Facebook chief technical officer Bret Taylor quits

Facebook's chief technical officer Bret Taylor on Friday announced he is leaving the world's leading social network to start a new company with a friend.

Taylor revealed the move on his Facebook page less than a month after an initial public offering (IPO) of stock reported to have made millionaires of about a thousand of the California company's employees.

"I've really enjoyed working with Bret and getting to know him as a friend and teammate," Facebook founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said in an email response to an AFP inquiry.

"I'm grateful for all he has done for Facebook and I'm proud of what he and his teams have built."

Taylor cited accomplishments including the "open graph" that lets outside websites or applications synch with the social network and mobile products such as Facebook Camera and integration with Apple gadgets.

"I'm sad to be leaving, but I'm excited to be starting a company with my friend Kevin Gibbs," Taylor said, not indicating what the new enterprise would be.

"While a transition like this is never easy, I'm extremely confident in the teams and leadership we have in place."

He referred to Zuckerberg not only as his boss for three years, but as among his closest friends.

It is common for startup employees made rich by the initial public offering of stock to depart companies to pursue dreams or new endeavors, according to analysts who anticipated that might happen at Facebook.

By far the Internet's dominant social network, Facebook went public on May 18 in a $16 billion share sale, the second largest IPO in the United States ever.

The run-up to the sale was marked by bubbly enthusiasm reminiscent of the dot-com era, to the extent that lead underwriter Morgan Stanley agreed to raise the offering price and increase the number of shares issued.

But the shares barely held above the $38 introductory price on the opening day and have since fallen, delivering real and paper losses in the billions of dollars to the new investors.

Facebook shares rose six percent to close at $30.01 Friday. 
Source:TOI

Delhi court asks Home ministry to serve summons to Google, Facebook

The Ministry of Home Affairs(MHA) was asked by a Delhi court to get its summonses served to various foreign-based social networking websites, including Facebook and Google, accused of promoting class enmity and undermining the national integrity. 

The court asked MHA that the summonses issued against the websites should be returnable by September 22. 

"Let the accused (social networking websites) be summoned through the assistance of the MHA, Government of India. The summonses shall be returnable on September 22," Metropolitan Magistrate Jay Thareja said. 

These websites named in the complaint filed by Vinay Rai includes -- Facebook, Orkut,YouTube, Yahoo, Blogspot, Google and Microsoft. 

Besides this, the court discharged two accused websites, Shyni Blog and Exbii after the complainant's counsel S P M Tripathi told the court that they do not want to proceed with the complaint against the two websites as their addresses have not been found despite all efforts. 

"In view of the statement made by the advocate for the complainant, the complaint is dismissed against accused Exbii and Shyni Blog," the magistrate said. 

The court, on the last date of hearing, had told Rai to come out with the modalities of serving the summonses to the foreign-based websites. 

As the day's proceedings began, advocate Tripathi said they could send the summonses served to the websites through courier service.
Source:TOI

Facebook, Microsoft looking for office space in Manhattan

Facebook and Microsoft are shopping for more office space in Manhattan, sources say, underscoring New York's stature as a must-have location for top tech companies who need to be "book-ended" on both the west and east coasts. 

Facebook, based in Menlo Park, California, has browsed several locations in the city including the former New York Times Building at 229 West 43rd Street, two people familiar with the search said. 

The social-networking company's New York staff is primarily in sales, although there are also some marketing and engineering personnel in the city. Last year, Facebook said it planned to hire more engineers in New York. 

Facebook, which currently occupies about 40,000 square feet of office space at 335 Madison Avenue near Grand Central Station, is shopping for 100,000 square feet to 150,000 square feet of office space, one source familiar with the matter said. 

Microsoft, also has looked at the former Times building and at a new building at 51 Astor Place, two sources said. Microsoft is looking for about 200,000 square feet, the source said. It currently occupies 174,000 square feet at 1290 Avenue of the Americas near 52nd Street, another source said. Microsoft, the world's biggest software maker, based in Redmond, Washington, declined to comment, as did Facebook. 

It is unclear how far along either company is to committing to a new location and they could opt to stay at their current New York offices.

Facebook is still sending out requests for proposals. It signed a 15-year lease at 335 Madison in December 2010.

Microsoft's lease expires in 2014, two sources said. New York, chiefly Manhattan, is a growing incubator for technology. In the fourth quarter of 2011 it ranked No. 2 behind California as the top destination for technology venture capital funding, according to CB Insights data.

In the last five years, information technology jobs in the city have increased nearly 29 per cent to 52,900, according to a report issued last month by the Center for an Urban Future. The report identified 486 digital startups created in New York since 2007 that have received angel, VC or other outside funding.

Many of those companies are located south of 34th Street in Manhattan's Midtown South office market, the New York home of internet search and advertising powerhouse Google.

Source:TOI

Facebook pays interns more than Google

The world's most popular social networking site Facebook pays its interns nearly $74,000 (Rs 40.7 lakh) a year in a bid to attract young talent, according to a report. 

According to a report by Business Insider,Facebook pays comparatively more than most other tech companies, so that young talented people that may not choose a more established company like Google. Software engineering interns, for example, earn $74,700 (Rs 41.1 lakh) a year, reports a newspaper. 

The report also revealed that other staff members at Facebook get paid pretty well, with at least 10 roles commanding six figure salaries . According to the report, senior software engineers are commanding the most coin at Facebook, getting a salary of $132,503 (Rs 72.9 lakh). 

Software engineers, also called coders, are the most valuable workers because they turn the ideas fired at them by Mark Zuckerberg and his executive team into reality.
Source:TOI

‘Likes’ become ads on Facebook

On Valentine's Day, Nick Bergus came across a link to an odd product on Amazon.com: a 55-gallon barrel of ... personal lubricant. 

He found it irresistibly funny and, as one does in this age of instant sharing, he posted the link on Facebook, adding a comment: "For Valentine's Day. And every day. For the rest of your life." 

Within days, friends of Bergus started seeing his post among the ads on Facebook pages, with his name and smiling mug shot. Facebook - or rather, one of its algorithms - had seen his post as an endorsement and transformed it into an advertisement, paid for by Amazon. 

In Facebook parlance, it was a sponsored story, a potentially lucrative tool that turns a Facebook user's affinity for something into an ad delivered to his friends. 

Amazon is one of many companies that pay Facebook to generate these automated ads when a user clicks to "like" their brands or references them in some other way. Facebook users agree to participate in the ads halfway through the site's 4,000-word terms of service, which they consent to when they sign up. 

With heightened pressure to step up profits and live up to the promise of its gigantic public offering, Facebook is increasingly banking on this approach to generate more ad revenue. The company said it does not break down how much revenue comes from such ads. Its early stock market performance - down 22 per cent from its offering price - is likely to increase the urgency. 

But this new twist on advertising has already proved to be tricky. Users do not always realize that the links and "likes" they post on Facebook can be deployed for marketing purposes. And Facebook has already agreed in principle to settle out of court a class-action lawsuit over the practice in California. 

Not least, its algorithms lack a sense of humor, which can lead to surprises, as in the case of Bergus. 

"I was mildly annoyed, though not to the point of deleting my Facebook account or throwing a hissy fit," said Bergus, 32, a multimedia producer in Iowa City, who wrote about the glitch on his blog. "I know the costs of using Facebook. It does not cost me money. It uses lots of my personal information." 

Wall Street is watching closely to see exactly how Facebook plans to use the information offered every day by its more than 900 million users. The company brought in $1 billion in revenue in the first quarter, the vast majority of it from advertising, but it has not disclosed what portion of that is from sponsored stories. 

Facebook recently began to show sponsored stories in the site's main news feed and in its mobile apps, where they appear a lot less like traditional ads, though they do bear a "Sponsored" label. It has told investors that consumers were 50 per cent more likely to recall an ad if it came with a plug from a Facebook friend. And it has made clear to users that while they can change a privacy setting so their "likes" do not appear under ads in the most prominent advertising zone on Facebook pages, they cannot turn off other kinds of endorsements that show up elsewhere. "Because sponsored stories are just stories from the news feed, you cannot opt out of them," Facebook explains in its help center. 

A company spokesman said that users can choose not to click the "like" button next to something if they don't want to be associated with it, and in general they can use the privacy settings to control who sees what they do. 

Amit Shah, a marketing executive with 1-800-Flowers, said sponsored stories had been remarkably effective in drawing new eyes to the company's Facebook page, especially on lucrative occasions like Mother's Day. He said the company did not need to obtain permission from its fans to run such ads. 

"The person has given their consent because they're engaging with your brand page, and you're boosting that engagement," he said. "Our experience is that people love hearing stories of other customers."
For marketers, sponsored stories save money. No creative work is involved. All they are doing is leveraging one user's stated preference - whether for a lubricant or a political candidate - and spreading the word to that user's friends. The most frequently used trigger for such ads in sponsored stories now is the vague, broad "like" button. 

But people "like" things for different reasons. Sometimes it's to cash in on goodies. "'Like us' on Facebook to enter to win a gift bag worth about $450," read one recent promotion from the clothing chain Brooklyn Industries. 

Bergus, a roller derby fan, "likes" a store called Sin City Skates, mainly to get updates on new products in his Facebook news feed. Peter Zaback, 32, a friend who originally alerted him to the ad in which Bergus appeared, "likes" President Barack Obama's page because he wants information from the campaign. Zaback said he did not know whether his endorsement had been used as a political ad. 

Eric Goldman, an associate professor at the Santa Clara University School of Law, took aim at Facebook for, as he put it in a blog post, putting words in its users' mouths. Facebook, he wrote, interprets a "like" as a statement of a user's attitude and a "green light" to create an ad. 

"So Sponsored Stories creates a zero-sum game," Goldman wrote. "I as a user probably don't get any value from the public presentation of my implicit endorsement (if anything, it might hurt my position with my friends), but Facebook and its advertisers benefit from it." 

Sponsored stories resulted in what initially seemed like a potentially damaging class-action lawsuit in California, though last month the company announced its intention to settle out of court. 

In filing the case, in US District Court, lawyers for the plaintiffs argued that the company had been unfair and deceptive in deploying users' names and pictures in advertising without consent. In its defense, Facebook took a press-freedom approach, saying it did not need consent because sponsored stories were actually "news," because all Facebook users were public figures to their friends. Details of the proposed settlement were not disclosed. 

Angel Fraley, a Seattle costume designer who was the lead plaintiff in the case, said that she recalled clicking the "like" button for an online French course offered by Rosetta Stone. At the time, she said, she was considering moving to Paris, and she hoped that a "like" on Facebook might get her a discount on the course. It did not. Instead, several months later, she showed up in an ad for Rosetta Stone on her friends' Facebook pages. 

Fraley, 39, still "likes" many things on Facebook. But she said she resented being used for advertising. "When I signed up, that was not part of the deal," she said. 

In Ames, Iowa, Zaback came across a plug from another friend the other day. Steven Good's name and face popped up on his news feed, with the announcement that Good "likes" American Airlines. 

Good, 30, was not surprised. It would be naive, he said, to count on an entirely free deal from Facebook. As the social media manager for Phi Delta Theta, a Christian college fraternity, he was experimenting with sponsored stories himself, hoping to leverage "likes." 

If you use the site, Good argued, you should be prepared to be used. "It's the nature of the beast that is Facebook," he said.
Source: TOI.IT

Angry Birds & Farmville: How they help students score better

Eight-year-old Ashish Gupta, a third standard student, could never really understand what a fraction was. His mother asked him to play an online game on a site recommended by her friends on Facebook. Ashish, who logged on to classtopper.com, got a screen similar to the online game sites he visits and started working on a fraction game.

A circle cut into half, with one portion painted green, appeared and he was asked what fraction of the circle was coloured. Confused as he was, he clicked on the wrong answer. And just like on the Farmville and Angry Bird sites, his score started appearing on the right side of the page.

Ashish scrolled down to the explanation which read: "Count the number of equal parts. Count the number of green parts. One out of 2 equal parts is green. So, write one out of 2". That was very easy for Ashish to understand. Very soon, he scored a decent 88%. He had also mastered the concept.

Gamification, or using gaming techniques to explain concepts, is a happening trend among Indian students these days. It has been identified as among the Top-10 technology trends for 2012 by audit and consultancy firm Deloitte.

Classtopper. com, for one, has over 10,000 users logging in just a month after its launch in India. With digital games generating over $25 billion in sales worldwide in 2010, online content providers are wrapping educational material in the form of games so that students can learn, while having fun.While some people dismiss gamification as a fad, neuroscientists are discovering more and more ways in which humans react to interactive design elements. They say such elements can trigger feel-good chemical reactions from human responses to a stimuli -- increasing the reaction time, states the study 'Future of Internet' by Pew Research Centre.

Last week, two IIT-Mumbai alumni, Ashish Rangnekar and Ujjwal Gupta -- co-founders of BenchPrep -- brought out the first game-based GRE test preparation app for iPad, called GRE Score Quest, which can be downloaded free from App Store.

"As a student attempts a question, we tell them how many of their friends have got the same answer correct. We also compare the student's performance with their peers around the world. These elements are similar to what you see in Angry Birds in Facebook," says Rangnekar.

"We create games using the educational content developed by publishers like McGraw Hill. For example, if a mathematics chapter has a long list of theorems, we create a match-the-column game," says Rangnekar.

Complex algorithms deployed in game-based platforms were traditionally used by high skill-assessment programmes like GREs. "Students who appear for GRE examinations have to go through different levels. Depending on how he/she scores in the first section, the complexity of the next section is determined," says Rochelle, explaining the new format, which was introduced in August 2011 by Educational Testing Service (ETS), the organisation which conducts GRE tests globally.

The difference now is that these algorithms are now designed for students to be used anywhere, anytime. Jatin Patel, co-founder and CEO of UK-based company classtopper. com, says, "The gamebased software operates on the concept that each learner is different. The software throws up questions in three different ways. Only if the students get right, can he/she proceed to the next level. There are 35 different analytical tools which track a student's progress".

In what's still a disruptive space with no visible competition, classtopper.com hopes to tap the Indian market with its 75,000 private schools and 9 crore students. The company is in talks with Google Ventures for private equity funding. While those who can afford smartphones, tablets or PCs can play games online, students of Municipal Corporation Schools in Mumbai are being initiated to these fun learning processes.

In March 2012, some students of Mumbai's 'City of Los Angeles School' in Mahim were asked to stay back after their examinations to carry out a pilot on online educational videos from Khan Academy, which creates educational videos for students. "Students were shown videos of subjects they learnt and then made to answer a set of game-puzzles," says Miheer R Walavalkar, country director, India of Teach-A Class. This was facilitated by creating an 'Internet hotspot' in the school.

"A hotspot is created by converting one of the computers into a server and connecting rest of the computers to it," explains Walavalkar. Unlike the classtopper. com play pattern where the software adjusts automatically, here students are offered fun-based questions designed from a base level and then gradually increased in complexity.

"There was a scramble among students to step up their scores and they prepared to work on this for hours together," says Miheer. The next pilot is going to be held at Geeta Vikas schoo in Mumbai. Meanwhile, students of high-end schools like RN Podar School in Mumbai have been using videos from Khan Academy as part of their learning curriculum.

"Teachers only give them the links to the videos. Students are asked to watch the videos at home and a discussion on this is held the next day," says the principal of the school, Avnita Bir, who stumbled on this site while going through Facebook. "There have been 2 lakh visitors from India to Khan Academy sites," says Sundar Subbarayan, School Implementations Lead, Khan Academy. Most of the downloads were from Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai, in April.

Source:TOI.IT

Instagram web traffic surges 78%

Photo-sharing social network Instagram has seen a 78 per cent uptick in unique visitors after it launched its Android app, and was acquired by Facebook. 

The dramatic gain in traffic placed Instagram at the top of the web for growth in April, according to ComScore Inc. 

According to The Los Angles Times, Instagram brought in nearly 14.6 million different individuals to its service in April, making the app the 106th-most visited property on the Internet. 

By comparison, the app grew by just 19 per cent in March with 8.2 million uniques, leaving it No. 204 on the most visited list. 

According to the paper, Instagram's uptick was undoubtedly tied to the start-up's expansion onto Google's platform of Android phones. 

The Android Instagram app arrived in early April, and at that time Instagram had about 30 million users. 

According to Venture Beat, after April's growth, Instagram is now believed to have over 50 million users.
Source:TOI.IT

How Nasdaq's tech glitch affected Facebook IPO

Dead silence. For nearly 20 minutes on the morning of Facebook's trading debut last Friday, the line Nasdaq had opened up to keep traders informed about the social media company's $16 billion IPO had been mute. Well after the stock was supposed to have opened at 11 a.m. New York time, no one from Nasdaq was talking - and there was still no sign of trading. 

Finally, at 11:28 a.m., an unidentified person announced that the shares would open in about 2 minutes. Nasdaq also said orders and cancellations were still being processed, according to several sources listening to the call. 

Those crucial 20 minutes created confusion that turned into chaos over the next few hours as market makers - the brokers who quote bid and offer prices - struggled to figure out what was happening. They were rebuffed in their attempts to get Nasdaq to halt trading and sort out a growing number of problems. 

A lack of communication and, some say, misinformation from Nasdaq may have been central to the failed debut of Facebook's shares. Market makers - crucial to the smooth operation of stock trading - were unsure about their exposure for hours. Investors were in the dark as to whether their trades had gone through, in some cases for days afterwards. The turmoil caused the four big market-makers for Facebook's stock, Knight Capital Group, Citigroup's Automated Trading Desk, Citadel Securities, and UBS AG to lose around $115 million between them. 

"There was very little if any communication from Nasdaq throughout the entire process," said Mark Turner, head of trading at Instinet, another market-maker based in New York. "As a matter of fact, we feel there was miscommunication." 

Instinet said it also suffered a loss, though it wasn't specific other than to say it was significantly less than the $30-35 million reported by Knight. 

The precise actions taken by Nasdaq officials last Friday are still unclear. Spokespeople for Nasdaq declined numerous requests for comment, referring Reuters to a status alert issued on Monday that outlined some of the problems encountered and some of the steps it took in an attempt to resolve them. 

Fist-pumping
The Nasdaq call, led by Nasdaq Vice President Todd Golub, according to sources, was scheduled to last 2 hours from 10:15 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. to make sure that the exchange was keeping in close touch with the market. It is a normal event for a big IPO. However, this call stretched into the late afternoon, as the most anticipated new US stock offering in years turned into one of the ugliest. 

The fallout from the events last Friday has become a continuing nightmare for Nasdaq OMX Group, which wooed the social media network for months and openly prides itself on its technology. 

The result is another black eye for an exchange industry already suffering because investors not only lost confidence in the financial crisis but through the "flash crash" in May 2010 when $1 trillion in shareholder equity was temporarily wiped out in a matter of minutes.  Nasdaq CEO Bob Greifeld pumped his fist at the symbolic opening bell ceremony at Facebook's headquarters in Menlo Park, California next to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg an hour-and-a-half before the company's stock was due to start trading. There were no outward signs then of the problems that were about to unfold back on Wall Street. 

At 10:58 a.m., Nasdaq issued a notice that the Facebook opening would be delayed until 11:05 a.m. IPO delays of that nature are not unusual, especially with a massive launch like Facebook. 

But then the revised start time passed without an opening trade on the stock. Minutes passed as traders waited. Nasdaq's next communication came at 11:13 a.m., when it noted in a terse emailed message to people who subscribe to the exchange's alerts that Nasdaq is "experiencing a delay in delivering the opening print in Facebook," with no other details. 

Meanwhile, market-makers were receiving messages about their orders that later proved to be inaccurate. They say they were told during the period between 11:05 and 11:30 a.m., when the stock finally opened, that orders were still being taken for the opening price. 

"Nasdaq representatives were stating right up until 11:29 that they were still accepting orders in Facebook for the open," said Turner of Instinet. 

But that wasn't the case. Later, Turner said he was told that orders submitted up to 25 minutes before the opening were either canceled or not submitted into the marketplace until about 1:50 p.m - more than two hours later. Other market makers received similar messages. 

Behind the scenes, the massive order volume was overwhelming Nasdaq's systems. 

Orders that were supposed to be processed in 3 milliseconds were taking 5 milliseconds, said one person familiar with exchange operations. This proved to be a major problem: In the extra two milliseconds new orders flooded in, thwarting the system's ability to establish an opening price for the stock and leading to a backup in unprocessed orders. 

"This is starting to get bizarre," Wayne Kaufman, an equity market strategist at brokerage John Thomas Financial, said from the firm's trading floor on Wall Street, around 11:15 a.m.

Finally, the decision was made to put through a fix to the systems problem and get the stock trading. That move to a secondary matching engine used the order book as it appeared at 11:11 a.m. - but this meant new orders and changes in orders that came in later did not show up in the opening price. A matching engine is a computer that pairs bids and offers to complete trades.

Eric Noll, Nasdaq's head of transaction services, said in a statement earlier this week that the fix instead led to 2-1/2 hours of uncertainty during which brokers were unable to see the results of their trades.

Trading halt?
The stock opened at 11:30:09 a.m. at $42.05 a share. An investor looking at a quote screen might have thought the trouble had ended there. In reality, the problems were about to worsen.

After initially heading to a high of $45, the stock soon began to plunge towards its issue price at $38. Lead underwriter Morgan Stanley stepped in to defend the stock while some others - unsure whether their orders had been processed or not - backed away from trading or decided to sell.

If confidence is undermined at the open, people "pull back because their orders are essentially going into a black hole," said former Nasdaq Vice Chairman David Weild. Clients were telling their brokers they had not received confirmation of orders - which normally come through in seconds.

"Multiple market makers called Nasdaq and asked them to halt the stock and said, 'You have a problem and it's getting worse,' and their response was, 'The stock is trading normally,'" said an executive at one market-maker. It is unclear who would have the authority to halt the stock. Nasdaq would not comment on whether it considered such a move.

For market-makers, the chaos was particularly problematic because they didn't know what they and their clients owned, and at what price. "Should I be selling stock, should I be buying? And what's my price point?" said another official at a market-making firm. "You just don't know, so you were in effect flying blind until 2 o'clock."

Source:TOI.IT

How Google gets all your private data

Secrets spilled across the computer screen. After months of negotiation, Johannes Caspar, a German data protection official, forced Google to show him exactly what its Street View cars had been collecting from potentially millions of his fellow citizens. 

Snippets of e-mails, photographs, passwords, chat messages, postings on websites and social networks - all sorts of private internet communication - were casually scooped up as the specially-equipped cars photographed the world's streets. 

"It was one of the biggest violations of data protection laws that we had ever seen," Caspar recently recalled about that long-sought viewing in late 2010. "We were very angry." Google might be one of the coolest and smartest companies of this or any era, but it also upsets a lot of people - competitors who argue it wields its tremendous weight unfairly, officials like Caspar who says it ignores local laws, privacy advocates who think it takes too much from its users. 

Just this week, European anti-trust regulators gave the company an ultimatum to change its search business or face legal consequences. American regulators may not be far behind. The high-stakes anti-trust assault, which will play out this summer behind closed doors in Brussels, might be the beginning of a tough time for Google. 

But never count Google out. It is superb at getting out of trouble. Just ask Caspar or any of his counterparts around the world who tried to hold Google accountable for what one of them, the Australian communication minister Stephen Conroy, called "probably the single greatest breach in the history of privacy". 

The secret Street View data collection led to inquiries in at least a dozen countries, including four in the US alone. But Google is yet to give an explanation of why the data was collected and who at the company knew about it. No regulator in the US has ever seen the information that Google's cars gathered from the citizens. 

The tale of how Google escaped a full accounting for Street View illustrates not only how technology companies have outstripped the regulators, but also their complicated relationship with their adoring customers. 

Companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple supply new ways of communication, learning, entertainment and high-tech wizardry for the masses. They have custody of the raw material of hundreds of millions of lives - the intimate e-mails, the revealing photographs, searches for help or love or escape. People willingly, at times eagerly, surrender this information.

But there is a price: the loss of control, or even knowledge, of where that personal information is going and how it is being reshaped into an online identity that may resemble the real you or may not. Privacy laws and wiretapping statutes are of little guidance, because they have not kept pace with the lightning speed of technological progress.

©2011 The New York Times News Service

Microsoft's social network So.cl now open to all

Microsoft has opened up its So.cl social networking service to the general public, which lets users share and comment on interesting search results and connect with "like-minded" people. 

It is targeted at students and had earlier been restricted to invitees at universities and schools in the US. The service integrates with Facebook and is being pitched as an "experiment" rather than a rival to other networks. 

Microsoft revealed that the product was developed by its Fuse Labs unit as a "research project... focused on the future of social experiences and learning." Members are invited to create "collages of content" using the firm's Bing search engine technology and external links, which they can, then share with others. 

Users can then identify people who are interested in the same topics, monitor their associates' feeds and take part in "video parties" during which members watch online videos together, commenting on them via chat function. Members can sign in using their Facebook login details, however, their So.cl activities do not show up on Facebook's pages unless the option is activated. 

The move to open up the service to the general public was taken over the weekend with little fanfare, prompting some analysts to speculate that Microsoft only had limited ambitions for the project. "The fact that So.cl is targeted at students echoes Facebook's beginnings and has made many assume it is a Facebook clone," the BBC quoted Eden Zoller, principal analyst at technology consultants Ovum, as saying. 

"But So.cl is, as Microsoft stresses, an experiment designed to be a layer on existing social networks. "Microsoft is being sensible in positioning So.cl in this way - the opposite approach of Google, which entered social networking all guns blazing with a full on service, and is having modest success," Zoller said. 

Zoller added that the project could also help Microsoft further improve Bing's search capabilities. A study by Comscore suggested that Microsoft had a 15.4 percent share of the US search market in April compared with Google's 66.5 percent lead. Earlier surveys have suggested that the gap is even wider in the UK and parts of Europe.

Source:TOI.IT

Facebook IPO: How much employees have lost

 Facebook's outside investors aren't the only ones feeling cheated, as an average employee of the firm has lost over $844,000 since the company's flotation, it has emerged.Since Facebook sold shares to the public at $38 a pop last Friday, the average employee has lost an estimated $844,000, based on yesterday's closing price of $32. Shares rose 3.2 percent yesterday, which was their first daily gain.


"It's obviously disappointing for Facebook's employees who still need to work there, engineering the site and selling ads," the New York Post quoted Sam Hamadeh, the head of research firm PrivCo, as saying. In contrast to Facebook's troubled times, Google and Apple have seen their shares soar, rewarding employees who stuck with them.

"At Google, you count on that money every year because the stock has been relatively stable and growing. At Apple, you count on that money. At Facebook, we don't know yet," said Robert Greene, the head of GreeneSearch, a tech recruiting firm.Recruiters have estimated that Facebook's cool-company status is in jeopardy if the stock-price erosion continued, absolving the super-sized growth that attracted workers in the first place.

Employees are currently left with no option but have resorted to a wait-and-see approach until their lockup ends and they can sell their shares. The first lockup for insiders expires after 91 days.

Source:TOI.IT

Facebook goes public, Zuckerberg rings NASDAQ opening bell

 Mark Zuckerberg, wearing his trademark hooded sweatshirt, remotely rang the bell to open the Nasdaq Friday, marking a historic share offering for Facebook that confirms the growing importance of the social network giant. 

Amid a crowd at Facebook's California headquarters, Zuckerberg and hundreds of employees cheered as the 28-year-old co-founder rang the bell via video for the New York-based Nasdaq. Facebook shares were to start trading later in the day in the richest-ever initial public offering for a technology firm. 

Zuckerberg wore a dark hoodie, unfazed by criticism from some on Wall Street about his casual attire. And most of those on hand for the ceremony were wearing similar sweatshirts or T-shirts.

The company's stock, priced at $38 per share, was to begin trading under the symbol "FB" on the Nasdaq, giving the leading website a dizzying value of $104 billion at its market debut. 

The IPO raised more than $16 billion, making it the richest after that of financial giant Visa in 2008, according to Renaissance Capital. The addition of a possible stock "over-allotment" could boost the total to $18.4 billion. Facebook itself is selling 180 million shares and early investors in the company the remaining 241 million. 

With a market value of $104 billion, Facebook is now among the most valuable US companies, ahead of sector giants Amazon ($98 billion) and Cisco ($89 billion), and more than twice the value of Ford Motor Co. ($38 billion). But it remains behind Google ($203 billion) and Apple ($495 billion). 

Facebook employees staged a software coding "hackathon" at the company's offices in the Silicon Valley city of Menlo Park overnight ahead of the market opening. Under the share plan, Zuckerberg, who began Facebook with classmates at Harvard in 2004, will hold 55.8 percent of the voting power of Facebook shares, and over 18 percent of the value of the company, which he controls through a dual class stock structure. 

Wall Street and investors around the globe have been girding for a Facebook IPO frenzy over the past few days as Facebook boosted the estimated price for its shares and added to the number being offered by insiders. Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter said he believed that despite the large number of shares being offered, Facebook's stock price will climb quickly. 

London-based Hargreaves Lansdown Stockbrokers said Facebook may have a hard time living up to lofty expectations but pointed out that it is "a relatively developed company which can display 'real' income and profit." "There are extremely high expectations for the company's prospects and perhaps on that basis it deserves the punchy valuation it has been given," the brokerage said in a note to clients. 

But the brokers said Facebook faces challenges including how to make money from the growing base of mobile users.One of the shadows hanging over Facebook is concerns over privacy. Some 900 million people use Facebook. But when they realize their private information is being bought and sold, some don't like it so much. 

Some consumer and privacy advocates say Facebook has been too loose with user data, and hope that as a publicly traded company, it may change its tune. Zuckerberg has repeatedly apologized for privacy lapses amid outrage from users over revelations their online activities were visible to a wide audience of advertisers and other users. 

Late last year, in a settlement with the US Federal Trade Commission, the social networking giant promised to honor users' privacy preferences and to stop making claims about the security of personal information that are untrue. The IPO's net proceeds to Facebook are estimated at $6.4 billion. The rest of the cash goes to Facebook insiders and others who made early investments in the social network, and to cover the IPO costs. 

At the heart of the debate about the wisdom of owning a piece of Facebook is how much revenue it takes in. Revenue vaulted to $1.06 billion in the quarter which ended March 31 -- an improvement year-over-year but down about six percent from the previous quarter.

Source:TOI.IT

Rich Indians looking to invest in Facebook IPO

After signing up in millions to join the social networking site's account, Indians now want a pie of Facebook's coveted IPO as well. Several rich Indian investors, wanting to be a part of the Facebook dream, are readying plans to invest in the $13.5-billion Facebook public issue, the roadshows for which kicked off in the US on Monday.

Though Indian investors may not grab the limelight when the post-issue shareholders' lists are drawn, there may be several Indians who will end up owning a small number of FB shares at issue close. According to international wealth managers, several ultra high-net worth Indians are looking to make "token investments" in the FB issue.

"HNIs in India may subscribe to the Facebook issue in tranches. It'll be more like a token investment in the IPO stage and they will look at increasing exposure after there's a better understanding of earnings growth in the next few quarters," said Prateek Pant, head - products & services, RBS Private Banking India.Facebook is offering about 337.4 million shares for $28 to $35 each, according to a regulatory filing on Friday. At the upper end of the price band, the IPO would raise $13.5 billion, pegging net valuation of Facebook at $95 billion. The social networking website will launch its issue on May 18 on the US bourses. Facebook added 46 million MAUs (monthly active users) in India as of December 31, 2011, an increase of 132% from the previous year, as per the company SEC filings.

According to wealth managers, rich investors are looking to invest in small lots, mostly for 800 to 1,000 shares. At $35 per share, Indian investors will require over 18 lakh to apply for 1,000 FB shares.

"Indian investors wanting to invest in the FB issue will have to take a measured call. They will have to fund their share purchase through liberalised remittances scheme (LRS) route, which allows every Indian to invest up to $200,000 in overseas asset classes," said Satya Narayan Bansal, chief executive of Barclays Wealth.

"Indians may invest in the FB issue if they find valuations attractive. They may only make token investments as rich investors may not want to exhaust their entire LRS allowance on this issue," Bansal said.

Wealth managers say it's the FB fad that's prompting rich Indians to invest in the issue. A good number of these investors are entrepreneurs and professionals who are familiar with the workings of US stock markets and many of them already have companies like Apple, Google and Microsoft in their portfolios. These investors park their money in global blue-chip companies to diversify their stock portfolios. Their investments in FB is seen more as a fad, wealth managers said.

Indian investors can invest in the FB IPO only if they have an international bank and an overseas trading account. Usually, foreign banks in India refer local clients to their offices (or partners) in Singapore or Dubai to participate in such high profile public issues. Almost all foreign wealth managers are pitching FB to their Indian clients.

The final share allocation will depend on the overall demand for the issue among global investors. Rich investors from China and Gulf countries have already given large mandates to their banks and brokerages to subscribe to the FB issue, wealth managers said. "Facebook is a breakthrough internet company which has managed to capture the fancy of 900 million users all around the world. Indian investors, however, are apprehensive to commit large sums of money (to the FB issue) simply because several e-commerce companies, which recently floated IPOs at rich valuations, are trading at significant discounts in the US markets," Pant said.

Another worry among Indian investors is the conflicting reports about FB's valuation. Many analysts have voiced concerns over Facebook's 80-85 times price-to-earnings multiple, when an established player like Apple Inc commands a P/E multiple of just over 14 times. According to wealth managers, listing gains is an important factor in US markets, but e-commerce companies like Facebook may need longer holding period for better capital gains. The weak rupee is another factor that's prompting rich Indian investors to put in smaller sums of money to the FB issue.

"Family offices that managed to put out money (overseas markets) when the rupee was at 45-47 levels may consider investing in the FB issue. These investors will not be hurt if rupee gains in strength," said Richa Karpe, director - investments, Altamount Capital, which manages several Indian family offices.

"It is not advisable for investors to convert their LRS allowance at current rates. They may log losses in the event of rupee gaining strength. Price appreciation in FB shares may take time to come," Karpe said.

Source: timesofindia.indiatimes