Tag Archives: tech

Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO

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After arriving from rival Google in 2008, Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s second-in-command has helped grow its 70 million user base into over 750 million active “friends” today, representing about 11% of the world’s population. The Harvard MBA served as chief of staff for the U.S. Treasury Department under President Bill Clinton, and managed Google’s online global sales and operations as a vice president. One of few prominent women in tech, Sandberg has been vocal about empowering women. “We still haven’t achieved the goal of real equality for women in the workplace and men in the home,” she wrote in an August op-ed. “We can–we must–do better.”

“Larry Summers taught me early in my career, you want to work for the absolutely smartest people you can, and Mark Zuckerberg definitely falls to that category,” Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO tells Forbes. “People like Mark come around once in a decade, once in a generation, who have such a strong view of where the world is going, or should be heading and then the tenacity and the determination to actually create that world.”


How to Play the Facebook IPO

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SmartMoney.com’s Jack Hough is on WSJ’s Mean Street with strategies for investors looking to jump into the Facebook IPO:

What could go wrong on Facebook’s march to one of the biggest IPOs in history? WSJ’s Shira Ovide discusses on Digits:

Lastly, Forbes editors on what you need to know about the social networking giant’s bottom line:


Social Media More Addictive Than Alcohol

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Powered by Guardian.co.ukThis article titled “Twitter is harder to resist than cigarettes and alcohol, study finds” was written by James Meikle, for The Guardian on Friday 3rd February 2012 10.37 UTC

Tweeting or checking emails may be harder to resist than cigarettes and alcohol, according to researchers who tried to measure how well people could resist their desires.

They even claim that while sleep and sex may be stronger urges, people are more likely to give in to longings or cravings to use social and other media.

A team headed by Wilhelm Hofmann of Chicago University’s Booth Business School say their experiment, using BlackBerrys, to gauge the willpower of 205 people aged between 18 and 85 in and around the German city of Würtzburg is the first to monitor such responses “in the wild” outside a laboratory.

The results will soon be published in the journal Psychological Science.

The participants were signalled seven times a day over 14 hours for seven consecutive days so they could message back whether they were experiencing a desire at that moment or had experienced one within the last 30 minutes, what type it was, the strength (up to irresistible), whether it conflicted with other desires and whether they resisted or went along with it. There were 10,558 responses and 7,827 “desire episodes” reported.

“Modern life is a welter of assorted desires marked by frequent conflict and resistance, the latter with uneven success,” said Hofmann. Sleep and leisure were the most problematic desires, suggesting “pervasive tension between natural inclinations to rest and relax and the multitude of work and other obligations”.

The researchers found that as the day wore on, willpower became lower. Their paper says highest “self-control failure rates” were recorded with media. “Resisting the desire to work was likewise prone to fail. In contrast, people were relatively successful at resisting sports inclinations, sexual urges, and spending impulses, which seems surprising given the salience in modern culture of disastrous failures to control sexual impulses and urges to spend money.”

The academics, who included one each from Florida State University and Minnesota University, said the subjective reporting of desire was relatively low for tobacco, alcohol and coffee, apparently challenging “the stereotype of addiction as driven by irresistibly strong desires”.

They added: “Resisting the desire to work when it conflicts with other goals such as socialising or leisure activities may be difficult because work can define people’s identities, dictate many aspects of daily life, and invoke penalties if important duties are shirked.”

Hofmann told the Guardian: “Desires for media may be comparatively harder to resist because of their high availability and also because it feels like it does not ‘cost much’ to engage in these activities, even though one wants to resist.

“With cigarettes and alcohol there are more costs – long-term as well as monetary – and the opportunity may not always be the right one. So, even though giving in to media desires is certainly less consequential, the frequent use may still ‘steal’ a lot of people’s time.”.

Hofmann added: “We made clear to participants that answering the BlackBerrys did not count. Also people really did not feel a desire to use them – they only beeped once in a while and, if anything, that was more annoying than pleasing, I guess. And there was nothing else they could use the devices for.”

Würtzburg had been the testing ground because he had worked there as an assistant professor until recently.

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Facebook’s quietly confident IPO

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Powered by Guardian.co.ukThis article titled “Facebook’s quietly confident IPO” was written by Paul Carr, for guardian.co.uk on Tuesday 31st January 2012 14.56 UTC

About time too. Facebook is on the point of filing papers with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in preparation for its long-awaited initial public offering. This is both big news and no news at all.

It’s big news because, as a friend who works on Wall Street tweeted yesterday, a Facebook initial public offering (IPO) is to Wall Street what a pony is to a little girl. So excited is the financial world about what the Wall Street Journal calls the “Big Kahuna of stock listings“, that the NYSE and the Nasdaq are fighting like rabid dogs to host the listing. To keep people guessing, Facebook has reserved the ticker symbol $FB on both exchanges.

Meanwhile Facebook’s IPO is no news at all because, well, we’ve all been talking about it for years. In fact Facebook has been around for so damn long – and is so damn high profile – that it’s almost a surprise to hear it’s still privately owned. The beyond-healthy secondary market for the company’s shares only adds to the illusion that it’s already a public company: private trading of Facebook stock on Sharespost.com currently values Zuckerberg’s empire at $84bn (£53bn). Some analysts – or at least enthusiastic bloggers – are predicting a valuation hitting $100bn when the company IPOs.

We’ll know for sure soon enough. We’ll also know how much money the company makes selling ads next to all of our embarrassing party photos and banal status updates. Spoiler alert: it’s a shedload..

But first Facebook has to enter its mandatory quiet period – where everyone closely involved in the company has to keep their collective mouth shut as potential investors, the media and regulators dig around in the company’s business and figure out if there’s anything important we should know before we buy shares. For recent Silicon Valley IPOs such as Groupon and Zynga the quiet period has been a tragedy wrapped inside a comedy. And not least because Valley CEOs don’t seem to understand the meaning of the word “quiet”.

When Zynga CEO Mark Pincus faced a roomful of investors in December – days before his company went public – he gleefully informed them that Zynga would likely double its number of paid subscribers. The announcement left financial commentators aghast – the prediction wasn’t in the company’s prospectus and is precisely the kind of thing that CEOs aren’t supposed to say during a quiet period. Still Pincus’s ballsy prediction did little to boost Zynga’s prospects – despite being a hugely profitable enterprise (those virtual goods quickly add up), the stock dropped 5% on its first day and has consistently traded below its $10 offer price. Or as Forbes put it when reporting those numbers: “Zynga IPO goes SplatVille“. The reason for the failure? Forbes suggested that the market simply wasn’t sure how long the world will continue to buy imaginary tractors to tend digital crops.

And then there’s Groupon: the discount group-buying site thing that originally priced at $20 at a share, enjoyed a day-one increase of 31% but is currently trading back down at $19.6. Like Zynga’s Pincus, Groupon’s CEO Andrew Mason is a renowned loudmouth. When, as often happens, critics took advantage of Groupon’s quiet period to write negative reviews of the company, Mason came up with a breathtakingly ham-fisted way of fighting back. He wrote a series of “private” memos to staff addressing the criticisms – memos which, wouldn’t you know it, ended up being leaked to the press. The SEC was, to put it mildly, unamused.

So, given the, uh, shaky track record of recent Valley IPOs, are we likely to see Facebook crash and burn? Or can we at least look forward to fireworks during the quiet period? Actually, probably not. For one thing, despite what you might have seen in that ridiculous movie, Mark Zuckerberg is no Mark Pincus or Andrew Mason. Even when not bound by a quiet period, Zuckerberg is notoriously tight-lipped in making statements about his company. Only very rarely, say when a mob armed with burning torches is marching towards his office over changes to Facebook’s privacy settings, does Zuckerberg force out a terse statement explaining himself. Hell, he probably can’t wait to be legally barred from speaking.

But even if Zuckerberg was mindful to respond to critics, it’s hard to know what’s left to respond to. Facebook has been more carefully scrutinised than a three-time presidential candidate. There have been dozens of books, tens of thousands of articles and all kinds of legal scrutiny over the years. The company’s scandals have all been covered and re-covered to the point where there’s barely anything left to know.

Finally, unlike Zynga or Groupon or most other high-profile tech IPOs, there’s not much chance of Facebook going out of fashion any time soon. We’ve been declaring Facebook “over” for many years now but it stubbornly refuses to become unpopular. Instead it has slowly become the de facto login for so many services that it’s hard to imagine life without it.

So, while Wall Street might be salivating over the events of the next few months, and while the few major shareholders who haven’t already cashed out are about to get very rich, for the rest of us there’s likely to be only one surprising thing about Facebook’s IPO. And that’s just how dull a $100bn flotation can be.

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One World Trade Center, The World’s Most Expensive Office Tower

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The price tag for One World Trade Center, the signature skyscraper under construction at Ground Zero in New York, has risen to more than $3.8 billion.

According to WSJ, the price tag for the building has shot up $700m from the latest public estimate, making it the world’s most expensive new office tower.

Once completed, the 1,776-foot tower will be the tallest in the U.S., but it won’t be the highest in the world.

In comparison, the developer of the world’s tallest tower, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, said it cost $1.5 billion to construct.

Most of the cost overruns are due to the security measures being taken in the design of the building which sits on a site that has been bombed twice by terrorists.

Conde Nast has already signed a lease to move its headquarters to more than 1 million square feet at 1 World Trade Center.


Apple, the world’s first trillion-dollar company?

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Powered by Guardian.co.ukThis article titled “Can Apple become the world’s first trillion-dollar company?” was written by Dan Gillmor, for guardian.co.uk on Friday 27th January 2012 19.58 UTC

Almost certainly, Apple will soon hit $500bn in market capitalization – half a trillion dollars. So, based on its current growth, it’s fair to wonder if it will become the world’s first trillion-dollar company. (I’m far from the first to do so, by the way; see this piece, for example.)

The first question to ask is, who cares? After all, $1,000,000,000,000 is just a number, albeit a very, very, very big number. Yet, if achieved, it would represent more than just a triumph of one company’s plan. It would speak to the way global economics and commerce have shifted – in both useful and worrisome ways.

At the beginning of the millennium, people were asking this about another technology company, the digital networking giant Cisco. Then came the popping of the 1990s bubble, of which Cisco had been a major beneficiary, and the company has never come close to its top valuation.

Apple is different. I can’t think of another company that’s been more innovative and – this is key – efficient and brutal, not just in its visible part of the marketplace, but also in the rear echelons of business that end users rarely notice. It is this combination that has brought Apple to where it is today, and the company’s momentum appears only to be growing. (Incidentally, Apple is not the only possible trillion-dollar outfit; Facebook, which increasingly takes on the hue of an unregulated public utility, is another.)

Let me tell you how Apple could reach the trillion-dollar mark – and why I doubt it will.

No company has been more relentlessly innovative in its field in recent years, period. Apple’s particular genius has been to expand that field, to be first or early in categories it defined, and then, when competitors caught up, pushed further. Its attention to customers borders on fanatical, not always in good ways. Still, Apple’s arrogant paternalism, which has pushed me away, is nonetheless felt by many customers to be preferable to the slapdash and customer-unfriendly ways of most Windows PC makers and the other smartphone sellers. And Apple’s dominance in the tablet market shows few signs of any plausible near-term challenge.

Apple’s quality control is best-of-breed, even if its devices are far from perfect. Coupled with the unquestioned best customer service, buyers pay much more for Apple devices than ones from challengers. Among Apple’s main customers are mobile phone carriers, which resell to consumers, and Apple commands a huge premium in that market.

Growth potential remains extraordinary, in part because the mobile device business – Apple’s real cash cow – is evolving so quickly. Customers are surprisingly willing to buy expensive new devices every year or two, and Apple’s customers are more willing than most to open their wallets. Moreover, the company’s much-rumored move into television, which is becoming just one more kind of video, could be yet another major revenue stream.

The supply side of Apple’s power is known mostly inside the tech industry. Just as Walmart revolutionized the supply chain in its own category – and then brutalized its suppliers to create cheaper and cheaper goods – Apple has made its own supply chain into the most efficient machine of its kind. This means, among other things, that Apple can sell hardware at extremely competitive prices, and given its huge margins, the company is much better-positioned than its competitors to wage price wars. Tim Cook, who formally took over the CEO job just before Steve Jobs’ death last fall, led the team that created this leviathan, and he’s clearly pushing the boundaries.

Apple is also increasingly global, moving away from its former focus on the American market. In years past, I rarely saw its products when traveling overseas; now, I see iPads, iPhones and Macs everywhere.

Finally, consider that Apple has done all this in a difficult economic climate. Imagine what it might do if a robust global recovery occurs.

Those factors, and many others, suggest that Apple has enormous possibilities for growth. For every dollar its share price rises, the company gains about a billion dollars in added market capitalization. Could it double again? Betting against Apple in any respect has become a high-risk undertaking.

Yet, while I have no doubt that Apple will continue to grow and thrive, at least for the next few years, doubling its current value is a much more challenging task than it would seem on the surface.

It’s unwise, first, to assume that Apple’s currently hapless competitors won’t get their act together, at some point. Moreover, while Apple may make best-of-category gear, sometimes, “good enough” is, in fact, good enough – if the price is right.

Second, Apple’s increasingly predatory business practices could eventually attract more serious attention from competition authorities. Perhaps US antitrust officials will hide their eyes, but even Microsoft – the Apple of its day, in terms of market power – eventually found itself under scrutiny. Among other issues, Apple’s scorched-earth patent war against Android hardware makers (though, curiously, not Google itself) and lockdown tactics with the iOS that powers iPhones and iPads are, I believe, blatantly anticompetitive. Microsoft’s jousting with competition authorities created a valuable brake on that company’s historic tactics; the rise of Google and others didn’t occur because of that braking effect, but Microsoft knew it couldn’t even try to repeat its earlier abuses.

Third, speaking of abuses, at some point, Apple will be obliged to face a reality that and almost all other US tech companies try to ignore. As they achieve more efficiency, they are doing so at the cost of jobs in their own country and doing too little about harsh labor conditions imposed by their suppliers. Apple pays lip service to this issue, at least; someday, it may have to pay real money to persuade its customers that they’re doing business with an honorable outfit.

Fourth, it’s difficult by definition to maintain margins once a company gets past a certain level of sales and profitability. Initiatives that moved the needle earlier barely register when you get to the kind of domination Apple is achieving.

Fifth, macroeconomic factors do matter. Ask Cisco, among others.

Finally, and most important in the long run, innovation does emerge to challenge our assumptions. Ultimately, monopolists and the most powerful enterprises find themselves on the outside looking in to new territories and markets, as they try to defend old ones. Apple is more focused and relentless than most, but it, too, will reach a point where it is brought down – or at least challenged – by a new reality it either didn’t see coming or couldn’t master.

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Facebook IPO Coming Next Week

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The Facebook IPO is upon us… Want to get in and acquire Facebook stock? Here’s the details of the Facebook IPO, which will be filed next week. Facebook — which will likely raise up to $10 billion in its offering – — is on track to be the largest Internet I.P.O. on record, besting Google’s $1.67 billion offering in 2004. “It’s inevitable,” said Sean Parker in an interview with DealBook’s Andrew Ross Sorkin on CNBC this week. “There’s a possibility that it will be the largest offering in history.” This IPO will make Mark Zuckerberg the richest man in the universe. Would you “like” Facebook stock? Via the WSJ:

Facebook Inc. could file papers for its initial public offering as early as next week, people familiar with the matter said, as anticipation mounts for what is likely to be one of the biggest debuts for a U.S. company.

The deal, seen as defining moment for the latest Web investing boom, could raise as much as $10 billion and value the social network between $75 billion to $100 billion, said people familiar with the matter. A valuation of $75 billion would be below earlier expectations.

The website, which in less than eight years has attracted more than 800 million members, has changed the way people across the globe communicate, from organizing political protests to sharing baby pictures.

he Internet giant is close to picking Morgan Stanley to lead the deal, these people said. Wall Street banks, many of them struggling amid a crimp in trading profits, have been jostling for a leading role in the deal, which could yield them tens of millions of dollars in banker fees, potential new business and bragging rights.

A nod for Morgan Stanley would mark a disappointment for rival Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which a year ago was viewed as having an edge to lead the deal. One person familiar with the matter said that while Morgan Stanley would likely land the coveted “lead-left” spot on an IPO financial filing, Goldman would also likely play a significant role.

Spokespeople for Facebook, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs declined to comment.

Facebook could file documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission as early as this coming Wednesday, said one person familiar with the matter. But that timing is just one scenario Facebook executives are considering, the person said. Executives are also considering filing a few weeks later, the person said.

People familiar with the matter have said the company is targeting an IPO sometime between April and June.

A $10 billion Facebook offering would rank fourth among IPOs for U.S. companies, behind Visa Inc., General Motors Co. and AT&T Wireless, according to Dealogic. It would rank Facebook as the biggest U.S. Internet offering ever, replacing Google Inc., which raised $1.9 billion in 2004 at a $23 billion valuation.

At a $100 billion valuation, Facebook would be worth about the same as McDonald’s Corp. and nearly half of Google.

Facebook’s revenue is driven by its advertising business, as big brands rush to the site to interact with consumers through display ads and fan pages. Facebook has been able to increase its world-wide advertising revenue from $738 million in 2009 to $3.8 billion in 2011, according to estimates from research firm eMarketer. It isn’t known if Facebook is profitable.

Facebook’s final valuation will be determined by a variety of factors, people familiar with the matter said, such as investor demand for social media, the IPO market and the health of the European economy.

The IPO will mint a new generation of Silicon Valley millionaires on the level not seen since Google’s offering. Some 3,000 people work at Facebook.

An IPO will also test the ability of Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, age 27, to manage a global company whose financial performance will be scrutinized every three months by investors. Mr. Zuckerberg started the company in 2004 out of his Harvard University dorm room. Overall, about 500 million users now log into the site daily, according to Facebook.

Mr. Zuckerberg had been reluctant to push forward with an IPO. People familiar with his thinking said he has been fearful of the damage an IPO could do to the company’s culture. He wants employees focused on making great products, not the stock price, they said.

But outside forces are partly pushing his hand. Facebook executives began to realize in 2010 that Facebook would have more than 500 shareholders by the end of 2011, which would trigger a regulatory requirement that Facebook start publicly reporting financial information.

Mr. Zuckerberg decided it made more sense for Facebook to go public and reap some financial benefit from an IPO, rather than stay private but have to release its financial information, said people familiar with his thinking.

Leading the Facebook sale would be a huge win for Morgan Stanley, which last year cemented its position as the top Internet stock underwriter by leading the IPOs of LinkedIn Corp., Groupon Inc., and Zynga Inc. The bank’s global tech banking team, led by Michael Grimes and Paul Chamberlain, is also based in Menlo Park.


Blackberry P’9981 by Porsche Design

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While the Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android-based devices have increasingly captured the smartphone market, the Blackberry had seen its share steadily eroded. But the folks at Research in Motion still have a strong hold in the corporate smartphone market. If you’re still one of those addicted to your Blackberry – and have some extra money you are just dying to spend – here’s the phone for you.

The new Blackberry P’9981 comes from the masters at Porsche Design. The P’9981 is similar to the Blackberry 9900. But Porsche Design has infused the phone with artful additions. The entire body is forged from stainless steel. The battery cover is wrapped in real leather. The keyboard is made of stark metal. Plus the Porsche Design logo is stamped boldly across the top.

The P’9981 is slightly bigger than it’s 9900 cousin – both in size and weight. But it doesn’t feel heavy. In fact, it feels robust and solid – like it can take a three foot fall without any concern.

The P’9981 is about as nice as you’ll get for a Blackberry. The biggest obstacle for most will be the price – a hefty $2,350. For the CrackBerry addict with some extra cash, it’s a nice buy. But others will likely shy away due to the price and the diminishing influence of RIM’s iconic smartphone.

The Blackberry P’9981 is available in Europe and the Middle East. It will be available in the U.S. this spring.


New Richard Mille Sapphire Crystal Watch Worth $1.65 Million

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The expression “time is money” just got interesting. After presenting remarkable limited series of watches, such as the Winter Olympics 2010 watch, famous brand Richard Mille  launches a new, but not less interesting edition of 5 watches entitled RM 56 Felipe Massa SAPPHIRE, each with a price tag of $1.65 Million.

Even though the watches produced by Richard Mille are known to pay tribute to elegance and luxury, not many people expected a design that features the entire casing carved into a piece of sapphire crystal rock. This makes the entire process of production interesting and, according to official data, quite laborious. Professionals at Richard Mille stated that it takes 1,000 hours to machine the case, another 430 hours to grind and further 350 for the finishing touches!

One could say all this effort is well worth it. The end result is intricate, stylish and absorbing. So much so, that telling time could be a bit more difficult than when dealing with a common watch, as the user’s attention is likely to be drawn by the impressive exposed mechanical system. The watch is said to be reflective and scratch resistant. The Richard Mille logo is present on the back, as a reassurance of quality and opulence.

Richard Mille


Steve Jobs Doll Canceled

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Sorry, there will not be a Steve Jobs action figure. Following “immense pressure” from lawyers, the eerily lifelike doll that resembles the late Apple founder is no more.

“Unfortunately, we have received immense pressure from the lawyers of Apple and Steve Jobs’ family,” the In Icons company said in an emailed statement.

The 30.4-cm doll — offered with Jobs’ trademark black turtleneck and jeans — was to go on sale for US$99 at the start of next month.

“Though we still believe that we have not overstepped any legal boundaries, we have decided to completely stop the offer, production and sale of the Steve Jobs figurine out of our heartfelt sensitivity to the feelings of the Jobs family,” the company said.

The company’s website shows the figurine in lifelike poses alongside famous Jobs quotes, such as: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.”

The company manufacturing the dolls, Hong Kong-based DiD Corp, insisted earlier this month that the doll was not a toy, but a sincere tribute to the iconic innovator.

“We didn’t put anything related to the Apple brand or Apple products, nor did we smear the image of Jobs,” a DiD Corp official stated. “We are making this for Apple fans.”

Last year Apple — the maker of iPhones, iPads, iPods and Macintosh computers — blocked the sale of unauthorized Steve Jobs bobble-head dolls made by a different company in China.

Jobs died on October 5 at the age of 56 after battling cancer for several years.

DiD Corp also offers military action figures and one of US President Barack Obama, according to its website.