Facebook’s conundrum over mobile ads
One of the more eye-catching elements of Facebook’s obligatory rundown of “risk factors” in Wednesday’s IPO filing was the section on mobile.
Facebook has huge scale on mobile. Half of Facebook’s monthly active users – 425m people – use its mobile products, as of December.
Facebook files – all you need to know
Facebook has finally filed to go public, with plans to raise at least $5bn. The 845m-strong social network’s S-1 registration statement appeared on the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s website on Wednesday afternoon.
Some key facts from the IPO filing: founder Mark Zuckerberg has a 28.4 per cent stake worth $22.7bn, based on a $80bn valuation for the company. Facebook made $1bn on $3.7bn in revenues in 2011. It will trade under the symbol FB and Morgan Stanley is the lead broker.
After the jump, a breakdown of the contents of the 192-page filing and reaction from around the web as reported in our live blog.
WikiLeaks could set servers afloat, Fox News reports
Tech news from around the web:
WikiLeaks, the whistleblowing website, is investigating the possibility of taking its hosting infrastructure offshore to avoid the long arm of the law, reports Fox News. The suggestion is that this would be more than just an island out of the reach of the taxman – WikiLeaks has explored floating its infrastructure on a barge in international waters, Fox claims. Julian Assange is in London’s supreme court this week fighting his extradition to Sweden, while a new legal challenge has also emerged from FSI, his former lawyers, who accuse the WikiLeaks founder of failing to pay his legal fees.
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.
Facebook’s release of 60 new lifestyle apps that let users track the recipes they cooked, the dresses they bought, and the trip to Paris they want to take, are turning the social network into a personal online scrapbook.
The apps, plus Facebook’s opening of its platform to any developer that wants to build on it, are clearly aimed at diversifying the experiences people can have on the site – to stem boredom, and to keep people participating. That’s a sensible business move ahead of the company’s IPO, as it keeps engagement rates up, and that keeps marketers optimistic and spending money.
But is seamlessly sharing the most minute details of daily life truly a way to stay connected with people, even within the limited confines of the internet?
Facebook names alleged Koobface gang
Facebook has taken the unusual step of making public the names and personal details of five men it believes to be behind the Koobface computer worm that attacked hundreds of thousands of computers through the social network’s profiles.
The alleged gang appear to be living in St Petersburg and were tracked by Facebook and a team of researchers over three years.
Half price Facebook ads – as long as you link back to Facebook
Facebook is heavily incentivising its advertisers to keep users within the social network, rather than clicking out to their own sites, according to a new report by social marketing agency, TBG Digital.
Twitter’s displeasure with Google’s “Search plus Your World” may have been the most loudly heard reaction, but tech commentators also took to their blogs to criticise Google’s latest enhancement to personalised search this week.
Tech news from around the web:
Talks between media companies and Microsoft over the software giant’s online subscription service has been put on hold, it was reported on Reuters.
The technology giant had been in intense talks with potential programming partners for over a year and was hoping to roll out the Netflix-style service in the next few months. But it pulled back after deciding that the licensing costs were too high for the business model Microsoft envisaged, people familiar with the discussions said.
Google and Twitter scrap publicly over social search
Google and Twitter have become embroiled in a war of words over the search engine’s new “your world” update, which has raised concerns that it would over-emphasise Google’s own social network over its rivals.
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