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Tag: Randi Zuckerberg

  • Punky Brewster Backed By Google Ventures, Advised By Randi Zuckerberg

    Soleil Moon Frye, commonly known as the girl who played Punky Brewster, has a startup called Moonfrye, and it has attracted $2.5 million in funding from GRP Partners, Greycroft, Daher Capital, and Google’s investment arm, Google Ventures.

    The company is readying a mobile product aimed at inspiring “digital creativity in parents and children with physical products that surprise.” Basically, it will focus on family-oriented crafts and DIY. Frye is serving as Chief Creative Officer. Former IAC exec Kara Nortman is CE.

    Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s sister Randi Zuckerberg is serving as an advisor, along with Dan Rosensweig, Tim Ferriss, Gina Bianchini, Erik Lammerding and Rick Marini.

    The startup builds on the Moonfrye.com online community launched a few years ago. It already has 1.5 million Twitter followers and 500,000 Facebook likes.

    “As my most important role in life is being a mom, it was clear to me that parents around the world were looking for cost effective activities where their families could come together and create meaningful experiences both online and off,” said Soleil Moon Frye.

    “Our product has a unique, innovative design that is going to be a game-changer for providing parents and children with a shared creative outlet,” said Nortman. “If moms are shutting off passive entertainment in favor of engaging their kids actively on mobile devices then we have made our small dent on society.”

    “There’s a restored interest in craftsmanship and DIY. It’s a refreshing change from the reliance on ready-made goods,” said Kevin Rose, General Partner at Google Ventures. “Combining real world experiences with digital tools creates a lot of interesting possibilities when put in the hands of moms and families, and Soleil and Kara have an inspiring vision to bring that to life.”

    Those interested can sign up for early access to the app.

  • Randi Zuckerberg Snags a Two-Book Deal from HarperCollins

    Randi Zuckerberg Snags a Two-Book Deal from HarperCollins

    Randi Zuckerberg, former marketing head at Facebook and sister of CEO Mark Zuckerberg, has just finalized a two-book deal with HarperCollins.

    The first book will be called “Dot Complicated,” which happens to be the name of a modern lifestyle newsletter and blog where Zuckerberg serves as the Editor-in-Chief. The other book will be a children’s book exploring some of the same themes.

    According to HarperCollins, we should see both books hit the shelves in the Fall.

    In the adult nonfiction book Dot Complicated, Zuckerberg will share her personal and professional story and the entrepreneurial journey she has been on through her time at Facebook and beyond, including her work as a television correspondent and producer, balancing her career with motherhood and launching Zuckerberg Media. The book will also address the multifaceted complications of our socially transparent world today, including issues of privacy, social identity, authenticity, crowd sourcing and the future of social change. In an enhanced e-book format, Dot Complicated will feature innovative and engaging interactive components, including a platform for crowd sourced stories and social media integration.

    Randi Zuckerberg left Facebook back in 2011 and has since founded her own company Zuckerberg Media.

    “Technology has changed virtually every part of our lives, resulting in a modern, digital society that feels a lot like the wild, wild west,” said Randi Zuckerberg. “I am thrilled to be working with HarperCollins to share some of my own crazy experiences on the front lines of social media, and to inspire people of all ages to embrace technology, as well as the new set of social norms that come along with it.”

  • Randi Zuckerberg Present at NASDAQ

    Randi Zuckerberg Present at NASDAQ

    Randi Zuckerberg, elder sister of Facebook CEO Mark, left the social media giant last year, to start her own company called RtoZMedia. This didn’t stop her for being present for the ringing of the NASDAQ opening bell this morning in NYC, which brother Mark was notably absent from. Mark Zuckerberg kicked off the IPO from Facebook’s Menlo Park headquarters earlier today. Facebook CFO David Ebersman was also on hand on the NASDAQ floor this morning. Incidentally, media-savvy Randi is also executive-producing a reality show on Bravo called Silicon Valley.

    As for brother Mark, his Facebook has sold 421.2 million shares at $38 a pop during the IPO. Zuckerberg owns 503.6 million shares and options, valued at $19.1 billion, which makes him the 29th richest person in the world, and wealthier than Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Thing is, some say there is not set guarantee that Facebook could quickly devolve into Myspace. Unlikely.

    Facebook didn’t perform as well as some expected in the market today, though an insider had pointed out that there might’ve been a but of a communication problem early on that might’ve delayed sales from the start. Apparently, Nasdaq was having a problem notifying big banks that sales were even going through. On a smaller level, a lot of smaller-time investors were likely running into this sort of error message today:

    fb trading

    Still, it’s evident that today’s numbers can’t really be taken as a gauge to how Facebook stock will ultimately perform. For more extensive coverage on Facebook’s IPO, go here.

  • Randi Zuckerberg Weighs In On the Future of Social

    Randi Zuckerberg, sister of Facebook’s Mark, and former Marketing Director of Facebook herself, struck out on her own last year to start her own social media business R To Z Studios. But, before that, Randi worked in corporate America. She was a panelist on the Forbes On Fox business analysis program.

    When brother Mark launched his company, she found the shift from the usual corporate structure to the Silicon Valley startup structure quite the whiplash.

    Zuckerberg visited Tulsa, Oklahoma on March 15, 2012, as part of the Spears School of Business’s speaker series, While there she recorded an interview in which she discussed some of the things she has learned or been told in her years in business, her take on where media is going, what industries are in for big changes in the near future.

    A couple of highlights:

    As you’re putting together your social media presence, think about not just tomorrow, but your entire career in front of you. People are now looking at your Facebook profile when they are looking to hire you. Every person is a brand now.

    I think companies that are looking to hire people right out of school are going to look for students who are good writers, are savvy, who understand the online space. If you’ve been able to build up 1,000 Twitter followers for yourself along the way, it shows that people are already listening to you right out of the gate.

  • No Google+ For Google’s Management Team?

    Do they not like it, or do they simply not want to conform to a new social media platform? These are just a few of the questions I have after seeing the chart detailing how much members of Google management team use their fledgling social networking site.

    The chart, which comes courtesy of The Understatement, is concise and awfully revealing. Not only that, but it begs another question, if Google’s leaders aren’t using it, why on earth would normal folks want to switch over? You’ll notice Randi Zuckerberg, even though she’s moved on from her brother’s creation, still uses Facebook. A great deal, in fact.

    So why don’t the majority of Google’s management team not use Google+? Obviously, unless you’re hearing it from the horse’s mouth, speculation reigns. But after you look at the chart in question, it does make one wonder:

    Google Management Chart

    The names that immediately pop out are Eric Schmidt, Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Between the three big dogs of Google, there have been a total of 22 posts made on Google+. What gives? Is this a case of securing your name’s page and being done with it or do these guys simply not have time to share everything aspect of their lives on a social network, regardless if it has their brand or not? In his article, Michael Degusta makes a couple of valid observations about their level of interaction:

    2. “The board/top management shouldn’t be expected to use Google+”
    Yes, they should – maybe not every member extensively, but not even a single post by a single non-executive member of the board? Can you imagine Fred Wilson not publicly using the major new product of one of his companies?

    3. “Steve Jobs was really active on Ping?”
    Ok, fair enough. But a music social network isn’t even remotely fundamental to Apple’s future whereas clearly Google thinks Google+ is central to its future.

    With that in mind, would Google+‘s future be brighter if Schmidt, Page and Brin posted more? I’m not so sure that’s accurate either. That being said, seeing a higher level of interest from the group that dominates search would probably only help their social networking venture.

  • Zuckerberg Leaves Facebook

    If a report from All Things D is true, and it looks like it probably is, considering that the letter of resignation is embedded in the piece, Randi Zuckerberg, Facebook’s director of marketing, who also happens to be the sister of CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is leaving the company.

    Apparently her new company will be something called RtoZMedia, as she told Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg and Elliot Schrage in the letter, to reach her at her new company, including an email address: [email protected]. There’s nothing at RtoZMedia.com but a placeholder page at this point.

    “Be assured I will continue to be a strong, vocal evangelist for the most incredible social platform ever created,” she said in the letter. She also listed her work with Facebook that she was most proud of, which included things like the ABC News/Facebook Presidential Primary Debate in ’08, the CNN/Facebook Inauguration Partnership in ’09, the ABC/Facebook Live Election Night coverage in ’10, the Davos/Facebook partnership for the World Economic Forum, and the launch of Facebook Live.

    She said these things all have one thing in common in that they “revolve around the intersection of traditional media and social technology,” which from the sound of it will be the focus of her new endeavor. “Now is the perfect time for me to move outside of Facebook to build a company focused on the exciting trends underway in the media industry,” she wrote.

    I guess Facebook should be glad she’s not going to Google. A report today has Facebook in “panic” mode and lockdown over Google’s social network. BusinessInsider points to a Quora post voted up by a Facebook engineer saying, “I work with Facebook engineering, and I can say the answer is kind of, not exactly, maybe, sure. We are in lockdown. It’s official; you can see the lockdown sign lit up in the offices. It’s no secret. However, the first suggestion I saw of a lockdown was a week before G+ came out. It was posted on an internal group and had over 50 likes when I stopped paying attention.”

    Zuckerberg was in the news earlier this week, receiving attention for saying, “Anonymity on the Internet has to go away” during a discussion about cyber bullying. “People behave a lot better when they have their real names down,” she said, according to the Huffington Post. “I think people hide behind anonymity and they feel like they can say whatever they want behind closed doors.”

    Update: Zuckerberg tweeted the following:

    @randizuckerberg
    Randi Zuckerberg    It is with mixed emotions that I announced my departure from Facebook today to launch my own initiative. More info soon… http://t.co/m3XpphA 15 hours ago via Tweet Button · powered by @socialditto