Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg received a hoodie from the NASDAQ CEO and thanked his site’s users in opening remarks recorded before he rang the NASDAQ opening bell this morning.

In his short speech that just aired on Bloomberg TV Zuckerberg said, “I know this may seem like a big deal. But here’s the thing: our mission isn’t to be a public company. Our mission is to make the world more open and connected. All of you out there have built the largest community in the history of the world. You’ve done amazing things that we never would have dreamed of and I can’t wait to see what you’re going to be doing as we go forward. So on this special day, on behalf of everyone at Facebook, I just want to say to all the people out there who use our product, thank you.”
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According to online analytics company comScore, Americans watched 37 billion online videos on sites like YouTube, Yahoo and Facebook in April. In total, 181 million U.S. Internet users watched an average of 1,307 minutes of online videos last month. Those numbers are virtually unchanged from last month, but one area that has seen pretty spectacular growth over the last few month is online video advertising. According to comScore, U.S. Internet users watched almost 9.5 billion video ads last month. That’s about 60 ads per viewer. What makes this number even more astonishing is that it was only in March of this year that the number of video ads topped 8 billion for the first time.Continue reading →

There are lots of different approaches to the amorphous market of ‘e-learning’ but only a handful ever feel much like fun. I think amongst the best of these are sites like MangaHigh which teaches Math, or Moshi Monsters which has subtle learning tasks for kids.

Another which works well is Quipper, which, in a Q&A format, helps people learn things in a sort of game format. Today it’s announced that it has raised $3.6m (£2.3m) of Series A funding led by Globis, the Japanese VC. The round has been two other investors: Atomico, the London-based VC firm led by Skype co-founder Niklas Zennström and Benesse, a major Japanese education and publishing company. Continue reading →

How timely. After launching a year ago at Disrupt NYC 2011, Tracks is today releasing one of its biggest updates to date. The service is much like Color, but without the creepy factor as any and all members of a specific photo-sharing group must be invited. I like to think of it as the place where Color and Google+ Circles intersect, but I far prefer Tracks than either of the former.

Thus far Tracks has offered iOS, web- and real-world versions of your tracks (the collection of photos shared with a specific social network, which can be both geo-temporal or last forever). Today, however, the service gets much more beefy, with the ability to shoot and send real-time video and the addition of new filters, Instagram-style. There are now ten filter options on the app, and they’ll all work on both photos and videos.

But that’s not all.Continue reading →

Why is there nothing but Facebook IPO news today, you (Facebook haters) may be asking? Well, outside of the obvious – people are obsessed, this is a historic event, it’s the biggest tech IPO over, etc., etc. – there’s another reason why all the news outlets are publishing Facebook this and Facebook that today. It’s because everyone else is holding their news for a later date….the result of which has led to a historic event of my own: inbox zero.

So this is what it’s like not being a tech blogger?Continue reading →

Zynga’s share price plummeted 11.4% from $8.09 to $7.19 in the eight minutes after Facebook’s IPO went live, and down 13.3% since yesterday. Investors may be worrying that a solid performance of Facebook’s stock indicates that the social network will be less reliant on Zynga. Renren, LinkedIn, and some other tech stocks are down too.Continue reading →

Facebook shares opened at $42.05, a 10.5 percent increase from its final price last night at $38. This would value the company at $115 billion. While the price is going to fluctuate a lot today, there’s a crowdsourced bet from Twitter users on FacebookIPOClosingPrice.com that the company will close at a $54 price and a $135.7 billion valuation.

Shares are currently trading at $40.01, a 5 percent increase that gives the company a $110 billion valuation. It’s a very safe, by-the-book increase that ensures that Facebook had efficient pricing from its underwriters and didn’t leave too much money on the table. But there’s also a slight bump so it doesn’t produce bad publicity. Continue reading →

Facebook’s opening trade on NASDAQ has been delayed. We don’t know why, but we’re hearing mixed reports involving both unexpectedly high demand from retail investors and problems with canceling orders. As we explained in a post about 20 minutes ago, the underwriters of the deal are meeting and trying to set an opening price.

But because of unexpected changes in demand, it seems market makers are having issues settling on an opening price. They have the option of delaying the offering in five-minute increments until they can find a final price. Continue reading →

Trading has now begun on Facebook after a bit of a hiccup with NASDAQ, and while the numbers are nowhere near the heady heights of $70-$100 that some people were murmuring earlier, the $42.05 opening figure is still 10 percent higher than the $38-per-share price set by Facebook yesterday. At the time of this writing, it is trading a bit lower, at $40.

In Facebook’s S-1, the company listed how many shares main players were set to sell at listing time. Based on a share price of $38, here are how the values are coming out. The first number is the value of the shares they are selling, and the second is the value of their remaining stake in the company:
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Today’s Facebook IPO is a momentous, historical occasion. It’s set to be the biggest tech IPO ever, and the third largest IPO in U.S. history, second only to Visa and General Motors. The company that was once just a glimmer in the eye of a Harvard student named Mark Zuckerberg raised over $16 billion yesterday as shares were gobbled up by hungry investors, and that $38 share price point is expected to increase as the stock starts trading around 11am today.

Do you know how much money that is? Continue reading →