Mark Will Ring The Nasdaq Bell on 18 May , 2012

NEW YORK — Wall Street has one simple task as Facebook Inc. shares begin trading: Don’t mess it up.

Major stock exchanges, brokerage firms and mutual fund companies have been gearing up for one of the biggest initial public offerings on record. And, with all the hype surrounding the social-media giant, any snafus would be a major embarrassment.

“It has to go off without a hitch. There’s going to be a lot of visibility on this,” said Larry Tabb, chief executive of the TABB Group consulting and research firm. “If this goes poorly, it will not just be a poor reflection on Nasdaq — it will be a poor reflection on the U.S. market structure.”

In pricing its stock at $38 on Thursday, Facebook raised $16 billion in the third-biggest IPO in U.S. history and the largest ever by a tech company. The stock trades as FB.

The company is expected to sell an additional $2.4 billion in stock later this month, raising the total value to $18.4 billion. That would make it the second-largest U.S. IPO, trailing only the $19.65 billion raised by Visa Inc. in 2008.

The IPO values Facebook at $104 billion, by far the largest ever for a newly public company.

Facebook shares are scheduled to begin trading at 11 a.m. Eastern time, 90 minutes after the Nasdaq Stock Market opens. The late start is designed to give the stock exchange and Wall Street brokerage firms sufficient time to process what is expected to be a crush of opening-day orders.

At center stage is the Nasdaq, considered to be the world’s premier home for technology companies. The exchange has been testing various scenarios for how the stock will open, checking its systems through a dummy ticker — ZWZZT — to allow clients to practice processing their orders.

Glitches do happen. In April, when software developer Splunk Inc. went public on the Nasdaq, the price soared so high the exchange halted trading. However, trading reportedly continued elsewhere, leading to canceled trades.

The biggest blunder happened in March when BATS Global Markets, an electronic trading platform, suffered a trading debacle. A software glitch sabotaged the company’s own IPO, which sent the stock plummeting and forced it to cancel the offering altogether.

BATS has been in talks with Nasdaq about the Facebook IPO, but hasn’t participated in any of the tests. However, clients have been routing test orders of Facebook through the exchange, spokeswoman Stacie Fleming said.

Meanwhile, the New York Stock Exchange is making sure it is ready for the crush of new shares that will be dumped into the market Friday. The Big Board has dedicated a server just for Facebook trading that will be done on the NYSE Euronext Inc.’s all-electronic Arca exchange.

“We’re fully prepared,” NYSE spokesman Rich Adamonis said.

Tabb said myriad problems could arise, though he predicted high volume wouldn’t be one.

Buyers and sellers may not get access to the stock, he said, because market data feeds connecting all the exchanges could hit a snag, trading algorithms may not be properly tuned, or a server could crash.

“If there’s a problem it’ll be a technology glitch,” Tabb said.

Brokerages are getting ready to field phone calls from customers who want Facebook shares — and potentially upset clients who didn’t get as large of an IPO allotment as they wanted.

Fidelity Investments in Boston, one of the country’s largest retail brokerages, has employees on standby to deal with high customer demand, spokesman Steve Austin said.

Wall Street might spend the remaining few hours before Facebook’s public debut worrying about what might go wrong. But there’s a decidedly different atmosphere on the West Coast at Facebook’s Menlo Park headquarters.

Hundreds of employees spent Thursday in a “hackathon” — an all-night work session for programmers and engineers.

Even founder Mark Zuckerberg was expected to attend the event — until he rings the Nasdaq’s opening bell.

By Andrew Tangel and Walter Hamilton, Los Angeles Times

Google is finally set to give tough time to Facebook .  The searching giant recently launched Google+, a social networking site that aims to rectify the company’s failed social media efforts, such as Google Buzz and Wave, and put a dent in Facebook’s business.

So does Google+ stand a chance against Facebook, which is now over 750 million users strong and hasbeen valued at $100 billion? Google isn’t giving up without a fight: the behemoth needs a hit in the social space and one Google executive called Google+ a bet-the-company effort. To help you decide, here’s a look at six features Google+ has that Facebook doesn’t (You can see what they have in common here).

Are these elements important? Are they enough to tempt you to make the switch–or at least join Google+? Let us know in the comments below. For more on Google+, check out our tips for Google+ newbies and 9 things you need to know about Google’s new social network.

Seperate News feed

Google+ comes with “Sparks,” a basic news reader offering users access to separate news feeds covering a variety of different topics. Google+ members can customize what interests appear on their Sparks page, which is directly accessible from their Google+ profile. Clicking on one of the topic–say “soccer,” or “fashion”–in the Sparks page delivers a stream of stories from around the web, presenting the headline and first several sentences of articles from outlets such as New York Magazine, The Next Web, and YouTube.

What differentiates Sparks from the Facebook news feed is its focus on specific topics and on news: you won’t find information on your friend’s newborn, but you will find highlights from blogs, newspapers, and other media outlets sorted by topic.

Keep Your Social Circle secret

When Google+ users sort their friends, acquaintances and other contacts into Circles, no one else knows how they’ve been grouped. Google will show other Google+ users who you’ve put into your Circles, as well as who has put you into their Circles, but it won’t reveal how you’ve characterized those Circles–who else in them, how they’re titled, etc. For each post on Google+, users can specify, via a convenient drop-down menu, what Circles can see the content.

Facebook Groups operate a bit differently. Though there are different privacy settings (“open,” “closed,” and “secret”), the bottom line is that all the members of the group will be able to see all the other members of that group, as well as the type of group they’ve been added to. The members of an individuals’ Circle are visible only to the invidual who created it.

In addition, Facebook uses Lists, not Groups, to help users restrict the audience that can view status updates and other posts. But Lists remain an imperfect solution, requiring extra steps for users, who have to click through several screens to specify what “list” to share with, and setting up Lists isn’t quite as seamless as on Google+. The New York Times’ David Pogue observes, “Facebook has something similar, called Lists. But compared with Circles, it’s buried and a lot more effort to use.”

See What Strangers Are Saying

Whereas on Facebook the only posts and status updates that appear in your news feed come from people you’re friends with, Google+ allows you to see updates from people you aren’t yet following, but who are following you. The “Incoming” stream displays posts from other Google+ users who have put you into their Circles, but you have not yet “circled.” You can follow them if you choose by putting them into one of your circles.

Hang Out With People You Don't Know

Facebook Chat requires you to be friends with someone before you can chat with them. Google Hangouts, for better or for worse, are much more open: up to ten people can join a Hangout video chat, and they need not be in each others’ Circles to do so. If you’ve “circled” someone, but she hasn’t put you in one of her Circles, you can still join a Hangout she creates.

Get To It From Gmail (Or Google.com)

Via its social graph, Facebook has spread far beyond its Facebook.com domain. Facebook “like” buttons populate a slew of news sites, your Facebook friends’ activity appears on numerous third-party sites, and more and more of the information you see is customized based on your Facebook profile and personal interests.

Facebook follows people around the web, encouraging them to constantly engage with and click back to its site, but Google+ has its own advantage: it’s embedded directly into Gmail, valuable real estate that users navigate to repeatedly each day. Every interaction with their email inbox presents an opportunity for them to log on to Google+–with a single click, users can go from their inbox to their social network. Google+’s integration with Gmail also provides an easy way to populate the social network.

Embedded in the black header that now appears on Google.com, Google+ also follows people as they browse the search engine. In other words, Google has found a way to immediately put Google+ in front of users multiple times a day.

Facebook and Google in the ring

Facebook vs Google

Google announced Tuesday the launch of a new social network, called Google +, or Google Plus, which aims to take on Facebook. As our sources reported:

Google made a huge announcement this tuesday, launching Google +, or Google Plus, its long-awaited version of a social network to rival Facebook.

Google’s been trying to crack the social market for years, running into false starts with content-sharing services Wave and Buzz. (The former fizzled and the latter set off a privacy complaints that ended with a lawsuit and an FTC settlement.) Many have been waiting for Google’s big push into social since it rolled out its +1 button in March, especially as Facebook gets cozy with its search rival, Microsoft.

And then, today, Google announced +. The site bears a striking resemblance to Facebook, with streaming feeds and specialized groups of friends. In fact, Google + gathers many of the features of existing social networks.

The network has five basic components: Circles, Sparks, Hangouts, Instant Uploads and Huddle. It also requires a Google profile, meaning you’ll need to provide Google, at minimum, with a name and a photo.

Circles lets you group your contacts — e.g. friends, work, family. Like Facebook, this features lets you share information with groups of contacts instead of hitting everyone with your latest update at once. Sparks acts like an RSS reader or Facebook news feed, letting you input things you’re interested in and pushing relevant content to you. Hangouts features live group video chats, aiming to foster spontaneous meetings with up to 10 people. You can also alert certain groups of friends when you’re hanging out.

Instant Uploads takes care of the increasingly important mobile aspect of social networking, automatically posting users’ phone pictures and videos to a private album. From there, users can decide if and with whom they want to share their media. You also have the option to add location data to every Google + post.

And Huddle is a group texting feature — similar to Beluga, which Facebook acquired in March — that lets you have a group chat through your phone.

Some analysts are asking whether Google expansion into the social media sphere is a bad move. TechCruch guest contributor Semil Shah asked the same question:

Today’s soft-launch of Google’s new social galaxy, Google+, raises one interesting question: Can Google, a massive, multinational, cash-rich, consumer technology company with multiple successful productivity applications and services, take its dough out of the oven and bake a social network into their bread?

-Jago News-

Farmville New Tricks and Items

The people who play Farmville have a great surprise in store for them this week with all of the new items that the popular Facebook game offers.  There are now new collections, themes, and technical changes to intensify the player’s experience.

New Farmville items include additions to the Wild West theme that has been going on for some time now.  Players can now collect toys such as ABC blocks, duck toys, jacks, marbles, train whistles, and paddle balls.  Each of these toys has different rarities and players need a different number of each items. They can find these items by seeding their plowed land or by using their Farm Cash to purchase them.  When they find these items, they will have the option of posting it onto their wall so that their friends will be able to claim one as well.

Another new Farmville trick added this week: Players can now send more gifts to a larger amount of their friends.  In the past, the number of friends you could send gifts daily was limited.  Now that limit has been raised to fifty friends each day. The Wild West theme has grown drastically this week.  Users can now purchase a Western Longhorn, Wild West Fort, Blacksmith, Wild West Stream, Gold Panning, Wanted Post, Tumbleweed and so much more.  However, these new Farmville items will only be accessible for a limited period of time.

Farmville users will no longer be bored with the monotony of the seeding, plowing and harvesting since there are now new things they can do and items they can collect.  It was a smart move from Zynga and one that will probably push Farmville into even more success in the gaming world.

Facebook Revenue 2009

Facebook has topped the expectations in 2009 by realizing nearly 800 million dollars income last year, ABC News reported referring to two unnamed sources. Insiders also revelaed that the social media community has gained 10 million dollars operating profit last year. The 800 million dollars revenue has far exceeded the company’s expectations.

Facebook – which has almost 500 million registered users now – was started as a closed network of university students in 2004. The social media announced in 2009 that its financial balance has turned to posititive, realizing more income than expenditure. At the same year analysts estimated 500 million dollars of the company’s earnings. Although, privacy scandals have cracked the company’s reputation plenty of times recently, the number of registered users and advertisers are steadily growing.

Experts believe, the success in Facebook’s advertising platform is that the large general advertising campaigns can find their ways to their target groups just like smaller, highly specialized marketing campaigns.

Facebook regularly rejects buying and investing offers, while the business world is waiting for the company’s introduction in the stock markets. However, this move is unlikely now, because Facebook is able to finance its agressive expansion from its own revenues. Besides the founders, the company’s shareholders are Microsoft, the Russian Digital Sky Technologies, the Hong Kong based billionaire Li Ka-Shing and other venture capital groups.

Ban on Big sites

Ministry of Information Technology and Telecom has confirmed that it has received ban orders from Lahore High Court on Thursday to ban Google, Yahoo, Hotmail, MSN, Bing, YouTube, Amazon etc , reported BBC Urdu, citing unnamed sources in the Ministry.

Ministry of Information Technology and Telecom has confirmed that it has received ban orders from Lahore High Court on Thursday to ban Google, Yahoo, Hotmail, MSN, Bing, YouTube, Amazon etc , reported BBC Urdu, citing unnamed sources in the Ministry.It merits mentioning here that inter-ministerial committee of IT Ministry decides on how to and why to ban or not to ban a website.

Committee is reportedly meeting today to discuss the implication, execution and procedures of the ban.IT Ministry has an option of getting stay-order from Supreme Court against LHC’s decision; however, all these options will be discussed in today’s meeting.Unlike Facebook’s ban previous month, LHC’s current ban orders for search engines were not welcomed by the masses.Earlier this week, Lahore High Court had ordered to immediately block nine websites for publishing and promoting sacrilegious material while hearing a writ petition filed by a citizen, Muhammad Sidiq, seeking a ban on the websites for publishing blasphemous materials and twisting the facts and figure of Holy Quran.PTA has already sent a summary to Prime Minister of Pakistan to discuss ban options of offensive websites – summary has details on implications of banning search engines and social media.Ban includes 9 websites, which are considered as backbone of internet, blocking them will mean a total internet blackout in the country.

Last month "Everybody Draw Muhammed Day" drew protests from students in Lahore.

 A Pakistani court has ruled that the government can unblock Facebook if the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority takes measures to block any objectionable material on the social networking site, a lawyer involved in the case said.

Chaudhary Zulfiqar Ali, a lawyer representing the Islamic Lawyers Movement, which initially petitioned the court to block Facebook, said the next hearing for the case will be June 15.

On that day, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority will explain to the court how it plans to block objectionable material on Facebook and other websites.

An official from the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority said that Facebook will be unblocked immediately after the court delivers a written order.

Pakistan blocked the site May 19 in response to an online group that called on people to draw depictions of the Prophet Mohammed, officials said Wednesday. Drawing depictions of the prophet is forbidden to followers of Islam; devout Muslims consider such depictions offensive.

The Telecommunication Authority issued the order a day before “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day,” scheduled by a Facebook group with the same name, because of “the objectionable material” on the site, said Khoram Ali Mehran of the Telecommunication Authority.

Meanwhile, nearby Bangladesh also blocked access to Facebook over the weekend, after government officials said satirical cartoons of the prophet and the country’s leaders were uploaded.

Youtube

The Ministry for Information Technology and Telecom has lifted a ban on Youtube. However, social networking website Facebook will remain blocked in line with the order of Lahore High Court.

The LHC had directed the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) to block the site till May 31 over blasphemous content.

Federal Secretary Najeebullah Malik told Geo that PTA was asked to ensure the blockage of links carrying sacrilegious drawings.

He said that the government would implement any order given by the court about Facebook in future too.

PTA chairman Dr Yasin said that Youtube would also be restored immediately after receiving orders from the information ministry.

Virus Attack on Facebook

Hackers have flooded the Internet with virus-corrupted spam that targets Facebook  estimated 400 million users in an energy to stealbanking passwords and collect other delicate information.

The emails tell recipients that the passwords ontheir Facebook accounts have been reset, urging them to click on an attachment to acquire new login credentials, according to defiant-virus software maker McAfee Inc.

If the attachment is opened, it downloads some types of malicious software, counting a series that steals passwords, McAfee said on Wednesday.

Hackers have long targeted Facebook users, transport them spoiled messages via the societal networking guests’s own inner contact structure. With this new harass, they are with common Internet email to division their malicious software.

A Facebook spokesman said the troupe could not state on the precise suit, but barbed to a stage renovate the crowd posted on its web location formerly on Wednesday notice users about the spoofed forward and advising users to cancel the email and to tell their links.

McAfee estimates the hackers sent out tens of millions of spam across Europe, the United States and Asia since the push began on Tuesday.

Dave Marcus, McAfee’s leader of malware inquiries and communications, said that he expects thehackers will result in infecting millions of computers.

“With Facebook as your allure, you potentially have 400 million people that can click on the attachment. If you get 10 percent victory, that’s 40 million,” he said.

The email’s business line says “Facebook password reset confirmation buyer brace,” according to Marcus.

YouTube Dropping Support For IE6 Starting 13th March

March 13, 2010, YouTube will no longer officially support Internet Explorer 6. Ars Technica found the specific date buried in a YouTube Help item pertaining to browser support. Under the section header, “When does older browser support end for YouTube and what does this mean?,” it reads:

“Support stops on March 13th. Stopped support essentially means that some future features on YouTube will be rolled out that won’t work in older browsers.”

The support entry also details that Google’s YouTube will notify site visitors of the change in browser support by displaying an interstitial every two weeks — indefinitely until the user upgrades — that will serve as a very blatant visual reminder and encourage IE6 browsers to upgrade accordingly.