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Tag: Facebook IPO

  • Comparing Facebook’s IPO With Other Tech Companies

    It’s Facebook IPO day, and the forecast for the stock sale is incredibly strong. Considering the service’s $104 billion estimated worth, which is based on said IPO forecast, chances are it’s going to be a really good day for the Facebook crew. However, how does Facebook’s IPO compare to other tech company public offerings?

    To be blunt, it doesn’t. Facebook’s $104 billion estimated worth is far beyond the likes of Google and Apple. Of course, Apple went public in the 1980s, so it’s no surprise their IPO was valued much less than the current tech giants. I’m sure the fact that Apple’s stock currently costs over $500 a share helps them rest easy.

    As for Facebook’s initial value, the New York Times has an interactive chart that compares Facebook’s speculated IPO value to other tech companies, with Google’s serving as something of a benchmark. As you’ll soon see, Facebook’s IPO is much, much larger than any of the tech companies before it.

    The first screencap shows where Google stands in relation to the tech IPOs that came before theirs:

    Tech IPO Chart

    But then, Facebook goes public, setting a new standard:

    Tech IPO Chart

    The next slide expands the chart on a logarithmic scale:

    Tech IPO Chart

    First-day pop is factored in:

    Tech IPO Chart

    The final slide is a little sobering if, for nothing else, the realization that over half of the tech IPOs don’t massively succeed like Google and Facebook. In fact, a great many of them have negative returns:

    Tech IPO Chart

    What’s the lesson in all this? Don’t go public unless you have a huge Internet following? Or remain patient like Apple, which also experienced a drop of 25 percent related to their IPOs value. Clearly, Apple has rebounded massively, but then again, they could very well be the outlier, not the norm.

  • Facebook IPO: Are Facebook Credits About To Become More Important?

    The Facebook IPO is going live today and everybody is asking a multitude of questions. Is Facebook worth investing in? Is it just a fad? Will it be the biggest tech IPO in history? One question that seems to be getting ignored is what Facebook will do to monetize the platform now that its advertising value has been brought into question.

    Peter Vogel, co-founder of Plink, thinks the answer lies in Facebook Credits. Writing an editorial for TechCrunch, Vogel says that Facebook Credits are about to become much bigger. Why? Facebook Credits made up 15 percent of Facebook’s 2011 revenue according to Vogel, but only two percent of Facebook users actually bought said credits. There’s a lot of room for growth there.

    Why are so few people buying Facebook Credits though? Social gaming is about the only thing that really takes advantage of Facebook Credits on the platform and that’s only for buying virtual goods. Facebook takes a 30 percent cut of the sale with the rest going to the developer. There are power users who buy a lot of Facebook Credits for their games, but can Facebook use its virtual currency to monetize the platform even further?

    Vogel thinks that Facebook will start to really push its virtual currency after the IPO goes live. The reasoning is that he believes potential shareholders see advertising revenue, Facebook’s current bread and butter, as less volatile than virtual currency. A post-IPO Facebook will be more free to experiment in new monetization methods that may help extend the platform beyond its already massive valuation.

    Like myself, Vogel sees the future of Facebook in the recently announced App Center. It’s here that the virtual currency can take center stage. He predicts that Facebook will make credits more visible and integrated into the experience. From the App Center, he thinks that Facebook will even suggest services to spend those credits on.

    Vogel and I are once again on the same wavelength in thinking Facebook lowering its 30 percent cut on Facebook Credits will lead to more platforms adopting the service. If Netflix can ever get over its much publicized trouble with an archaic U.S. law, the platform could offer streaming over Facebook using the virtual currency. He even mentions more off the wall ideas like newspapers using Facebook Credits as a method to pay for subscriptions.

    On a final note, he expects the revenue generated from Facebook Credits to double every year for the next five years. He even expects credits to overtake advertising in revenue by 2016. Payvment CEO Christian Taylor also sees a bright future in Facebook Credits. While I may not necessarily agree with the notion of Facebook Credits growing that much, it’s obvious that they will become important.

    I guess the next big question is whether or not Facebook will integrate Credits into Open Graph. Will Facebook allow outside vendors to use Credits on their own Web sites? Will we see a future where major online retailers offer the option to use Facebook Credits alongside PayPal and other traditional payment methods?

    If Vogel is right, Facebook will be a major player in the online economy in a few years. They would cease being just a social networking platform and become the next Google – trying to be everything to everyone.

  • Facebook IPO May Be The Most Important in History, Says Mark Cuban

    Mark Cuban, the billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks, has a new op-ed published at Business Insider in which he declares the Facebook initial public offering (IPO) the most important IPO in history. He bases this on two different premises. One, that the huge popularity of the Facebook brand will lure retail investors back to Wall Street, meaning a large influx of new money into the market. Two, the high-frequency traders that play the market daily will destroy these new retail investors. From Cuban’s editorial:

    If lots of individual, retail investors do buy into Facebook and they make money at it, that could lead to individual retail investors coming back into the market. Something that individuals smartly have avoided for the last several years.

    Cuban may be right that retail investors were smart to avoid the market over the course of the recession. However, will individual investors really throw caution to the wind and put their money down on a tech company? Just over a decade since the first tech-bubble burst? Probably. And those that see the market as a full time job, the high frequency/algorithmic traders, as Cuban calls them, will take those retail investors for a ride. Said Cuban:

    They will feast on the unwashed, unsophisticated mass of retail buyers dashing into Facebook. They will pray that the stock skyrockets and stories of individuals making out like bandits are spread throughout the media. They will attack this stock like a pack of wolves.

    Though the Facebook IPO will certainly invigorate the stock market in the short-term, it remais to be seen what long-term effects it may have. Realistically, Facebook won’t singlehandedly reinvigorate the U.S. economy. What the IPO will do, for certain, is put Facebook on the same level as that other giant of internet advertising: Google. Silicon Valley, not Wall Street, will be the place to watch in the coming years.

    (via Business Insider)

  • Facebook IPO Kicks Off at 11AM Today

    It’s finally here, the day we thought they would infinitely delay. That’s right, its IPO day for Facebook. At 11am this mourning shares of Facebook will begin striding on the Nasdaq stock exchange under the ticker symbol “FB”. The offering is hoping to raise about $16 billion. The company is valued at $104 billion.

    It has been an interesting week for investors who are hoping to grab a piece of the social network giant and it began early Monday when it was already clear that demand for shares had already outweighed the supply. In fact, Friday afternoon brokers were already calling around trying to find more shares. Essentially, Facebook was ready to close the book on the whole affair by Tuesday.

    Then the inevitable happened and Facebook and their underwriters decided to make over 50 million more shares available. Not only did they decide to make more available, they also decided to increase the price range, and why not? They increased it from $28 to $34 to $34 to $38.

    Of course, then early investors and Facebook insiders decided it was a good time to offer up some of their shares as well. Folks like PayPal’s Peter Thiel, Tiger Global Management, and Accel Partners all offered some of their shares to increase the available units by almost 25%.

    There’s no word out there about if any of these shares are still available or if they have all been spoken for. I suspect if you want a piece of Facebook it will be hard to come by. Regardless, the trading will begin in less than two hours and the magic number will be $38.

    Check back here all day for more news on the Facebook IPO and pretty much all things Facebook as the day progresses.

  • Stock Market: Facebook Valuation Breaks Records

    Stock Market: Facebook Valuation Breaks Records

    Stock market records were effectively shattered when Facebook’s valuation rose to an insanely impressive $104 billion, which is more than any company on its first day on the market. What’s more, the virtual house that Zuckerberg (and friends) built is the second largest initial public offering in history, bested only to the folks over at Visa.

    Speaking of Zuckerberg, the man himself will ring the Nasdaq bell this morning, though in a most untraditional fashion. Instead of being on-site to claim the honor, Zuckerberg will ring it from the Facebook HQ in California. When he pushes the proverbial button to signal the start of the day, he will be surrounded by a small cluster of co-workers who will, no doubt, be celebrating the fact that a large portion of them will be instant millionaires.

    A whopping 421 million shares Facebook (FB) shares will begin trading at 11am today (May 18th) for $38 a piece.

    In anticipation of the company’s IPO, Facebook employees held an all-night “hackathon”, an event where ideas — outrageous and otherwise — are pushed into development. Several of the features that users take for granted were conceived, constructed, and implemented during these sessions, including Facebook’s chat system and an early version of the Timeline.

    Nasdaq OMX Group Inc. will hold a two-hour conference call beginning at 10:15am to keep industry types up-to-date with anything and everything involved with the Facebook IPO.

    Jonah Goldberg
    @JonahNRO     Bono will make estimated 0 million off the Facebook IPO. 3 times Romney’s wealth in a single day. Awaiting Obama’s denunciation.
    38 minutes ago via web · powered by @socialditto
     Reply  · Retweet  · Favorite

    ConradCreativeCONS
    @3hvndred     With Facebook’s IPO and the amount of new wealth it will create, this will mark the era of the start up.
    10 minutes ago via UberSocial for BlackBerry · powered by @socialditto
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    Heena Chavda
    @HeenaPRGal     If you’ve got bad news, today is a fantastic day to share it! Its Friday AND btwn Facebook’s IPO & JP Morgans B loss no one is paying attn
    3 minutes ago via Twitter for iPhone · powered by @socialditto
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    John Corner
    @john_corner     Facebook IPO: A million dollars isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? 19 billion dollars | The Wall Blog http://t.co/XMdWdrPn
    3 minutes ago via TweetMeme · powered by @socialditto
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    Akia Booker
    @akia_booker     A lot of people will become extremely rich today. Too bad “regular” people couldn’t get in on Facebook’s IPO today
    3 minutes ago via UberSocial for BlackBerry · powered by @socialditto
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  • Facebook IPO: Company Raises $16 Billion At $104 Billion Valuation

    Facebook announced the IPO this afternoon, offering 421,233,615 shares of its common stock at a price to the public of $38 per share, putting it at about $16 billion, and valuing the company at over $104 billion.

    Facebook says shares will begin trading on the NASDAQ under the symbol “FB.” The company is offering 180,000,000 shares of Class A common stock. Selling stockholders are offering 241,233,615 shares of Class A common stock.

    According to the New York Times, it’s the third largest public offering in the history of the U.S. (just behind GM and Visa).

    Wow. I hope it doesn’t become the next Myspace.

    As a quick refresher, here’s what the company listed as risk factors.

    Facebook says closing of the offering is expected to occur on May 22 (subject to customary closing conditions).

    The company and stockholders have granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to 63,185,042 additional shares of Class A common stock “to cover over-allotments, if any.”

    The IPO ‘s book runners are: Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, Goldman, Sachs & Co., BofA Merrill Lynch, Barclays, Allen & Company LLC, Citigroup, Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank Securities. RBC Capital Markets and Wells Fargo Securities are serving as active co-managers.

  • Facebook Tells Employees to Keep Working

    Facebook Tells Employees to Keep Working

    Facebook’s IPO is just around the corner. Imagine working for them right now. You are a young hacker who got in with a tech giant before its IPO. You probably have all kinds of stock options for the work you’ve done with them, and you are about to see your shares go public and make you filthy rich. Or at least moderately rich, depending on how long you’ve been there, and how you define “filthy” rich. The Facebook IPO is reported to create over 1,000 new millionaires.

    Odds are the gravity of what is happening is weighing heavily on your mind. What are you going to buy? Should you just take what you’ve got and start your own company? How is your life and the culture of your company going to change? Will it even do as well as expected?

    Part of Facebook’s solution is to remind everyone working for them that they still have a job to do. These posters are being posted around the Facebook campus, according to Bloomberg reporter Jon Erlichman.

    Ultimately this will help morale and keep hackers hacking. If employees are constantly worried about their personal wealth, odds are it will negatively effect productivity and performance. That is the last thing Facebook needs right now. Proving to investors that they are a solid company grounded with dedicated individuals is priority one.

    [h/t: Business Insider]

  • Facebook Finally Sets Their IPO Stock Price at $38

    As you may recall, Facebook originally said they would price their stock somewhere between $28 and $34, but as investor interest seemed to outweigh available shares of the company, Facebook and their underwriters decided to add over 50 million more shares to the offering and jack the price range up to between $34 and $38.

    Now here we are on the eve of the IPO and we have the final word on what Facebook shares will cost. No surprise, $38 is the magic number. They have definitely been working that number up the scale as the week went on. I had a feeling the highest number would be the number.

    Facebook will offer over 421 million shares of their company in tomorrow’s IPO and they stand to generate a total of $16 billion. So if you’re out to own a piece of social networking history or you just believe it is a wise investment, call your broker and get out your checkbook, it all happens first thing tomorrow. Check back here early tomorrow to see how the IPO is going.

  • Why Most People Never Click Facebook Ads

    …It’s because they’re not on Facebook!

    Pretty easy math on that one, right?

    While much has been made this week about the legions of people on Facebook who have resisted clicking on ads, the Associated Press located the opposite pole of that news and dashed headlong into that direction to talk to some of the people who have managed to fend off the hype to join the social networking site that is steadily colonizing the world.

    Several of the reasons given for why these hold-outs haven’t gulped down the Facebook Kool-Aid recall a lot of the complaints that the 901 million Facebookers frequently make about their experience on the website: no desire to rekindle decade-dead relationships, kind of boring, it’s a distraction, email and cell phones work just fine for communication, and so on.

    Although most of the individuals profiled in the AP report might be described as the edge of Facebook’s bread and butter age demographic, it does highlight Facebook’s possible problem of appealing to a broader audience. MaLi Arwood, 47, said that she’s “absolutely in touch with everyone” she needs to be in touch with and therefore has no need for Facebook. Echoing a sentiment that nearly every Facebook member has bemoaned at least once, Arwood added, “I don’t need to share triviality with someone that I might have known for six months 12 years ago.”

    While it’s impressive that only 2 of every 5 Americans haven’t joined Facebook, the fact that Facebook is most attractive to the a notoriously capricious age demographic doesn’t exactly lend any credence to the company’s long-term sustainability. Just ask Zynga, who purchased the mobile app, Draw Something, about how easily people can lose interest in a product. Or maybe revisit Rupert Murdoch’s lament about the demise of the once-popular MySpace. Permanence is an illusion.

    That’s not to say that Facebook’s going to swerve off a cliff the way Draw Something appears to have done or be mismanaged the way MySpace was handled; far from it, really. Facebook’s got enough momentum to carry it for a while longer, but if the questions evoked this week about its inability to generate more revenue have any validity then the speculation that the company’s IPO will invite another disastrous tech bubble could have some substance.

    Unless, that is, Facebook figures out some way to supplant the utility of extant, reliable ways to stay in touch like phones, email, and text messaging in order to appeal to the huge chunk of the population that currently doesn’t see Facebook as necessary.

    More than that, Facebook will be required to achieve what no other tech company has been able to do so far: create a universal product that piques the interest of everybody across all demographic spectrums. In the absence of such innovation, there will continue to be more and more people who regard Facebook as an ephemeral commodity.

  • Famous IPOs: Where Are They Now? [Infographic]

    While we sit and wait for the Facebook IPO to get rolling tomorrow morning, I thought it would be nice to take a look at past tech IPOs and see how they have progressed or regressed since going public. This one come from Mindjet.Com and gives us a sense of how sometimes, largely hyped IPOs offer very little in the way of reward for investors after the sale.

    If you are planning on investing in some Facebook shares than you might want to digest this graphic for a little while first. I think it illustrates the wide spread buyer’s remorse investors can have after falling victim to the buzz that can surround these offering. For instance, Groupon was something in great demand when the IPO was pending, but it has offered investors nothing since.

    Other companies like Research in Motion and Linkedin have focused more on the shareholder’s aspect of things and have performed consistently better than they were at the time of their IPOs. So I guess the point here is, don’t get caught up in the buzz and be more focused on what you think can happen after the IPO. Does the company have the potential to create more value than it already has or will it be stagnant and struggling to find new avenues to explore?

    Take a look at what Mindjet came up with:

  • Where Today’s Additional Facebook Shares Came From

    Earlier today we announced yet another addition to the amount of shares available in the upcoming Facebook Initial Public Offering (IPO). As you may recall, last Friday traders were already calling around looking for more shares, and on Monday, the available shares were all already spoken for. Then on Tuesday, Facebook and their underwriters added over 50 million more shares and raised the target price range by about $4.

    Tomorrow they will finally set the price and trading will begin on Friday. I think we can assume at this point however, that they are done adding shares to the offering. One question that came to my mind is where did these extra shares come from? Speaking specifically about the 25% more from this mourning, they came from early Facebook investors and company insiders.

    PayPal’s Peter Thiel was an early investor and he has offered some of his stock. Tiger Global Management will sell 23.4 million of their shares, and Accel Partners will contribute 11 million of their shares to the IPO. In total 84 million more shares have been made available.

    The grand total of shares available has grown to 421.2 million and the amount they stand to raise could reach $16 billion depending on what the price ends up being tomorrow. As you may already know, Facebook will be traded on the Nasdaq stock exchange under the ticker symbol “FB”. We’ll keep you updated as the Facebook IPO continues to evolve.

  • Will Facebook’s Priorities Change After Going Public?

    As we approach the eve of the much anticipated Facebook IPO many are still left wondering how the social networking site is going to satisfy demand from all their shareholders to generate huge returns on those investments. Now as many of you may recall, just before all of this IPO additional shares ruckus, many experts in the investment industry were concerned about just how overvalued Facebook already was. Remember, just because people want to own shares doesn’t mean it’s going to perform once their money is invested.

    Right now investors should be worried about how Facebook ads are performing, what they are going to do to take advantage of their huge influx of mobile traffic, and most importantly, how they are going to attract more entities to advertise on their platform. So one fear that may arise is that Facebook will sell our personal data in order to help advertisers more effectively target us with marketing campaigns. In fact, Facebook more recently made some changes to their privacy policies and added the “Facebook Terms and Policies Hub” in order to bring a greater degree of transparency to how they manage our personal data.

    If we’ve learned anything from the banking industry, it’s that the fine print is designed to do one thing, make victims of everyone who is subject to the terms. Like the United States constitution, legal professionals work to exaggerate and twist the wording to work to their advantage in one case, and then turn around and reinterpret it to mean exactly the opposite in another. So is this what will happen with our private data and the privacy policy?

    If Facebook wants to make any money it will. Facebook is a social network, if advertisers can’t take advantage of your personal connections and personal preferences what good would it be? A recent AP-CNBC poll found that almost 65% of Facebook users either weren’t sure or didn’t feel safe purchasing goods through Facebook. Another poll by Abine online privacy finds that 75% don’t trust Facebook or how they use our sensitive personal information. That’s really interesting considering the amount of information we share on the site has been gradually headed upward.

    Abine CEO William Kerrigan commented on the Facebook sharing trend and our private data:

    “We all use Facebook to connect, share, and stay in touch with friends and family, but that doesn’t mean we want all of our private information out there for the entire world to see,”

    “We’re starting to see a real shift in Facebook users’ behavior. Today, the only thing growing faster than Facebook’s user base is the number of its users setting their privacy settings.”

    On Friday Facebook will become a publicly traded company and it will have a responsibility to keep its shareholders happy. I just have to wonder if the return on their investments will outweigh Facebook’s responsibility to their users and keeping their private data safe. Somehow I doubt it’s a priority to advertisers or shareholders.

  • Pizza Delicious Test Runs a Facebook Ad

    Pizza Delicious Test Runs a Facebook Ad

    With Facebook in the process of its IPO, some investors have been frightened beyond the general terrors afforded by founder Mark Zuckerberg’s refusal to remove his rebellious-yet-comfy security-hoodie – they fear that Facebook might run into a bit of an issue concerning the effectiveness of its ad content in general, mainly the present lack of viable translation to mobile – and now a small pizza place in New Orleans has reported on the actual results of running a paid ad on the Social Network.

    Pizza Delicious, a small business owned by Michael Friedman and Greg Augarten, peddles takeout New York-style pizza in New Orleans, two nights a week. The two wanted to expand, but weren’t sure how to proceed. So they decided to run a paid ad on Facebook – and NPR, while compiling other stories regarding Facebook, stepped in and hooked Friedman and Augarten up with Rob Leathern, a social media advertising guru.

    Incidentally, there is also a Kickstarter project for the restaurant presently winding down. Here’s a clip:

    The three first targeted the friends of users who already ‘liked’ Delicious Pizza on Facebook, which equated to roughly 224,000 people, or 74% of people who reside in new Orleans. This was too broad a demographic, so those who like N.Y.C-type things (the Jets, the Knicks, Notorious B.I.G., etc.) were targeted, bringing the demographic down to about 15,000. Still, after 12 hours of running the ads, nobody clicked, and Facebook took it down. If an ad spot isn’t doing anything on the social network, Facebook promptly pulls it. New Orleans-based ‘likers’ of Italian food were then tried, about 30,000 users, and these ads went viral, presenting about 700,000 times.

    Alas, the results weren’t anything to write home about really. The campaign ended up costing $240, which equated too about a dollar per new Facebook fan. So, out of 700,000 ad views, 240 users actually ‘liked’ what they were seeing. Friedman commented, “Is that feeling of exhilaration worth 240 dollars? – I don’t know – hopefully, that translates into new business.”

    There would be no new business really. Though, when Augarten was emptying the trash one night, he got a message on his cell reading, “Just found out about you guys via a sponsored Facebook ad if you can believe it. Super excited about your new place -happy to toss in a few bones over the top.” The person who sent the message contributed 10 bones, I’m assuming the the Kickstarter project. So, 10 bones against $240 was the final result of the Pizza Delicious Facebook ad campaign. Optimist Friedman said, “And that was cool – We got some return on our ad.”

    It would appear that social media advertising might not replace TV ads anytime soon, though some businesses have had better luck. I wonder how well Samsung Mobile USA’s ad on the Facebook logout screen did yesterday – Facebook logout screen ads run about $700,000 a day.

  • Facebook Co-Founder Severin Could Save $67 Million

    You might recall last Friday when we reported on Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin. Eduardo attended Harvard with Mark Zuckerberg and helped Facebook arrange for much of the financing that got it to where it is today. Before the social network site really took off, Eduardo was forced out of the loop, but some years later he filed a lawsuit against Zuckerberg and others involved in the creation of the site and won a sizable settlement along with a 4% share of the company.

    The Brazilian-born Saverin has been a resident of the United States since 1998, but more recently moved to live in Singapore. As of late september he appears on a list of US residents who have renounced their citizenship. This decision stands to save Severin millions in taxes to the IRS.

    Tom Goodman, a spokesman for Saverin, commented on Saverin’s decision:

    “Eduardo recently found it more practical to become a resident of Singapore since he plans to live there for an indefinite period of time,”

    According to Bloomberg, Saverin would owe taxes on a sum total of about $2.44 billion, which, according to a tax professional’s calculations, would run him about $67 million in US tax. By choosing to leave the country and denounce his citizenship, Saverin would owe an exit tax of about $365 million. He could indefinitely delay paying this tax until the shares are actually sold, as the figure is derived from an estimated capital gains tax based on him actually selling the shares.

    Tom Goodman commented to Bloomberg about these tax calculations and Saverin decision to leave the United States:

    “The calculations and assumptions are not only erroneous, they also further perpetuate the false impression that tax was the reason behind Eduardo’s decision,”

    “His motive had nothing to do with tax and everything to do with his desire to live and work in Singapore.”

    There has been no word from Saverin on what he is currently working on or if he plans to ever return to the United States. Either way, his 4% stake is bound to increase in value once Facebook goes public. After the exit tax is paid, Eduardo won’t owe any future capital gains tax on appreciation in the United States and Singapore doesn’t have a similar tax.

  • Is Facebook Changing Too Quickly?

    With the Facebook IPO drawing ever closer, the company is trying its best to project itself as stable and business-friendly. This wasn’t always the case, though. Until just a couple of years ago, CEO Mark Zuckerberg would implement changes on the site without notice to users, often causing an uproar. These changes were put together as part of the famous Facebook “hackathons” the company would hold. The Wall Street Journal is reporting on how the climate at Facebook is now changing, from the wing-it hacker vibe to a more controlled, thought-out corporate mentality.

    As an example, the Journal article looks at how Facebook’s new Timeline feature was developed. Timeline is the new look of user pages that shows significant and recent events as blocks on the page. According to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook spent 18 months developing Timeline, with Zuckerberg himself spending hours each week in meetings with the volunteer design group. The company even used focus groups to get user feedback on the design. The change was previewed months before launch, and then user were given a choice to switch to it or not.

    But it didn’t matter. Users still complained, at least as much as when the News Feed was introduced with no warning. If Timeline had been thrown together during an all-nighter hackathon, would the user outcry be any less dramatic?

    Another recent change, the promotion of “trending articles” within users’ News Feeds has proven unpopular as well. It’s a given that the decision to put news reader app articles into the News Feed wasn’t made overnight.

    There was a time when Zuckerberg seemed not to care what Facebook users thought of the site’s changes. His confidence was almost condescending as he professed to know exactly what people want in a social network. And you know what? He was right. His vision was spot-on and years ahead of anyone else. So what will happen as Zuckerberg takes a step back and allows focus groups design Facebook features? Will he be able to keep his long-term vision for Facebook on-track now that the company will have shareholder to please on a quarterly basis? It’s time to find out and I, for one, am eager to see how corporate money and culture will shape the world’s largest social network.

    (via Wall Street Journal)

  • Facebook Adds 25% More Shares for IPO

    Facebook Adds 25% More Shares for IPO

    Just announced this mourning, Facebook is offering 25% more shares for their upcoming initial public offering. As we reported earlier this week, the IPO was sold out by Monday, and all the shares were spoken for. In fact, last Friday investors were already looking for more. Yesterday, Facebook and their underwriters decided they would add 50.6 million more shares and adjust the targeted price range from $28 to $34, to $34 to $38.

    Now, with 25% more shares available, the IPO could raise an additional $3 billion. This would bring the grand total of the IPO to $16 billion with a total of 421.2 million shares on the market. So it is safe to say they won’t be hurting for money after this one. Pooling all the shares available from every employee and including those held for future employee equity grants brings the total company value to $106 billion.

    However, if you exclude the 2.1 billion shares that remain outstanding after their IPO, according to their SEC filing, the company would be valued at $81.2 billion. Keep in mind though, the IPO doesn’t officially start until Friday. The price will be set tomorrow and trading will be on the Nasdaq stock market under the ticker symbol “FB”.

  • Facebook Study Shows Brands How to Build Engagement

    With the Facebook IPO imminent, it’s no coincidence that Facebook has been whipping itself into a business-friendly shape. To that end, Facebook began to update Facebook Studio, the website that allows marketers to develop their Facebook campaigns and compare them with others. Less than a month ago, Facebook released a demo tool for Facebook Studio that allows marketers to preview their ads by showing how the placement will look on a real Facebook page.

    Now, Facebook is helping marketers on the site with its “measuring success” series of blog posts. Today on the Facebook Studio blog, the company is revealing the results of a small study it conducted into brand engagement. From the blog post:

    To better understand what makes a successful Page post, we recently conducted an internal study to discover which topics generate the most engagement. The study shows that speaking about subjects related to your brand is the best way to generate engagement. While the conclusion may not seem surprising, since your fans liked your Page because they like your brand, understanding how post topics relate to engagement can help you improve your content strategy and identify the best content to promote through Ads and Sponsored Stories.

    Their study separated posts by brands into three categories: messages about the brand, messages related to the brand, and unrelated messages. Splitting the posts into those categories also enabled Facebook to determine what marketers should do to derive different outcomes from their posts. Facebook states that posts related to the brand, but not specifically about the brand, were the “sole universally significant predictor of all types of engagement.”

    As for what works for each type of engagement aside from brand-related posts, Facebook had some tips on that too. If marketers want the posts to be widely shared, Facebook suggests using media such as photos and videos in the post. Getting users to “Like” a post is a matter of giving readers a “clear call to action.” In other words, requesting that the reader “Like” the post. Generating comments is most easily done by asking questions in a post.

    Small, common sense, tips to be sure, but ones that could help your brand grow on Facebook.

  • Facebook IPO Particulars [Infographic]

    Facebook IPO Particulars [Infographic]

    We’ve been covering the angles all week. First Investors were saying Facebook was way overvalued, next it was that demand had far outweighed the available shares, now, Facebook and their underwriters have issued more than 50 million additional shares to pacify the incredible demand. The funny thing is, the IPO doesn’t officially even happen until Friday.

    Regardless, this baby is gonna be sold out again by tomorrow. If you thought you were going to scoop up a piece of Facebook and you haven’t done it yet, I am 99% sure that it is too late for you. While we are waiting for the definitive word on who actually got a piece of Facebook and who didn’t, we can enjoy this infographic from MBAOnline.com.

    This one leans more toward the fun side and is filled with interesting little tidbits about how Facebook evolved from just an idea in Mark Zuckerberg’s head to the social giant we know today. Warren Buffet says he’s not buying it, but millions of others are. take a look:

    facebook ipo

  • Facebook Memoir Coming Soon & Zuckerberg Joins the Elite

    Facebook Memoir Coming Soon & Zuckerberg Joins the Elite

    Mark Zuckerberg, who just celebrated his 28th birthday on Monday, is the second youngest self-made billionaire in the world, but now also the youngest CEO of a Fortune 1000 company to go public. It is also expected by many that 2012 will be the year Facebook joins the Fortune 500 list.

    The news here is that Mark is about to join the list of the youngest CEO’s running Fortune 500 companies in the United States. Remember, the Facebook IPO officially starts trading on Friday, but you may have heard, on Monday, demand outweighed available shares and the underwriters of the deal approved another 50.6 million shares to be offered. Facebook also adjusted the price range from the originally planned $28 to $35 to $34 to $38.

    So, as you can imagine, these are exciting times to be a part of the Facebook team, especially if you are a large shareholder, like Zuckerberg himself. But, it wasn’t so long ago that nobody knew what Facebook was and that social networking actually meant going out and meeting people.

    Katherine Losse was an early employee at Facebook and back in 2005 she joined the team of Ivy League grads who made the social network a reality. She spent five years with that group building Facebook from he ground up. Now she has signed a deal with the Free Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.

    On June 26th they will release a book called, “The Boy Kings: A Journey into the Heart of the Social Network”. Losse, who left Facebook on friendly terms, served as a researcher and writer at the social networking site. The book is her first hand account of how Facebook grew from just an idea to the networking empire we know today.

    So if you want to learn more about Mark Zuckerberg and the multi-billion dollar company we know today, take a look at this book and discover what it was like watching the company and the people evolve into what we recognize as social networking today.

  • Facebook IPO adds 50.6 Million Shares and Adjusts Price: $34 to $38

    Facebook IPO adds 50.6 Million Shares and Adjusts Price: $34 to $38

    We reported yesterday that Facebook was ready to close their books on their much anticipated IPO two days early as all of the shares were already spoken for. In fact, by most accounts the shares war already gone last Friday. Today Facebook has announced the availability of 50.6 million more shares and a revised price range of $34 to $38. This will make a lot of investors happy.

    Here are some key statements from Facebook’s updated SEC S1 Filing:

    “We and the selling stockholders have granted the underwriters the right to purchase up to an additional 50,612,302 shares of Class A common stock to cover over-allotments.”

    “We anticipate that the initial public offering price will be between $34.00 and $38.00 per share.”

    Facebook will make about $12.1 billion if you take the average $36 per share price, but if things fall pin the high-end of the spectrum they could raise well over $14 billion.

    Take a look at Bloomberg’s coverage of the changes to the Facebook IPO:

    No word yet on if the additional 50.6 million shares have already been snatched up, but I would predict that by Thursday there wont be anything left to trade. Remember, Friday is the first official day of the offering. We’ll keep you updated as news continues to roll in about the Facebook IPO.

  • Half of U.S. Think Facebook’s a Passing Trend

    Half of U.S. Think Facebook’s a Passing Trend

    There’s nothing like being given the same prognosis as Friendster and Myspace three days ahead of your social networking company’s initial public offering, but that seems to be the will of the people today as a new Associated Press-CNBC poll shows that Americans are pretty split when it comes to Facebook’s life expectancy.

    In the United States, 56% of people use Facebook and – this isn’t really surprising – a whopping 81% of the 18-to-35-year-old demographic are lurking somewhere on the site with 55% of them visiting the site every day and 33% of them visiting multiple times a day. While the younger adults might be all in like with Facebook, they’re not a very faithful class of users as a slim majority of them – 51% – think that Facebook is merely a passing fad. Fair-weather friends, indeed. They’re not alone in those conflicting feelings, though, because the general public’s opinion is slightly less pessimistic as only 46% don’t think Facebook has any long-term staying power. Alternately, 43% of the overall population think Facebook will likely be sticking around for a while.

    One reason people might not be giving full faith and credit to Facebook is because of – surprise, surprise – privacy issues. 3 of 5 Facebook users don’t believe that the company will protect their personal information. In fact, a paltry 13% trust Facebook enough to protect their data while only 12% feel comfortable enough to make purchases through the site. I wish this poll had asked this assured minority why they feel like Facebook will secure their personal info.

    The young-ish majority of Facebook users are also the most interested in Facebook’s impending IPO with 59% of the 35-and-unders saying it’s probably a wise investment (even though you kiddos think it’s just a passing fad? Make up your mind, fickle youth!). The percentage of other generations who think Facebook’s a good place to hedge your bets is about split even, with nearly half of Generation X (ages 35-44) agreeing so and 55% of middle-aged people approve of a Facebook investment.

    But at least Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is fairly well Liked among his demographic peers: 46% said they like him. No information on why they like him so, but perhaps it’s because he always looks like he’s having such a good time. Seriously, have you ever seen that man not smiling?

    On the other end of that question, 14% do not like Uncle Zuckerberg. That hoodie hoopla probably didn’t help those numbers, either.