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Posts Tagged ‘zuckerberg’

Late last year, we published a list of the top 10 IPO candidates of 2010.  Leading that list was Facebook, which has grown to 400 million users and is finally starting to turn on the revenue pumps as it works toward its inevitable IPO. But this evening, the Wall Street Journal published an article penned by Jessica Vascellaro that may dash the hopes of anyone who thinks that will happen in the immediate future. The lengthy piece, which is well worth reading in its entirety, touches on quite a few issues related to Facebook’s history and its future, and largely revolves around CEO Mark Zuckerberg — who doesn’t sound all that keen to take his company public.

While the article covers a lot of familiar territory about Facebook’s past, there’s plenty of new information too. Of note, the article says that Facebook executives have “discussed how revenues for 2010 could hit between $1.2 to $2 billion” — figures that exceed even the $1.1 billion InsideFacebook’s Eric Eldon reported yesterday (clearly, the number is looking big). The article also asserts that Facebook is working on a tool for sharing your physical location with Facebook (something that we’ve been hearing about for quite a while, and that I believe will be key in the future).

With regard to Facebook’s IPO, the article discusses Zuckerberg’s penchant for “delayed gratification”, which he says he has a special capacity for.  And because Zuckerberg still maintains firm control over the company, and when it will IPO, delayed gratification seems to be the law of the land.

There are also a handful of interesting anecdotes about Zuckerberg. According to the article, a Facebook engineer once wrote an internal memo called “Working With Zuck”, in which he warned other employees not to hope for much in the way of back-patting from their CEO, explaining they should not “expect acknowledgment for your role in moving the discussion forward; getting the product right should be its own reward.”

Yesterday, Facebook’s Dave Recordon commented that he just finished a marathon session of The West Wing, a great show about the inner-workings of a fictional White House that ended its run on NBC in 2006. I agreed with Recordon, it was a great show. You know who else agreed? Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

So why is this interesting? Well, the creator of The West Wing was Aaron Sorkin. He was also the executive producer and primary writer through the first four seasons. If you’ve heard Sorkin’s name in the tech sphere recently, it’s because he’s also the writer of the new Facebook movie, The Social Network, currently filming under the direction of David Fincher.

On his Facebook Wall, Recordon wrote, “Just finished watching all seven seasons of The West Wing for the first time. Sad that there isn’t more!” To which Zuckerberg replied, “I had the same feeling. It’s such an amazing show.”

So Zuckerberg is clearly a fan of Sorkin’s work pre-The Social Network. But will he be a fan of the movie? That still seems unlikely given that it’s based on the Ben Mezrich book, “The Accidental Billionaires”, which paints Zuckerberg and his early Facebook team in a less-than-favorable light.

Still, with a Sorkin script and Fincher directing, there’s no doubt there is some great creative talent behind the project. On-screen, Zuckerberg will be played by Jesse Einsenberg (maybe best known for Zombieland and Adventureland, but better in The Squid and the Whale). Meanwhile, early Facebook President, Sean Parker, will be played by Justin Timerblake — something which interrupted a tech party Timberlake was to be at a few months ago in San Francisco.

Ah, the ever-tangling web of Hollywood and Silicon Valley.

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The holiday season is approaching fast, and that means one thing here at TechCrunch: more giveaways! Sure, we’ve given away Twitter gadgets and wireless music systems, but this is definitely the best giveaway yet by a mountain peak. In fact, the winner will be climbing a mountain in Peru to the fabled Inca city of Machu Picchu. Well, you and a guest will actually be on horseback most of the way, and staying in WiFi-equipped luxury eco-lodges. But you can walk part of the way just to say you hiked the Inca trail.

This 7-day adventure for two, which is worth about $7,000, is being donated by the tour operator Mountain Lodges of Peru in conjunction with ekoVenture, a marketplace for “experience travel” (read our recent post on them). You can enter the contest here to win the trip by using the secret code “ilovetc” (and if you want to retweet this contest or share it on Facebook use the buttons above). Mountain Lodges of Peru is a past recipient of National Geographic’s “50 Tours of a Lifetime” award so you’ll be in good hands.

Man, I wish I was eligible. The contest ends at midnight Pacific Time on December 3. Everyone who enters will get periodic Photo of the Day emails from ekoVenture, but there is an opt-out link for those who don’t want it.

It’s going to be hard to top this giveaway, but if you are a company out there with ideas (and prizes) let us know. Nothing is too good for our readers.

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Businesses using Twitter; there’s something to this idea. Even Twitter itself realizes it, as it’s expected to be a part of its own business model launching soon. In the meantime, other companies continue to jump into the ring. The lastest is American Express, which today unveiled Pulse, a Twitter stream focused on small businesses.

Pulse, which is a part of American Express’ Open Forum site, uses Twitter’s API to display the public tweets from small business owners. This stream can also be broken up into different small business industries, such as auto dealers, cleaning services, restaurants, and many others.

The service also has its own Trending Topics area, and highlights the top shared links on Pulse in the right hand column of the page. And if you click on the “Links” hyperlink near the top of the stream, it will show you all the top links being shared. There is a little star icon next to these to allow you to pick which ones you think should receive higher placement. These are all little nice features.

Front and center on the page is also a way to search for any business you think may be a part of the Pulse stream. And if you’re a small business owner not yet a part of it, you can sign up and nominate your company to be included.

We’ve reached out to ask American Express if there is any kind of financial agreement with Twitter to use these tweets, but it would seem that they’re just using the public API. This is a similar concept to what Federated Media has been doing with ExecTweets, a curated stream of tweets from business executives.

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Gmail is furthering its offline strategy today with the announcement of the ability to include attachments in composed emails when offline. Google says this was one of the most requested features for Offline Gmail and starting today, you be able to attach files in offline mode the way you would in online Gmail.

You’ll be able to attach all types of files except inline images, which are images in the body of the email. When you have Offline Gmail enabled, Google says that mail now goes through the outbox when you’re online or offline, allowing Gmail to capture all attachments regardless of internet connections.

Earlier this year, Google rolled out a Google Gears version of Gmail, which detects when you are offline. It caches your e-mail so that you can read it, respond to it, search it, star it, or label it. When you are connected to the Internet again, it sends all the messages. Google also introduced an offline version of Calendar.

Offline access is a big part of Google’s strategy to chip away at Microsoft’s Outlook’s hold on business email. For promotional purposes, Google now wants Gmail users who are using Offline features to take pictures of themselves while accessing their email from an unusual place, such as a submarine, without internet access. Google will post the most interesting photos on the Gmail Blog. I guess a picture is worth a thousand words.

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If you’re a computer science graduate a year out of college, there probably isn’t a celebrity you’d be more excited about knowing than Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. So when he takes a minute to record a video with you to prove to your younger brother’s friends that you actually got a job at the company, it’s something you are pretty proud of. And the fact that Zuckerberg does this kind of thing is one of the reasons why Facebook wins. Watch the whole video with Dan Muriello here.

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Cisco has added another company to its coffers with the acquisition of ScanSafe for $183 million. A few weeks ago, Cisco announced a $2.9 billion acquisition of mobile networking infrastructure provider Starent Networks, which followed the $3 billion acquisition of video video-conferencing company Tandberg in late September.

ScanSafe provides software-as- a-service (SaaS) Web security solutions for large and small businesses. Tom Gillis, Ciscos’s VP and general manager of its security technology business unit, said in the release that the acquisition would help further Cisco’s vision “to build a borderless network security architecture that combines network and cloud-based services.” ScanSafe’s service will be integrated with Cisco’s AnyConnect VPN Client, a virtual private network (VPN) product to offer a cloud-security service.

The deal is expected to close in the second quarter of 2010. While Cisco has always implemented a strategy of acquisitions, the fact that it has opened up its purse strings three time in the past month is a good sign for tech M&A overall.

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According to a survey by Junior Achievement , 12-17 year olds thought Steve Jobs was more important than Oprah who, in turn, was just a bit cooler than Tony Hawk. What do kids know anyway?

Read the original here:
Steve Jobs is more popular than Oprah

As  we promised , we got you pictures and a hand-on review of the newly released  Nokia Booklet 3G . Hi-res versions at the end.

Here is the original post:
Nokia Booklet hands-on and pictures

Facebook and StudiVZ have reached a settlement in the alleged plagiarism case, with the German social network operator paying Zuckerberg and co an undisclosed sum as part of the deal. Both companies will be withdrawing their respective claims both in the United States and Germany and continue to operate their business as before (statement in German).

StudiVZ and Facebook have agreed not to disclose any more details about the settlement.