A new app from the founders of Tapjoy is emerging to combine mobile and social commerce on iOS and Android devices. The app, called Karma, makes gifting to friends a breeze, by integrating with a user’s social graph on Facebook and suggesting gifts for them.
Rapid adoption of OS X Mountain Lion would clearly threaten Microsoft. But after digging into Apple’s new operating system, Edward Aten of Swift.fm thinks it poses a threat to another, less obvious, company — the current leader in the consumer cloud, Facebook.
Facebook is planning to upgrade its premium ads on February 29, with the goal of boosting performance by 40 to 80 percent, according to documents obtained by iStrategyLabs’ Peter Corbett.
A new policy from Sky News bars reporters from posting anything other than work-related content on Twitter, and even forbids them from retweeting anything that doesn’t come from a Sky account. As with so many other similar policies, this completely misses the point of social media.
It looks like Facebook wants to address the big weaknesses in its mobile business model before it has to deal with nagging questions of its investors. According to FT, Facebook plans in March to include sponsored posts in its mobile news feeds.
Facebook is in the process of converting all user profiles to the Timeline design. But according to a poll, the majority of people aren’t so keen on the new look. Seventy percent of all respondents disapproved of Timeline, as did 90 percent of people over 65.
In its IPO filing Facebook mentions the word “mobile” 123 times but didn’t use the term in positive ways. In fact, Facebook’s S-1 filing is one big warning to investors: Its growth is being driven by user behavior that it has so far failed to monetize.
According to Edward Aten, founder of Swift.fm, Facebook is recreating and competing with nearly every significant Internet product of the last few years. It’s an unprecedented pivot that threatens Facebook’s core products and may eventually benefit the very same startups Facebook is trying to crush.
In the letter to shareholders included in Facebook’s IPO filing, co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg makes it clear his vision goes beyond just a social network. He wants to fundamentally rewire the way the world works, from interpersonal interactions to commerce to even government.
The most highly anticipated initial public offering in today’s tech world is officially happening. Facebook filed S-1 documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission Wednesday afternoon to raise a maximum of $5 billion. According to the filing, Facebook made $3.7 billion in revenue in 2011.
