And The First Facebook IPO Hackathon Photos Roll In
 Hundreds of Facebook employees congregated at 'Hacker Square' at the company's Menlo Park headquarters this evening ahead of the company's insanely-hyped initial public offering. Now, some of the first photos are starting to trickle in. There was a standing ovation for chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, who gave a talk before several long-time engineers bounced in while wearing capes or bringing boomboxes.
Tonight Facebook is having its 31st Hackathon to celebrate the IPO. Hackathons are a company tradition. They're a place where engineers and other non-technical employees get to stay out all night building concepts into real products that sometimes eventually get shipped. Some of the big products that have come out of earlier Hackathons include Facebook chat and an early version of Timeline. |
Spotting The Next Facebook: Why Emotions Are Big Business
 Tomorrow Facebook will sell shares in one of the biggest tech IPOs in history. New investors will gobble up the stock to get a piece of the global phenomenon famously started in Mark Zuckerberg’s dorm room in 2004. But while owning the stock will have quantifiable value when it trades on the open market, few buyers will be able to say truthfully that they understood the value of the company just a few years ago.
Ask yourself candidly, what did you think of Facebook the first time you landed on its homepage? Where you blown away? Could you see how it would fill a gaping need in the lives of nearly a billion people? If you’re honest with yourself, and you’re not Peter Thiel, your answer is probably, “No, not really.” |
Facebook Keeps Shipping. Now You Can Silence Spammy Apps And More With New Notification Controls
 If there's something on Facebook that won't stop pinging you with Notifications, tell it to shut up instantly with Facebook's new granular, in-line notification controls. Hover over an alert in the Facebook.com homepage's globe icon drop-down and click the 'x' for the option to turn off notifications from that app, group, event, or post you commented on. The whole drop-down has a slick new look, too
Previously you had to dig your way to the dedicated Notifications Settings pageto make these changes, and there was no way to turn off a specific source of alerts -- you had to silence all your events or all your posts. Facebook has confirmed with me that most of the changes to notifications will be rolled out to everyone by tonight, except for app alert controls which are still in testing.
As we accumulate more friends and apps, Facebook's notifications can turn from delightful pointers to annoying distractions that interrupt our lives. These new controls mean if you want a more zen Facebook experience, you can make it so. |
Kleiner Perkins Closes On $525 Million For Its 15th Venture Fund, ‘KPCB 15′
 Silicon Valley venture capital stalwart Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers is announcing this evening that it has closed on a $525 million round for its fifteenth venture fund, dubbed 'KPCB 15.' The fund will be focused on making early-stage investments in digital, green tech, and health sciences startups. |
Facebook’s $38 Share Price Makes Instagram Deal Worth Nearly $1.2 Billion
 Facebook's $38 share price would make its deal to buy Instagram worth nearly $1.2 billion, up from the roughly $1 billion price the company announced in April.
That's a nice little bump but the deal hasn't gone through given regulatory reviews. On top of that, we don't know the restrictions on the shares like when they vest or if they're subject to lock-up period. When Facebook agreed to buy Instagram, it said it would pay with $300 million in cash and 22,999,412 shares of stock. That stock is now worth nearly $874 million, creating a $1.17 billion price tag.
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Gasp! Thanks To These Startups, Teachers Are Making Money On The Web
 On the whole, teacher compensation in the U.S. is embarrassing. To pick on marketers, some might see the fact that the average marketing manager makes twice the average salary of just about every type of teacher as just a wee bit backwards.
Luckily, there are a number of startups that are starting to change that, thanks to the Web and the growing popularity of open, online educational platforms. For example, Udemy, a web platform that allows anyone to host and take online classes, this morning announced that its top ten instructors earned a combined $1.6 million over the last 12 months. |
The Smart Si Thermostat Aims To Upset The Nest
 This is the age of thinking thermostats and, not to be outdone by a well-known circular model, hardware startup Ecobee has released the Smart Si. It is a smart thermostat with small color screen and a web interface so temperature wonks can update their heating models on the fly.
The Smart Si is not quite as sleek as the Nest but offers more accessible settings - think of this as the Linux to Nest's OS X. The web interface allows you to see your home's current status, set a vacation profile, and view reports on your system's performance including HVAC and heater usage. |
Pulse Is Getting Ready To Make Money, Looks To Hire Its First Sales Executive
 Pulse, the popular free mobile news reader for iPhone, iPad and Android, could soon get ads. Until now, Pulse, which launched its first app in May 2010, was ad free and the company focused more on user acquisition than monetizing its service. A new job posting on Pulse's site, however, clearly spells out the company's plans to start making money in the near future. The company is currently looking for its first sales executive and says that it is "building innovative and disruptive ways of empowering brands to share their content and tell their story in a way that’s natural and native to Pulse." |
Hey Bike Owners: Spinlister Can Make You Up To $100 A Week
 It's been about a month and a half since peer-to-peer bike rental service launched in San Francisco and New York. Since then, the New York-based startup has been busy trying to attract bike owners to list their bikes and improve its inventory, while also trying to improve the overall experience of using its site.
Despite only being available in two cities and for six weeks, the startup has already attracted a fair amount of interest from listers and renters. It has an inventory of about 400 from bikes from individuals, and more than 2,000 from bike rental shops listed. And it's seen rental interest from all over the world, with renters from six of the seven continents. (Antarctica is the only holdout.) |
Facebook Credits About to Grow Up…. Fast
 Although introduced in 2009, we’ve only seen glimpses of what Facebook Credits will become when it grows up, and Facebook is about to kick off the training wheels.
So far, Facebook has done little to promote the virtual currency of Facebook Credits and it’s been used almost entirely in social gaming. But even with this limited exposure and promotion, Facebook Credits’ fees already represents $557 Million in revenue or 15 percent of Facebook’s entire 2011 revenue. Even more remarkable is that less than two percent of Facebook users bought virtual goods with Facebook Credits in 2011, yet it still represented 15 percent of Facebook’s revenue, primarily from just one vertical – social gaming. One vertical and two percent of members represented 15 percent of Facebook’s 2011 revenue! |
FastCustomer Unleashes Telephone Call Concierge Service
 "People are sick of shitty customer service," said FastCustomer co-founder, Stephanie Hay. And she and her team aim to do something about it.
Their first product, for the iPhone, Android, and other platforms, allowed you to search for a customer service number - say Adam & Eve - and press a button. The program waits on hold for you and then calls you on your phone immediately upon connecting. The company saw 100,000 downloads and estimates that they saved people 1 million minutes of hold time.
They've just launched a new telephone concierge service, 1855-DONT-HOLD (855-366-8465), that allows you to call in and perform the same operation. In short, this thing stays on hold for you. The whole process usually takes less than an hour.
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How High Will Facebook Stock Go Tomorrow? Place Your Bet At FacebookIPODayClosingPrice.com
 Angel investor and all-around web magnate Chris Sacca wrote a quick tweet early yesterday about how it'd be cool if there was a website where people could predict where Facebook's stock will end up at the end of its first day as a publicly traded company.
Well, ask and ye shall receive.
A programmer named James Proud answered the call, hacking together FacebookIPODayClosingPrice.com, a fun little website that keeps a running tally of people's bets on where Facebook's stock will close on IPO day. |
Twitter Wants An Interest Graph: Now Tracking Your Browsing To Make Follow Suggestions
 Twitter does a lot of things right, but it still hasn't solved the problem of turning its noise into signal. After joining Twitter, it can take a lot of following and unfollowing scores of accounts before you've curated a stream that makes sense for you. With its platform growing fast, Twitter is looking to make the onboarding process a little easier (and more personalized) for new users, which is why it announced today via its blog that it will begin serving users tailored suggestions of who they should follow. |
Verizon: If You Want To Keep Your Unlimited Data, Pay Full Price For Your Next Smartphone
 Verizon CFO Fran Shammo ruffled a few feathers yesterday when he mentioned at an investor conference that every one of their customers would be on one of the carrier's new data share plans.
In an effort to clarify his meaning, Verizon sent a statement to a handful of news outlets today that shines a bit more light on how they plan to make this situation work. |
Salesforce.com: Q1 Net Loss Of $19.5M On Sales Of $695M. Benioff Says It’ll Have Its First $3B Year FY2013
 The ongoing interest and use of cloud-based services has brought a generally good set of results to one of the leaders in the enterprise software-as-a-service business. Salesforce.com released Q1 earnings just now and in a quarter that is traditionally slower for the company, it swung to a net loss of $19.5 million, compared to a net profit of $530 million a year ago. Nevertheless, total revenues for the quarter were $695 million and earnings per share of $0.37 -- beating estimates from analysts as polled by First Call, who expected adjusted EPS of $0.34 and $678.21 million for revenue. The figures were also better than Saleforce's own guidance of $0.33-$0.34 for the EPS and revenue of $673 million - $678 million.
The sales were an increase of 38 percent on revenues for the same period a year ago, and Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com, says that the company is on track for its first $3 billion year; last year the company broke new ground with $2 billion in sales.
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Vizibility Launches Its NFC-Enabled Business Cards
 Love'em or hate'em, despite the best efforts of Bump and others, traditional business cards aren't going away anytime soon. At least, though, some companies are trying to bridge the gap between paper cards and efforts like Bump. New York-based Vizibility first announced its NFC-enabled businesses cards during SXSW earlier this year. Now, the online identity management platform for professionals, is ready to take this project out of beta and is making it widely available as a standard feature for its paying subscribers or for a one-time fee of $15 for users with free accounts. |
Facebook Will Have The Biggest Tech IPO Ever, Raising $16 Billion With $38 Share Price
 Facebook shares will start trading at $38 tomorrow, the company confirmed in a release, giving it a valuation of $104.12 billion. Facebook and its early shareholders will raise just over $16 billion in tomorrow's much anticipated IPO.
At a $104 billion valuation, Facebook is worth more than any other tech IPO candidate at the time of its offering. It also perfectly matches what Facebook shares have been trading at in secondary markets over the last several months. Google was worth $23 billion at the time of its very unusual Dutch auction IPO back in 2004. As of tomorrow Facebook will be worth about half of what Google is worth now. |
We Talk To Two Exciting New NYC Startups: Fancy Hands And Stamped [TCTV]
 Last night, Time Inc. threw a pretty badass party in Manhattan to celebrate "Ten NYC Startups To Watch." Among the ten were Fancy Hands, a site that offers up a personal assistant for every and any need you might have, and Stamped, a social network that lets you put your stamp of approval on the things you like.
We pulled aside founders of both companies to find out a little more about them, their business models, and why they think they deserve a spot on Time Inc.'s list. |
Freshdesk Launches $10M “Future Fund” To Bring Free Help Desk Support To 500+ Startups
 Freshdesk, the makers of cloud-based help desk software that allows companies to support their customers through email, phone, website, Facebook and Twitter, are on a mission to compete with the big boys of the space, like Zendesk and Salesforce's Desk.com. Though it believes that the biggest market opportunity down the road will be in offering a unique brand of cloud-based customer support to the enterprise, Freshdesk wants to entice (and give back to) the little guys as well.
That's why the startup is today announcing the first phase of its "Future Fund," which will provide customer support services to 501 startups and early-stage businesses through $10 million-worth of services which includes free support for one year. Any startup with less than $1 million in annual revenue qualifies, but to get thing started, Freshdesk has teamed up with incubators and angel funds, like YouWeb, Tandem Entrepreneurs, Internet India Fund, 500 Startups, and Proudly Made. |
The Google AdSense Killer And 3 Other Ways Facebook Could Make A Lot More Money
 Tiny sidebar and news feed ads aren't going to cut it. If Facebook wants to live up to a $104 billion valuation it will need bold new revenue streams. An offsite ad network, big glossy news feed ads, and payments for physical goods are a few ways it could boost its average revenue per user far beyond the puny $4.34 a year it earns today.
Facebook has a tough decision to make now that's going public. It will have to strike a new balance between the good of its users, advertisers, app developers, and investors. If it refuses to explore new business models, its share price could sink. But if it strays too far in favor of making money, Facebook could lose its addictiveness and the faith of its users. Here's the four aces Mark Zuckerberg could have up his sleeve. |