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Friday, May 18, 2012

Facebook starts public sale of its stock

Report from voanews.com:

FacebookFacebook, the world's biggest social media website, started selling stock to the public on Friday, with its initial $38 share price edging above $40 in the first hours of trading.

Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, signaled the start of trading on the Nasdaq exchange in New York by remotely ringing a bell from company headquarters across the continent in California.

The popular social networking site, with 900 million users worldwide, raised about $16 billion from the stock sale. That is one of the biggest stock debuts in U.S. corporate history and rivaled only by financial services company Visa and automaker General Motors. The stock offering drove Facebook’s value to at least $104 billion, making it one of the most valuable U.S. companies.

But contrary to some investors’ hopes, the stock price did not soar in the first day’s trading. The share price stayed in a relatively narrow range, topping $42 at one point, then falling back to the opening $38 level before settling above $40 in mid-afternoon trading.

Zuckerberg, who turned 28 earlier this week, started the popular social networking site just eight years ago in his college dorm room at Harvard. As investors bought shares, they became part owners of the company, but Zuckerberg will still control more than 55 percent of Facebook's voting stock.

Some analysts expect millions of Facebook shares will be purchased in the first hours of trading because of the high demand to own part of such a ubiquitous and recognized product. The stock is being traded under the symbol “FB.”

But others are advising clients to wait and see whether the company can still continue to grow and how much advertising it can sell before buying shares.

Facebook’s advertising revenue growth has slowed in recent months, and doubts about its long-term viability were heightened earlier this week when General Motors announced it was pulling its paid advertising off the website.

Facebook has also yet to devise a strategy to attract advertising on mobile devices like smartphones or tablet computers.

Originally published on voanews.com
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Opinion Articles

Review: BeeWi BBS020 solar-powered hands-free Bluetooth car kit

Mark Bridge writes:

Persuading mobile phone users not to hold their phone when they’re driving should be a simple task. It’s dangerous, it’s against the law and the penalties include a fine plus points on your licence.

But even then, there’s often an excuse about convenience and usability. Some people don’t like wearing headsets, some don’t like wires and some simply forget to charge the batteries.

That’s why a new hands-free Bluetooth loudspeaker from French company BeeWi caught my eye.

Author: The Fonecast
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The simple case of the disguised iPhone 4

Mark Bridge writes:

I remember the launch of Carweek back in the 1990s. It was a motoring magazine produced as a weekly glossy newspaper; a novel format, although one that probably led to its demise. 'Spy shots' of prototype cars seemed then – as now – to be much sought-after, despite them often not showing much resemblance to the finished product. Indeed, I often wondered how you could possibly road-test the handling of a new car when it was covered with unflattering body parts that served to disguise its shape.

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Maria Sharapova and the 'geek porn' of unboxing

Mark Bridge writes:

'Unboxing' is - or was - the new geek porn. We know this because The Register told us so in 2006, when the practice of video recording the unpacking of new consumer electronics products started to become popular. Just over two years later The Independent tried to tell us that unboxing was still the new geek porn but, by then, conventional porn had probably returned to... er... pole position.

Why do I mention this?  Well, Sony Ericsson has just published its own unboxing video featuring tennis player, model, charity worker and Sony Ericsson brand ambassador Maria Sharapova.

Author: The Fonecast
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Scaremongering news stories? There's an app for that

Mark Bridge writes:

Here’s a news headline that caught my eye.

Shotgun certificate up for renewal?  There's an app for that

Or, if you prefer…

Police to allow gun users renew licences with iPhone app

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Mobile payments: solutions get dumber while cards get smarter?

Mark Bridge writes:

Last week I spotted a couple of mobile-related news stories that involved payment company MasterCard. One came from CPI Card Group, which had introduced a “next-generation, MasterCard-approved payment tag” (a.k.a. 'sticker') that enabled “any mobile device to be used to make payments anywhere using the worldwide contactless MasterCard PayPass standard” (by sticking it on the back).

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