Gavin O'Malley, Nov 29, 2011, 2:38 PM
Facebook's IPO Could Top $100 Billion WSJ et. al

Web watchers could barely contains themselves on Tuesday amid reports that a future Facebook IPO could be valued at over $100 billion.

“The social networking firm is now targeting a time frame of April to June 2012 for an initial public offering,” reports The Wall Street Journal, citing sources. “The company is exploring raising $10 billion in its IPO -- what would be one of the largest offerings ever -- in a deal that might assign Facebook a $100 billion valuation.”

A Bloomberg source seems to believe that "Facebook may file for an IPO before the end of the year," though the "[e]xact timing for the filing hasn't been determined."

Regarding a Facebook IPO, ReadWriteWeb suggests: “It could prove very big for the whole tech startup world and for those who enjoy the innovation that startups create.” Why? “Because the Facebook IPO could mean more and bigger startup acquisitions, more support for more startups and an infusion of smart money and experience into radically new tech experiments.”

Despite all the excitement, however, “The timing of Facebook's IPO is likely to hinge in part on the condition of the stock market, which has not been kind lately to some other prominent tech IPOs,” writes The Los Angeles Times. “In a major disappointment, shares of one of this year's most closely watched IPOs, online-coupon company Groupon Inc., have plunged recently.”

Writing in the past tense -- more in reference to Groupon’s dive, than Facebook’s planned IPO -- Gawker concludes: “The Tech Bubble Just Popped.”

TechCrunch even asks whether an IPO is the best thing for Facebook. “To date, Facebook has been conservative with monetization and progressive with product development,” it writes. “But outside stockholders could detract from Facebook’s vision and momentum. They could push for faster returns, and pressure the company to display more ads, turn mobile into a direct revenue stream, and play it safe with product. This might produce short-term gains, but could hamper what CEO Mark Zuckerberg has built into a core communications utility for the world.”

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  • Gavin O'Malley, Nov 29, 2011, 3:18 PM
  • Report: Yahoo Aiming To Unload Minority Stake The New York Times Apparently, Yahoo’s board is doing everything it can to prevent selling the company as a whole. Rather, it’s reportedly taking offers for a minority stake in the struggling Web giant. As sources tell The New York Times, a consortium of investors led by private equity firm Silver Lake and Microsoft is one of several parties interested in such an arrangement. Yahoo’s financial advisers at Allen & Company and Goldman Sachs set the end of business on Monday as a deadline for offers for a minority stake in company, The Times reports, citing sources. Meanwhile, TPG Capital, another private equity firm, is also expected to submit a proposal. “Both plans involve taking as much as a 20 percent stake in Yahoo,” The Times writes. Yahoo would then likely take on debt to finance a stock buyback. “Coupled with the roughly 10 percent stake that is held by Yahoo’s co-founders, Jerry Yangand David Filo, the maneuver would effectively give the winning investor group a majority holding,” The Times explains. All that said, however, Yahoo’s board may still consider bids for the entire company, The Times adds, citing another source. Read the whole story...
  • Senator Curbs Tracking Shoppers' Cell Phones CNNMoney Remember those two malls we told you about last year, which planned on tracking shoppers’ every move by monitoring their cell phone signals. Well, following a phone call from Sen. Charles Schumer's office, the Promenade Temecula in southern California and Short Pump Town Center in Richmond, Va. have decided to put the project on hold. While malls have long tracked how crowds move throughout their stores, this would have been the first time they've used cell phones, CNNMoney.com reported last week. Customers were to be notified of the tracking via small signs, but the only way for them to opt out would have been to turn off their phones. In a press conference on Sunday, Sen. Charles Schumer said the malls should have given shoppers the choice to opt-in, CNNMoney reports. "A shopper's personal cell phone should not be used by a third party as a tracking device by retailers who are seeking to determine holiday shopping patterns," the New York senator said in a statement. "Personal cell phones are just that -- personal. If retailers want to tap into your phone to see what your shopping patterns are, they can ask you for your permission to do so." Read the whole story...
  • WordPress Bows Ad Program WordAds TheNextWeb No, not AdSense. WordAds -- That’s what WordPress.com is calling its new, very AdSense-like advertising program. Made possible by a recent partnership with Federated Media, WordAds will carry premium display ads from respected brands, but will only be available to select, high-performing WordPress blogs. “It’s open to publicly visible blogs with custom domains, and factors such as level of traffic and engagement, type of content, and language used will factor into whether a blog gets accepted,” TheNextWeb writes. Premium or not, news of the problem raises the obvious question: What took WordPress so long? “With 50,000 new WordPress.com blogs coming online every day according to the company, it’s perhaps surprising that this is the first time we’ve seen revenue-sharing ads available as an option,” TheNextWeb adds. The answer? According to Jon Burke, head of advertising at WordPress.com: “We’ve resisted advertising so far because most of it we had seen wasn’t terribly tasteful, and it seemed like Google’s AdSense was the state-of-the-art, which was sad. You pour a lot of time and effort into your blog and you deserve better than AdSense.” Zing! Read the whole story...
  • Flavors.me Seeks To Sort The Social Web Fast Company The latest startup to tackle information-overload, Flavors.me hopes to become a "catch-all" for social content, as well as a stream designed to aggregate fragmented social services. As Fast Company reports, the latest version of Flavors culls content from about three-dozen sources, including Facebook, Instagram, Foursquare, Flickr, Netflix, and Last.fm. “Add a couple channels, follow a few friends, and you'll instantly create a stream of content across all networks,” Fast Company explains. “The idea is to curate and not simply aggregate our social content--Flavors comes with a sleek tool to easily filter out sources and people, which is easily the service's best feature.” Says founder Jonathan Marcus: "I want a website that lets the content really shin … I want a website that showcases me and those close to me in a visual way, and changes how social content is presented." Marcus admits that Flavors isn’t the first service to take information excess and fragmentation, but insists that none have done so with the startup's focus on design. Meanwhile, “There's also the question of whether Flavors is significant enough to remain its own separate service, or whether it should be a layer built on top of Facebook's social graph,” Fast Company notes. “After all, Facebook has far more users and far more support from other services.” Read the whole story...