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Tech

Crowdfunding via customers is the new startup capital

But hidden in the headlines about the JOBS Act is the creation of an entirely new class of capital that could be far more valuable to startups: customer capital. Instead of raising capital from VCs, entrepreneurs can reach out to customers directly. Read More »

Lawyers tried to ruin Mark Zuckerberg’s big day with a sprawling lawsuit that portrays the Facebook founder as a rogue hacker, and accuses the company of tracking users on their computers and iPhones. We have a plain english Q&A. Read More »

 
 

By now you might have heard of this little thing called Facebook’s IPO. Check out links to our coverage so far. Read More »

Facebook’s advertising woes, including the highly publicized departure of General Motors, reinforce the fact that while Facebook may function like a social network, on the business side it looks almost exactly like a media company — and that is going to be a major challenge. Read More »

The Facebook IPO is coming, and it is one major spectacle. Just look at the wall-to-wall coverage on CNBC and Bloomberg, who haven’t met an IPO they didn’t beat to death. So instead to adding to cacophony, I’ve aggregated the best blog posts for you Read More »

Facebook set out more details about its long-awaited IPO in a new filing that reveals that an initial share of the company’s stock will sell for between $28 and $36. Read More »

When Instagram launched its Android app in early April, we said that it would only be a couple of weeks before the company crossed the 50 million mark. Well, it took three weeks (interrupted by its $1 billion dollar acquisition by Facebook) to cross that milestone. Read More »

The debate on whether or not Silicon Valley is in a bubble might not be the right question. Instead we may want to ask ourselves, Has the fundamental notion of tech investing shifted as technology has become more dominated by the consumer market? Read More »

Facebook’s $1 billion blockbuster deal for Instagram may have been motivated by a desire to keep Instagram out of Twitter’s hands. Twitter reportedly offered hundreds of million dollars for Instagram, which prompted Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg to offer a better deal. Read More »

It’s hard to imagine Instagram’s rivals feeling good about the company’s $1 billion sale to Facebook. But at least one competitor suggests that users fleeing from the photo app could actually boost other services. Read More »

One of the great things about Instagram is its passionate community. The news of Facebook buying Instagram for a billion dollars is getting thumbs down from the Instagrammers, once again showing that it is people not corporations that control the social networks and how they evolve. … Read More »

What is about Instagram that has made Facebook open up its checkbook and spend nearly a billion dollars in stock and cash to buy up a company only in its third year. There are many reasons, and the biggest one is fear. Read More »

More Must Reads

Facebook has acquired Instagram for nearly one billion dollars, the company announced this morning in a blog post. The deal is a combination of cash and stock. With this sale, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, cofounders of Instagram are the newest mega-millionaires in Silicon Valley. The duo … Read More »

Curation has been a hot topic of discussion. Twitter, Tumblr and Pinterest are the engines of “curation” Today, Percolate, a startup put up a video about curation that is worth watching. It is an enjoyable video that explains curation in a simple yet articulate manner. Read More »

When there are so many social media avenues to present yourself, how do you maintain authenticity and manage your identity? Maybe you don’t. At SXSW Interactive this year, the age-old debate over authenticity and anonymity raised voices as identity and privacy took center stage. Read More »

Open-web advocates may long for a revolt against walled gardens, but in the end the success of a social network is determined by the willingness of users to put up with its restrictions. For Facebook, that is both its biggest strength and its biggest weakness. Read More »

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. Read More »

Even after it goes public, Facebook will still be controlled single-handedly by CEO Mark Zuckerberg through a special class of stock and voting agreements. In other words, while you may own stock in the company, you will have virtually no say in what happens to it. Read More »

Get ready for a blockbuster — and almost nuts — year of technology in 2012. Why? Because Facebook is doing the mother of all initial public offerings. And like Netscape and Google before, the Facebook IPO is going to change not only the company but also … Read More »

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. Read More »

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. Read More »

In Facebook’s IPO document filed Wednesday, Mark Zuckerberg dedicated a significant portion of his letter to something a bit out of the ordinary: Teaching potential investors about “the Hacker Way” and dispelling the negative connotation the word “hacker” has gotten in the mainstream media. Read More »

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. Read More »

San Francisco startup 1000memories has integrated its ShoeBox app for scanning and sharing old physical photos online with Facebook’s Timeline user interface. This means that people will be able to easily fill in the gaps on their Timeline between their birthdates and when they joined Facebook. Read More »

Earlier today a Facebook staffer released a browser extension called “Don’t Be Evil,” a not-so-subtle dig at Google’s corporate motto. Unfortunately, both Facebook and Google are two companies who don’t quite understand that “don’t be evil” is more than just words. Read More »

Contrary to the concerns expressed by the Washington Post’s ombudsman, the last thing the Post — or any newspaper — needs to worry about is whether it’s moving too quickly. If anything, the pace of change in media is speeding up rather than slowing down. Read More »

Moving Flickr photographs over to Facebook is not easy. Goyaka Labs promises a free, automated, fast way to transfer your photos en masse in a three-step process so they can be shared with friends and family. A Picasa version is also on its way. Read More »

This week, Facebook held its 28th official “Hackathon,” an all-night event where the only rule is that employees can’t work on their daytime projects. This was the company’s final Hackathon at its Palo Alto campus, and GigaOM has exclusive photos and video from inside the event. Read More »

I started my European tour with a visit to Loic Le Meur’s annual celebration of the Internet, Le Web. If attendees were an indication, startup culture is everywhere. Perhaps it’s the setting, but this celebration of technology and startups reminds me of another creative age. Read More »

Thirty years after Steve Jobs and Bill Gates revolutionized personal computing, there’s a new generation of entrepreneurs focused on bringing people together. Folks like Zuckerberg, Dorsey and Crowley are leading the charge in changing the way people communicate andinteract with each other. Read More »

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg this weekend set the Internet ablaze with his comments that if he started his social network today, he would stay in Boston. I disagree. His being in Silicon Valley and being able to hire the right people contributed to the company’s success. … Read More »

What do Belichick defensive schemes, Tom Clancy novels, Google+ and Facebook have in common? The answer is that all are so byzantine that they leave people scratching their heads to figure them out. Somewhere along the way social media lost sight of keeping things simple. Read More »

Music services such as MOG, Rhapsody and others were expected to be part of the big Facebook re-launch. They were, except as an afterthought. Somewhat predictably, Mark Zuckerberg brought the CEO of Spotify on stage while competitors were relegated to little icons on a single slide. Read More »

Nielsen’s research shows that the US Internet users spend a disproportionate amount of time on Facebook, a trend that should worry everyone else including Yahoo and Google. I guess, Mark Zuckerberg was right in describing Facebook as a once in 100-years-kind-of-media shift. Read More »

Facebook’s blocking of a Chrome extension that allowed users to export their friends’ email addresses has reignited a debate over who should control that kind of data — should you have the right to export it, or is Facebook right to prevent you from doing so? Read More »

As rumors of a big Facebook/Spotify deal swirled, Mark Zuckerberg took the stage at the e-G8 Forum in Paris and reasserted that he has no ambitions to go Hollywood. “We don’t have the DNA to be a music company or a movie company,” Zuckerberg said. Read More »

Mark Zuckerberg gets a lot of attention for founding Facebook, but if it were up to him, his employees would be joining him on more of the magazine covers. At a recent conference, Zuckerberg said lavishing credit on a successful company’s founder is a big mistake. Read More »

Former Twitter CEO Evan Williams breaks the important aspects of identity down into five distinct pieces, including authentication and personalization. But the reality is that what we mean by “identity” can change from moment to moment, and that may be the most difficult problem of all. Read More »

Facebook is said to be considering a private share offering that could top $1 billion, and would value the entire company at $60 billion. If it continues to raise funds through such private deals, there’s a chance the company may never even do an IPO. Read More »

Facebook was expected to launch a new email service this morning, but what the company announced was much broader; CEO Mark Zuckerberg said it is a single “social inbox” for every kind of communication people use, including email, SMS, instant messaging and Facebook chat messages. Read More »

After Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg debuted a new Groups tool to encourage more private and directed interactions between subsets of his more than 500 million users on Wednesday, he sat down with me and Groups product manager Justin Shaffer. Read More »

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s reported pledge to donate $100 million in stock to Newark schools has sparked a heated debate over the valuation of the company, which has been estimated at $33 billion. Some argue this is absurd, but the truth is not quite that simple. Read More »

Interest in who the real Mark Zuckerberg is has reached an all-time high, given the approaching release of the semi-fictional “The Social Network” in October, a movie about the origins of Facebook made without his consent. Today the New Yorker gives him a lengthy profile. Read More »

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke freely about the company’s user numbers, revenue and product vision in a October 2005 conversation, shortly after its 5 million user party and just after Facebook Photos had launched. He said Facebook was already making $1 million per month on advertising. Read More »

In a draft script for “The Social Network” that I obtained from sources in the movie industry, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is portrayed as vindictive and naive. A spoiler alert seems strange given the movie is supposedly based on real events, but now you’ve been warned. Read More »

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