Friday, May 18, 2012

The Latest from TechCrunch

The Latest from TechCrunch

Link to TechCrunch

Quipper Raises $3.6m For Its Fun Take On E-Learning

Posted: 18 May 2012 09:02 AM PDT

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There are lots of different approaches to the amorphous market of ‘e-learning’ but only a handful ever feel much like fun. I think amongst the best of these are sites like MangaHigh which teaches Math, or Moshi Monsters which has subtle learning tasks for kids.

Another which works well is Quipper, which, in a Q&A format, helps people learn things in a sort of game. Today it’s announced that it has raised $3.6m (£2.3m) of Series A funding led by Globis, the Japanese VC. The round has been two other investors: Atomico, the London-based VC firm led by Skype co-founder Niklas Zennström and Benesse, a major Japanese education and publishing company.

The fundraising, which seed funding from Atomico last year, will be used expand with an emphasis on increasing the amount of content on the platform

Founded by Masa Watanabe, a co-founder of Japanese mobile social gaming company DeNA, Quipper’s app asks users to answer a series of questions, and they learn during that process. You can also use it to create your own quiz programmes, making the app appeal to teachers and parents but also to professional training companies.

The London-based company says its 1.7 million users have answered questions on the platform 85m times in 2,000 topics since it launched in October last year. The app exist on a site and on Apple iOS and Android.

Tracks Releases Most Ambitious Update Yet: Custom Camera, New Filters, And Real-Time Video

Posted: 18 May 2012 09:00 AM PDT

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How timely. After launching a year ago at Disrupt NYC 2011, Tracks is today releasing one of its biggest updates to date. The service is much like Color, but without the creepy factor as any and all members of a specific photo-sharing group must be invited. I like to think of it as the place where Color and Google+ Circles intersect, but I far prefer Tracks than either of the former.

Thus far Tracks has offered iOS, web- and real-world versions of your tracks (the collection of photos shared with a specific social network, which can be both geo-temporal or last forever). Today, however, the service gets much more beefy, with the ability to shoot and send real-time video and the addition of new filters, Instagram-style. There are now ten filter options on the app, and they’ll all work on both photos and videos.

But that’s not all. The update brings with it the ability to add friends to various tracks from Facebook and Twitter, as well as a new custom camera with multi-shot capability and locks for exposure and focus. Animations have also been added.

Tracks has seen great success since its debut at Disrupt last year, launching an iPhone app officially in October and raising a $1 million round in December. The company also enticed Photobucket’s founder Alex Welch to join the board.

Speaking of Mr. Welch, here’s what he had to say about today’s Tracks update:

Since joining Tracks as both an investor and board member last year, I have worked very closely on product and strategy with Vic and team. I continue to be impressed at the overall vision, as well as the dedication and execution of this team. As simple as it may sound, the challenge of having a single mainstream service that can span both experiences and interests with different groups of friends and family, has not been solved at a large scale. The Tracks approach is the right one.

The idea of a private social network is one of the few new social ideas that I can jump on board with, and it’ll be interesting to see how the company builds out this offering with behemoths like Facebook and Twitter still growing at a solid pace.

Click to view slideshow.


How Big Is The FB IPO? It’s So Big I Just Hit Inbox Zero

Posted: 18 May 2012 08:55 AM PDT

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Why is there nothing but Facebook IPO news today, you (Facebook haters) may be asking? Well, outside of the obvious – people are obsessed, this is a historic event, it’s the biggest tech IPO over, etc., etc. – there’s another reason why all the news outlets are publishing Facebook this and Facebook that today. It’s because everyone else is holding their news for a later date….the result of which has led to a historic event of my own: inbox zero.

So this is what it’s like not being a tech blogger?

OK, if I’m being honest, it’s like inbox two or three, since there are a few tech companies who are clueless enough to think I care about their minor enhancements today, of all days (Nuance, I’m looking at you. Nuance PDF Software update, really? Really?!) But for the most part, it’s been radio silence since sometime last night.

(Note that I’m not counting automated newsletters and notification emails – those never hit the inbox anyway.)

As someone who pretty much gets 50 emails every couple of hours, this is a marvel. I want to take a snapshot to remember this moment. It’s a beautiful thing. Inbox zero. Inbox zero, I tell you!

I expected a little more fanfare from Gmail. “Woohoo?” That’s it? Ah well.

Not only have PR people made the FB IPO a national holiday of sorts, other startup founders who email, text and Skype us are delaying their outreach efforts as well. There’s no “our app just rolled out version 2.0!” No “we got funded!” No “we added sharing features and user profiles!” No “we just hit a million users!” Nothing. Zip. Zero. Nada.

The handful of pitches which have come in today are Facebook-related, and didn’t come in via PR. PR is taking the day off!

PR folks, who often reach out trying to shimmy their way into the news cycle by tying their company to whatever news is happening that day, have actually given up today. That’s how big the Facebook IPO news: they gave up. 

No, I’m not crying. I just have a little something in my eye.

Zynga’s Share Price Falls Off A Cliff As Facebook IPOs, Down 13.3% Before Trading Halted

Posted: 18 May 2012 08:52 AM PDT

Zynga Price Drop

Zynga’s share price plummeted 11.4 percent from $8.09 to $7.19 in the eight minutes after Facebook’s IPO went live, and down 13.3 percent since yesterday. Trading has been halted to stem further losses.

While we can’t know the exact reason why this happened, I’d bet that investors expected Zynga shares to pop alongside Facebook’s during the IPO. But when they didn’t pop at all and instead stayed flat, those short-term investors sold off the social gaming company’s shares.

Many tech stocks have traded downward following Facebook’s open. Chinese social network Renren, professional network LinkedIn, and some other related tech stocks are also down.

Update: Renren is recovering, It’s now down just 1.16% from yesterday, compared to its place down 12.66% 14 minutes after Facebook began trading.

No IPO Pop Here: Facebook Trades Slightly Higher At Around $40

Posted: 18 May 2012 08:30 AM PDT

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Facebook shares opened at $42.05, a 10.5 percent increase from its final price last night at $38. Shares are actually currently almost flat at $39.16, which is 3.6 percent higher than $38 the price that underwriters settled on last night. While it may not be as juicy a story, it’s a signal that Facebook’s IPO was priced pretty efficiently and that the company didn’t leave too much money on the table.

Right now, retail investors are getting their hands on the shares. The company’s first trade was actually delayed by 30 minutes on NASDAQ as market makers had issues settling on an opening price. They kept delaying the opening in five-minute increments, which isn’t all that uncommon in popular offerings, according to a conversation we had with Bruce Aust, who is NASDAQ's executive vice president and head of the global corporate client group, earlier today.

While the price is going to fluctuate a lot today, there’s a crowdsourced bet from Twitter users on FacebookIPOClosingPrice.com that the company will close at a $54 price and a $135.7 billion valuation.

Yesterday, the social networking giant priced its IPO at $38 a share, at the very top end of its revised $34 to $38 price range. That makes it the biggest tech IPO in history. Facebook offered 180,000,000 shares of stock in the offering while early shareholders including Peter Thiel and Accel Partners are selling more than 200 million more shares. This is the biggest recent IPO since Zynga, which saw its shares pop 10 percent on its opening trade of $11, giving the company a $7.7 billion valuation.

Facebook’s opening has impacted the rest of the market though. Zynga’s shares are down by 13.3 percent. We don’t know why but perhaps there was speculation that the shares would pop on Facebook’s IPO and when they didn’t, Zynga came tumbling back down to reality.

Earlier today, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg along with vice president of product Chris Cox, chief operating office Sheryl Sandberg and chief financial officer David Ebersman rang the NASDAQ opening bell remotely from Facebook’s headquarters at 1 Hacker Way in Menlo Park, California.

Facebook’s Opening Trade Has Been Delayed On NASDAQ

Posted: 18 May 2012 08:25 AM PDT

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Facebook’s opening trade on NASDAQ has been delayed. We don’t know why, but we’re hearing mixed reports involving both unexpectedly high demand from retail investors and problems with canceling orders. As we explained in a post about 20 minutes ago, the underwriters of the deal are meeting and trying to set an opening price.

But because of unexpected changes in demand, it seems market makers are having issues settling on an opening price. They have the option of delaying the offering in five-minute increments until they can find a final price.

This is not terribly uncommon and it’s happened in very recent, popular IPOs like Splunk, according to Bruce Aust, who is NASDAQ’s executive vice president and head of the global corporate client group. Early word is that we’re looking at a $42 price, or a pop of just over 10.5 percent. That would give Facebook a $115 billion valuation.

Need A Little Context On Facebook’s IPO? The Social Network Made More Money Than…

Posted: 18 May 2012 07:59 AM PDT

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Today’s Facebook IPO is a momentous, historical occasion. It’s set to be the biggest tech IPO ever, and the third largest IPO in U.S. history, second only to Visa and General Motors. The company that was once just a glimmer in the eye of a Harvard student named Mark Zuckerberg raised over $16 billion yesterday as shares were gobbled up by hungry investors, and that $38 share price point is expected to increase as the stock starts trading around 11am today.

Do you know how much money that is?

That’s more than nine Google IPOs, the cost of buying Napster 132 times in 2008, and enough to buy Mark Zuckerberg plenty of executive hoodies — 266,266 to be exact.

And how did I calculate this madness, you ask? I didn’t. A new website just popped up titled “Facebook made more money than”, and it looks a helluva lot like a Facebook page (fittingly). The site is sourcing facts from the web to provide a little added perspective on just how much $16 billion is worth.

Check it out here.

Here’s one more for the road, just to nail down the nearly unimaginable sum in your mind:

The $16 billion netted by Facebook before the stocks begin trading is more than the value of 66 sets of Winklevoss twins.

Gadget Of The Week: The Omega J8006 Juicer

Posted: 18 May 2012 07:50 AM PDT

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In this first installment of Gadget Of The Week I decided to try something a bit different. Rather than focus on some obscure cellphone or wonky laptop, I decided to take on one of the biggest questions in the average small and home office: which juicer should I buy? After trying a number of juicers – and investing in a few – I’m pleased to report that the Omega J8006 is definitely worth the investment.

I am what they call, in the medical literature, a fat and lazy blogger. There’s nothing I love more than scarfing down cookies as I sit at my computer. With that in mind (and inspired by Brian Lam’s article at The Wirecutter), I decided to try my hand at juicing.

I began by picking up the $99 Le’Equip model which uses a swiftly rotating blade and an ejection system for squeezing the juice out of almost any fruit or vegetable. The price was right – under $100 for a fairly sturdy juicer is good – and the reviews were excellent. I also tried the Breville models but those didn’t support the juicing of greens as readily. Obviously there are more (this dude made 290 videos featuring all of his favorite) but I was going for the lower end.

Before we get ahead of ourselves, it’s important to understand the various aspects of juicing that are important to the average consumer. There are multiple types – the Le’Equip is an ejection system that uses centripetal force to push out the juice out of a spout. Then there are masticating juicers. These juicers either use a worm gear or two larger gears to chop food into finer and finer bits. These bits are then smashed to render the juice. They move much more slowly than ejection systems and, in turn, work a bit more efficiently.

What does juicing do for you? The science is still out (and many nutritionists state that juicing isn’t much better than eating a bunch of vegetables and the process removes much of the fiber, rendering the juice less biologically useful) but I personally find that after a big glass of kale, cucumber, and maybe a lemon or apple, I’m less hungry and less inclined to sit at my desk idly snacking on Bugles. I would never eat, say, a head of kale by itself. Juicing takes the tedium out of veggies.

Working with the Le’Equip was quite enjoyable although it tended to spray pulp out of its back end and spit juice out of the top. The speed of the blades – while excellent for rendering juice – didn’t allow for much control.

That’s when the Omega came into my life. This massive, heavy juicer – more a home motor than a real juicer – takes it slow and steady. You feed veggies in, they’re slowly masticated with the thick, 80RPM rotor. As the food moves through it is chopped up and squeezed out into a plastic cup while the pulp falls into another cup. Clean-up is simple. You take the juicer head off, move it to the sink, and uncouple all of the pieces. Then, with some soap and water, you can just rinse off the four pieces and clean the metal screen. You can also run the gear through the dishwasher.

The device also makes nut butters and can extrude pasta. You can even use it as a slow food processor.

The bad news? At $299, you’re really going to have to be into juice to pick this thing up. However, compared with the swiftly moving and messier “cheaper” models, I’m very pleased with the 8006′s performance. If you used this in an office, for example, you’d have considerably less to clean up and the system is far more durable than other machines I’ve seen. No one wants to clean up a scrim of flung orange pulp off of the kitchen wall, which is why the 8006′s slow-moving auger is a much better choice.

Has juicing helped me lose weight? Not yet, but here’s hoping. Does it make me feel a little better and less inclined to eat junk. I think so. And anything that can keep my fat face out of a bag of M&M-laden Chex mix is the thing for me.

Click to view slideshow.


Explainer: What Happens In The 15 Minutes Before Facebook Shares Start Trading

Posted: 18 May 2012 07:47 AM PDT

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Facebook shares are supposed to go live on the NASDAQ market in about 20 minutes. But what happens in the next crucial 15?

We caught up with NASDAQ’s Bruce Aust, who is the executive vice president and head of the global corporate client group there. After several years of carefully courting the company’s management, NASDAQ beat out rival New York Stock Exchange for Facebook’s hand. NASDAQ is usually is the exchange of choice for most tech companies like Google and Apple, but NYSE has snuck away with a company or two in the last year like LinkedIn.

Companies generally go live after market opening at around 10:30 or 11 a.m. Eastern, he said. About 15 minutes before shares start trading (e.g. right now!), the underwriters of Facebook’s offering like the offering’s lead Morgan Stanley get together and discuss current market orders, he said.

“The market makers have a chance to work on price discovery to find the opening price,” he said. “If there are more orders coming in than they expected, they may choose to delay it in five minute increments.” Update: Yep, it’s delayed by 5 minutes!

This has happened in very recent, popular IPOs like Splunk. So while Facebook is expected to go live at 11 a.m. Eastern, it could get delayed if there is insanely high demand. Over the past few days, the market makers have had a chance to sort out orders at Facebook’s final price of $38 a share. But right around market opening, many new orders often flood in amid the hype.

It can be a little unpredictable. But after that opening price is settled, Facebook will move forward just like any other stock traded on the exchange.

“Once we’ve got the buyers and sellers matched off, it’s off to the races,” he said.

$FB Is Blowing Up On StockTwits, Too

Posted: 18 May 2012 07:36 AM PDT

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Another startup cashing in (figuratively speaking) on the FB IPO: StockTwits. Earlier this week, the social network for investors added Facebook to its StockTwits Social Heatmap, a feature on the site that provides a visualization of what the StockTwits some 200,000 investors and traders are talking about. Usually, the heatmap looks looks like a bunch of little squares – the bigger the square means more conversation.

But today, Facebook ($FB) is dominating, even pushing fan favorite $AAPL aside.

Over the past 72 hours, StockTwits executive editor Phil Pearlman has been watching the momentum on the heatmap building up, and says the community is “simply riveted” by the Facebook IPO. (As is everyone else, everywhere.)

“From a sentiment point of view, the heatmap is a reflection of the velocity of social interest. People are obsessed and discussing the IPO like mad,” says Pearlman.

“$FB discussion was already strong and has doubled over the past 24hrs.  It is tapering a bit here and will likely go crazy again as the stock begins trading around 11, or at least that’s my best guess,” he adds.

Above is a shot of the heatmap from this morning.

As we go to post this, the FB square has shrunk down a bit, but it’s still early. Very soon, that chart might be nearly all gray.

Visualization junkies will have fun with something like this, given that the heatmap updates in real-time, reflecting the live discussions taking place on site. You can also break the chart down by past hour, last 6 hours and last 24 hours, if you’re curious. Also note that the algorithm looks at volume and influence of those discussing the stock, too.

You can join the Facebook stream here if you want to contribute (or just watch).

Mark Zuckerberg Posts Status Update As He Rings The NASDAQ Opening Bell

Posted: 18 May 2012 06:59 AM PDT

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This is awesome. At 9:30 AM ET, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted what’s bound to be a historical status update to his Facebook Timeline. The post simply reads: “Mark Zuckerberg listed a company on NASDAQ. — with Chris Cox and 4 others.” You can read the whole story right here from the engineer who rigged up the auto-post: “How Facebook Hacked The NASDAQ Button”

Since the CEO was busy actually ringing the bell from Hacker Square at Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park, Facebook figured it would post for him. The post went live just as Zuckerberg rang the NASDAQ Opening Bell. In the future, don’t be surprised when more physical objects get hooked into Facebook.

Knodes Made A Teaser Trailer For Our Hackathon Tomorrow And It’s Awesome!

Posted: 18 May 2012 06:52 AM PDT

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The Hackathon is one of the best parts of Disrupt. Granted, it’s not quite as emotional as watching the Battlefield rounds play out, but there’s something sort of inspiring about the idea that you may be building the start of a company during a 24-hour beer/pizza/Red Bull-fest.

Success stories like Group.me and Docracy were born at our Hackathon, but they’d be the first to tell you that none of it is possible without our awesome API sponsors. These include foursquare, The Echo Nest, metaLayer, Twilio, bitly, Tumblr, Spotify, Mobli and more. But one has gone above and beyond when it comes to teasing out the event, with the promise to offer “one thousand dolla dolla bills” to the hacker who makes the best use of their API.

Knodes, who is offering up a context API which maps users’ social graphs, has made a movie-type trailer ahead of the Hackathon and posted it to YouTube. It promises that same cash reward we just talked about, packaged nicely in a briefcase, along with a $250 JetBlue gift card.

The tagline reads: “You. On a plane. With a briefcase full of money. Make it happen.”

Other sponsors are handing out cash too (among other things), including $5,000 from both AT&T and CityGrid, and a whopping $10,000 from Mobli. Ticket sales are already closed for hackers, but you’re more than welcome to attend the Hackathon presentations on Sunday. If interested, sign up with this EventBrite link.

Video & Photos: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Rings In The NASDAQ Bell

Posted: 18 May 2012 06:47 AM PDT

Zuckerberg On Screen Ringing The NASDAQ Bell

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg didn’t travel to New York’s Times Square for the company’s big day. He did it unconventionally like you’d expect a hacker would.  He opened the bell remotely from the company’s Menlo Park Headquarters after Facebook employees had just finished a long, all-night Hackathon — their 31st. They played midnight hockey and worked on extra projects, as you can see from photos we re-posted here.

Just ahead of the 6:30 PST open, the company’s employees got together again in the main headquarters “Hacker Square” in front of a big stage where he rang the bell. Facebook is the second company ever to ring in NASDAQ’s bell remotely on its IPO day. Zynga was the first back in December.

But unlike Zynga CEO Mark Pincus in last December’s IPO, Zuckerberg didn’t give any remarks. He was flanked by chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, vice president of product Chris Cox and Elliot Schrage, who is Facebook’s vice president of public policy and communications.

“Mark and Sheryl wanted to make sure it was about team that helped grow this company,” said Bruce Aust, who is NASDAQ’s executive vice president and head of the global corporate client group. “They wanted to make it special, but they also wanted to remind everyone that this is just one day in the life in company. They wanted say, ‘Let’s get back to work once we have the IPO opening bell. It’s a company that’s very focused on its mission.”

There were also many long-time Facebookers on-stage like Javier Olivan, who oversees internationalization and growth, Sam Lessin, who oversaw Timeline, another vice president of engineering Mike Schroepfer and more. A Facebook engineer named David Garcia had hacked the NASDAQ button to auto-post the bell opening to Zuckerberg’s Timeline (and we have the inside scoop on how he did it!)

It was the culmination of an eight-year journey that began in Zuckerberg’s Harvard dorm room. But it’s the company first step in what may be a very long life. Facebook is the most anticipated IPO of the last eight years after Google. It’s the largest tech IPO in history because the company stubbornly waited so long to go public. Facebook and its early shareholders are raising $16 billion today, or nearly 10 times what Google raised in its highly-hyped and very unorthodox Dutch Auction-style IPO in 2004.

When the market finally opened, Zuckerberg had signed a statement to be shown in Times Square. It was a company motto. It read, “to a more open and connected world.”

How Facebook Hacked The NASDAQ Button

Posted: 18 May 2012 06:46 AM PDT

Zuck Publishes To Timeline As He Lists Facebook On NASDAQ

Editor’s note: Some savvy Facebook engineers rigged the NASDAQ button to automatically post “Mark Zuckerberg has listed a company on NASDAQ – FB” to the CEO’s Timeline as he rung the bell to open the NASDAQ’s day of trading. David Garcia, a senior software engineer at Facebook, explains how they turned the NASDAQ on to Open Graph.

It was a normal Monday. Nothing out of the ordinary other than that Facebook was set to go public at the end of the week. Camera crews were beginning to appear and NASDAQ was coming to campus so we could ring the opening bell together. Other than that, it was like any other Monday.

During lunch, some us started talking about how cool it would be if the second Mark rang the bell a story would post to his timeline to let his friends and subscribers know.

I was so excited about this idea that when I got back to my desk, I posted on Facebook: "We should totally hack the button so it pushes an open graph action, "Mark Rang the NASDAQ bell".

The first person to comment? Zuck: "It would be epic if you pulled that off."

I got to work that night.

The solution: connect the NASDAQ button to a mobile phone logged into Facebook to generate an open graph action. While this seemed simple, it would prove to be a little more complex in practice.

Step one was to hack the headphones of my mobile phone. Just like you use headphones to play or pause music, I wanted to get them to publish an action on Facebook. I grabbed a soldering iron and soon enough we had a way to trigger the phone to publish an open graph action.

Step two was to see how the actual NASDAQ button worked. By the time NASDAQ arrived on Wednesday, a few other engineers caught wind of the project and offered their help. So five of us headed over to the conference room to check out the button. NASDAQ was game and allowed us to dismantle the button, with only one rule: don't break it.

As we unscrewed the cover and poked around inside, we discovered that it looked quite different from what we were expecting. While the system wasn't too complicated (a touch pad, a light, and grey box containing some relays connecting to the power supply), our hack was going to prove a bit of a challenge. We plied open the gray box to test the various circuits and figure out exactly how they worked. After some delicate tests with a voltmeter, we came up with a solution.

A couple of us then headed off to Radio Shack to pick up a couple relays, capacitors, and resistors. A couple of hours later, we had built our hack. The finished product wasn't exactly the prettiest thing, but hacks aren't supposed to be. They're just supposed to work.

We ran back to the conference room with the button to make sure it did.

We hooked up our hack to run at exactly the same time as Mark pushed the button to turn on the light and ring the bell. Then we attached a wire that hooks to the hack and into the headset jack of a cell phone. When the button was pressed, it sent a signal through the hack, and the phone got the signal that triggered the custom action through our Open Graph API, posting a story onto Mark's Timeline. It worked.

"Mark listed a company on NASDAQ – FB – with Chris Cox (VP of Product) and 4 others [Sheryl Sandberg (COO), David Ebersman (CFO), Cipora Herman (Treasurer), and Dave Kling (Deputy General Counsel)"

In less than 3 days, an idea became reality, something that would be seen by people all around the world.  So, like I said, it was just a normal day here at Facebook.

Ready To Talk FB? Social Finance Site TradingView Debuts Real-Time Chat

Posted: 18 May 2012 06:45 AM PDT

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Social finance site TradingView, which launched in September of last year, is rolling out a new feature just in time for the Facebook IPO (c’mon, you knew there would have to be at least one story about “just in time for the Facebook IPO” today, right?). But anyway, this one seems relevant at least: TradingView is launching interactive real-time chatting on its site, which lets users talk about stocks in a slightly more private forum than Twitter.

The site, for those unfamiliar, was created by trading software company MultiCharts, a company that, as the name implies, is all about charts and graphs. TradingView, then, aims to make those stock charts more social. Users can create and share charts, follow charts, comment on them, post them to Twitter or embed them on websites.

The new real-time chat feature will be stock-specific, letting users view and join discussions related to the stock (cough FB cough) they’re interested in. When you scroll over a company on your watch list, you’ll see the live chat window for that symbol right next to the live stock chart.

If you want to try this feature out, be warned: you’ll be a beta tester. The feature is so new that it hasn’t even made its way to the production servers yet. Instead, you’ll need to log in to: staging.tradingview.com (don’t worry about that browser warning, it’s OK).

Then use the username “tradingview” and password “tview24″. Wonder if it will crash?

Samsung’s Galaxy S III Reportedly Racks Up Over 9 Million Pre-Orders Worldwide

Posted: 18 May 2012 06:30 AM PDT

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As if anyone needed any more proof that the Samsung’s Galaxy S III would sell like (slightly more expensive) hotcakes, a report from the Korea Economic Daily reveals that the long-awaited handset racked up over 9 million pre-orders from mobile carriers across the globe.

To put that number in a bit of perspective, the tremendously popular Galaxy S II was officially unveiled at MWC in February 2011, and managed to rack up 3 million global pre-orders by the end of April. Its successor, on the other hand, managed to garner triple the number of pre-orders in the three weeks since it was revealed in London.

The news comes from (what else) an anonymous Samsung representative, who also pointed out that production was in full swing at the company’s facility in Gumi, Gyeongsangbuk-do Province. At that pace, Korean analysts expect that the consumer electronics giant is capable of churning out nearly 5 million Galaxy S IIIs each month.

Given the months of hype surrounding it and the scores of carriers across the globe that have already committed to carrying it — 296 at last glance — the Galaxy S III seems well-equipped to shatter the records set by its forebears. It wasn’t long ago that Samsung announced that the Galaxy S II had tiptoed over the 20 million sales mark, an accomplishment that came roughly 10 months after the device launched. Nine million units potentially in the bag is a strong start, and it doesn’t even include U.S. customers — our LTE-enabled models are slated to hit our shores well after the first international batches are sent out.

Charts: Facebook’s IPO In Historical Context And Its Share Price Over Time

Posted: 18 May 2012 06:22 AM PDT

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Facebook will be the largest tech IPO in history today as the company and its early shareholders raise about $16 billion at the final price of $38 a share. There is also an allotment for them to sell up to $2.4 billion more in the next 30 days. Here’s how it compares to other historical IPOs, according to NASDAQ data.

Then here’s how it compares to how much Google and Microsoft each raised in their respective IPOs.

We also have historical price data from SecondMarket, which is a private secondary market that became popular among former Facebook employees who wanted to offload part of their stake in the company. Here’s more data from them:

Facebook has outperformed many of the largest tech companies in the world over last few years. (That’s not totally surprising though since they started from a much lower base.)

Here’s how the number of transactions has scaled up on SecondMarket over the last few years.

Analysts: Nokia On Track To Burn Through Its Whole $6B Cash Pile In Next 2 Years

Posted: 18 May 2012 06:17 AM PDT

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The Facebook IPO is expected to usher in a day of massive trading volumes on the markets, and some believe that might translate to a lift for some tech stocks. But one that could really use some help has just been served another course of bad press: Nokia is apparently burning through its cash reserves — fast.

The company, for years the biggest mobile phone maker in the world, has fallen on very tough times, as competition from companies like Samsung, Apple and a barrage of inexpensive device makers, have translated into declines in sales, market share and profitability.

That’s now translating into what has been identified as another issue: the burning of the cash pile. In the last five quarters, Nokia has burned through €2.1 billion ($2.7 billion) from its cash reserves. Analysts polled by Reuters on average believe that at the rate Nokia is going, it will go through another €2 billion ($2.5 billion) in the next three quarters, with the total current cash pile of €4.9 billion ($6 billion) gone within two years.

To put that in some context, in 2007 Nokia had cash reserves of €10 billion in 2007 ($12.7 billion). That points to its cash pile burn accelerating — a result of the fact that the company has been trying to transform its business, which requires investment, while at the same time seeing massive sales drops:

In the company’s last quarterly earnings, reported April 18, Nokia reported that overall revenues were down by $4 billion (€3.4 billion) to $9.7 billion (€7.4 billion). Smartphones, the core of Nokia's fightback strategy, declined by more than 50 percent both in revenues and unit sales, and the company saw a 40 percent drop in revenues from devices, its biggest business, with sales in those now at €4.2 billion. Nokia also swung to an operating loss of $1.7 billion, blaming the double-whammy of competition from Apple/Google as well as restructuring costs, as the company has pushed to put a stronger emphasis on its new line of smartphones in a race to gain back its rapidly disappearing market share in the higher-margin end of the smartphone market.

That market share has been slipping for some time now, but it was in the last quarter that it finally slipped enough to put Nokia into number-two behind Samsung. According to Q1 figures out earlier this week from Gartner, Nokia now has 19.8 percent of the mobile market to Samsung’s 20.7 percent. While Samsung’s sales have been rising, up to 86.6 million units from 68.8 million in the quarter a year ago, Nokia’s have been going in the reverse direction: now at 83.1 million units compared to 107.6 million a year ago.

Nokia currently has two tranches of credit bonds outstanding: bonds of €1.25 billion euros at 5.5 percent maturing in 2014 and €500 million of notes at 6.75 percent due in 2019. These have now reached the lowest investment grade status at S&P, Fitch and Moody’s with negative outlook.

“I would not rule out the possibility of Nokia being downgraded further,” Nancy Utterback, a credit strategist at Aviva Investors, told Reuters. “The company is in a negative spiral that will be hard to reverse.”

Reuters does also point out some bright spots. The company is expected to sell 20 million of its new Windows Phone-based smartphones this year, and 46 million next year. And if the company continues on its cost-reducing course, it could end 2012 with €2.8 billion ($3.6 billion) in net cash this year.

And there is another possibility that we will likely see raised more and more: a “white knight” in the form of a Microsoft acquisition. The software company  is already heavily entwined with Nokia over the use of the Windows Phone OS — paying Nokia $1 billion annually for this — a relationship that could well deepen if Nokia’s problems continue to grow.

 [Image: Images of Money, Flickr]

Watch Mark Zuckerberg Ring The NASDAQ Bell Before Facebook’s IPO

Posted: 18 May 2012 06:14 AM PDT

Nasdaq Welcomes Facebook

You can watch  here on TechCrunch or on the NASDAQ website as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made history this morning ringing the bell to open the day’s trading on the NASDAQ from Facebook’s headquarters just before his company’s IPO. The ceremony didn’t include Zuckerberg giving a speech or any remarks. However, he did sign the NASDAQ bell’s touchscreen “To a more open and connected world”. Facebook stock won’t actually begin trading until 8am PST / 11am EST so investors will have a few more hours to salivate.

Employees have been at 1 Hacker Way in Menlo Park for an all-night hackathon that’s about to culminate with Zuck’s bell-ringing ceremony.

9:26am EST – The ceremony begins.

9:28am EST – Zuckerberg was flanked by COO Sheryl Sandberg, VP of Product Chris Cox, and several other employees.

9:30am EST – With no remarks, Zuckerberg has rung the bell. For those who missed it, you can watch a short video of the bell ringing from Facebook employee Bob Baldwin here.

9:31am EST – Zuck signed the NASDAQ Opening Bell touchscreen “To a more open and connected world”, as is now shown on the NASDAQ’s screen in Times Square

XKCD: Punch Me In The Face If I Use Klout

Posted: 18 May 2012 05:41 AM PDT

klout

I don’t understand Klout. I’ve convinced myself that it’s best that way. I just avoid it, really. Grading a person’s social media influence on a scale of 100 seems like something popular girls would do in high school.

Like Alexia said last year, nobody gives a damn about your Klout score. I honestly didn’t give a damn about my Klout score until I heard about the deals with airlines. That said, free perks do not outweigh worrying about a seemingly arbitrary scoring system. Today’s XKCD comic nails it. Please, Internet, if I ever write about Klout in any way, punch me square in the face.

But let’s not stop there! Join the movement! Follow XKCD and opt out of Klout!
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