Intense competition for new domain names

June 13, 2012 10:23 am by FT

The body overseeing the allocation of new web addresses has revealed intense competition for certain domain names and strong demand for non-Latin web suffixes as companies apply to own potential rivals to .com, writes Duncan Robinson.
A total of 1,930 applications for new web suffixes were made, with more than a third of these aimed at just 229 addresses, according to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the organisation in charge of regulating web domains. Read more

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Posted in Internet |
From Comment and analysis June 6, 2012

At a cybersecurity conference in Tel Aviv yesterday, the Russian antivirus expert who discovered the Flame computer virus, a type of malicious software, appealed to the US and Israel to cease deploying cyberweapons. They “are a very bad idea”, he said. “My message is: stop doing this before it’s too late.” How right Eugen Kaspersky was.

Until now, cyberwarfare has been largely confined to Hollywood or to the prophecies of a few Cassandras warning darkly of a “digital Pearl Harbor” or “Cybergeddon”. But two closely linked events last week should give everyone cause for concern. An arms race in cyberspace is a distinct reality.

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Posted in Security |
From FT Comment June 1, 2012

The feeble showing of Facebook’s stock in the weeks since its $16bn initial public offering has left people casting about for explanations. Maybe Morgan Stanley, which organised the IPO, got complacent. Maybe Facebook neglected to adapt its platform fully to the world of mobile devices. Maybe, if we are to believe the Los Angeles Times, the company, for all its 900m users, is “losing its cool”. Those explanations are wrong. There may be a simpler explanation: political risk.

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Posted in Internet, Social |
From Management column May 28, 2012

Now we know what people mean when they say merger integration is torture. Former staff at Autonomy, the UK software company bought by Hewlett-Packard less than a year ago, say submitting to the US company’s “stifling” bureaucratic procedures felt “like being water-boarded”.

In turn, Meg Whitman, HP’s chief executive, has blamed “classic entrepreneurial company scaling challenges” for Autonomy’s “very disappointing” latest quarter. She has ditched Mike Lynch, the British group’s outspoken founder, often lauded in the UK as a hero of the homegrown technology sector.

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Posted in Hardware |
From FT Business Life May 24, 2012

When Ayush Agarwal decided to look for love, he thought carefully about his likes and dislikes. The 28-year-old product manager at Google, who lives in San Francisco, loves Apple products. So he signed up to Cupidtino, a dating website for Apple fanboys and fangirls.

“The idea of pivoting my dating life around Mac ladies was intriguing,” he says. “It’s definitely a solid conversation starter. Also, having a Mac girlfriend would mean that I wouldn’t end up becoming [her] tech support”.

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Posted in Digital media, Social |

Facebook IPO: the public network’s opening day

May 18, 2012 11:30 am by FT

Facebook has become the public network – no longer a private company, the social network now has shareholders and a ticker symbol (FB) to go with the 900m users of its service.

Its initial public offering was priced at $38 on - the top end of its range, giving the Silicon Valley company a valuation of $104bn. But after opening at $42.05, Facebook’s underwriters had to fight to keep it above its float price, the shares closing at just $38.23, up 0.6 per cent.

For a Facebook “Timeline” of its opening day – from before the opening-bell ceremony at its Menlo Park headquarters through a frantic trading day – read Tim Bradshaw and Chris Nuttall’s live blog after the jump.  Read more

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Posted in Social, Tech Finance |

Facebook shares already a marketing incentive

May 18, 2012 9:30 am by FT

By Robert Cookson in Hong Kong

A Hong Kong-based brokerage is offering free Facebook shares to all new customers in an attempt to cash in on the hype surrounding the initial public offering of the world’s biggest social network.

8 Securities, which launched in March, said customers would receive US$200 of Facebook shares simply by signing up to its online trading platform with a minimum deposit of HK$10,000 (US$1,287), a process it claimed took less than eight minutes.

However, investors hoping to flip the free Facebook shares immediately after they start trading on Friday are out of luck; 8 Securities will buy the shares on the open market in coming days and deposit them in customer accounts within 14 days. Read more

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Posted in Internet, Tech |
From Business blog May 16, 2012

Facebook investors: you have been warned. The last time I was in Silicon Valley was 12 years ago, in the very week that the Nasdaq crashed, marking the end of the dotcom boom. That I should fly back into San Francisco on the eve of the social network’s initial public offering cannot be a good omen.

I’m not here to write about Facebook – for expert insights, read the analysis of my San Francisco-based colleagues or the FT Lex team – but the IPO overshadows most discussions. What strikes me is how entrepreneurs, technology executives and analysts I’ve met are reluctant to talk publicly about Facebook and its founder Mark Zuckerberg. Ask them what they think about him and they tend to preface their remarks with a polite request that this part of the interview should be off the record.

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Posted in Social |

Facebook kicks off IPO roadshow

May 7, 2012 8:58 pm by FT

Mark Zuckerberg in New YorkDressed in his trademark “hoodie”, Mark Zuckerberg stepped in front of hundreds of would-be investors on Monday in New York City to make the case for buying shares in his company, Facebook, writes Arash Massoudi.

The lunch-time stop was the first on a roadshow that will showcase the social networking site to potential investors across the country. The stream of investors filing out of the conference center at the Sheraton Hotel in Manhattan described the company’s performance on Monday as “polished and professional”. Read more

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Posted in Social, Tech |

Madvertise buys Turkish mobile advertising rival

April 17, 2012 1:47 pm by FT

Berlin tech start-up Madvertise has bought Turkish mobile advertising rival Mobilike in what the German company sees as an important step to becoming the European market leader, writes Gerrit Wiesmann in Berlin.

The four-year-old German company, which allows advertisers to pinpoint and address potential customers via their mobile phones, is one of the more mature start-ups on the Berlin scene.

To fund European growth, Madvertise secured $10m in series B venture-capital funding late last year, and counts Silicon Valley-based Blumberg Capital as a shareholder. Read more

Posted in Internet, Mobile, Tech |
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