Facebook, the company devoted to making the world "more open and connected," finally opened its financials to the world today when it filed for an initial public stock offering.
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Facebook made a profit of $1 billion on $3.7 billion in revenue during 2011, an increase of 88 percent over its 2010 revenue, according to the 198-page document it filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Facebook was incorporated in 2004 has been profitable since 2009. It took longer than expected to file to go public, which requires that it disclose its revenue and expenses in detail for the first time. The Wall Street Journal said the IPO could be one of the biggest U.S. public stock launches ever and could value Facebook at nearly $100 billion.
Facebook's IPO filing provided other interesting numbers, such as:
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It's Facebook Official: IPO's a Go originally appeared on About.com Personal Web Pages on Wednesday, February 1st, 2012 at 23:37:05.
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Uncle Sam's top cops want a new app for peering into social media to see what people are saying that might involve illegal activity or pose threats to national security.
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The FBI put out a request for information this month as part of market research for its proposed new "social media application" project, to see if the information technology industry actually has the capability to build what it wants. Responses from technology companies and other potential vendors are due by Feb. 10.
Privacy advocates generally oppose government monitoring of social media, but so much social media chatter is already public that it won't be easy to stop development of the analytical app the FBI wants. PC World called it a "social network spy app."
The CIA already routinely monitors social media for global threats, as NPR reported in a story last week when it took a closer look at the CIA's Open Source Center for foreign intelligence. ...
FBI Seeks Social Media X-Ray Machine originally appeared on About.com Personal Web Pages on Monday, January 30th, 2012 at 00:00:16.
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©Tumblr's menu makes it easy to do quick multimedia posts across multiple platforms and networks.
The social blogging movement continues to gain momentum as a newer generation of blogging tools add more social networking features. In case you're wondering, social blogs are a cross between a blog and a social network. The software programs creating them are often called microblogging tools because they encourage short or "micro" posts analagous to status updates on Facebook.
Social blogs let people post short updates quickly by email or cell phone, and auto-post the same updates to social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Social blogs go beyond RSS-type subscription feeds of first-generation blogs to include following and friending capabilities similar to those of Facebook and Twitter.
Read more about social blogs.
Learn how to use Tumblr and Posterous, two free social blogging tools.
Social Blogging Popularity Soars originally appeared on About.com Personal Web Pages on Monday, January 23rd, 2012 at 10:19:43.
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The annual Consumer Electronics Show typically showcases prototypes and technology that are months, if not years, from hitting the market. So it's an early barometer for winds of technological change.
And when it comes to social media, one big wind at the 2012 CES last week was integration with technology of all kinds, suggesting it will be another newsy year for social networking and related services. In particular, social TV and connected cars were two areas where social media made plenty of news in Las Vegas.
In addition to TV growing more participatory and social, and cars getting social networking plugged in, four other areas likely will be ripe for social media evolution this year:
Mobile communication
Social marketing strategies
Labor, staffing, job issues
Presidential politics
Read more about social media predictions for 2012.
2012 Predictions: Socializing Your TV, Car, What Else? originally appeared on About.com Personal Web Pages on Monday, January 16th, 2012 at 21:28:08.
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The new search system Google rolled out this week incorporating more social networking content and contacts into search results has stirred quite a backlash from privacy advocates and competitors. It represents perhaps the most advanced type of social search the Web has seen so far.
Privacy advocates are worried about personal information potentially being shared more widely than people want, even though Google said it has taken pains to develop a system that can encrypt the personal part of each person's search results and keep that private, so only the person searching can see it. Competitors like Twitter, meanwhile, expressed concern that Google's new search results won't give as much prominence to breaking news tweets as they would in the past.
Google came up with a totally dorky name for its new system: "Search Plus Your World." On the company blog, Google said it represents an expansion of the "social search" results it previously offered . ...
Google's New Social Search Stirs Anti-Social Backlash originally appeared on About.com Personal Web Pages on Thursday, January 12th, 2012 at 08:38:56.
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It's a ritual to look back at each year when it ends, and there was plenty to look back on in social media during 2011.
So for all you social media news hounds, here are two lists of noteworthy trends and news in the 2011 social mediasphere.
Business Trends - One reviews the seven top social media business stories of 2011, or what leading social media tool makers were doing to generate headline news.
People Power - The other looks at major social media news events in 2011. People using social media in high-impact ways made news all year long during 2011. The biggest social media trend by far was how these tools are changing our lives and society as they go mainstream
Social Media 2011: Year in Review originally appeared on About.com Personal Web Pages on Monday, January 2nd, 2012 at 16:18:12.
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An obscure blog called PhoneDog burst into the media limelight after the New York Times ran an article last weekend about its legal spat with a former employer over a Twitter account and its followers.
The PhoneDog case sparked hundreds of newspaper articles, even more blog posts and lots of prime-time TV coverage within a few days as reporters zeroed in on the murky issue of social media ownership -- who really owns a Twitter account, or a LinkedIn profile, and all the followers and contacts associated with them?
The legal answer remains fuzzy. Even though the Twitter TOS or terms of service, the Facebook terms of use and similar agreements specify that users own the content they post on the networks, they also typically retain the right to cancel, switch or revoke the account at any time.
Legal experts say it's not entirely clear whether anyone really has a property interest in Twitter accounts or followers. The Twitter ownership issue is especially confusing in cases like PhoneDog, in which a worker is tweeting on behalf of an employer.
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Media Limelight Hits Twitter Ownership, Is Your Company Next? originally appeared on About.com Personal Web Pages on Friday, December 30th, 2011 at 08:54:56.
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