Twitter stock slumps 50% as Goldman, Deutsche Bank still say `buy’

Twitter Inc investors who heeded the advice of high-profile banks such as Goldman Sachs Group Inc and Deutsche Bank AG to buy the social media company’s shares might be kicking themselves.

Much more accurate calls were made by Wells Fargo, Atlantic Equities and Macquarie Research, whose analysts advised clients to get out of the high-flying stock about the time it peaked in December.

On Wednesday the stock fell as low as $37.24, 50 percent below its peak of $74.73 the day after Christmas, wiping almost $18 billion off Twitter’s market capitalization.

The downgrades, and the subsequent swoon by the stock, reflect concern about slowing growth in Twitter’s user base and the company’s ability to reverse the trend. Year-on-year growth in the number of Twitter users has fallen for five straight quarters, and the company said on Tuesday that its 255 million monthly users, on average, appeared to check the service less frequently than a year ago.

That in turn has fueled doubts that Twitter could one day attract as many users as Facebook Inc’s 1.2 billion, or match its much larger rival’s power as an advertising vehicle. It’s also raised questions over whether it can sustain growth over the long term. While no one is suggesting Twitter will lose its consumer cachet as happened to companies such as MySpace or Orkut, neither can anyone guarantee that as tastes change newer rivals won’t usurp it.

“Can they become a mainstream company? That’s the open question,” said Ben Schachter, the Macquarie Securities analyst who downgraded Twitter’s stock to “underperform” on December 27 – the day after it peaked.

It’s a far cry from the enthusiasm that greeted the company when it debuted on the New York Stock Exchange on November 7 and its shares soared 73 percent over the offering price. There was no let-up for the next two months, as the stock scaled fresh highs with little or no news to justify the valuation.

That got some analysts worried. Schachter, speaking to Reuters on Thursday, recalls a “runaway momentum.”

Starting mid-December, seven brokerages downgraded the stock within a span of three weeks. Wells Fargo and SunTrust Robinson kicked off the first round of downgrades on December 16, followed by Atlantic Equities. Macquarie timed its downgrade to perfection.

In his downgrade note on December 16, Wells Fargo analyst Peter Stabler said investors were “underestimating the challenges facing the company”.

A common theme was that Twitter, though innovative, well-run and full of potential, simply did not warrant such a rich valuation, so soon.

“They are focusing on the right things. I only have positive things to say about the company. My quibble is with the stock,” said Brian Wieser, Pivotal Research Group analyst, who was among the first to urge clients to retreat.

He downgraded the stock to “sell” immediately after Twitter’s shares jumped on its opening day. At the time, he had a $30 target price on the stock and recommended selling after they breached the $45 level in their market debut.

The risks
Twitter said in 2010 that it aims one day to have 1 billion users. It did not specify a time frame.

Some of the analysts who downgraded the stock in December are not as confident in Twitter’s long-term outlook, much of which will hinge on the company’s ability to increase both the number of users and how much time they spend on the site.

A fast-growing and engaged user base would help Twitter rake in more advertiser dollars; however, those are issues over which management has limited control, Atlantic Equities analyst James Cordwell said in December.

Investor worries were reflected in the response to Twitter’s quarterly results this week, when the market overlooked higher-than-expected revenue to focus instead on the slow user and usage growth. Twitter’s shares fell 10 percent.

The expiration on May 5 of Twitter’s six-month “lockup” – the period after the initial public offering during which early investors are barred from selling their shares – could put the stock under more pressure. Restrictions on about 470 million shares will be removed.

Twitter’s co-founders, Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams, and Chief Executive Richard Costolo have said they do not plan to sell their shares after the post-IPO restrictions are lifted.

Only one other major investor, Benchmark Capital Management Co LLC, which owns 31.6 million shares, has publicly stated that it will not sell the stock when the lock-up expires.

“Despite some key investor and executive statements that they will not sell near term, we estimate that 50-70 percent of shares could be unlocked,” JPMorgan Chase & Co analyst Doug Anmuth said in a research note on April 30.

The other camp
Still, Goldman and Deutsche Bank, both underwriters of the high-profile IPO, maintain their positive views of the stock, in spite of the user trends, two consecutive quarters of disappointing results and the decline in its shares.

Twitter shares trade at 334.2 times forward earnings, far more than Facebook’s 38.1 times, according to StarMine, or the average of 17.95 for the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, according to Thomson Reuters data.

“The company continues to execute near-flawlessly around items in its control like revenue and expenses,” Deutsche Bank analyst Ross Sandler wrote in a note on Thursday, a day after Twitter posted its second-quarter results. Sandler didn’t immediately return a phone call and an e-mail. Goldman Sachs analyst Heath Terry was traveling and not available for comment, his assistant said.

Sandler said market sentiment would eventually shift away from users toward revenue growth. Facebook, he argued, also struggled with slow user growth last year before regaining Wall Street’s favor thanks to its strong mobile ad business.

Schachter, the Macquarie analyst, says much will depend on how successful Twitter will be in revamping its site to attract mainstream users.

“They are executing well in terms of innovation, but the user growth is a bit of a concern,” he said. “The hope is that they can change the site, to make it more user-friendly.”

source: interaksyon.com

Connections, reconnections…and twins finding each other on Facebook

Get those tissues out, and start scrolling.

In celebration of its tenth birthday, Facebook has come up with www.facebookstories.com to present how users from all over the world were able to use the popular social networking site in an extraordinary way.

There’s Andrea Mihalik from New Jersey, United States, who makes one-of-a-kind, handcrafted chairs for her business, Wild Chairy. On a visit to Kiltamany, a small village in Kenya, she was able to witness a wedding, where the locals were dressed up in beaded jewelry and patterned clothing.


In awe, she knew she wanted to collaborate with the women who wove their own neckpieces. They were able to keep in touch through Facebook messaging, and Mihalik has incorporated their designs into two of her chairs.

One of the women from the village said, on the video that accompanies the story, that she and her fellow weavers were able to send their children to school through the sale of their wares.

Learn more about “Weaving Connections” here: .

Another character is Yisrael Quic, a librarian in the village of San Juan La Laguna in Guatemala.

36 years of war had created a culture of silence in his community of Tz’utujil Mayans. But with the help of teachers who donated books to build a library, the new generation is not just gaining access to information, but slowly finding their voice, as well.

With the arrival of the Internet to their village, they were able to access more knowledge online, but, sadly, there was none on their native language.

Quic is remedying this through a Facebook page and group where he writes in their Mayan language, to be able to bring it – and their way of life – to the future.

Learn more about “The Librarian” here: http://www.facebookstories.com/stories/53739/the-librarian.

A third story is straight out of Parent Trap. Born in Busan, South Korea, Samantha from New Jersey and Anaïs from Paris, France, were twins separated – if not at birth, then somewhere around that time, when they were put up for adoption by different institutions.

After Anaïs saw videos of Samantha on YouTube and a trailer for the latter’s movie 21 & Over, she messaged her on Facebook to find out if there was more to their uncanny resemblance than a mere coincidence.

Five days later they came face-to-face on Skype, and the rest is history.

Learn more about the “Twinsters” here: http://www.facebookstories.com/stories/53771/twinsters.

Facebook has many other stories to move and to inspire, such as that of a homeless poet in São Paulo, Brazil; a photographer in New York, New York; an art movement celebrating LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) rights in Sydney Australia; a cab driver in London, England; lovers in the US, whose relationship transcended continents and lifetimes; and a man from Manitoba, Canada, who helped a boy from Congo undergo a surgery so he could walk.

source: interaksyon.com

Facebook plans low-key birthday bash

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook has grown into an Internet giant over the last decade, but it is celebrating its birthday with a low-key, belated party and an eye toward the future.

While the arrival of its 10th anniversary on Tuesday has pundits analyzing the social network’s past and theorizing about its future, the Internet juggernaut is trying to stay focused on the job at hand.

“Just as we do every year, we will have an internal party on Friday afternoon,” Facebook spokeswoman Arielle Aryah told AFP in response to a query regarding the company’s birthday celebration plans.



It remained to be seen whether the Menlo Park, California-based social network, which now boasts over a billion users, had something playful planned for its actual anniversary on Tuesday.

In an earnings call last week to discuss stellar quarterly results, Facebook chief and co-found Mark Zuckerberg gave a nod to the growth seen during the past decade but focused on the future.

Zuckerberg spoke of making “apps” for showcasing Facebook features on smartphones or tablets to stay in synch with mobile Internet lifestyles.

Long-range goals included using artificial intelligence to figure out how pictures, videos, comments and more shared at Facebook are related and of shooting toward helping people share anything they want, with anyone they want, whenever they want.

Facebook broke ground late last year on an expansion to its campus in former Sun Microsystem digs in the Silicon Valley city of Menlo Park.

The new West Campus was designed by respected architect Frank Gehry.

As Facebook celebrates its 10th anniversary, the world’s biggest social network is finding its path as a maturing company, adapting to an aging user base.

Zuckerberg has repeatedly described Facebook’s mission as “making the world more open and connected,” and some say he has accomplished just that.

The company created in a Harvard dorm room in 2004 has established itself as a phenomenon, securing its place in the world of the technology giants.

“Facebook has made the world much smaller, much more interactive,” said Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry.

In its short history, Facebook has become a part of daily life for more than a billion people around the globe.

“More than 20 percent of all time spent on the Internet is spent on Facebook,” says Lou Kerner, founder of the Social Internet Fund.

Facebook says it has a global total of 1.23 billion monthly active users, including 945 million who use the social network on a mobile device.

And, a Pew Research Center survey released Monday suggests no slowing momentum for the network, even though more than half of US Facebook users said they are turned off by oversharing and didn’t like the fact that they showed up in pictures without giving permission.

After a calamitous initial public offering in May 2012 plagued by technical glitches, Facebook saw its share price slump by half.

But the company has been on a roll for the past year, with its stock hitting record highs.

According to the research firm eMarketer, Facebook has become the second-largest recipient of digital advertising spending behind Google, and is particularly strong in mobile ads.

“Facebook appears the best way to play the social Internet,” Morgan Stanley analysts said in a note to clients, preferring Facebook to the up-and-coming network Twitter.

source: interaksyon.com

Smart releases new app for Web surfing

MANILA, Philippines — Smart Communications, Inc. has released a new mobile apps that gives users mobile access to social networking applications even without Wi-Fi access.

“PowerApp is the world’s first mobile Internet storefront which gives users the ability to access their favorite mobile apps and sites without the need for a Wi-Fi connection, making the experience truly mobile,” Smart said in a press release.

Available applications that can be viewed through PowerApp are Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Google Plus, LinkedIn, Path, and Waze.

The service, according to Smart, will be made available until January 15, 2014 to prepaid and postpaid subscribers of Smart and Talk ‘N Text.

Aside from the social media use, PowerApp also offers other bundles such as Email, Chat, and Photo packages.

Android users can download the application via Google Play and register for the Free Social Package, originally priced at P20 for one day (Social20) or P10 for 3 hours (Social10).

iOS and feature phone users can also text FREE SOCIAL to 5555 (for Smart Prepaid, Postpaid, Infinity and Talk ‘N Text) 9990 (for Smart Freedom Plan subscribers) or 7577 (for Smart Postpaid All-In users) to avail of the promotion.

source: interaksyon.com

1.6 billion people on social networks - study

WASHINGTON DC - An estimated 1.61 billion people, more than one in five globally, will log in to social networking sites at least monthly this year, the research firm eMarketer said Tuesday.

The study said the number was up 14.2 percent from a year ago and growth will push that number up to 2.33 billion by 2017.

The highest penetration of social network users, according to eMarketer, is in the Netherlands, at 63.5 percent. Norway was second at 63.3 percent, followed by Sweden (56.4 percent), South Korea (54.4 percent), Denmark (53.3 percent), the United States (51.7 percent), and Finland (51.3 percent).

A majority of residents were also on social networks in Canada (51.2 percent) and Britain (50.2 percent, according to the report based on data from research firms, government agencies, media outlets and company reports.

The 1.61 billion figure represented 22 percent of the world's estimated population, the survey said.

The report said India is seeing the highest growth this year of 37.4 percent, though only 7.7 percent of the population uses social networks. Indonesia's numbers will climb 28.7 percent and Mexico will grow by 21.1 percent. eMarketer said.

All three of those countries are also high-growth areas for Facebook, the world's largest social network with more than one billion users.

The US remains the country with the greatest number of Facebook users, at 146.8 million, but with India's large population and expected growth rate, it will have the largest Facebook population of any country by 2016, according to the report.

source: interaksyon.com

At Twitter, global growth tests free speech advocacy

SAN FRANCISCO — When a Brazilian state prosecutor last year set out to silence anonymous Twitter messages that were revealing the location of drunk-driving checkpoints, he served the social media company’s just-opened Sao Paolo office with a lawsuit.

Sharing sightings of police checkpoints does not violate any rules set by Twitter Inc, which has far fewer restrictions on content than social media rivals such as Facebook Inc. Nor would such Tweets be a crime in the United States. Twitter has traditionally resisted efforts to obtain the identity of users whose words might be regarded as a crime.

But in Brazil, Twitter quickly handed over the Internet protocol addresses of three accounts as a demonstration of its “good faith, respect and will to cooperate with the Brazilian judicial power,” the company’s lawyers said in a legal filing last October.

Even that wasn’t enough: the lawsuit, which demands that the company bar any such accounts in the future, is ongoing.

The situation in Brazil is a microcosm of the public policy and business challenges facing Twitter as it seeks to translate global popularity into profits.

Since its inception, the 140-character messaging service’s simplicity and mobile-friendly nature – it can be used by any cellphone with a text-messaging function – has helped speed its global adoption as a source of real-time information. Unlike many social media services, it can be used anonymously.

The company’s laissez-faire approach to monitoring content, together with an aggressive posture in challenging government censorship requests and demands for customer information, have made it the darling of civil liberties advocates and political protesters from New York’s Zuccotti Park to Cairo’s Tahrir Square.

But now, as it prepares to become a public company with a valuation expected to exceed $10 billion, Twitter must figure out how to make money outside the U.S. International customers make up more than 75 percent of Twitter users, but only 25 percent of sales come from overseas.

That means opening offices and employing people on the ground: there are now seven overseas offices and counting. And that, in turn, means complying with local laws – even when they conflict with the company’s oft-stated positioning as “the free-speech wing of the free-speech party.”

These conflicts, paradoxically, arise not so much in countries with repressive governments – the service is banned outright in China, for instance – but rather in countries with Western-style democracies, including Brazil, Germany, France, Britain and India.

“There are a bunch of countries that you can’t treat like China because they have democratic systems and they abide by the rule of law, but they have speech restrictions that we would find objectionable,” said Andrew McLaughlin, a former director of global public policy at Google Inc and White House technology official who is now chief executive of news website Digg. “Those are the issues where the rubber hits the road on free speech.”

In Twitter’s initial public offering prospectus, which was made public last week, there was only an oblique mention of protecting speech. The company said its corporate mission was to facilitate the dissemination of “ideas and information instantly without barriers,” and that “our business and revenue will always follow that mission in ways that improve – and do not detract from – a free and global conversation.”

Alex Macgillivray, the former general counsel who coined the company’s free speech slogan and was widely regarded as a staunch civil libertarian, left the company in September.

Twitter declined to comment about potential conflicts between its business goals and its free-speech advocacy in general, or any specific cases.

There’s certainly no shortage of political chatter on Twitter, and world leaders ranging from Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to Pope Francis have taken to the service as a means of communicating directly with constituents.

Activists say they haven’t seen Twitter backing away from its free-speech policies yet – but they’re wary.

“Twitter has always been an ally,” said Hisham Almiraat, a Moroccan blogger who manages the anti-censorship website Global Voices Advocacy. “As soon as Twitter becomes public, it needs to be accountable to its shareholders, and its strategy becomes more short-term. If Twitter, for reasons of greed, or because they are politically compelled, decides to change that core philosophy, then I’ll worry.”

Opportunity in Brazil

A booming, social media-loving country of more than 80 million Internet users, Brazil perennially ranks among Twitter’s most active markets. When the company set up operations in Sao Paolo in late 2012, the company’s top sales executive, Adam Bain, described the opportunity in the country as “amazing from a business perspective.”

As in many Latin American nations, the service is used by everyone from the president on down. And with Twitter proving to be a powerful companion medium for sports and other forms of televised entertainment, Brazil’s role as host of the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympic Games make it an especially attractive target.

Yet the broad adoption of Twitter has not been accompanied by broad tolerance of the free-wheeling conversations that characterize social media in general and Twitter in particular. Brazilian government bodies regularly file more requests for user information or content removal than any country other than the U.S., according to transparency reports published periodically by companies including Twitter and Google.

Luis Fernando Canedo, the prosecutor in Brazil, described his case over the driving checkpoints as a landmark for the country – and also for Twitter, which had never before been sued by a government.

“Social networks are a relatively new reality and so is their impact,” Canedo told Reuters. “There are future situations today we can’t even imagine and in which the State will have to position itself in front of certain illegal, harmful practices being carried out over the Internet.”

His case has not exactly gone smoothly. Even after obtaining Internet addresses from Twitter, the prosecutors misidentified the suspects behind the driving checkpoint Tweets.

They then dropped the case against the individuals, but still want Twitter to bar any such accounts in the future.

Hate speech in Europe

Twitter has long tried to hew to the position that users – not the company – are responsible for the content on the service. But last year it implemented a means of filtering Tweets by country, so that if it were forced to censor messages in one place it would still be able to show them in others.

That capability was used for the first time last October, when Twitter yielded to a request from German police to filter a neo-Nazi group’s Twitter account so that users in Germany could not see it.

Earlier this year, just as Twitter’s head of international strategy, Katie Jacobs Stanton, relocated to France to open Twitter’s Paris office, Twitter’s lawyers were fighting an order by a French court to reveal the email and IP addresses of users who had sent a spate of anti-Semitic tweets, which are prohibited under the country’s hate-speech laws.

When Twitter exhausted its appeals in July, the company turned over the information.

In Britain, meanwhile, parliament in April passed a new defamation law that shifted liability to website operators for its users’ posted content, which some observers said could hasten the end of online anonymity.

Like most global companies, Twitter has always acknowledged that it must obey the laws of the countries in which it operates. At the same time, though, it had little physical presence internationally and thus could take a hands-off approach.

Now, as Twitter grows its sales operation, absence is not a viable strategy.

“If you make the choice to operate in a country, you’re subject to local laws,” said Roy Gilbert, a former Google executive who set up the search giant’s operations in India in 2004.

Twitter, moreover, may need local offices even more than some other Internet companies because its ad strategy depends on wooing large brand advertisers that need to be serviced by a direct sales presence, noted Clark Fredericksen, an analyst at eMarketer.

While Google can make money by allowing small businesses in a country to use its self-serve advertising platform, Twitter’s self-serve ad product remains in its infancy and is only available in the U.S.

New problems

In countries such as Egypt and Turkey, Twitter has sought to avoid falling under local jurisdiction by selling ads through contractors, although it remains unclear whether the strategy will be tenable in the long run.

Amid massive anti-government protests fueled by organizers on Twitter this summer, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan threatened to shut down the service, which he called a “scourge.”

His government called on Twitter to set up an office in the country so it would fall under Turkish law. Twitter rebuffed the request and weeks later posted a job for an executive in Dublin to manage ad resellers within Turkey.

Ozgur Uckan, a communication professor at Istanbul Bilgi University, said authorities may still be able to pressure the company by targeting its local partners. “The authorities may try to force Twitter to comply, using their regulation tools like tax issues,” Uckan said.

In recent months, the ruling party backed away from its efforts to muzzle the service. Instead, it is adopting a tactic that has raised yet more questions about Twitter’s future in the country.

The ruling AK Party recruited thousands of volunteers and paid workers to join Twitter, two party sources told Reuters. The pro-government volunteers have employed tactics such as reporting their political rivals as spammers, leading to their accounts’ suspension.

“We decided to fight against them with their own tool and now we are more active on Twitter,” said one party member, who asked not to be named.

The tactics proved so successful that Twitter chief executive Dick Costolo was pressed to make a statement in July denying that the company was cooperating with the Turkish government to suspend opposition accounts.

“You can’t imagine the Internet without Twitter or Google. They are now considered the air you breathe,” said Almiraat, the Moroccan blogger. “Now they’re in a position of power, and they should be very careful with that power.”

source: interaksyon.com

Facebook expands ‘Graph Search’ within social network

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook said Monday it was expanding the capabilities of its “Graph Search” function to help users navigate and find information within postings on the world’s biggest social network.

“Starting today, Graph Search will include posts and status updates. Now you will be able to search for status updates, photo captions, check-ins and comments to find things shared with you,” the company said in a statement.

“Search for the topics you’re interested in and see what your friends are saying, like ‘Dancing with the Stars’ or ‘Posts about Dancing with the Stars by my friends.’”

Facebook launched the service in January in an effort to help members better navigate the vast amount of information on Facebook, which is not available on Web search engines such as Google. But at the time, it lacked detailed information from member postings.

Facebook emphasized that the new effort is not Web search, but can help find certain information archived within the network and in the content of friends. It uses Microsoft’s Bing search engine to scour content in Facebook.

The company said the expanded Graph Search is rolling out slowly to “a small group of people who currently have Graph Search and we will continue to improve this experience by listening to feedback.”

Facebook has said Graph Search will respect privacy, and that people can only see content that has been shared with them or publicly available posts.

source: interaksyon.com

Facebook 'Like' button is free speech right - US court

WASHINGTON DC - Hitting the "Like" button on Facebook is an element of free speech protected by the US constitution, a federal court ruled Wednesday, in a case closely watched by employment lawyers.

The US Court of Appeals based in Richmond, Virginia, made the judgment in the case of a Virginia sheriff's department worker who claimed he was fired for exercising his free speech rights -- in this case "liking" a political opponent of his boss.

"His conduct qualifies as speech," the court said in a 81-page decision that sent the case back to a lower court for review of those issues.

"In sum, liking a political candidate's campaign page communicates the user's approval of the candidate and supports the campaign by associating the user with it.

"In this way, it is the Internet equivalent of displaying a political sign in one's front yard, which the Supreme Court has held is substantive speech."

The American Civil Liberties Union and Facebook both filed legal briefs supporting the view that the "Like" button is protected speech.

The ACLU brief said "liking" something on Facebook "expresses a clear message -- one recognized by millions of Facebook users and non-Facebook users -- and is both pure speech and symbolic expression that warrants constitutional protection."

source: interaksyon.com

Twitter, social media are fertile ground for stock hoaxes

NEW YORK — Prominent short-seller David Einhorn raised eyebrows last month when he popped up on Twitter to disavow that he had tweeted about Herbalife Ltd.

“Apparently I have a twitter impersonator,” said the hedge fund manager, adding that he had no plans “to tweet about stocks.”

What set off Einhorn, founder of Greenlight Capital, was a post by a since-suspended Twitter account called @Greenlightcap that read: “The $HLF tug of war will in the end come down to who has more money to play with. I wouldn’t want to be in Bill’s shoes right now #TeamIcahn.”

That may have misled people into thinking that Einhorn – whose infrequent tweets under @davidein tend to be about poker – was picking sides in the battle between two other big-name investors, Carl Icahn and Bill Ackman, who have opposing positions in Herbalife.

Einhorn isn’t the only shortseller who has been impersonated on Twitter, which has become an important source of information for many investors. In late January, shares of Audience Inc and Sarepta Therapeutics Inc plunged following tweets that were purported to be from short-selling researchers.

“Twitter pump and dump schemes are obviously something for the market to be concerned about, even if they are just a new way for people to do schemes that have been done forever,” said Keith McCullough, chief executive officer at Hedgeye Risk Management in New Haven, Connecticut. He uses Twitter and has more than 22,000 followers.

In such hoaxes, anonymous users set up accounts with names that sound like prominent market players, issue negative commentary, and spark massive declines. The selling that follows shows how the rapid spread of information on social media can make for volatile trading, and is a warning to investors who trade on news before fully verifying the source.

The FBI monitors Facebook and Twitter, and told Reuters in November that social media will be a big part of securities fraud. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s website has a warning that swindlers can use social media “to appear legitimate, to hide behind anonymity, and to reach many people at low cost.” And the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has issued social media guidelines to broker-dealers, requiring that they keep records of usage.

In January 2012, the SEC charged an advisor with attempting to sell fictitious securities through LinkedIn Corp, an online social network catering to professionals.

“As some violators have learned the hard way, using social media to defraud investors leaves an electronic trail of footprints for our investigators to follow,” said John Nester, a spokesman for the SEC in Washington, D.C.

Looking for information

Investors can minimize the risk of being conned by only trusting the Twitter accounts of established users and independently researching any tip or rumor.

In addition to Twitter, another popular site for traders is Stocktwits.com, where users send messages almost exclusively about stocks. These sites in some ways are more sophisticated versions of on-line chat rooms that were popular during the dot-com boom. Rumors in those rooms flowed freely, and became a breeding ground for untrustworthy information.

Twitter and StockTwits have stronger filters – the Einhorn impersonator’s account was suspended shortly after the misleading post – but the spigot of false information cannot be shut entirely.

StockTwits doesn’t allow discussions of penny stocks “since those are the ones that are the most vulnerable to being pushed around,” said Howard Lindzon, the company’s San Diego-based chief executive.

Twitter, which did not respond to requests for comment, verifies the accounts of public figures, focusing on “highly sought users in music, acting, fashion, government, politics, religion, journalism, media, advertising, business, and other key interest areas,” according to its website.

Analytic firms are also emerging to help traders navigate social media.

The activity in audio chip maker Audience, which has a market value of $275 million, serves as a prime example of the peril of following sources that are not what they seem – and is also where social media scanners see an opportunity.

The initial fake tweet was posted at 8:44 a.m. New York time on January 29, by someone pretending to be short-seller Carson Block of Muddy Waters. Block is best known for exposing accounting problems and taking short positions in a series of Chinese companies listed in the United States.

The share declines did not accelerate until after 2 p.m., when trading picked up, and more than 300,000 shares traded in a two-minute period, far exceeding the stock’s daily average volume of about 186,000 shares.

Dataminr, a New York-based social media analytics firm that monitors Twitter for stock activity, said it sent an alert on the fake tweet at 12:28 p.m. The firm “was able to warn its clients of a market rumor far in advance of the market-movement, along with providing context on the veracity of the message,” said Dataminr Chief Executive Ted Bailey.

While Dataminr declined to provide the actual language of the alert, it said the alert conveyed skepticism about the tweet on Audience, noting the account’s past activity and its “demonstrated domain expertise across the social graph.”

Overall, analytic firms said scanning programs were not advanced enough to be fully automated yet.

“We’re a strong believer in the human element in this,” said Emmett Kilduff, CEO of Dublin-based Eagle Intel, a social media analytics firm that has alerts evaluated by a research team composed of former portfolio managers and analysts.

Another analytics firm, London-based Knowsis, filters its alerts through market professionals. CEO Oli Freeling-Wilkinson said the firm looks at who is sending information, taking into account the person’s location, whether they are an established market professional, and how shares react.

No system is fail proof, and big share reactions will still likely occur from time to time, goosed initially by Twitter but later as investors react to price moves. It is this aspect that will keep people on their toes.

“There’s an impulse, when you see a name of yours moving like this, to shoot first and ask questions later and find out why it is moving,” said Sam Ginzburg, head of trading at First New York in New York.

source: interaksyon.com

Facebook unveils new privacy controls

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook Inc began rolling out a variety of new privacy controls on Wednesday, the company’s latest effort to address user concerns about who can see their personal information on the world’s largest social network.

New tools introduced on Wednesday will make it easier for Facebook’s members to quickly determine who can view the photos, comments and other information about them that appears on different parts of the website, and to request that any objectionable photos they’re featured in be removed.

A new privacy “shortcut” in the top-right hand corner of the website provides quick access to key controls such as allowing users to manage who can contact them and to block specific people.

The new controls are the latest changes to Facebook’s privacy settings, which have been criticized in the past for being too confusing.

Facebook Director of Product Sam Lessin said the changes were designed to increase users’ comfort level on the social network, which has roughly one billion users.

“When users don’t understand the concepts and controls and hit surprises, they don’t build the confidence they need,” said Lessin.

Facebook, Google Inc and other online companies have faced increasing scrutiny and enforcement from privacy regulators as consumers entrust ever-increasing amounts of information about their personal lives to Web services.

In April, Facebook settled privacy charges with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission that it had deceived consumers and forced them to share more personal information than they intended. Under the settlement, Facebook is required to get user consent for certain changes to its privacy settings and is subject to 20 years of independent audits.

Facebook’s Lessin said some users don’t understand that the information they post on their Timeline profile page is not the only personal information about them that may be viewable by others. Improvements to Facebook’s so-called Activity Log will make it easier for users to see at a glance all the information that involves them across the social network.

Facebook also said it is changing the way that third-party apps, such as games and music players, get permission to access user data. An app must now provide separate requests to create a personalized service based on a user’s personal information and to post automated messages to the Facebook newsfeed on behalf of a user – previously users agreed to both conditions by approving a single request.

The revamped controls follow proposed changes that Facebook has made to its privacy policy and terms of service. The changes would allow Facebook to integrate user data with that of its recently acquired photo-sharing app Instagram, and would loosen restrictions on how members of the social network can contact other members using the Facebook email system.

Nearly 600,000 Facebook users voted to reject the proposed changes, but the votes fell far short of the roughly 300 million needed for the vote to be binding, under Facebook’s existing rules. The proposed changes also would eliminate any such future votes by Facebook users.

source: interaksyon.com

Facebook Hits One Billion Active Users

Facebook has officially reached one billion active users, Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg has announced.

In an official blog post, he writes:

This morning, there are more than one billion people using Facebook actively each month. If you’re reading this: thank you for giving me and my little team the honor of serving you.

Helping a billion people connect is amazing, humbling and by far the thing I am most proud of in my life. I am committed to working every day to make Facebook better for you, and hopefully together one day we will be able to connect the rest of the world too.

Facebook had 955 million active users in July 2012, and though gaining 45 million users is not a small task, it seems as if the world’s biggest online social network took a little bit more time than expected reaching the 1 billion milestone.

Still, it’s an enormous number, dwarfing most other players in the social networking space by orders of magnitude. It took Facebook several years to reach the magical 100 million number back in 2008, but from then on it seemed like Mark Zuckerberg’s baby could not be stopped.

However, despite its ever-expanding user base, Facebook started looking vulnerable after its stock plummeted following the less-than-stellar initial public offering in May 2012.

source: mashable.com

Sri Lankan faces UAE court for making death threat vs. Pinay on Facebook

A Sri Lankan electrician faced a United Arab Emirates (UAE) court on Sunday for allegedly threatening to kill a Filipina co-worker via a post on the social networking site Facebook.

The Sri Lankan, 33, was also accused of making a similar threat to the Filipina waitress via text message, according to a report of the news site Khaleej Times on Monday.

He was charged the Court of First Instance for threatening to commit a crime supposedly after the Filipina turned down his marriage proposal, the report said.

The Filipina waitress, 24, told prosecutors that she saw the threatening message on Facebook in March.

She said she and the Sri Lankan used to work in the same hotel in Abu Dhabi.

While the Filipina was transferred to Dubai, the defendant allegedly kept calling her and sending her SMS messages.

The Filipina had her mobile number deactivated but later learned from a friend that the defendant posted on Facebook that he wanted to kill her.

After seeing the message, the Filipina sought police assistance and lodged a complaint.

Police in Jebel Ali arrested the defendant and seized his laptop in April.

For his part, the defendant said he and the Filipina met two-and-a-half years ago and entered into a relationship for one year.

He said he lent the Filipina Dh1,000 and she did not pay it back. He also claimed the Filipina ignored his calls.

But he admitted he wrote on his Facebook page that he wanted to kill her and asked people how he could do it. - VVP, GMA News

source: gmanetwork.com

Facebook could shrink like Yahoo —analyst

Can anyone ever imagine social networking giant Facebook "disappearing" eight years from now?

It just might happen, according to a hedge fund manager who noted Facebook‘s sliding stock price in recent weeks.

“In five to eight years, they are going to disappear in the way that Yahoo has disappeared,” tech site Mashable quoted Ironfire Capital founder Eric Jackson as saying on the CNBC show Squawk on the Street on Monday.

But Jackson qualified his definition of "disappearing" as being a shadow of its present self.

He cited the case of Yahoo, which remains profitable today but is no longer the juggernaut it was in 2000.

“Yahoo is still making money, it’s still profitable, still has 13,000 employees working for it, but it’s 10 percent of the value that it was at the height of 2000. For all intents and purposes, it’s disappeared,” he said.

Facebook stock officially went on sale on May 18 at $38 per share. It closed Monday at $26.90, Mashable said.

Mashable quoted Jackson as saying Facebook’s decline may be due to the continued emergence of the mobile web, and Facebook’s struggle to adapt to it.

This was despite Facebook having bought the popular mobile photo-sharing app Instagram for $1 billion in April.

Still, the company has acknowledged mobile as a potential stumbling block for sustained growth.

“The world is moving faster, it’s getting more competitive, not less. I think those who are dominant in their prior generation are really going to have a hard time moving into this newer generation," he said.

“Facebook can buy a bunch of mobile companies, but they are still a big, fat website and that’s different from a mobile app,” he added.

Problem with mobile

Mashable noted Facebook, during its required initial pre-IPO disclosure of 35 “risk factors” released in February, admitted that as mobile use of Facebook and the web in general continues to expand, its ad-free mobile platform will become more problematic.

It reiterated the challenge in an amended filing in May.

2nd of 3 generations

Mashable said Jackson saw Facebook as a member of the second of three generations of modern Internet companies.

The first generation, highlighted by businesses such as Google and Yahoo, served as portals that organized and aggregated the web’s information.

The second generation, most notably Facebook, capitalized on an emerging social web. The third generation is made up of companies whose sole goal is leveraging and monetizing mobile users.

“When you look over these three generations, no matter how successful you are in one generation, you don’t seem to be able to translate that into success in the second generation, no matter how much money you have in the bank, no matter how many smart PhDs you have working for you,” Jackson said.

He cited the case of Google, which is struggling to move into social. "And I think Facebook is going to have the same kind of challenges moving into mobile,” he said. — TJD/HS, GMA News

source: gmanetwork.com

Investors brace for Facebook debut on Wall Street

Investors are bracing for Facebook's Wall Street debut on Friday after the world's No.1 online social network raised about $16 billion in one of the biggest initial public offerings in US history.

Valued at $104 billion, Facebook is larger than Starbucks Corp. and Hewlett-Packard combined, sparking intense speculation on how much higher its valuation will rise once shares start trading.

"A 15 to 20 percent pop is in the realm of possibility," said Tim Loughran, a finance professor at the University of Notre Dame. "Given they already moved their IPO range up and increased the size, that's bullish to begin with."

Facebook priced its offering at $38 a share on Thursday, but the price could be higher when shares begin trading under the FB symbol on the Nasdaq at around 11 a.m. Eastern Time.

Some expect shares could rise 30 percent or more on Friday, despite ongoing concerns about Facebook's long-term moneymaking potential. An average of Morningstar analyst estimates puts the closing price for Facebook shares at $50 on its first trading day.

The IPO, expected to mint more than a thousand paper millionaires at the company, has received wall-to-wall media coverage and sparked hopes of a boom in sales of everything from San Francisco Bay Area real estate to automobiles.

Facebook employees marked the event with an all-night "hackathon" at the company's Menlo Park, California headquarters starting on Thursday evening, a tradition in which programmers work on side projects that sometimes turn into mainstream offerings.

Facebook's 28-year-old founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg was expected to ring a bell at the company's Silicon Valley headquarters on Friday morning to kick off trading on the Nasdaq.

Founded in a Harvard dorm room in 2004, Facebook has grown into the world's dominant social network with 900 million users.

At $38 a share, Facebook would trade at over 100 times historical earnings versus Apple Inc.'s 14 times and Google Inc.'s 19 times.

For all the high expectations surrounding Facebook, the company faces challenges maintaining its growth momentum.

Some investors worry the company has not yet figured out a way to make money from the growing number of users who access Facebook on mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones. Meanwhile, revenue growth from Facebook's online advertising business, which accounts for the bulk of its revenue, has slowed in recent months.

"With mobile usage growth exceeding desktop, monetization in the near term could be reduced given little-to-no ad coverage on mobile, challenged by limited screen sizes," said a report last week from Susquehanna Financial Group.

GM said on Tuesday it would stop placing ads on Facebook, raising questions about whether display ads on the site are as effective as traditional media. —Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com

Report: Facebook may file for IPO next week

The social-networking behemoth is planning as early as next week to file for an initial public offering worth up to $100 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed sources.

Morgan Stanley is expected to be lead underwriter with Goldman Sachs also likely to play a major role, the sources said. USA TODAY could not independently corroborate the story. The timing of such a filing could put Facebook on track to start trading stock as early as this spring.

The six-year-old Facebook is expected to raise $10 billion, with a valuation of between $75 billion and $100 billion, although such information would not be in the initial registration document. By either measure, it would make Facebook among the largest IPOs ever. (Visa set a record in 2008, when it raised $17.9 billion.)

"It makes Facebook the largest Internet IPO ever," says Kathleen Smith, a principal at IPO investment advisory firm Renaissance Capital.

Facebook declined to comment. "We're not going to participate in IPO-related speculation," Facebook spokesman Larry Yu said Friday.

Article Source: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/story/2012-01-27/facebook-ipo-could-come-next-week/52823968/1