TechPatio » Facebook

Facebook Looking to Make Big Money With IPO

Guest Author — Tue, 15 May 2012 17:55:55 +0000

For months now, we have been hearing about the clout that Facebook is going to be carrying once they finally release their Initial Public Offering (IPO). It now appears that those particular expectations were a little muted, especially when it comes to the actual value the company would carry once their IPO was sold off. Filing papers on May 3rd, Facebook took another step towards going public and the numbers now show that the company could be valued anywhere from $77 to $96 billion when the smoke clears.

The company has officially stated that it will sell 335 million shares and that the stock will be priced at $28-$35 a share. If those numbers are accurate, it would mean that Facebook’s IPO would be the biggest an internet company has seen since Google went public back in 2004. The company will now begin to the dusty trail on what is usually referred to as a “roadshow” where higher-ups will meet with various high-powered executives who are considering buying up large amounts of stock. The executives will have a series of question and answer sessions with Mark Zuckerberg and the top-of-the-ladder members of Facebook’s management team. While the process is named an Initial Public Offering, these sessions are very far from being open to the public. Invitations are the only way to get in the door, and having millions of dollars is the only way to get an invitation.

Reuters is reporting that the tour will begin shortly, though the company is supposed to keep quiet about it until the SEC signs off. That means that at the moment, the social media giant cannot say who will be going out on this roadshow, but it would seem to be major mistake to not include Zuckerberg. While the genius creator of this mega social site is rumored to have a prickly personality that could turn people off in a one-on-one situation, the heavy investors are going to want to meet the man responsible for all of this. Many industry insiders often cast these roadshows as little more than celebrity meet and greets. In the case of Facebook, which was a completely unique idea when it was launched, people with deep pockets are going to want to see the man behind it.

Facebook is the undisputed king of social media sites, still outpacing Twitter and Google+ by a wide margin, the questions that appear to be the most important to the stock market insiders is whether or not Facebook is really worth the money it stands to make. There are plenty of people on Wall Street who remember the last tech bubble bursting. Zuckerberg and the rest of his Facebook managers should expect to get grilled as to why the shares should open with such a high price tag. Of course, Facebook can counter with the ridiculous numbers of subscribers (somewhere around 800 million Worldwide) and then point to the fact that they are gaining more every day. Businesses have already seen the value of using Facebook to reel in their own profits; it seems likely that in the end, the social media site won’t have any problems convincing investors of its worth.

Guest article written by: Bo Vandy has been freelance writer covering the tech sector for over four years. In that time he’s covered everything from Android to Apple … Facebook to Twitter. He contibutes to several sites including DegreeJungle a college resource.

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How To Update Your Twitter & Facebook Status With Siri

Guest Author — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 11:41:27 +0000

Having a jog in the morning and want to respond to a text, travelling to a distance place and want to know the weather condition or trying to locate your favorite restaurant and you do not know the directions, Siri is there for your rescue. Even when you’re driving or you need a break from the keyboard, you can speak your status updates instead of typing them. Without glancing at your phone screen, today this voice-based personal assistant allows you to conduct diverse tasks if you own an iPhone 4S. Siri, which is an integrated part of iOS 5, allows you to use your voice to send messages, schedule meetings, place phone calls, etc. Siri is not traditional voice recognition software that asks you to remember passwords and speak commands, but it is the software that understands natural speech and conducts the processing accordingly.

It is overwhelming to understand the buzz that has been happening around Apple’s new personal assistant, whether it can be used for tweets or Facebook updates. However, following some simple steps and using the SMS features of both the social networking sites, you can get Siri to update both your Twitter and Facebook accounts.

Here’s how we go:

How to update Twitter?

Step 1

Begin with setting up your phone on Twitter mobile settings page. Following the steps on the page enter your country and phone number.

Step 2

Then SMS the words ‘GO’ to the number allocated against your country; for U.S. it is 40404. This will help in verification of your phone number with Twitter.

Step 3

In the next step, in order to tweet, you can send and SMS to that registered number. For your convenience, you can add the number t40404 to the iPhone address book and name it as ‘Twitter’.

Step 4

Now to make Siri tweet for you, activate it by pressing the Home button for a long time. Post a text, which can be your status update, to the saved ‘Twitter’ number. Once you confirm and approve the text, the saved ‘Twitter’ number will post the update on your twitter account.

How to update Facebook?

Step 1

As mentioned above for Twitter account, you can follow the similar steps for your Facebook updates. Ensure to verify your phone number in the Facebook mobile settings page.

Step 2

When you visit the page, click on ‘add a phone’. You will be asked to enter your password and select your country and mobile operator. After doing so you have to text the letter ‘F’ to 32665.

Step 3

Once it is done, a confirmation code will be send which you have to enter on the web page. After the steps are completed, your will be set up with Facebook. Then following the similar steps like Twitter, you can update your status in by sending a text to the contact with the Facebook number.

These are some of the simple process to follow till Apple iPhone comes up with some innovative feature to update social networking via Siri directly. Till then one can enjoy the features of Siri on the move and have the advantages conveniently.

Guest article written by: Samantha Harper is a blogger by profession. She loves writing on technology and luxury. Beside this she is fond of gadgets. Recently an article on Ferrari 599 GTO attracted her attention. These days she is busy in writing an article on Sound systems.

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What Does the New Facebook Interface Mean for Google+?

Guest Author — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 20:24:34 +0000

As a Facebook user, you’ve probably noticed by now that Facebook has launched a new newsfeed interface as of last week. For many Facebook users, this came as a shock and even an unwelcome interruption.

The new Facebook newsfeed interface shows top stories that you may find interesting and also has a side bar newsfeed that updates your friends’ activities in real time. The purpose of the new newsfeed is to help you keep tabs on important friends, no matter how often you log in to Facebook. The interface has changed from the traditional newsfeed to a predictive newsfeed, showing top stories that may be the most important to you.

Many users don’t appreciate the fact that what you see on Facebook will depend on how often you visit. In the old Facebook interface, you would see Top News and Most Recent news in your newsfeed. But now, Facebook has combined two of those features into one newsfeed. What you see in your newsfeed will depend on how often you log in and interact on Facebook.

If you don’t log in very often, you will probably see top stories from the last time that you logged in the next time that you use Facebook. If you log in to Facebook often, you will see the most recently posted stories first of all.

More than a few Facebook users were unhappy with these recent newsfeed changes. Especially since other tech websites predict that these changes are only the beginning in the Facebook overhaul.

If you’ve logged into Facebook lately, you may have noticed that quite a few users have been threatening to quit Facebook altogether and move on to the competitor Google+. This could be the opportunity that Google+ has been waiting for to take the lead over their biggest social media competition.

But not so fast… Even though users are complaining, Facebook has grown to over 750 million users in June 2011. Facebook is expected to earn over $4 billion this year alone, doubling their reported revenue from 2010. So Facebook is hardly suffering in the face of this user backlash.

Google+ has responded to the Facebook changes by making their social media service open to the public with invitations no longer required. Google+ also introduced several new interactive features called Hangouts Extras. These features allow for screen sharing, Google docs sharing, and Sketchpad sharing.

So what do you think as a Facebook user? Are the changes in your favorite social network too much, or do you like the new Facebook interface? Do you think this is the right time to move on to Google+?

Guest article written by: Joel Newman is a freelance writer experienced in Internet marketing and social media marketing. For more information on top registry cleaners to speed up your PC, you can visit Joel Newman’s Registry Cleaner website.

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Import your Facebook friends into Google+

Klaus — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 07:25:00 +0000

Facebook must be scared since they shut down a Google Chrome plugin that would allow you to export your Facebook friends and import them into Google+.

Luckily, there are other ways of doing it – and here’s one method: Use Yahoo contacts to export your Facebook friends, then export Yahoo contacts into a CSV file which you import into Gmail contacts and then you’ll be able to “find and invite” those contacts via Google+ circles. It sounds more complicated than it really is, so just watch the video below to see how it works.

And don’t forget to get your own free (and almost instant) Google+ invite!

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Facebook + Spotify (and how to use Spotify internationally)

Klaus — Thu, 26 May 2011 09:27:54 +0000

Facebook and Spotify teams up to provide a new music service to Facebook users. The new service will probably be named “Facebook Music” or “Spotify on Facebook” and is said to be launched in as soon as just two weeks, according to Forbes.

Apparently there’s no money shifting hands in this deal, Facebook doesn’t pay Spotify anything for this and Spotify doesn’t pay Facebook anything either – both parties believe the agreement of teaming up will be of benefit to both of them.

Even though Spotify will now be able to reach out to millions of new users, their service will still be limited to the same countries as usual, which are Finland, France, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and United Kingdom.

Spotify offers a free subscription that allows 10 hours of music each month and a Premium subscription at around €10.

PS: There’s actually a way around the country limitations of Spotify. I’m living in Malta and I’ve been subscribing to Spotify Premium for quite a while now. To be honest, I can’t really remember how I got through signup, whether or not it requires a United Kingdom IP address or if that doesn’t matter, they just need a zip code within the UK and of course you also need a credit card that will work and this is where it gets tricky. Probably the easiest thing is to find a friend in the UK and transfer the monthly subscription to him and have him login at your Spotify account to enter his credit card details.

This whole procedure is probably not allowed Spotify… but I’m guessing they don’t mind having paying customers? However, I’m likely going to cancel Spotify if/when Apple launches something cloud-based for iTunes, if it’s a good deal of course.

Speaking of Facebook, are you a member of the TechPatio Faceobok page yet…?
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Are you Facebook addicted?

Guest Author — Wed, 04 May 2011 12:05:14 +0000

The immense popularity of the social network Facebook has generated a lot of additional business, including the celebrated book and movie, but also some other activities that are less widely publicized, like the study regarding the Facebook Addiction Disorder (FAD). While the study is still in the works and other psychologists go rampant on dangers of online dependency, the actual question here is why do people use Facebook so much and why it is so incredibly popular? Why do people rather spend time on Facebook, instead of going out and actually mingling with people in person?

Overview
The situation for singles to socialize has become very complicated in the last couple of decades. Sexual harassment lawsuits, AIDS, financial crisis and dozens of other factors have limited the possibilities of young adults to approach each other and to interact in previously acceptable manners. More and more people connect, interact and socialize through bulletin boards, forums, emails and now also social networks. Contrary to personal interaction, hiding behind the internet allows the interested individual to present him- or herself in best possible manner, with best possible, even altered personas, avatars if you like, and most inhibitions that exist in the real world do not apply anymore.

Addiction
Such virtual existence can become addictive. There are several computer “games” that simulate real life, like Sim City, Second Life, even the immensely popular Star Wars has their own internet universe opened for escaping the everyday life, 24 hours, seven days a week, be a Jedi or Yoda, Jabba the Hutt or any of the members of the Star Wars universe in the online game Star Wars Galaxies. Your own personality forgotten, guaranteed. There are plenty of other online multiplayer games available, Counterstrike or Quake, that do not require you to establish a persona, just go around and shoot your opponents, but no less addictive and no less popular.

Social networking
There is nothing to install, in order to start interacting with people on Facebook. You just create your profile with a few clicks and you are there. You can mail and message your friends, find long lost connections, see pictures of people who are far away and do other very good and useful things. The problem starts when you suppress and neglect your regular life in order to hang around on Facebook. Yes, perhaps people who would not talk to you in person did answer your post on Facebook, but that does not mean that you are suddenly “in”. On the other hand, you really can talk to people, or at least post on their wall, who are generally out of your reach, up to certain celebrities who maintain their own Facebook page themselves, or at least visit frequently.

Bottom line
Do not allow an alternate reality to rule your life, no matter how close to the real thing it is. Keep everything within good measure and you will not become an addict. If you find out that you missed school or work because of Facebook, that you neglected to sleep because of Facebook, that you have not eaten and cried for two days if your status has not been liked by a single friend, then you do have a problem. Facebook, like the internet in general, is a great tool and a wonderful possibility to stay in touch with people. Use it as such, but go out and live as well. The world is beautiful, more beautiful than an LCD screen can display and real social interaction is way better than the artificial compensation called Facebook.

Guest article written by: Andy G., webmaster of a driver downloads website, Bravofiles.com.

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10 Tips for Using Facebook in the Office

Guest Author — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 17:48:22 +0000

Are you addicted to Facebook? Can you make it a full nine hours without needing to find out someone’s status or play Mafia Wars? If not, you are not alone. Here are some ways to keep up with your Facebook page without getting caught.

Rearrange your desk: People need change within their workplace. If you have the chance, move your computer and desk to minimize the chances of others watching over your shoulder. Be aware of any reflective surfaces behind you. This might inadvertently reveal your activities to the world.

Have a distracting poster in your workspace: If you have a cubicle, put up a compelling poster which appeals to the boss’ interests. Are they a classic rock and roller? Hang an awesome picture of Bob Seger. Does this person like fast motorcycles? Show off your interest in the Hayabusa and Ninja. If you’re not sure, use a poster which has a lot of detailed information. Perhaps something outlining the history of computing.

Develop awareness: You might be tempted to completely immerse yourself in the Facebook experience, but you have to resist. Watch the movements of your coworkers and be aware of your surroundings. Be prepared to leave your Facebook pages at a moment’s notice. If you have cameras in your office, know where they are pointed.

Become proficient at alt-tab and ctrl-tab: Alt-tab rotates between applications on your computer. Control-tab sends you to the next browser window that you have open. When you detect someone harmful in the area, change your browser window or the application to something that appears more work related. For PC users, Windows-D will immediately clear your desktop.

Have other applications maximized: Make sure that the work-related applications are maximized. There is nothing so embarrassing as to successfully perform an alt-tab or ctrl-tab and still see the remnants of the Farmville farm crops or the message that you were writing. If you are using Windows-D, make sure that you have switched tabs to something work related so the tell-tale ‘f’ won’t show.

Use Anonymouse.org: This is great for workplaces where your internet usage is being tracked. Go to the site, go to your preferred URL and type in your username and password from there. This is a proxy service which obscures your surfing habits from your boss.

Change your online status: You don’t want anyone to know that you were on. Go to your privacy settings and select ‘no-one’ as your online status. When your boss is using Facebook during the workday, your presence cannot be detected.

Remove embarrassing photos: If you have any photos of yourself which do not show you in a professional light, remove them. If you get caught, you don’t want to have to explain your photo as well as your activities.

Remember that people talk: You might have vented a time or two about work on your Facebook page. When you are using Facebook at work, make sure that those disparaging comments have been removed. You do not want to explain your motives.

Limit your Facebook interactions while at work: Do not leave yourself logged in all day. Check it, read the latest updates, and log off. Leave the long conversations at home. Resist the temptation to play the games. Turn your computer’s sound off so as not to startle your coworkers.

Facebook is a great way to pass the time at work. It allows you to clear your head, check on your crops, and use your energy. Most companies, however, frown on the use of Facebook at work because it diminishes productivity within the workplace. When you play on Facebook, exercise care.

Guest article written by: James Adams blogs about business, productivity and marketing at an online specialist in office supplies and office stationery.

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Facebook sets a new Photo upload record

Klaus — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 18:51:58 +0000

Randi Zuckerberg (Mark’s sister) who leads Facebook’s consumer marketing team, wrote in a tweet that 750 million photos were uploaded to Facebook during the New Years Eve weekend. The previous record was during Halloween 2010.

In July 2010, Facebook said more than 100 million photos are uploaded to their site – each day!

It’s unknown exactly how many photos are currently stored on Facebook, but if you estimate that each Facebook user has uploaded 100 photos (on average), times 500 million users, there could potentially be 50 billion photos on Facebook servers…

Flickr said in September 2010 that their users have uploaded a 5 billion photos.

If you want to see a smaller amount of photos, check out TechPatio’s Photo of the Week!
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Facebook launches “e-mail” service: Facebook Messages

Klaus — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 10:44:38 +0000

As rumored yesterday, Facebook would be announcing a new web based “e-mail” service soon – and now they have. They call it Facebook Messages.

Actually, it’s not really like the e-mail we know and use every day. Here’s how Facebook put it on their blog:

We are also providing an @facebook.com email address to every person on Facebook who wants one. Now people can share with friends over email, whether they’re on Facebook or not. To be clear, Messages is not email. There are no subject lines, no cc, no bcc, and you can send a message by hitting the Enter key. We modeled it more closely to chat and reduced the number of things you need to do to send a message. We wanted to make this more like a conversation.

Messages will be prioritized depending on who they are from. If they arrive at your @facebook.com e-mail address, they’ll go into “Others”. If they arrive from somebody you know, they’ll go into Inbox. It will also be possible to integrate it with some, still unknown, Instant Messaging clients.

According to Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook spent 15 months to develop Facebook Messages and it will be available in the coming months. If you can’t wait, you can request an invitation here.

I must admit that I’m not really sure what to think about Facebook Messages yet. I see the upside, that it’s more like chat and you can get chat messages into your Inbox from people e-mailing you on @facebook.com, which is not possible (as far as I know) with MSN Messenger, ICQ, Skype etc. – with those services it arrives as regular e-mail and “outside” the actual chat conversation.

However, I couldn’t imagine not being able to CC, BCC and use subject lines. I guess you can’t send a e-mail “Facebook Message” to somebody outside of Facebook, unless they e-mail you first? I mean, what would the subject then be and how would the recipient be able to sort through incoming messages (from Facebook) if you cannot define the subject of your message.

We’ll just have to see in the coming months as more and more people are getting access to Facebook Messages.

PS: Remember, Facebook likes to know as much as possible about you and your friends, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they want to stick their noise into whatever goes through your Facebook Messages inbox. Keep that in mind…

UPDATE – Video added:

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Facebook to launch webmail service? Would you trust them?

Klaus — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 11:46:27 +0000

Facebook has been working secretly on a project known as Project Titan which the public first heard something about in February. According to TechCrunch, Facebook will announce the project on Monday.

But TechCrunch knows more than that – they claim that according to reliable sources, Facebook is about to launch a webmail client, a “Gmail killer”. TechCrunch also speculates that Facebook’s own webmail service might be one of the reasons behind the recent struggle between Facebook and Google regarding contact person imports to/from Gmail.

Facebook already has a built-in “private message” feature you can use between your friends and such. It’s far from perfect but it’s good for a lot of things. Personally, I’d rather avoid using it. I love being able to search my local inbox for mails, and when a mail conversation has happened on Facebook, then I can’t search it inside my local e-mail.

Another – and probably more important downside – is data mining. Gmail already “reads” your e-mail to serve relevant ads. Facebook will surely do the same. But when is it enough? How much do you want Facebook to know about you and your e-mail habits?

For me, I’ll pass on this one. Without even knowing what it is yet.
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