Posts tagged Mark Zuckerberg
Poke to unlock; the next Facebook phone?
May 28th
Well, the Olympics haven’t even started yet, but it seems as though the long jump competition is already off to a kick start. Facebook has certainly captivated headlines recently, with its $1 billion Instagram purchase in April, its sudden comment-censorship in May and of course the much deliberated IPO just last week.
However, with the latest unveiling of a camera app for the iPhone , as well as a universal app store (https://www.facebook.com/AppStore) it’s becoming rather clearer that Facebook is heading in the unsettling direction of the Mobile phone platform.
The New York Times says the social network has hired six hardware and software specialists with iPhone experience with the aim to get a Smartphone to market by next year.
“Mark is worried that if he doesn’t create a mobile phone in the near future that Facebook will simply become an app on other mobile platforms,” said an anonymous Facebook employee in an interview with Nick Bilton.
This attempt is marked as the company’s third at actualizing a Smartphone into its core business; initial rumors in 2012 put the Fb Smartphone on the spot, yet the company deviated from mobile development, ostensibly due to the realization of just how difficult it actually is to plunge into building mobile hardware.
The fact that Facebook’s mobile experience can be accounted for as novice, this rumor might be a bit too farfetched, at least for now. For starters, for this to actually work out, Facebook would need to find a suitable partner to manufacture the physical device, while improving their current mobile apps excessively. Having a set of core apps, when all is said and done, is not enough; they ought to be popular, and with the not so rave Facebook-mobile app reviews, this might be a bit difficult to achieve. Sure, Facebook would have a great advantage leveraging its strengths to make a superior contact list, but it’s doubtful that will excite enough people to get on board with a Facebook phone.
What’s next? Fb TV most probably, so that everyone will be able to enjoy social updates and sitcoms.
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It’s raining…Zucker-Buck!
May 20th
This week is certainly one that will go down in history for Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg; turning 28, taking Facebook public at a $ 104 billion valuation but most importantly marrying recently medical UC San Francisco graduate, and longtime girlfriend Priscilla Chan.
Now that Facebook Inc. has become a public company, wearing a hoodie will be the least of Mark Zuckerberg’s concerns.
Mark apparently received some condemnation for his apparel when the social-networking giant was pitching its initial public offering to investors. Zuckerberg will remain Facebook’s most-powerful shareholder after what has turned out to be a modestly successful IPO.
His personal stake in Facebook is now worth around $19.1 billion, making him richer than Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. Going public has made him the 29th-richest person in the world.
Santa Clara University law professor Stephen Diamond argued that investors did in fact want to Zuckerberg to stay in charge, since he is the one responsible for where his company is today. On the other hand, shareholders are worried that if things go wrong- which presumably they will- Zuckerberg might not be capable of dealing with some of these challenges. “The hoodie debate” personifies these concerns; it is quite venturesome to invest in an individual who holds so much power, and is relatively so young and inexperienced.
So, ultimately who are the big winners of the IPO?
We’ll give you the top three :
1. Sheryl Sandberg; the company’s chief operating officer has been on board since 2008 when she was propelled to leave Google. Her current salary is a modest $300,000 which has helped by almost 1.9 million shares, which are now worth $72 million. Not too bad huh?
2. Reid Hoffman; LinkedIn founder has been on board very early on when he, alongside Peter Thiel in 2004 had invested in Facebook. Back then, Myspace was dominating the social scene, yet their smart move paid off; Hoffman’s remaining stake is now worth $138 million and Thiel is valued at $1.1 Billion.
3. Paul David Hewson ( or most commonly known as U2’s front man, Bono) ; it turns out that Bono is also part of the Elevation Partners investment group, which has an almost 1.5% stake in Facebook. Elevation is taking $176 million off the table, and will still be left with a whopping $1.3 billion. This ought to compensate for the company’s disappointing investment in Palm and Forbes magazine.
Let us know how you feel about these historic chain of events, whether you actually take them to heart or simply do not regard them as important, we’d love to hear from you!
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Keep it relevant, or it won’t be published!
May 6th
It seems Facebook has been swooping the headlines lately by storm for a number of different reasons; this weekend has been no exception.
Apparently on Saturday morning there was a bit of a stir going on in Blog land. Max Woolf a Carnegie Mellon student and avid TechCrunch commenter had posted about our contemporary blog scene. His comment apparently scored high points with the well-known tech startup enthusiast, Robert Scoble as he set out to state his agreement with Woolf’s convictions yet of course adding a few of his own as well.
Surprisingly, his comment did not get through, as this message appeared:
While this “censorship” has received a lot of mixed reviews, Facebook remains firm on its policies against abusive or harassing behavior, since they are eager to create an environment of safe and righteous content.
The issue of a comment being “positive” or “negative” could be quite debatable; Facebook is not only restricted to one country or continent, therefore cross-cultural misunderstanding are not out of the question. In an attempt to solve this issue though, the company resorts to a combination of software algorithms and notifications from other users to identify inappropriate behavior.
Facebook have already contacted Scoble, signifying that his comment had been marked as “Spam” due to two main reasons : first being that he and Max are not friends; Scoble is only subscribed to Max, making his comments subject to more strict scrutiny. The second reasons is due to the fact that Scoble’s comment included three “@” links, making it look even more suspicious.
Our personal views are that Facebook is a private company in the end, and it’s completely up to them to dictate the way they run their business. This is the core difference between Government censorship and Private Company censorship, if we might call it as such. If we are to compare the two; with the latter, you have the luxury of simply not using their service and moving on to another that permits more freedom or is more in agreement with your needs. However, when it comes to the former, the choice is substantial (life, death, imprisonment, war).
Hence, Facebook is a luxury and not a right. A lot of people enjoy using it and yet they seem to forget one essential actuality; they willingly signed up, on their terms, to use their free service. So, if Facebook decided they could be served ads and be a market for games and other products in return to let you have access to their site, it’s completely their choice.
It seems Facebook are trying to do a new thing every single day, and while people may not welcome these changes with arms wide open, they are forced to yield eventually. Our only hopes remain that these new policies do actually contribute to removing actual spam and not “false positives”.
Looking for a simple, elegant backup solution?
Genie Timeline 2012 is a new version of the number one continuous data protection program Timeline 2.1. It offers the first metro style user interface; enhanced performance, and added features. Like us on Facebook and Follow us on Twitter for the latest news.
>Follow @Genie9backup