Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category
NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. stocks rose more than 1 percent on Monday, with the SP 500 snapping a six-day losing streak in a rebound from equities’ biggest weekly drop in almost six months, but Facebook slumped in its second session after a disappointing debut.
Tech shares were among the day’s biggest gainers, with an SP sector index surging 2.8 percent on the strength of Apple Inc. Shares of Apple climbed 5.8 percent to $561.28, leading the Nasdaq to its biggest one-day percentage gain since December 2011.
Facebook Inc, the social networking giant that fell short of lofty expectations last week, fared no better on Monday. Facebook’s stock sank 11 percent in its second day of trading, dropping to $34.03, well below its $38 issue price.
“Institutional buyers weren’t as enamored with Facebook as retail investors were, so it isn’t a surprise to see them taking their liquidity out for other areas,” said John Norris, managing director of wealth management with Oakworth Capital Bank in Birmingham, Alabama.
Investors are watching the 1,300 to 1,290 range on the SP 500 as a major support level, the lower end of which was tested last week after the benchmark index had fallen 7.8 percent since the end of April. The bottom of the range coincides with the SP 500′s 10-month moving average.
Sentiment improved after G8 leaders gave verbal backing for Greece to stay in the euro and stressed over the weekend that their “imperative is to promote growth and jobs.” Greece is expected to hold elections after the country was unable to form a government following its most recent elections.
The Dow Jones industrial average jumped 135.10 points, or 1.09 percent, to 12,504.48 at the close. The Standard Poor’s 500 Index climbed 20.77 points, or 1.60 percent, to 1,315.99. The Nasdaq Composite Index rose 68.42 points, or 2.46 percent, to close at 2,847.21.
In another factor helping sentiment, China’s premier called for additional efforts to support growth on Sunday, signaling Beijing’s willingness to take action after a recent series of economic indicators suggested that the world’s second-biggest economy will slow further in the second quarter.
“We’ve been in something of a near panic lately, and after so many down days, it was inevitable that we would bounce back, especially with news indicating that things aren’t falling apart,” Norris said.
Facebook shares were expected to face tough trading this week if lead underwriter Morgan Stanley stops supporting the stock and managers listed lower down in the IPO book, who were hoping for an early surge, decide to get out before going underwater.
Nasdaq OMX Group said it plans to implement procedures through which the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) will accommodate orders not executed in Facebook during the social media company’s market debut on Friday. Nasdaq shares gained 3.6 percent to $22.78 after falling more than 4 percent on Friday.
In earnings news, Lowe’s Cos Inc, the world’s second-largest home improvement chain, cut its fiscal-year earnings outlook and said demand slowed toward the end of the traditionally strong first quarter. Lowe’s stock slumped 10.1 percent to $25.60.
Yahoo shares rose 1 percent to $15.58 after news that Chinese Internet entrepreneur Jack Ma is buying back up to half of a 40 percent stake in his Alibaba Group from Yahoo for $7.1 billion in a deal that moves the Chinese e-commerce leader closer to a public listing.
About 83 percent of companies traded on the New York Stock Exchange closed in positive territory while on the Nasdaq, almost three-fourths of shares ended higher.
Volume was light, with about 6.77 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, the American Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, below last year’s daily average of 7.84 billion.
Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/wall-st-rebounds-investors-dump-facebook-064407539--sector.html
Apple Stores are increasingly seen as a sign of affluence, a sign that a neighborhood “has arrived.” It turns out that some cities are more anxious to arrive than others, offering Apple sweetheart deals to open new stores — deals … Continue …
Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/twitter-index-fans-urge-lady-gaga-cancel-jakarta-081113407.html
Was it Nasdaq‘s fault? Or was it the bank’s fault? Or was it Facebook itself? As Facebook’s stock continued to tumble, Wall Street started pointing fingers, according to The New York Times.
Nasdaq could be on the hook for millions of dollars lost because of technical glitches during Facebook’s IPO, The Wall Street Journal reports. And CEO Mark Zuckerberg‘s fortune dropped by $2.2 billion on Monday, according to Bloomberg.
YouTube uploads 72 hours of video every minute, The Washington Post reports.
Data collected by Internet companies are often off-limits to outside researchers, who can’t verify studies based on the data, The New York Times reports.
A study finds that Apple is still the world’s most valuable brand, according to Reuters.
Are tablet computers better for kids than TVs? The Wall Street Journal takes a look.
Several cable companies are teaming up to offer nationwide Wi-Fi, PC Magazine reports.
Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/todays-e-reads-facebook-bubble-already-popped-092425791.html
Paul Brannigan, the untrained actor who stars in Ken Loach’s latest movie, has gone from being unemployed in a rough Glasgow neighborhood to nude scenes with Scarlett Johansson.
Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/cannes-preview-tarantinos-django-unchained-creates-twitter-buzz-094708870.html
Apple Stores are increasingly seen as a sign of affluence, a sign that a neighborhood “has arrived.” It turns out that some cities are more anxious to arrive than others, offering Apple sweetheart deals to open new stores — deals … Continue …
Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/facebook-cracks-top-20-most-valuable-brands-list-100050903.html
Facebook shares fell 11% Monday, after Morgan Stanley and other Wall Street banks ceased propping up the social network’s stock at Friday’s $38 offering price. Although the IPO was a big success for Facebook and its early investors and insiders — who sold $9 billion worth of shares they’d acquired at lower prices — the offering was a disappointment for many investors who clambered to get a piece of the most-hyped IPO in nearly a decade. The IPO also revealed significant problems at the Nasdaq stock exchange, turning what should have been a triumphant offering into an embarrassing debacle. Here are four take-aways from Facebook’s very rocky public debut.
Facebook’s bankers, led by Morgan Stanley, priced the offering too high. Last week, in the hype-fueled run-up to Facebook’s IPO, there were numerous reports about the intense demand for a slice of the social network. The IPO was “oversubscribed,” we were told, causing Facebook and its underwriters, led by Morgan Stanley, to raise the offering price from a low of $28 up to $38 per share, and also increase the number of shares sold. Many pundits — including financial analysts and journalists — predicted a large first-day pop, fueled by investor demand for one of the hottest offerings in years. (I predicted a $46 closing price, which was relatively conservative, but still too high.)
(VIDEO: The Facebook IPO: Explainer)
It may be part of an underwriter’s responsibility to support an IPO at the offering price, but the fact that Morgan Stanley and its partners were forced to wage such an epic battle to do so in the final hour of trading Friday indicates a pricing failure. Simply put, the artificial demand distorted the market — until Monday, when the shares tumbled 11%. With Morgan’s Stanley backstop gone, the market priced Facebook at a more authentic level, $34, or about $10 billion less by market-capitalization than the offering price. “The underwriters completely screwed this up,” Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter told The Wall Street Journal. The offering “should have been half as big as it was, and it would have closed at $45.”
Facebook’s fundamental financial metrics still don’t support its current valuation. If Facebook was overvalued at $104 billion, it’s still overvalued at $93 billion. Even after Monday’s sell-off, Facebook investors are still betting on the hope of steep revenue and earnings growth over the next few years. With $1 billion in profit last year, Facebook still has an extremely high price-to-earnings ratio of 93-to-1. Even if you stipulate strong earnings growth, the company’s forward-looking PE ratio is still at least 40-t0-1, by former Wall Street analyst Henry Blodget’s most “aggressive” scenario. That makes Facebook still much more expensive, on a forward-looking (2013) basis, than tech juggernauts like Apple (10-to-1) and Google (12-t0-1). Is it any wonder that Apple shares climbed nearly 6% on Monday, as investors chose its relative safety over Facebook? (Google shares climbed 2.3%).
(More: Facebook IPO: After the Hype, Investors are Betting on Hope)
Meanwhile, Facebook’s revenue growth is actually decelerating, and knotty questions remain about the company’s advertising business. Given the fact that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made clear that he prioritizes the company’s idealistic social mission over profits, investors should be very wary of buying the stock, even at these reduced levels. Should Facebook’s stock price be even lower than $34 right now? We may have to wait a few quarters to get a better sense of the company’s revenue and earnings growth, in order to find out where this stock should be priced.
The Nasdaq stock market can’t be relied upon to conduct the biggest IPOs. The Nasdaq had lobbied aggressively to win the Facebook offering over its rival NYSE Euronext, but when the big day came, its systems performed poorly. Trading was delayed for 30 minutes Friday as the exchange had trouble matching buy and sell orders. Trades for millions of shares were never confirmed, and some traders didn’t receive trade confirmation for hours — some not even until Monday morning. These snafus may have caused some investors to not trade further, hurting the stock’s first-day performance. One trading executive called it “arguably the worst performance by an exchange on an IPO, ever.”
One thing’s for sure: Nasdaq suffered a serious black eye at what should have been one of its proudest moments, as home to the most anticipated IPO in nearly a decade. “This was not our finest hour,” Robert Greifeld, chief executive of Nasdaq OMX Group, told reporters on Sunday. He blamed “poor design” in the exchange’s trading software — which is particularly ironic given the exchange’s reputation as the preferred home of tech companies. Greifeld said the exchange was “humbly embarrassed.” The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating the problems at Nasdaq, and its report, when issued, will no doubt lead to another round of hand-wringing about the stock exchange’s poor performance.
(More: With IPO Looming, Is Facebook’s Ad Business Ready for Prime Time?)
Ordinary individual investors should stay away from heavily-hyped IPOs like Facebook. It’s a sad testimony on the current state of our capital markets that the public is best-advised to stay away from the most-anticipated initial public offerings. The whole point of such offerings is to allow companies to raise capital to grow their businesses, while giving investors the chance to own a slice of America’s most promising companies. Forget about day-trading and stock-picking, regular people should be able to get in on IPOs in a sensible fashion, through mutual or index funds.
But the truth is that Facebook’s valuation had grown so large — thanks to several huge venture capital rounds totaling a record-breaking $2.2 billion — that by the time the offering reached the public, it was already overpriced. In other words, insiders (and others, like Goldman Sachs, which invested $500 million last year at a $50 billion valuation) bid up the company’s stock price, leaving little upside for public investors. “The I.P.O. system only works if it preserves a balance between public and private investors,” writes The New Yorker‘s John Cassidy. “If this balance is upended, and virtually all of the rewards are reserved for insiders, ordinary investors will refuse to play the game. A dearth of I.P.O.s would hurt insiders along with everybody else.”
It’s a shame that one of the most-anticipated IPOs in recent memory was marred by a serious price miscalculation, not to mention woeful first day trading execution. Some have argued that the lack of a huge first day pop is a good thing — and in a sense it is, because regular investors could have lost a whole lot more than they did. And the mis-priced IPO may cause bankers to be more conservative in the future. But the various problems with Facebook’s IPO reinforce some of the worst stereotypes about Wall Street: that it’s skewed toward insiders and top banks to the detriment of average Americans. That its systems have become too complex for even one of the top exchanges to manage properly. And that it’s driven by hype that often obscures real financials, injecting an additional level of risk into capital markets that may ultimately drive away potential investors.
MORE: Sick of Hearing About Facebook IPO? You’re Not Alone
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Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/facebook-ipo-fallout-four-lessons-rocky-public-debut-100712273.html
Apple Stores are increasingly seen as a sign of affluence, a sign that a neighborhood “has arrived.” It turns out that some cities are more anxious to arrive than others, offering Apple sweetheart deals to open new stores — deals … Continue …
Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/thank-facebook-song-change-life-video-102214905.html
Apple Stores are increasingly seen as a sign of affluence, a sign that a neighborhood “has arrived.” It turns out that some cities are more anxious to arrive than others, offering Apple sweetheart deals to open new stores — deals … Continue …
Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/oovoo-makes-facebook-multi-person-video-hangouts-possible-111236755.html
Facebook is testing a series of cosmetic changes to the top of users’ Timelines, the company has confirmed.
Screenshots of the new design were posted on Talking Points Memo Tuesday morning. The images (below) show a condensed version of Timeline, in which a user’s details (name, occupation, education, location) appear in reverse type on top of — rather than below — the cover photo.
[More from Mashable: ‘Thank You Facebook’ Song Will Change Your Life [VIDEO]]
The carousel of thumbnail images highlighting friends, photos, places, likes, etc. has also been compressed. Images are now replaced by thumbnails. Next to these, a new “Summary” section appears, presumably to highlight key events on a user’s Timeline.
The new version:
[More from Mashable: Richard Dreyfuss Blasts Zuckerberg, Brin at the Webbys [VIDEO]]
The old (current) version:
It’s not clear if the new design will give users greater control over the appearance of their Timelines. We’re curious to know, for instance, whether users will be able to modify the color of the type that appears on top of their cover photos.
What do you think of the new design? Do you like the reverse type? Would you miss the thumbnail images if they were removed?
BONUS: The Evolution of the Facebook Profile
2005 – The Facebook
Back in the days when The Facebook was only available to select networks, the News Feed didn’t exist. Users hopped between profiles like this one.
Click here to view this gallery.
Top image courtesy of iStockphoto, -Oxford-
This story originally published on Mashable here.
Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/facebook-tests-timeline-design-pics-113158648.html
NEW YORK (AP) — Shares of Facebook tumbled 4 percent before Tuesday’s opening bell, continuing a downward spiral that began at the start of the week.
The blame game has already begun, with some pointing fingers at Nasdaq, where technical issues created confusion during the first day of trading, and others blaming the lead underwriter of the offering, Morgan Stanley.
After being priced at $38, the shares opened at $42.05 on Friday and fluctuated between $45 and $38 throughout the day, before closing up just 23 cents.
On Monday, the Menlo Park, Calif., company’s shares began to tumble and closed down 11 percent. The losses continued in Tuesday’s premarket session, with the shares falling $1.35 to $32.68.
However, the initial public offering from Facebook Inc. occurred the same week that the markets posted their worse performance so far in 2012, with the Standard Poor’s 500 index falling 4 percent.
And it may also be a classic case of investor fleeing risk, as financial turmoil continues in Europe and Asia.
The stock was supported during the first day of trading as underwriters bought up shares to prevent them from falling below $38.
The Nasdaq OMX Group Inc. will be facing shareholders today during its annual meeting and a significant portion of that time will certainly be devoted to addressing the Facebook issue.
Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/ahead-bell-facebook-132313047--finance.html
