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Tag: billion

  • Mega Millions Jackpot: Close To Half A Billion

    Mega Millions, the latest popular lotto game, is certainly living up to its name recently.

    The drawing last night, worth $363 million for six numbers, didn’t produce a single winner–although almost 50 people came close with five of the correct numbers. Each of those winners claimed $250,000, which is nothing to sneeze at…but coming so close to that huge jackpot had to sting.

    Because no one had all the numbers, the jackpot is now a mind-bending $476 million, which is a new record. The last and biggest jackpot was in 2007 at $390 million, which was won by two players in different states.

    With so many people struggling in today’s economy–and gas prices steadily climbing–it’s not hard to see why so many people are taking their chances at the lotto. Even though the odds of winning are staggering, the dream of an enormous, almost hard-to-fathom jackpot is too much to pass up.

    The winning numbers in last night’s drawing were 9,19, 34, 44 and 51, with a Mega Ball of 24.

    (image)@hodakotb
    Hoda Kotb    good am! nothing like waking up on winesday and realizing the mega millions lottery is 476 million dollars… hello #gottabuyaticket(image) 5 hours ago via web ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    (image)@BrodyJenner
    Brody Jenner    NO WAY!!! The Mega Millions is now up to 473 MILLION!!!! Nobody won… That is nuts(image) 8 hours ago via Twitter for iPhone ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    (image)@davebirkett
    Dave Birkett    Didn’t Clark Griswold’s Cousin Eddie get struck few times? RT @ajortiz3: Better change to be struck by lightning than winning Mega Millions(image) 2 minutes ago via TweetDeck ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    (image)@kencarr
    Ken Carr    Didn’t win Mega Millions last night. NOBODY DID! Friday jackpot will be 476 million. Biggest in US history. Holy giant fake check batman!(image) 9 minutes ago via Twitter for BlackBerry® ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

  • Facebook Gets $8 Billion Line of Credit

    Facebook Gets $8 Billion Line of Credit

    As part of some strategic moves Facebook is making ahead of their IPO, the company has received financing to the tune of $8 billion.

    The loans include a $5 billion revolving line of credit and a $3 billion 364-day bridge loan. This credit line will replace the companies current $2.5 billion revolving credit line used for general business purposes. The $3 billion bridge loan will be used to cover taxes for Facebook employees’ restricted stock units. Financiers include heavy hitters, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Bank of America Corp. and Barclays PLC.

    As part of the deal, Facebook added 25 new underwriters (bringing the total to 31) to its updated IPO filing, including Citigroup Global Markets Inc., RBC Capital Markets LLC and Wells Fargo Securities LLC. (Underwriters buy the IPO securities from the company and resell them to the public.)

    According to the updated filing, the $5 billion line of credit will be used for working capital and general purposes. It may also help with potential litigation costs. So far Yahoo has asked Facebook to license technology they believe to be covered under their intelectual property, threatening suit if the matter is unresolved.

    Yahoo may not be the only ones to have legal issues with Facebook. According to their SEC filing, “We presently are involved in a number of lawsuits, and as we face increasing competition and gain an increasingly high profile, including in connection with our initial public offering, we expect the number of patent and other intellectual property claims against us to grow.”

    Facebook made about $3.71 Billion last year, mostly in advertising. The company is marketing to an estimated 845 million monthly active users.

    Investors are still strong on Facebook, estimating the value at around $100 million. Facebook hopes to raise $5 Billion in sales of its IPO shares, potentially making this the largest internet IPO to date.

  • Tweet Milestone Accelerating Beyond Expectation

    Twitter hit  a new milestone yesterday – 20 billion tweets.

    According to Mashable, the milestone comes just two months after the service hit 15 billion tweets and about five months since it reached 10 billion, indicating that activity levels on the microblogging service continue to accelerate.

    I don’t think anyone would disagree with the view that Twitter is now a mainstream online channel of communication that’s expanded around the world. It’s a compelling means of conversation between friends for many of the 100 million Twitter users, a view borne out in a recent survey by the 360i agency (which also suggests that marketers don’t get Twitter yet).

    More people are developing  value-added services to enhance your experience of Twitter, whether aimed at an individual tweeter or for a company looking to make connections for its brands.

    Twitter itself has developed additional features including discovering who to follow, finding good deals on Twitter, and improving secure sign-in.

    But along with such extraordinary growth comes capacity and other problems leading to service unreliability and unavailability from time to time.

    When you have big plans, you can’t have unreliability if you want to succeed with those plans.

    As I write this, Twitter is offline for planned maintenance. A big task, it seems, as the maintenance windows is five hours and began at 7am UK time this morning. That’s five hours where Twitter won’t be available at some point during that time for 100 million people.

    As Twitter’s wholesome graphic on the home page currently says, it’s cool, I can chill. I imagine this maintenance will help Twitter fix recent frustrating issues and will prepare Twitter for the next wave in its development.

    Twitter is part of our landscapes.

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