Facebook said the migration of its users to mobile platforms is compromising its ability to make money from them, according to additions the company made to its IPO regulatory filing on Wednesday.
As the company fields questions from potential investors this week and next on its road show, Facebook is once again reiterating its philosophy of prioritising the user experience over generating revenue, particularly when it comes to its mobile offerings.
Short-term investors need not apply. That’s the key message in a newly released video Facebook produced for its investor road show, which is expected to begin next week.
The highly-produced video stars Facebook’s top executives, explaining the technical details of the platform with fast-paced cinematography, and describing its advertising model with guest appearances from Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and American Express.
But the most pointed message to investors comes toward the end from David Ebersman, Facebook’s chief financial officer: we want investors who believe in our mission and are excited about our long-term potential.
Next to your birthday and relationship status, you can now post on Facebook if you plan to give away your kidneys when you die.
Today Facebook announced that it created the slot for organ donation status to users’ profile pages, in an expert PR move that brings positive attention to Facebook ahead of its IPO without violating the quiet period rules of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Investors have put $100m into Castlight Health, a five-year old start-up that produces price comparisons for medical procedures, marking the latest of a series of investments in the health field by venture capitalists who believe Silicon Valley technologists are uniquely equipped to tackle the growing health care crisis in the US.
As health care costs have soared, employers and insurers have pushed more and more of those costs onto patients, increasing their out of pocket expenses many times over. Castlight, which allows patients to compare prices for common procedures among local doctors’ offices, is one of several technology companies that believes it can ease the financial burden on patients, and be profitable.
The titan of electronic communications received some hand-delivered mail on Tuesday: a petition signed by 53,000 people demanding that Facebook add a woman to its board of directors before its much-anticipated public offering.
About two dozen protestors gathered outside Facebook’s New York headquarters on Madison Avenue to submit the petition. When no staff person came to accept it, and security guards ushered the protestors out of the lobby, they left the box of papers on the sidewalk.
Path closed a $30m round of Series B funding on Monday, giving the mobile social network a $250m valuation.
The current round was led by Redpoint Ventures, with several other investors participating, including Sir Richard Branson, head of the Virgin empire, who said he is betting as much on Path’s chief executive, Dave Morin, as his product.
Path was founded as a smaller, more private alternative to Facebook, limiting users to 150 friends, and has since found a cult-like following among Silicon Valley technologists and designers. It had 2m users as of last month.
Other investors who participated in the current funding round include Greylock Partners, Kleiner Perkins, Index Ventures, Mark Pincus, chief executive of Zynga, Yuri Milner, founder of investment firm Digital Sky Technologies, Jerry Murdock, co-founder of Insight Venture Partners, and Allen & Company.
“It is important to us to work with investment partners who share common values around quality and building for the long term,” Mr Morin said. “Our ‘Path’ has only just begun.”
The company said it will use the new financing for international growth and expansion. The round bring Path’s total funding to more than $41m.
Joe Green, NationBuilder co-founder
In the summer of 2004, Joe Green, then 21, lived in a trailer with a 70-year old roommate in the 120-degree Arizona desert, while his college friends holed up in a house in Silicon Valley were building a website called TheFacebook.
Green led the grassroots campaign for John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, for four months in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, mobilising local residents to knock on their neighbours’ doors and win votes for Kerry.
Today he’s become the president of NationBuilder, a start-up company that builds software to make jobs like the one he toiled at during that hot summer easier.
ResearchGate, a social network for scientists and academic researchers, has received a second round of venture funding from Founders Fund, adding to the growing cadre of health and science related social start-ups attracting the attention of Silicon Valley investors.
The Series B round builds on the company’s earlier financing from social networking VC gurus Benchmark and Accel in 2010. The company did not disclose the funding amounts for either round.
At the exact same time Facebook filed for its IPO last week, Burning Man, the iconic counter-culture art festival held annually in the Nevada desert, began announcing the results of its first-ever, ill-fated ticket lottery system.
Designed to overcome the computer glitches and server crashes that beleaguered the 2011 ticket sale, the 2012 random lottery system succeeded mainly in infuriating long-time Burning Man participants, about 70 per cent of whom did not get tickets.
Facebook’s stock market launch is biggest test yet for the social network phenomenon. Can the young company, whose rapid expansion has often struck jarring notes over issues such as user privacy, live up to the huge expectations that could peg its valuation as high as $100bn? April Dembosky investigates as Facebook hurtles towards 1bn users.
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