Business | Cheryl Waller

How Facebook Has Changed Since Going Public 1 Year Ago

May 18, 2013 by Seth Fiegerman Leave a Comment

"Facebook was not originally created to be a company," CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in his SEC Registration letter a little more than three months before Facebook went public on May 18, 2012. "It was built to accomplish a social mission — to make the world more open and connected."

In the year since the Facebook IPO, some things haven't changed: Zuckerberg still sports his trademark hoodies, employees still rate their company and their founder highly, and Facebook still talks about its grand mission to make the world more open and connected. But the era of Facebook operating or being perceived as anything other than a corporation seems more distant with each passing day Read more...

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AOL, Yahoo Were Better Investments This Year Than Facebook Stock

May 18, 2013 by Lauren Indvik Leave a Comment

Ah, the benefit of hindsight.

Those who rushed to buy Facebook stock at its initial public offering price of $38 per share on May 18, 2012, are likely a little disappointed with their investment one year later. Though the stock has recovered from its $17.55 September 4 low, the price of the stock today, at a little more than $26 per share, is still closer to its all-time low than its opening price.

What if investors had put their money into other technology or Internet companies? Statistics database Statista looked at how a $1,000 investment made on the day of Facebook's IPO would have performed nearly one year later in the chart below. Read more...

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Facebook’s Financial Data Reveal It Doesn’t Need Zynga Anymore

May 14, 2013 by Quartz Leave a Comment

One of the few bright spots in Facebook’s last quarterly report was a modest increase in how much money the company makes from payments (as opposed to the company’s primary source of revenue, advertising). Payments were up about 15% from a year ago, mostly due to Facebook Credits purchased to play games on Facebook.

Historically, Zynga has represented the bulk of that revenue. You would expect that, as Zynga’s fortunes have declined, Facebook would see a corresponding hit in games revenue. But that hasn’t happened, notes entrepreneur and part-time Facebook analyst Jon Milani, who dug into Facebook’s latest quarterly report Read more...

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How Facebook Could Save Nokia

May 9, 2013 by Quartz Leave a Comment

On Tuesday, Nokia chief Stephen Elop fielded questions from irate shareholders at his company’s annual meeting in Helsinki. When, they wanted to know, would he do something about Apple and Samsung? In London next week, Nokia will announce its new high-end flagship product, whatever it is.

But Elop’s launch of the Nokia’s new Asha 501 in India this morning is worth watching more than the ailing manufacturer’s battle at the top end of the market. At a recommended price of $99 (before taxes) and near-enough full smartphone functionality, this is Nokia’s big push to capture the growing market for cheap smart devices. Elop wants to sell 100 million of them over the next few years. By way of comparison, that’s one in seven of every smartphones sold last year. Read more...

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Report: Facebook Looking to Buy Waze for $1 Billion

May 9, 2013 by Stan Schroeder Leave a Comment

Facebook is considering buying GPS company Waze for $800 million to $1 billion, Israeli daily newspaper Calcalist reports.

The talks are in an advanced stage, Calcalist claims. The two companies started talking started six months ago, due diligence is underway and a term sheet was signed

Waze, whose turn-by-turn navigation app uses crowdsourcing to gather real-time conditions on the road, has had 44 million users in April 2013

The two companies are partners; Waze already lets users share their drive with Facebook friends. Buying a social, mobile app with a strong user base makes sense for Facebook; if the acquisition happens it'll be interesting to see what Facebook's plans are in the GPS/location space Read more...

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8 Facebook Graph Search Pros and Cons for Marketing

May 7, 2013 by Scott Gerber Leave a Comment

Facebook Graph Search seems to have a lot of potential. With the improved search feature, we'll finally be able to sift through all the user data on Facebook in an intelligent, intuitive way.

For businesses and startups especially, features like Graph Search and Facebook's conversion measurement tool sound promising — has Facebook finally given business owners the toolkit they need to acquire new customers, target ads on a micro level and drive measurable conversions?

SEE ALSO: How to See When Someone Unfriends You on Facebook

The jury's still out, so we asked a panel of successful young entrepreneurs to share how they're using (or plan to use) Facebook's newer features to serve their business goals. Here's what they had to say. Read more...

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Zuckerberg Delayed Instagram Deal to Watch ‘Game of Thrones’

May 6, 2013 by The Daily Dot Leave a Comment

Only Mark Zuckerberg could throw a billion-dollar deal on ice to sit down with his friends and watch Game of Thrones.

We're at least a few years away from calling the 28-year-old Facebook CEO an eccentric billionaire (because a) he's not old; and b) he hasn't thrown stacks of benjamins from a hot air balloon just yet), but this is just one of the few details about the Facebook-Instagram deal that shook up the Web last year.

Writing for Vanity Fair, Kara Swisher has a comprehensive look at how the deal went down. Instagram's cofounders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger opted to sell to Facebook—rather than take a competing offer from Twitter—because, as Systrom told Krieger, “I really like Mark, and I really like his company. And I really like what Facebook is trying to achieve.” Read more...

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Facebook Makes Fortune 500 List for the First Time

May 6, 2013 by Seth Fiegerman Leave a Comment

Mark Zuckerberg can put another big accomplishment on his resume.

Facebook cracked the Fortune 500 list on Monday for the first time, about nine years after launching and less than a year after becoming a public company. In fact, it took Facebook less time to make the list after going public than any other company in history (excluding companies that were spun off from existing companies.)

Google, which previously held the record, first ranked on the Fortune 500 list after 16 months of being a public company. Facebook, by comparison, was only a public company for eight months of the last fiscal year before qualifying for the list Read more...

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Facebook Now Has 751 Million Active Users on Mobile

May 1, 2013 by Seth Fiegerman Leave a Comment

After Facebook released its fourth-quarter earnings report in January, CEO Mark Zuckerberg proclaimed that Facebook had "become a mobile company." In the latest earnings report, the company further justified that claim.

Facebook had 751 million monthly active users on mobile as of the end of March, a 54% increase from the same quarter a year ago, the company revealed in its first-quarter earnings report on Wednesday. Overall, Facebook had 1.11 billion monthly active users in the quarter, a 23% increase year-over-year.

Mobile ad revenue now accounts for 30% (or about $375 million) of Facebook's $1.25 billion in total ad revenue. In the previous quarter, mobile represented 23% of the company's total ad revenue. Read more...

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Facebook Earnings Preview: What to Expect

May 1, 2013 by Seth Fiegerman Leave a Comment

It has been nearly a year since Facebook became a public company. In that time, the stock has crashed and burned and staged a significant comeback — and that was just in the first six months

After falling to as low as $17.55 a share in early September, the stock has rebounded in fits and starts thanks to a combination of factors including CEO Mark Zuckerberg's pledge not to sell any shares for at least a year and the expiration of its stock lockup periods. But more than anything else, Facebook's stock has benefited from showing continued growth on mobile in the September and December quarter earnings reports Read more...

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