Are Facebook Credits the key to the social network’s future?

&h=75&w=75&zc=1&q=95" alt="Are Facebook Credits the key to the social network’s future?" class="fl" style="margin-top:5px;" />

As it ramps up for its initial public stock offering, there’s been a lot of attention focused on Facebook’s lack of performance as an advertising platform , despite its enormous size and reach. It’s an important issue for investors thinking about areas of future growth for the giant social network, as they try to justify what is likely to be a market value of at least $100 billion.

Continue reading...

Mac Pro Fans Launch Sad Facebook Campaign For Upgrade [Apple]

&h=75&w=75&zc=1&q=95" alt="Mac Pro Fans Launch Sad Facebook Campaign For Upgrade [Apple]" class="fl" style="margin-top:5px;" />

There's been strong indication that Apple is contemplating killing off the Mac Pro.

Continue reading...

Foodspotting moves to ensure you don’t need Yelp’s app

&h=75&w=75&zc=1&q=95" alt="Foodspotting moves to ensure you don’t need Yelp’s app" class="fl" style="margin-top:5px;" />

For several years I’ve used Foodspotting and Yelp together in concert on my iPhone: If I see a particular dish I want to eat based on a Foodspotting post, I’ll jump over to the Yelp app to find important restaurant details, like when it’s open, where it’s located and more importantly, the reviews. It’s not ideal, but it has worked. However, thanks to an update to Foodspotting’s mobile app  scheduled Thursday morning, I won’t need to hop between the two apps anymore

Continue reading...

Slide.ly Is Bringing Back The Mashup With Its Social Slideshow Service

&h=75&w=75&zc=1&q=95" alt="Slide.ly Is Bringing Back The Mashup With Its Social Slideshow Service" class="fl" style="margin-top:5px;" />

The lowly photo slideshow is not dead yet, or at least that’s the hope of the team at Tel Aviv-based EasyHi , which is debuting its new product Slide.ly today, backed by $1 million in seed funding. The company aims to pick up where Slide.com ( acquired by Google in 2010 ) left off

Continue reading...

Shortform Launches Bookmarklet And Facebook Open Graph For Seamless Video Curation And Sharing

&h=75&w=75&zc=1&q=95" alt="Shortform Launches Bookmarklet And Facebook Open Graph For Seamless Video Curation And Sharing" class="fl" style="margin-top:5px;" />

Video curation platform Shortform is launching a few new features that will make it easier for its video jockeys (VJs) to curate and share content with friends and followers.

Continue reading...

The Facebook Stats Game: Brazil Has The Highest Active Reach; Bangkok Tops The List Of Cities

&h=75&w=75&zc=1&q=95" alt="The Facebook Stats Game: Brazil Has The Highest Active Reach; Bangkok Tops The List Of Cities" class="fl" style="margin-top:5px;" />

Facebook says  that it generated half of its revenues outside of the U.S. and Canada in the first quarter of 2012, and some numbers out today underscore just how extensive its reach is in different markets, with active usage in some countries outstripping that of Facebook in its home market. According to figures from Nielsen — some of the latest numbers to come out in the battery of data that is being fired out in the final day before Facebook goes public – Brazil has the highest active reach of Internet consumers using the social network from home/work computers. Some 38.1 million Brazilians visited Facebook during March 2012, equivalent to 76.7 percent of all people who were  of those who were active online that month from home and work computers in the market.

Continue reading...

Facebook Quietly Launches Pages Manager iOS App, But You Probably Can’t Use It Yet

&h=75&w=75&zc=1&q=95" alt="Facebook Quietly Launches Pages Manager iOS App, But You Probably Can’t Use It Yet" class="fl" style="margin-top:5px;" />

Carefully cultivating your Facebook presence can be tough enough when you only have your personal profile to deal with, but it’s a completely different story when you’ve got a full-blown Page (or three) to manage on top of it. To help those particular users stay on top of things, Facebook has begun to roll out a new app (called, imaginatively enough, Pages Manager ) in a small handful of markets, though we in the U.S

Continue reading...

VCs simply love the Facebook Mafia

&h=75&w=75&zc=1&q=95" alt="VCs simply love the Facebook Mafia" class="fl" style="margin-top:5px;" />

Following the jaw-dropping $50 million funding of Quora , a Palo Alto, Calif.-based  knowledge community, folks from New York-based research firm, CB Insights crunched some data and came up with the following stats about the Facebook Mafia – aka people who left Facebook to start their own companies. “The Facebook Mafia isn’t waiting for an IPO to strike out on their own as company alumni have already raised $271 million of venture capital funding since 2006.  And the Facebook Mafia’s momentum appears to be accelerating with the group pulling in $130 million in just the first 5.5 months of 2012, a 137% increase over all of 2011, and the highest total in the last 6.5 years (graph below)

Continue reading...

Confirmed: Pinterest taking $100m for e-commerce play

&h=75&w=75&zc=1&q=95" alt="Confirmed: Pinterest taking $100m for e-commerce play" class="fl" style="margin-top:5px;" />

Now two things are more clear about the fast-growing social pinboard curation service – a business model and a valuation. Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten has confirmed it is leading a $100 million investment in Pinterest , together with existing backers Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners and FirstMark Capital plus angels

Continue reading...

Quora Investor Peter Thiel: “The Samwers Are Never Going To Clone Quora,”

&h=75&w=75&zc=1&q=95" alt="Quora Investor Peter Thiel: “The Samwers Are Never Going To Clone Quora,”" class="fl" style="margin-top:5px;" />

There’s been a lot of armchair valuation punditry  across the Valley this week.

Continue reading...