Displaying posts tagged as "Mashable.com"

Mashable.com

It’s Facebook IPO Week: Here’s Everything You Need to Know [VIDEO]


Facebook will be filing its initial public offering this week. The company may be worth more than $100 billion.

The world’s largest social network, with more than 901 million users, is set to become the most valuable U.S. tech company after going IPO. Google went public in 2004 with a valuation of $23 million.

Facebook will sell 180 million shares of its company stock, while more than 157 million shares will be up for grabs. The IPO is slated for Friday, but could happen as soon as Thursday.

Accel Partners, Digital Sky Technologies, Goldman Sachs, Greylock Partners and other early backers are among the investors expected to win big. Goldman Sachs plans to sell 13.2 million shares, according to PIonline.com. Reports also state Accel Partners will sell about $1.3 billion worth of stock while Digital Sky Technologies will sell 157.4 million shares.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is offering more than 30.2 million personal shares for sale. Facebook announced last Thursday individual shares are priced in the range of $28 to $35.

The young tech company, born in Zuckerberg’s Harvard dorm room in 2004, is receiving both criticism and support in the days before the IPO release. Institutional investors have expressed worry about Facebook’s advertising model. There is also concern about Facebook’s slow growth on mobile. On the other hand, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak showed his support for Facebook in a TV interview by saying he would buy Facebook stock regardless of the official company valuation, according to Bloomberg.

The 33 underwriters of Facebook’s IPO will have first dibs on stock. This means huge investment banks will direct where the stock traffic goes — generally, to the portfolios of big investors and well-known executives. Zuckerberg is appealing to average investors by allowing a percentage of Facebook’s shares to be purchased in E-trade.com, according to Time magazine.

Watch the video above to find out more about Facebook’s IPO. Plus how, and if, you should get in on the action.

From Mashable.com

 

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3 Twitter Rumors and What They Could Mean for Brands

David Clarke is CEO and co-founder of BGT Partners, a 2010, 2011 and 2012 Ad Age Top 15 Best Places to Work in the U.S. honoree. BGT creates interactive marketing and technology solutions for global corporations that strengthen brands, develop more engaging relationships and transform businesses.

With increased competition for ad dollars, Twitter is making a big push this year to become more attractive to advertisers. It has invested in a redesign, as well as brand pages, but that may not be all the social network plans to unveil.

According to a recent Ad Age report, the company is looking to add new experiences to its platform, in the hopes that the move will entice brands to spend more ad dollars.

Although Twitter hasn’t officially confirmed these rumors, it’s worth taking them seriously. See below for the three possible changes, and what each could mean for brands.

1. Open Platform

Facebook and Apple transformed their businesses by opening their platforms to third-party developers. The move allowed independent developers to create new ways for consumers to engage with brands. As a result, we now have multi-million dollar businesses built around these apps.

 

If the rumors are right, Twitter is heading in the same direction by opening its platform to developers.

An open Twitter platform would allow brands to create deeper interactions with consumers through custom experiences. This would not only be an opportunity for developers, but also for brands — especially those with strong Twitter presences. For example, if you’re using Twitter as a customer service channel, then a customer service app could potentially streamline the way you handle customer support.

That said, apps on Twitter will face inherent challenges. The Twitter stream is the main attraction, and most people don’t visit brand pages directly. Plus, popular Twitter browsers such as TweetDeck and HootSuite are built around the Twitter stream, which deals another blow to the power of brand pages. Perhaps custom apps can find a way to drive more traffic to brand pages, but it seems doubtful.

2. T-Commerce

Social commerce was hailed as the next big thing in ecommerce. Several brands developed ecommerce integration on the Facebook platform, hoping people would want to purchase while on Facebook, but it never really took off. Gap, JC Penny, and Nordstrom closed down their Facebook shops because customers preferred to shop on the main websites. This probably had more to do with the poor Facebook ecommerce user experience than with Facebook itself. Most of these early f-commerce attempts were simply developed without an understanding of how Facebook could add value to the shopping experience.

 

Now, Twitter is rumored to try its luck with social ecommerce for brand pages. Will it be successful?

Fundamentally Twitter has to succeed where Facebook failed. Twitter ecommerce, or t-commerce, has to create a significant added value to make it more compelling than shopping from a traditional web store.

“It’s likely that Twitter’s ecommerce solution will include a deep integration with Square, the mobile payment company Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey established in 2009. It’s possible that t-commerce will be a mobile-only service that uses location-based technology and one-click payments with your Twitter name. That would add significant value to Twitter’s mobile user base, especially when you consider that 50% of Twitter’s users are accessing Twitter on mobile devices.

3. Contests and Sweepstakes

Lastly, Twitter is rumored to introduce contests and sweepstakes for brand pages to create deeper brand engagement. That said, brands have been pushing contests and sweepstakes on Twitter for some time, and given the viral capabilities available with retweeting and hashtags, it will continue to happen.

 

Will an official change by Twitter be groundbreaking? Probably not, but it’s likely that these changes will allow brands to more efficiently manage and execute campaigns on this social network.

From Mashable.com 

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