An apology to Yahoos
With Yahoo’s board meeting to discuss the latest in a seemingly endless series of crises to overtake its top leadership, CEO Scott Thompson has issued an apology.
Not for the “inadvertent error” that led to his qualification-inflation. And not even for Yahoo’s overly casual use of that phrase last week, which was denounced by dissident investor Third Point as “insulting to shareholders.”
Dressed 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”.
These are busy times for Facebook. At the start of the week, the social networking company introduced a new feature for members to show their organ donation status. But the big news came on Thursday, as the social networking company announced that it would set a price range for its stock of $28 to $35 a share when it debuts on Wall Street later this month. It also released an IPO roadshow video.
Facebook’s share price: Jam tomorrow
The only way to justify Facebook’s sky-high valuation is to look to its growth in the longer term and ignore the next couple of years. That is the view that has been taking hold in the financial world as the IPO of the decade finally comes into sight.
Want to test your own assumptions about Facebook’s growth rate and profit margins – and what these will mean for its share price? The FT’s new interactive calculator lets you do just that. Click below to try it.
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.
Yahoo’s boss: a plain and simple bean-counter
It was an “inadvertent error”. That was Yahoo’s response today to the revelation that new CEO Scott Thompson hasn’t got a computer science degree after all, whatever his official biography may say.
(Late in the day on Thursday, Yahoo issued a second statement striking a very different tone from this casual attempt at a brush-off. Faced with a serious ethical question involving its CEO, the company’s board is now at least taking the matter seriously. See update at the bottom of this post.)
Flattr brings social micropayments to DailyMotion
One of the more innovative approaches in the plethora of efforts to persuade more people to pay for more content online is “social micropayment” firm Flattr.
Acting something like an online tip jar, Flattr reverses the usual payment process by giving people a way to pay for content after they’ve consumed it, rather than before they know what they are getting.
Avito, the Russian Craigslist, raises huge $75m round
Investment continues to pour into the soaring Russian internet market, which recently overtook Germany as Europe’s largest by users.
The latest mega-deal sees Avito.ru, a Russian online classified site along the lines of Craigslist, raising $75m from local private equity firm Baring Vostok and global venture capitalists Accel Partners, alongside existing investors Kinnevik and Northzone.
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.
Three months after the defeat of SOPA, a new bill in Congress had internet users, privacy advocates and civil rights groups up in arms this week. On Thursday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), a bill that the authors claim will allow the government and private companies to work together in order to fight against cyber terrorism.
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