Facebook may be planning to buy Opera Software, maker of the Opera web browser, according to a rumor. Sources of Pocket Lint say that the social network is looking towards making its own browser, which would put it alongside Apple, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, and Yahoo, and the purchase of Opera Software and its technology would save Facebook from having to build one from the ground up.
An Apple fan dissatisfied with the attention the company has paid to its Mac Pro line of recent has taken to Facebook, posting a fan page petitioning the computer maker to refresh its line of professional-level desktops, or at least to let Mac Pro fans know what is going on with the line. The page has subsequently taken off, with more than 4,100 Likes and a number of shares from users around the world.
Facebook has launched its own camera app for the iPhone (free, App Store), complementing the social network's existing iOS utilities. Following on the heels of the company's recent Instagram buyout, Facebook Camera provides a photo editor that can be used to crop shots or apply various filters.
Application and file sharing app Bump (free) has been updated to allow for photo transfers between a phone and a computer. Users of the app can go to the Bump website on a computer, then after selecting photos to share, can bump the phone into the spacebar to send the images to the browser. Images could then be saved to the computer or shared through social networks with a short link.
Facebook is in the process of launching a system to allow advertisers to measure the impact of their advertising efforts on the social network. The company is also looking to allow external advertising agencies to buy premium ad slots in users' news feeds. As The Financial Times reports, the changes to the site's advertising policies come as Facebook attempts to instill confidence in its capacity to leverage its massive user base in the world of targeted advertising.
The imbroglio over Facebook's initial public offering continued today with the announcement of a class-action lawsuit alleging wrongdoing on the part of Facebook and its underwriters. The lawsuit, filed in Manhattan federal court, claims that Facebook, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan Chase, among others, misled investors and caused them to lose more than $2.5 billion in the wake of the IPO. As Bloomberg reports, the plaintiffs have yet to specify the amount sought for damages. The case comes in the wake of the revelation yesterday that the Securities and Exchange Commission will be looking into the Facebook IPO to determine whether some investors received privileged information ahead of the opening.
The Facebook initial public offering (IPO) may have been hampered by the bank that brought the social network to Wall Street. The LA Times writes, Morgan Stanley was advising favored clients on reduced revenue estimates for Facebook, leading Wall Street insiders to avoid or drop shares. The US Securities and Exchange Commission will be looking into the Facebook IPO, with the Financial Industrial Regulatory Authority also expressing concern, particularly as this resulted in non-institutional investors with more shares than they had intended. With Facebook shares expected to be scarce, some investors over-ordered in the belief that they might miss out if they didn't, leaving them more exposed than they had planned.
Facebook's forthcoming App Center portal will feature a "Send to Mobile" option, allowing users to purchase apps on a desktop or tablet and have a notification delivered to their phones. The feature duplicates capabilities already found in Google and Apple's app stores, but uses Facebook's notification system. The Send to Mobile option is expected to be ready in time for the App Center's launch later this year.
After a shaky first day on the NASDAQ index on Friday, Facebook stock on Monday took a dive into the red as most tech stocks showed modest gains. FB shares closed at $34.03, an 11-percent drop from the $38 starting price for the record-setting IPO. The stock closed a few cents over the starting price on Friday, however the valuation was said to have been artificially inflated by underwriters reacting to an immediate falloff.
Smartphone users on at least 48 cellular carriers may be vulnerable to traffic hijacking and phishing attacks, according to researchers from the University of Michigan. A paper to be presented this week at the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy alleges that researchers were able exploit a carrier security feature to hijack connections to Facebook, Twitter, Windows Live Messenger, and the AdMob advertising network, and to spoof traffic for banks and financial institutions.
Facebook's initial public offering remained the biggest story in tech throughout the day, overshadowing the social network's latest acquisition, Karma, a company that specializes in mobile social gifting. The startup has developed an e-commerce platform that enables mobile users to quickly find gifts, select a personalized card, and notify the recipient via text message, e-mail or Facebook.
Facebook's record-setting IPO brought significant attention, however the company's stock price (NASDAQ:FB) ended up just $0.27 above the $38 offering price as the trading day came to a close. Shares started off the day trading at $42.05, 11 percent higher than the offering, however the price quickly fluctuated at lower levels before settling later in the afternoon.
Facebook, having just yesterday completed its initial public offering to the tune of a $106 billion valuation, now faces a $15 billion lawsuit in federal court. The suit, Bloomberg reports, alleges that the social network invaded the privacy of the plaintiffs by tracking their Internet use even after they had logged off of the social network.
Apple is one of several parties in talks with Russia's Skolkovo technology park about possible research and development facilities there, according to local publication Izvestia. Other interested companies are said to include Google and Facebook; agreements are reportedly already in place for firms such as Microsoft, IBM, General Electric, and Cisco. Skolkovo's organizers are said to be aiming at making the park a Russian equivalent of Silicon Valley.
A 21-year-old British man has been jailed for 12 months after pleading guilty to hacking a Facebook account. Gareth Crosskey of West Sussex appeared this week in Southwark Crown Court, where he was sentenced to a year's imprisonment for breaking the Computer Misuse Act 1990.
The recent decision by General Motors to cease its paid advertising operations on Facebook may have been the result of a failed pitch on Facebook's part to convince the automaker of the efficacy of advertising on the social network. Sources familiar with dealings between the two companies tell Reuters that Facebook's dual pitches—touting both free media advertising and paid advertising—served only to convince GM that its paid ads weren't effective enough to justify the cost.
Facebook sold 421.2 million shares at $38 each today, Bloomberg reports, raising $16 billion in the largest initial public offering by a technology company in history. The offering caps a storied past few weeks that saw representatives from the social network attempting to build investor confidence, even as reports emerged from other sectors that could well have undercut confidence in the company.
More troubling news has emerged in the run-up to Facebook's $100 billion initial public offering, as an AP-CNBC poll of Facebook users found only four percent of respondents often clicking on ads from the social network. The poll also found that a solid majority of respondents doubted the safety of purchasing goods and services through Facebook.
Yahoo lawyers accusing Facebook of fraudulently filing patents, as part of an ongoing lawsuit, may have been quickly proven wrong. Facebook, accused of deception, appears to have not only proved the Yahoo legal team wrong by producing the required evidence, but also discovered that there were no previous requests for the relevant document in the first place.
Even though the IPO roadshow is ongoing and large acquisitions are generally unwise during that period, Facebook has purchased Lightbox. Lightbox is a predominantly Android photo sharing startup with many similarities to the recently acquired Instagram. Facebook is closing Lightbox, and likely going to use staff developers for Android development. No terms of the deal have been formally announced.
General Motors has announced that it will cease advertising on Facebook, Agence France-Presse reports. The move could signal trouble for Facebook, which is currently attempting to allay prospective stockholder concerns in the run-up to its initial public offering.
Sony will be releasing two new Walkman docks in Japan on June 9. The CMT-V70B and CMT-V50 will dock with the Sony Walkman range of personal media players, with the V07B variant allowing Bluetooth streaming. Both docks are 5.4 inches thick, have FM/AM radio tuners, and will be available in five different colors. Price is not currently known.
After posting a mysterious teaser photo of a new product, ASUS has gone ahead and released all the specs of its latest, chic BDXL burner, the SBW-06C2X-U. Apart from the ability to write at 6x speeds to Blu-ray discs and the 100GB BD-R(TL) or 128GB BD-R(QL) media at 4x speeds, the external drive can also play back Blu-ray 3D content. It sits on a metal stand that can hold the drive in either a horizontal or vertical orientation.
Mark Zuckerberg has spoken up in the midst of Facebook's ongoing IPO roadshow, giving investors a better idea of what they can expect to be key revenue drivers for the largest social network in the world after it goes public. Zuckerberg says Facebook will set its sights on improving its mobile application, tying other online apps into Facebook, and creating a "transformative" advertising experience.
The state of California is close to banning requests from employers to interviewees and the workforce in general for Facebook login details. Assembly Bill 1844, passed yesterday, would protect workers from being asked for their social-network usernames and passwords, minimizing personal liability from disclosing private information.
Facebook is testing monetizing prioritizing posts in a news feed, Stuff learned during an interview with the social network's Mia Garlick. Called Highlight, a number of price points are being tested, including free. Basically, users will have the option of paying to make their posts more visible on the news feeds of friends when sharing them. The current tests are meant only to gauge user interest, the spokesperson said.
Facebook may be moving into the file sharing sector, crowding a space already occupied by Dropbox, Box, and, newly, Google. Sources have told Mashable that the social networking giant is preparing to allow users to share a number of file types some time very soon. The feature will be integrated into Facebook's Group pages.
The US Federal Trade Commission is launching a competition investigation regarding Facebook's recent $1 billion buyout of Instagram, say two sources for the Financial Times. The effort has allegedly already begun, with the FTC starting to collect information from "at least two" of Facebook's biggest competitors. The probe is described as routine for deals worth more than $68.2 million, but could delay the Instagram acquisition well past when Facebook told investors things would be completed.
Today, Facebook announced its new App Center, a portal on the social network designed for app discovery. The new portal, meant for socially-oriented apps, features an in-depth rating system, providing developers with demographic information on user ratings. Apps highlighted on the App Center cover both iOS and Android, making the App Center one of the only places one can find apps from the competing stores side by side.
A new analysis undertaken by comScore, using its new Mobile Metrix 2.0 tool, has shown that mobile apps are driving most of the time spent on social networks like Facebook, overtaking traditional computer-based browser access. The typical Facebook user was found to spend 441 minutes of their time accessing the site through their smartphone, which compared with an average of 391 spent by users surfing the site from their computer. A similar trend was seen for mobile-centric brands including Twitter, Pinterest and Foursquare, highlighting the increasingly post-PC nature of Internet use.
The Color app which isn't a stranger to reinventing itself has now partnered up with Verizon. In this new iteration, which will see the app come preloaded on some of Verizon's Android LTE smartphones, users will get the ability to stream what they're recording live and in HD, while simultaneously saving a local copy. Verizon customers will also have an exclusive feature that allows adding sound to the recording.
Facebook, in the run-up to its much-anticipated initial public offering, has amended its IPO filing four times to reflect new information from its ongoing legal battle with Yahoo. Now the social network has filed a fifth amendment, in which it releases a letter wherein Yahoo claims that Facebook risks violating 16 Yahoo patents in operation of its data centers and servers.
Facebook has finally set an official estimate for its initial public offering, which will offer individual shares for between $28 and $35. The pricing is said to equate to an estimated valuation ranging between $77 billion and $96 billion, slightly lower than the highest analyst estimates but far higher than any other Internet company.
In the buildup to Facebook, Inc's initial public offering (IPO), preparations are underway to launch an IPO roadshow. The roadshow is expected to begin on May 7, with a projected start of share trading two weeks later on May 18.
An iPad-native version of Facebook Messenger is currently in early beta development, according to a report from 9to5Mac. The app, which functions as a broken-out chat service separate from the main Facebook iOS app, features Notification Center support and is currently an upscaled version of the iPhone app, which has been available since last summer. The app offers an iMessage-like data-based chat function for users signed into Facebook.
Facebook has added an option to let users declare that they are an organ donor on their timeline, in order to raise awareness and help the 112,000 Americans waiting replacement organs. Mark Zuckerberg was inspired to make the change by his girlfriend and the late Steve Jobs.
Microsoft in a statement Monday clung to a firm stance on the proposed CISPA bill. The firm told The Hill that, despite having said it wanted to "honor the privacy" of users, it wanted the bill to continue forward. It would "look forward" to working with the Senate on the bill.
Apple served as the example for a wider industry issue once more on Saturday through an investigation on Saturday. The iPhone maker was already known to be offshoring most of its income, but it's now known by the New York Times to have divisions across Europe, the British Virgin Islands, and elsewhere outside of the US to minimize how much it's taxed. Within the US itself, it has taken advantage of Nevada's absence of corporate tax to boost some of the gains that come into the US.
The patent struggle between Yahoo and Facebook took another turn today, with Yahoo adding two more patents to its list of alleged infringements by Facebook. The move, which brings the total number of alleged Facebook infringements to 12, came in response to Facebook's own countersuit against Yahoo, in which the social network claimed that Yahoo had infringed on 10 Facebook patents.
A new report from the New York Times delving deeper into the Facebook buy of patents from Microsoft reveals that Microsoft at one point considered selling its Bing search engine to the social network. There is speculation in the industry that Facebook wants to start its own Internet search engine fed by the data it gathered from its millions of users in order to make money from online advertising. This would be a threat to Google more so than Microsoft, as the former is more dependent on such revenue.
HTC is said to be co-developing a new smartphone with Facebook, according to Digitimes. The Taiwanese handset maker has previously launched handsets with tighter than usual Facebook integration with its Salsa and Chacha devices. The new smartphone is said to leverage Android, but develop a platform built exclusively around Facebook.
Google debuted a new Share button on Tuesday, allowing sites to give users the option to post content directly from a site to a user's Google+ account. The move brings Google's social networking site in further alignment with the capabilities of its chief rival, Facebook.
Facebook's Initial Public Offering (IPO), believed to be scheduled for May, could be delayed, insiders have revealed to CNBC. This is reportedly due to a number of acquisitions and other distractions, which could lead to a delay of selling shares from the originally-believed week of May 14. Initial trading is now expected to come sometime in early to mid-June.
NVIDIA has now added a countdown to its earlier Facebook teaser for what is expected to be the GeForce GTX 690 graphics card. The official announcement will be made on April 28 at 7:30PM Pacific time at the the NVIDIA Gaming Festival in Shanghai, China. A live stream of the event will be available for viewing on GeForce.com.
Facebook will soon be releasing a new version of its app for Windows Phone, according to a post from the Facebook for Windows Phone team. The update will add a Metro flair to the app and implement a number of new features. Some of these features were popular requests among Windows Phone users, while others are late-arriving implementations of common Facebook features.
Facebook just released a new S1 for the first quarter of 2012, showing a drop in profits and operating income. The filing also revealed the total number of active monthly users, as well as the full costs of the social giant's acquisition of image sharing service Instagram.
Facebook is set to buy a large number of patents that Microsoft recently acquired acquire through an AOL auction. The deal, worth $550 million, lets Facebook own 650 AOL patents and patent applications, along with a license to the remainder that Microsoft retains.
Following a lengthy period of questions, comments and complaints about the difficulty users have in controlling privacy, Facebook has posted a series of proposed revisions to its Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, and is extending the comment period. The company continues to struggle with balance between gathering information about users for the benefit of both other users and advertisers, while addressing concerns of users, most of whom do not fully understand Facebook's data collection.
Facebook has given its mobile app a handful of Android-only features with an app update (Google Play). The new version now makes shortcuts for the camera and messages that will let users post photos and messages without having to launch the main app, whether through the app tray or a home screen shortcut. It takes advantage of Android's support for shortcuts that leap to a specific part of an app, which aren't yet options in iOS.
Facebook has completed construction of its new datacenter in Forest City, North Carolina, and half of the new facility is now online and serving user traffic. The massive datacenter broke ground in November 2010, and is expected to be fully operational some time later in the year.
