Facebook and pay all of the company's attorney fees. Facebook hasn't been entirely successful in restraining companies around the world from using two of the English language's most common words. Teachbook and Shagbook appear still to be going strong.
‘My Last Wish’ Is A Social Network Based On Death
MASHABLE - May 22 - Called My Last Wish, the app encourages users to post wishes on a ‘Wish Wall’ and then befriend others who might share their dreams. While definitely a little morbid, and certainly out of the ordinary, the app already has a little bit of a following. Posted wishes range from things such as traveling the world to writing a book.
Facebook Down 12% In Early Morning Trading
MASHABLE - May 21 - Facebook’s stock was down ~4.5% in pre-market trading, dipped below $37 and then fell about 8% below $36 upon opening and then fell as much as 12% later in the morning. Not surprisingly, the stock is also the most active on the Nasdaq. Facebook’s sluggish performance seems to be dragging down other social media stocks as well. Before the opening bell, stock prices for Zynga, LinkedIn, Renren and Yelp were all down.
Microsoft's So.cl Now Open To All Users
COMPUTERWORLD - May 21 - So.cl is however still viewed as an experimental project targeted at students. It combines social networking and search to promote learning. The site is now accepting all users interested in joining the site. So.cl helps users find and share web pages of interest as students do when they work together, Microsoft said.
Facebook Buys Up Social Gifting App 'Karma'
AFTERDAWN - May 21 - Facebook has purchased the social gifting app "Karma." Karma does not do all too much except let users connect to the network via the app and send others gifts.
by Andre Yoskowitz
See full article at Afterdawn
Google Plus Beginning To Lose Steam?
IMEDIA MONKEY - May 21 - Google+ has been branded a “virtual ghost town” with nearly a third of users only ever making one public post, then never posting again. Users logging onto Google+ typically wait 12 days between making posts, and when they do, it gets on average less than one share, less than one reply and even less than a single +1, which is the Google equivalent of Facebooks Like system. Google+ claims 170M users, but has declined to provide data to back the number up. Facebook now has 900M users worldwide.
by Nick Barnes
See full article at iMediaMonkey
Facebook’s IPO: Who Got Rich
- Mark Zuckerberg - 503.6M shares - worth $19.14 billion
- Accel Partners/Jim Breyer - $7.7 billion (invested $12.2M in Facebook in 2005)
- Peter Thiel - an early investor, $1.7 billion
- Yuri Milner (DST) - $1.7 billion in cash, paper value $3.3 billion
- Sheryl Sandberg - paper value of $72.2M
- Sean Parker - paper value $2.65 billion
- Eduardo Saverin - Facebook co-founder has an estimated net worth of $2.7 billion
- Greylock Partners - 1.5% of Facebook, a stake now worth ~$1.6 billion
- Bono - no one knows what Bono will make from the IPO, but Elevation Partners, his investment firm, made $1.5 billion
- Choe, a graffiti artist who painted the walls of Facebook's first offices in Palo Alto, was paid in 3.77M shares, which are now worth $144.2M.
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June 13-14, 2012 in New York - The 2nd Annual Corporate Social Media Summit West Coast
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June 21-22, 2012 in Beverly Hills
Sep 10-11, 2012 in Köln
Oct 2012 in Moscow - The B2B Social Media Summit and The B2C Social Media Best Practice Summit Europe
June 25-26, 2012 in London - The Social Media For Customer Service Summit West Coast
Early October 2012 in San Francisco - The 2nd Annual Social Media For Customer Service Summit East Coast
Mid-October 2012 in New York - The 2nd Annual B2B Corporate Social Media Summit East Coast
Mid-October 2012 in New York - The Social Commerce Summit Europe
Mid-November 2012 in London - The 3rd Annual Corporate Social Media Summit Europe
Mid-November 2012 in London - The Reputation Preservation And Crisis Communications Summit
Late November 2012 in London - 2nd Annual Social Pulse Summit
Sep 11-12, 2012 in Chicago
