With the Super Bowl just days away, YouTube has announced that this year’s Ad Blitz will be bigger and better than ever, thanks to a partnership with Adweek and the introduction of new social gaming components, including a touchdown dance GIF generator and more.
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Facebook Cleared to Issue Stock for Instagram Deal (The Wall Street Journal)
Facebook received approval Wednesday to use stock in its acquisition of photo-sharing application Instagram, clearing the way for a deal that has lost about a quarter of its value since an agreement in April. At a state hearing in San Francisco, Calif., to review the acquisition’s stock component, the California Department of Corporations found the deal to be “fair, just and equitable,” allowing Facebook to issue shares to Instagram. Los Angeles Times But Instagram founder and chief executive Kevin Systrom said in the hearing that he understood the ups and downs of the public markets and that the transaction is now worth more like $750 million. Business Insider The fairness hearing was the last regulatory hurdle the two companies had to face before the world’s largest social network could buy the hottest mobile photo-sharing startup. The companies opted to issue shares under California law rather than through the Securities and Exchange Commission, in part because it’s a faster process. San Francisco Chronicle
At the fairness hearing, Systrom was asked how his company made money, according to the Los Angeles Times. “That’s a great question,” the paper quoted Systrom. “As of right now, we do not.” AllFacebook The word on Wednesday was that Facebook could consider purchasing Waze, developer of a well-liked, free, community-based traffic-nav app. Waze has nearly 6,200 users talking about it and the app has garnered 126,000 likes. Read more
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Chief Technology Officer Bret Taylor Leaving Facebook (AllFacebook)
Facebook Chief Technology Officer Bret Taylor announced that he will leave the social network later this summer to start a company with Kevin Gibbs, founder and tech lead of the Google App Engine and creator of Google Suggest. Taylor joined Facebook in 2009 as director of platform products, and he was promoted to CTO in June 2010. PC Magazine The Stanford-educated Taylor previously worked as CEO of FriendFeed. He also served as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Benchmark Capital, and as a group product manager with Google, according to his LinkedIn profile. AllThingsD The move is likely to be of concern to some over the newly public company’s ability to hold onto entrepreneurial talent, especially in the wake of continued intense media and investor scrutiny over its rocky IPO last month. That’s especially true since Taylor has been in charge of both platform and mobile efforts at Facebook, a critical arena for it. The Wall Street Journal “I’ve really enjoyed working with Bret and getting to know him as a friend and teammate. I’m grateful for all he has done for Facebook and I’m proud of what he and his teams have built. I’m also proud that we have a culture where great entrepreneurs like Bret join us and have such a big impact,” Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement. A pair of Facebook executives under Taylor — Mike Vernal and Cory Ondrejka — will be taking over platform and mobile duties, respectively. TechCrunch Taylor’s is one of the first in a wave of Facebook departures TechCrunch is hearing, as a slew of older employees have hit their four-year stock cliffs, and the 90-day IPO lockout fast approaches. According to a source, many Facebook employees including one other executive are already planning what to do next. Read more
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Facebook to Set Final IPO Price Later Today (CNN Money)
Facebook’s long road to an initial public offering is coming to an end. Late Thursday, it will fill in one last piece of the puzzle: Its final IPO price. Mashable On Wednesday, Facebook announced that an extra 84 million shares will be added to its stock pool for sale. The extra shares will come entirely from insiders and early investors, according to the AP. Reuters But investors who want Facebook shares when the No. 1 online social network goes public later this week may have lost the opportunity. TD Ameritrade and Fidelity’s brokerage arm both stopped accepting orders of Facebook shares as of Tuesday evening, according to representatives for each of the companies. CNET Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, who is simultaneously becoming one of the richer and more reviled people around, wants to set the record straight. Saverin, who is now a citizen of Singapore after renouncing his U.S. citizenship, said his decision has nothing to do with taxes. Forbes All eyes are on Facebook this week in the lead-up to the social network’s initial public offering, but Google did all it could to steal back a little bit of glory on Wednesday. One of the biggest pieces of news was the search company’s addition of “Knowledge Graph” to its core product, a way to find answers without ever clicking a link and leaving the search results page. Read more
Have you ever wondered who plays the most social games? A new infographic from Flowtown breaks it down. ‘Who Are Social Gamers?’ takes a look at everything from the gender, age, family situation, education, income, employment and more to find out who, exactly, social gamers are.
It doesn’t matter that we’re coming up on the end of Q4. There’s A LOT happening in the social media IPO market right now! Check out these 10 companies:
Orkut possesses 66 million active users — virtually 60 percent of which come from Brazil. SuperData also reports that games played on platforms, excluding Facebook, such as Orkut, are predicted to gain $5.6 billion in revenue by 2014.
Tapjoy and PapayaMobile today announced that they are partnering to launch Social Marketplace that provides users with recommendations on which apps to download. Both companies have released a flurry of announcements recently and this particular news could be great for developers and users alike. More after the jump.
As console developers continue to expand to social and mobile platforms, I had a chance to get with Bear Trickey, Jesse Venbrux and Zach Aikman of Q-Games who recently launched PixelJunk Monsters Online on Facebook in an interview where they shared their approach to developing for Facebook. More after the jump.
Revenues from virtual goods sales in social games is growing exponentially each year and has the potential to reach $4 billion globally by 2016. Nonetheless, successfully monetizing social games is nowalk in the park, especially for those developers who may not have all the necessary resources. Luckily for them, the PlayPhone social gaming network just released PlayPhone PXP, a complete tool set ofadvanced virtual goods management tools supporting Android, iOS, and HTML5. More after the jump.
