Google passed on opportunity to buy Twitter: report
Google+ may or may not be a viable contender in the social networking space, but Google sure is committed to it.
How committed? According to venture capitalist Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures, which owns a stake in Twitter, Google's passed up the opportunity to buy the popular microblogging social network several years ago.
Facebook's real ad problem: addressable market size
Facebook's Friday IPO may have been cause for celebration on the company's Menlo Park campus, but it was hardly the coming out party major players on Wall Street had hoped it would be.
Beset by technical glitches at the NASDAQ and perhaps more skepticism from the market than anticipated, Facebook's shares failed to 'pop' as many expected.
The company's underwriters were forced to step in to keep Facebook's shares from falling below the $38 offering price.
Microsoft launches a new social network, but why?
When it comes to large tech companies and how they've fared with social networking, one could argue that Microsoft is the most successful.
Google has struggled to build viable homegrown social networks, Yahoo has largely done little of note, AOL purchased Bebo for $850m only to drive it into the ground, etc.
Microsoft's claim to success in the social space? A $240m investment in Facebook in 2007 which valued the social network at $15bn.
Facebook goes public, FB shares open at $42.05
The wait is finally over. After years of anticipation and weeks of headlines, the world's largest social network is a publicly-traded company.
FB shares, which priced at $38 yesterday, became available to the general public in the past hour on the NASDAQ.
After a delay, the stock hit the market at a opening price of $42.05. It is currently trading at around $40.
Mobile is the future, just ask Facebook
Thanks to Facebook’s filings with the SEC, we now have access to a treasure trove of Facebook data. And one metric everyone seems to be keeping their collective eyes on is mobile-social growth.
It’s going up…fast.
According to comScore, US Facebook users are now for the first time accessing the network from mobile devices more than from desktops or laptops.
Average U.S. users spent 441 minutes accessing Facebook from mobile devices in March compared to 391 minutes for desktop/laptop use. Facebook now says it has 488m mobile active monthly users, a 14% increase from December.
Ten interesting digital stats we've seen this week
I've rounded up some of the most interesting digital marketing stats I've seen this week.
Stats include multi-screen usage, mobile email, online returns, buying patterns of tablet users, social media customer service and Twitter's mobile user numbers.
Yahoo's ten biggest mistakes
The resignation/termination of now-formerly new Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson amid a resume scandal was an embarrassing moment for the once-great internet giant.
For most companies, such a collosal blunder would represent a faux pas of the highest order, but that's not the case for Yahoo, it's just one more in a long line of mistakes.
Here are the ten biggest mistakes the company has made...
Pinterest joins the billion dollar club with $100m funding from Rakuten
A million dollars isn't cool. You know what's cool? A billion dollars.
The words made famous by the movie that dramatized Facebook's beginnings may soon be passé in Silicon Valley, as investors clamouring to get in on funding rounds for the hottest tech startups seem increasingly willing to put their cash in at billion-dollar valuations.
Crazy? Perhaps, but Facebook's $1bn Instagram acquisition shows that big valuations don't exclude companies from the startup lottery, at least for the time being.
The latest entrant to the billion dollar club will be Pinterest, thanks to a $100m funding round led by Rakuten. The funding round puts a $1.5bn valuation on Pinterest.
GM ditching paid Facebook ads: report
Facebook apparently hasn't experienced any problems convincing investors to put their money into its IPO, but while the social network focuses its attention on Wall Street, it might do well to pay more attention to a nearby street: Madison Avenue.
That's because, according to a Wall Street Journal report, GM, the world's largest car maker, apparently isn't hot on Facebook's paid ads.
Twitter hits 10m UK users, 80% use mobile
Facebook may be the subject of all of the headlines with its public debut looming this Friday, but another major player in the social networking space is reminding the world that it's still growing too.
Twitter, which has built a company that one day might go public too on the back of 140 character messages, has waived its hands in the air by announcing that it has surpassed 140m users worldwide.
