Tag Archives: zuckerberg

Facebook News: Growing, But Slowing

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Maybe this example will help determine if you’re the "glass half full or glass half empty" type. The subject is Facebook and its ability to attract more users.

A recent item from the Bulldog Reporter noted the following:

Facebook’s growth appears to be slowing, particularly in the U.S. Unique U.S. visitors to the wildly popular social media site rose 5 percent in April to 158 million, according to data attributed to comScore, the slowest growth rate since comScore started tracking data in 2008. Users spent more than six hours a month on the site in April, up 16 percent from the prior year. Still, that’s a slower growth rate than the 23 percent increase in 2011.

Investors are concerned about Facebook’s ability to keep increasing revenue and make money from its growing mobile audience. But many analysts hold positive long-term ratings on the stock as the company has been rolling out new offerings for mobile users, including apps for taking photos, messaging and for managing business brand pages. It is also unveiling an app center to allow users to find Facebook-related games and other applications more easily, an AP news release reports.

So, the question is not whether you’re a Facebook fan, but whether you think it will continue to grow and prove to a success for investors. Your thoughts?

Zuck Does What Zuck Wants

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As most of you know, Facebook acquired Instagram last week for about… (cue Dr. Evil) one BILLION dollars. But an article in the Wall Street Journal illustrates how the board’s input on CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s decision was virtually nil. Notwithstanding the fact that he holds majority voting rights and can technically do what he wants, it’s still a pretty bad-a** move, in this blogger’s opinion. WSJ reports:

On the morning of Sunday, April 8, Facebook Inc.’s youthful chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, alerted his board of directors that he intended to buy Instagram, the hot photo-sharing service.

It was the first the board heard of what, later that day, would become Facebook’s largest acquisition ever, according to several people familiar with the matter. Mr. Zuckerberg and his counterpart at Instagram, Kevin Systrom, had already been talking over the deal for three days, these people said.

Negotiating mostly on his own, Mr. Zuckerberg had fielded Mr. Systrom’s opening number, $2 billion, and whittled it down over several meetings at Mr. Zuckerberg’s $7 million five-bedroom home in Palo Alto. Later that Sunday, the two 20-somethings would agree on a sale valued at $1 billion.

It was a remarkably speedy three-day path to a deal for Facebook—a young company taking pains to portray itself as blue-chip ahead of its initial public offering of stock in a few weeks that could value it at up to $100 billion. Companies generally prefer to bring in ranks of lawyers and bankers to scrutinize a deal before proceeding, a process that can eat up days or weeks.

Mr. Zuckerberg ditched all that. By the time Facebook’s board was brought in, the deal was all but done. The board, according to one person familiar with the matter, "Was told, not consulted."

Mr. Zuckerberg owns 28% of Facebook’s stock, and controls 57% of its voting rights, giving him the freedom to act independently if he wants. Mr. Systrom, similarly, owns about 45% of his company. That control means investors must accept the fact that the CEOs can move quickly. 

Have You Heard of Facebook’s New Competition? You May Soon

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Diaspora, an upstart social networking site, had a goal of raising $10,000 online to help get the fledgling network going. You see, its founders — four programmers from New York University’s Courant Institute — were amongst those revolting against what many perceive to be unethical privacy violations by Facebook. (Read here). 

So raising $10,000 from strangers for an unproven product sounds a tad ambitious, you say? But what if we told you they have now raised nearly $140,000 and counting. Surprising? Oh yes. And is Diaspora ready to topple the social networking giant? Doubt it, but time will tell. But they are giving Facebook something to think about as far as its policies toward its users are concerned. But there’s a valuable lesson here: Your business is never bigger than your customers, so please treat them well and when enacting new policies, put yourself in their position.

An excerpt about Diaspora:

What is the project about?

We believe that privacy and connectedness do not have to be mutually exclusive. With Diaspora, we are reclaiming our data, securing our social connections, and making it easy to share on your own terms. We think we can replace today’s centralized social web with a more secure and convenient decentralized network. Diaspora will be easy to use, and it will be centered on you instead of a faceless hub.

Why are we building it?

This February, Eben Moglen, Columbia law professor and author of the latest GPL, gave a talk on Internet privacy. As more and more of our lives and identities become digitized, Moglen explains, the convenience of putting all of our information in the hands of companies on “the cloud” is training us to casually sacrifice our privacy and fragment our online identities.

But why is centralization so much more convenient, even in an age where relatively powerful computers are ubiquitous? Why is there no good alternative to centralized services that, as Moglen pointed out, comes with "spying for free?” Why do we keep our personal data in a thousand places? We have the technology, someone just needs to take the time to figure out how we can communicate smoothly and intuitively, without the hidden costs of “the cloud”. As good programmers, when we noticed that the application we need doesn’t exist, we set out to fill the hole in our digital lives.

Hat tip to @mitchmaxson of MediaSauce, an Indiana Chamber member.

Facebook Works to Out-Twitter Twitter

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Sigh. You know, just when I feel like I’m fairly "with it" in terms of technology, Facebook goes and makes a bunch of changes. I blame the teenagers — though I’m trying not to feel like an old fogy here. But just give me an episode of "All In The Family" and a lukewarm Tab and let’s call it a day. At any rate, Techcrunch reports:

Facebook made a number of announcements today about changes to its home page, profile pages, and activity streams. Taken together, these represent a concerted response to the rise of Twitter as a real-time message broadcasting system that goes beyond members’ personal circle of friends.

One of the biggest changes is that Facebook is getting rid of the distinction between private profiles and public pages. The 5,000-friend limit will be dropped from the public pages. Facebook doesn’t want Twitter to become the way large companies and public figures connect to fans. Up until now, Facebook Pages haven’t really been the place fans go to connect with their favorite celebrities or brands. For that, they’ve started going to Twitter, where they can get updates in real time.

Facebook is also speeding up the updates that populate the news feeds on everyone’s personal page. Before, these would be updated every 10 minutes or so. Facebook’s introduction of real-time updates and a one-sided follow system mimics Twitter’s functionality. While it may be a little late to this part of the game, its user base of 175 million dwarf’s Twitter’s. Explains CEO Mark Zuckerberg:

"What we’re talking about today, is that there’s a philosophical change in that we want to converge these public figures (which are one way) and friends (two way connections)."

Stay tuned for a post in the near future about what employers are learning about applicants through Facebook.