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Facebook founder now richer than Google founders
BOSTON: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's personal fortunes have soared, thanks to investment fund GSV Capital's recent stake in the social networking site which has put the Harvard dropout at a worth higher than Google founder Sergey Brin and Larry Page.
Earlier this week, GSV Capital Corp bought 225,000 shares in Facebook at an average price of USD 29.28 each.
This stake values the popular social networking site at about $70 billion.
Based on the new investment, Zuckerberg in turn is worth approximately $18 billion, a report in Time magazine said.
"With the new valuation, Zuckerberg has one-upped Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, whose fortunes are estimated to have dropped," the Time report said.
This estimate makes Zuckerberg the third-richest man in the technology sector in the world, only behind Microsoft's Bill Gates and Oracle's Larry Ellison.
While Gates is estimated to be currently worth $56 billion, Ellison is the world's fifth-richest billionaire at $39.5 billion.
Earlier this year, Zuckerberg's net worth stood at $13.5 billion.
He had already shot past Apple's Steve Jobs last year and has now passed Google's Brin and Page, whose fortunes are now estimated to have dropped to $17 billion from $19.8 billion in March.
Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com
BOSTON: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's personal fortunes have soared, thanks to investment fund GSV Capital's recent stake in the social networking site which has put the Harvard dropout at a worth higher than Google founder Sergey Brin and Larry Page.
Earlier this week, GSV Capital Corp bought 225,000 shares in Facebook at an average price of USD 29.28 each.
This stake values the popular social networking site at about $70 billion.
Based on the new investment, Zuckerberg in turn is worth approximately $18 billion, a report in Time magazine said.
"With the new valuation, Zuckerberg has one-upped Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, whose fortunes are estimated to have dropped," the Time report said.
This estimate makes Zuckerberg the third-richest man in the technology sector in the world, only behind Microsoft's Bill Gates and Oracle's Larry Ellison.
While Gates is estimated to be currently worth $56 billion, Ellison is the world's fifth-richest billionaire at $39.5 billion.
Earlier this year, Zuckerberg's net worth stood at $13.5 billion.
He had already shot past Apple's Steve Jobs last year and has now passed Google's Brin and Page, whose fortunes are now estimated to have dropped to $17 billion from $19.8 billion in March.
Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com
ssparikshya
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RE: Facebook founder now richer than Google founders
now a days people think facebook is better than orkut
now also richer:clap::clap::clap: for facebook
now a days people think facebook is better than orkut
now also richer:clap::clap::clap: for facebook
Railways uses Facebook to inform passengers about train position
NEW DELHI: Railways have now launched a Facebook page to inform passengers about the latest position of trains including arrivals and departures.
"Through the Facebook we are informing the general public about the latest development activities and facilities being provided in the railway station and responding to queries about Railways," Northern Railway General Manager SK Budhalakoti.
He said the page by the Delhi division on the social networking site has become very popular since its launch in April.
"We also inform the passengers regarding the running position of the trains and their platform numbers at three major stations - New Delhi, Old Delhi and Nizamuddin ," he said.
A centralised SMS-based complaint monitoring system has been implemented wherein immediate action is taken to rectify the deficiencies after receiving complaints, he said, adding this has resulted in sharp decline in complaints being received.
Budhalakoti said battery-operated vehicles have been introduced in New Delhi Station to help senior citizens, women and children.
Northern Railway has claimed a 12 per cent decline in the rail accidents this year.
"There was no incident of train collisions even during the dense fog this year," he said.
Northern Railway earned Rs 10,997.02 cr during April 2010-March 2011, which is 12 per cent of the total earnings of Indian Railways .
Source: economictimes.com
NEW DELHI: Railways have now launched a Facebook page to inform passengers about the latest position of trains including arrivals and departures.
"Through the Facebook we are informing the general public about the latest development activities and facilities being provided in the railway station and responding to queries about Railways," Northern Railway General Manager SK Budhalakoti.
He said the page by the Delhi division on the social networking site has become very popular since its launch in April.
"We also inform the passengers regarding the running position of the trains and their platform numbers at three major stations - New Delhi, Old Delhi and Nizamuddin ," he said.
A centralised SMS-based complaint monitoring system has been implemented wherein immediate action is taken to rectify the deficiencies after receiving complaints, he said, adding this has resulted in sharp decline in complaints being received.
Budhalakoti said battery-operated vehicles have been introduced in New Delhi Station to help senior citizens, women and children.
Northern Railway has claimed a 12 per cent decline in the rail accidents this year.
"There was no incident of train collisions even during the dense fog this year," he said.
Northern Railway earned Rs 10,997.02 cr during April 2010-March 2011, which is 12 per cent of the total earnings of Indian Railways .
Source: economictimes.com
ssparikshya
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Facebook Credits For India To Launch Today
Facebook just can't stay away from the limelight these days. After successfully launching in several countries, the social networking giant is going to launch the payment system known as Facebook Credits for Indian users today. Using this system, users will be able to spend the virtual currency on the website on games and applications.
Deb Liu, Facebook's Platform Marketing Manager had stated on the company's official blog in January, "Starting July 1, we will require all social game developers on the Facebook canvas platform to process payments through Facebook Credits. Facebook Credits is currently used in more than 350 applications from 150 developers, representing more than 70% of virtual goods transactions volume on Facebook".
Brands using Facebook as a medium to sell goods will find this very useful. Facebook Credit has already been adopted for in-game virtual transactions by major developers including Zynga, Playfish, CrowdStar, Digital Chocolate, PopCap, and Arkadium; hence there is no doubt that we will hear a lot about it in the near future.
techtree
Facebook just can't stay away from the limelight these days. After successfully launching in several countries, the social networking giant is going to launch the payment system known as Facebook Credits for Indian users today. Using this system, users will be able to spend the virtual currency on the website on games and applications.
Deb Liu, Facebook's Platform Marketing Manager had stated on the company's official blog in January, "Starting July 1, we will require all social game developers on the Facebook canvas platform to process payments through Facebook Credits. Facebook Credits is currently used in more than 350 applications from 150 developers, representing more than 70% of virtual goods transactions volume on Facebook".
Brands using Facebook as a medium to sell goods will find this very useful. Facebook Credit has already been adopted for in-game virtual transactions by major developers including Zynga, Playfish, CrowdStar, Digital Chocolate, PopCap, and Arkadium; hence there is no doubt that we will hear a lot about it in the near future.
techtree
Facebook becomes biggest seller of online advertising with more than $2 bn in revenue
LONDON/PARIS: While traditional advertising groups jostled for awards at a recent annual industry gathering in Cannes , the year's biggest star was a newcomer to the beaches: the social network Facebook.
The company has gone from nowhere a few years ago to become the biggest single seller of online display advertising in the United States with more than $2 billion in revenues this year, according to research firm eMarketer.
Online ad sales have boomed in recent years largely because they finely target consumers in a way that print media and TV cannot match. Google and Amazon initially pioneered the trend by analysing web surfing and internet searches to target customers' tastes.
Now Facebook has brought a new level of sophistication to the game: mining data from its social network about users' likes and dislikes as well as those of friends to better target ads.
The 'social ad' approach can be seen in a current Facebook campaign run by tennis racket maker Head. Users who link to Andy Murray's page get updates from the player himself mixed in with ads for his sponsor and jokey Youtube videos.
However there are risks involved for Facebook and other online ad players as they develop ever more sophisticated ways to track people's behaviour online.
Some regulators see such tracking as a violation of privacy even when it is done anonymously. The Europe Union recently required that web surfers be notified if the sites they visit are collecting information about them, prompting howls from industry.
The stakes are high: industry insiders and analysts say brands are willing to pay more for such 'social ads' than they would for traditional online ads since they see them as more effective.
"Brands are willing to invest to learn how consumers interact with their brand," said Mykim Chikli from Performics, a division of Publicis, which helps big companies with online advertising placement and strategy.
"You can target people who like golf, cars, and watches and you can start to push ads to that profile of person."
In a demonstration of Facebook's current advertising power, Google recently launched a social network dubbed Google+ in its boldest attempt yet to crack the medium and tap the advertising dollars it brings.
TARGETING TRANSFORMATION
The move toward social ads shows how the Internet is transforming the whole industry.
Major companies from Nestle to Ford are increasing the proportion of their ad spend on the Internet to the detriment of traditional press ads and big ad agencies are scrambling to evolve.
The changes have given birth to a slew of tech start-ups trying to come up with more sophisticated ways to match ads to consumers, often with sophisticated data mining techniques and algorithms.
Among them is RadiumOne, a venture-backed start-up that tracks people's social behaviour on-line by partnering with niche social networks, blogs, and media-sharing sites and then uses that data to target ads.
"When you share an article or email a Web link to a friend, that's a very influential connection and we can track that through cookies and then segment users into groups," Chief Executive Gurbaksh Chahal told Reuters.
"Social data is immense," he said. "We've built some great technology that can understand data and find an audience in the real time and serve an ad that's relevant to them."
Martin Sorrell , the CEO of the world's biggest ad group WPP, says there is room to improve the effectiveness of web ads: "Online advertising is more sophisticated than offline, but it's not got to where we think it can go yet."
TENTACLES
Facebook's influence is also spreading beyond its own site as more webpages allow people to use their login details from Facebook to enter instead of a separate password.
Users can then share content and post messages within those sites as they would do on their social network, which in turn allows the website to access their profile and determine the user's likes and dislikes. Twitter has a similar system.
California-based start-up Gigya powers the buttons that allow such sharing for about 5,000 sites, such as US broadcaster ABC and sports apparel maker Nike.
Source: economictimes.com
LONDON/PARIS: While traditional advertising groups jostled for awards at a recent annual industry gathering in Cannes , the year's biggest star was a newcomer to the beaches: the social network Facebook.
The company has gone from nowhere a few years ago to become the biggest single seller of online display advertising in the United States with more than $2 billion in revenues this year, according to research firm eMarketer.
Online ad sales have boomed in recent years largely because they finely target consumers in a way that print media and TV cannot match. Google and Amazon initially pioneered the trend by analysing web surfing and internet searches to target customers' tastes.
Now Facebook has brought a new level of sophistication to the game: mining data from its social network about users' likes and dislikes as well as those of friends to better target ads.
The 'social ad' approach can be seen in a current Facebook campaign run by tennis racket maker Head. Users who link to Andy Murray's page get updates from the player himself mixed in with ads for his sponsor and jokey Youtube videos.
However there are risks involved for Facebook and other online ad players as they develop ever more sophisticated ways to track people's behaviour online.
Some regulators see such tracking as a violation of privacy even when it is done anonymously. The Europe Union recently required that web surfers be notified if the sites they visit are collecting information about them, prompting howls from industry.
The stakes are high: industry insiders and analysts say brands are willing to pay more for such 'social ads' than they would for traditional online ads since they see them as more effective.
"Brands are willing to invest to learn how consumers interact with their brand," said Mykim Chikli from Performics, a division of Publicis, which helps big companies with online advertising placement and strategy.
"You can target people who like golf, cars, and watches and you can start to push ads to that profile of person."
In a demonstration of Facebook's current advertising power, Google recently launched a social network dubbed Google+ in its boldest attempt yet to crack the medium and tap the advertising dollars it brings.
TARGETING TRANSFORMATION
The move toward social ads shows how the Internet is transforming the whole industry.
Major companies from Nestle to Ford are increasing the proportion of their ad spend on the Internet to the detriment of traditional press ads and big ad agencies are scrambling to evolve.
The changes have given birth to a slew of tech start-ups trying to come up with more sophisticated ways to match ads to consumers, often with sophisticated data mining techniques and algorithms.
Among them is RadiumOne, a venture-backed start-up that tracks people's social behaviour on-line by partnering with niche social networks, blogs, and media-sharing sites and then uses that data to target ads.
"When you share an article or email a Web link to a friend, that's a very influential connection and we can track that through cookies and then segment users into groups," Chief Executive Gurbaksh Chahal told Reuters.
"Social data is immense," he said. "We've built some great technology that can understand data and find an audience in the real time and serve an ad that's relevant to them."
Martin Sorrell , the CEO of the world's biggest ad group WPP, says there is room to improve the effectiveness of web ads: "Online advertising is more sophisticated than offline, but it's not got to where we think it can go yet."
TENTACLES
Facebook's influence is also spreading beyond its own site as more webpages allow people to use their login details from Facebook to enter instead of a separate password.
Users can then share content and post messages within those sites as they would do on their social network, which in turn allows the website to access their profile and determine the user's likes and dislikes. Twitter has a similar system.
California-based start-up Gigya powers the buttons that allow such sharing for about 5,000 sites, such as US broadcaster ABC and sports apparel maker Nike.
Source: economictimes.com
ssparikshya
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Facebook launching Skype-powered chat?
Facebook, the world's biggest social networking website, is set to launch a new feature next week, possibly in the mobile or tablet arena, its CEO said. Analysts are speculating that the 'awesome' product that Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg was hinting at might have a desktop component.
According to Techcrunch, Facebook will launch a new video chat product, powered by Skype, that may work in browser. The report quotes a source with knowledge of the partnership.
The reports says that though it is not clear if it will just work if a user has Skype already installed on the computer, or would require new software.
Facebook and Skype have been working for sometime towards deeper integration including adding various Facebook features into the Skype service.
Last month, Skype announced deeper integration with Facebook. Skype 5.5 Beta version for Windows allows users to instant message Facebook friends directly from Skype, using the new Facebook contacts tab.
Also, Skype users can use the Facebook News Feed within Skype to "like" a friend's status or comment on it without logging into Facebook.
Microsoft announced in May it was buying Skype for $8.5 billion, its biggest-ever acquisition, placing a rich bet on mobile and the Internet to try and best rivals such as Google Inc.
toi
Facebook, the world's biggest social networking website, is set to launch a new feature next week, possibly in the mobile or tablet arena, its CEO said. Analysts are speculating that the 'awesome' product that Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg was hinting at might have a desktop component.
According to Techcrunch, Facebook will launch a new video chat product, powered by Skype, that may work in browser. The report quotes a source with knowledge of the partnership.
The reports says that though it is not clear if it will just work if a user has Skype already installed on the computer, or would require new software.
Facebook and Skype have been working for sometime towards deeper integration including adding various Facebook features into the Skype service.
Last month, Skype announced deeper integration with Facebook. Skype 5.5 Beta version for Windows allows users to instant message Facebook friends directly from Skype, using the new Facebook contacts tab.
Also, Skype users can use the Facebook News Feed within Skype to "like" a friend's status or comment on it without logging into Facebook.
Microsoft announced in May it was buying Skype for $8.5 billion, its biggest-ever acquisition, placing a rich bet on mobile and the Internet to try and best rivals such as Google Inc.
toi
ssparikshya
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Facebook to make $1 billion from social gaming
Facebook Inc is on course to generate $1 billion in revenue this year from social gaming, according to Kevin Ryan, a leading Internet entrepreneur and former chief executive of online advertising giant DoubleClick.
Most of that revenue will come from advertising, Ryan estimated in an interview with Reuters this week.
The $1 billion forecast also includes revenue from Facebook Credits, which allow users to buy items for games and other activities on the social network, he added.
Ryan is now chief executive of luxury flash-sales company Gilt Groupe, but he invests in other Internet businesses including news website The Business Insider and 10gen, which runs MongoDB, a database that's popular with start-ups.
Ryan's brother, Sean Ryan, became director of gaming partnerships at Facebook in early 2011.
Facebook's more than 500 million active users are attracting a lot more ad dollars as companies step up online marketing. Research firm eMarketer estimated in January that ad spending on Facebook would exceed $4 billion this year. That's more than double levels of 2010.
A big chunk of that ad revenue comes from social games that are played on Facebook's platform.
"Assuming Facebook is on track to produce $4 billion in ad revenue this year, $1 billion of that coming from social gaming is not outlandish," said Paul Verna, a senior analyst at eMarketer.
Facebook is a private company and doesn't disclose financial information. A Facebook spokesman declined to comment on Friday.
Zynga Inc, the dominant developer of social games played on Facebook, filed for a $1 billion initial public offering on Friday.
Zynga disclosed that it generated $235 million in revenue during the first quarter of 2011, more than double the same period a year earlier. That level of sales and the growth rate suggest Zynga is on course to generate more than $1 billion in revenue this year.
"We generate substantially all of our revenue and players through the Facebook platform and expect to continue to do so for the foreseeable future," Zynga said in its IPO filing on Friday.
Facebook Inc is on course to generate $1 billion in revenue this year from social gaming, according to Kevin Ryan, a leading Internet entrepreneur and former chief executive of online advertising giant DoubleClick.
Most of that revenue will come from advertising, Ryan estimated in an interview with Reuters this week.
The $1 billion forecast also includes revenue from Facebook Credits, which allow users to buy items for games and other activities on the social network, he added.
Ryan is now chief executive of luxury flash-sales company Gilt Groupe, but he invests in other Internet businesses including news website The Business Insider and 10gen, which runs MongoDB, a database that's popular with start-ups.
Ryan's brother, Sean Ryan, became director of gaming partnerships at Facebook in early 2011.
Facebook's more than 500 million active users are attracting a lot more ad dollars as companies step up online marketing. Research firm eMarketer estimated in January that ad spending on Facebook would exceed $4 billion this year. That's more than double levels of 2010.
A big chunk of that ad revenue comes from social games that are played on Facebook's platform.
"Assuming Facebook is on track to produce $4 billion in ad revenue this year, $1 billion of that coming from social gaming is not outlandish," said Paul Verna, a senior analyst at eMarketer.
Facebook is a private company and doesn't disclose financial information. A Facebook spokesman declined to comment on Friday.
Zynga Inc, the dominant developer of social games played on Facebook, filed for a $1 billion initial public offering on Friday.
Zynga disclosed that it generated $235 million in revenue during the first quarter of 2011, more than double the same period a year earlier. That level of sales and the growth rate suggest Zynga is on course to generate more than $1 billion in revenue this year.
"We generate substantially all of our revenue and players through the Facebook platform and expect to continue to do so for the foreseeable future," Zynga said in its IPO filing on Friday.
China state fund eyes Facebook stake
BEIJING: A state-owned fund in China is reportedly interested in buying a stake in social network Facebook, said a media report.
A source told US business magazine Business Insider that China's sovereign wealth fund - the China Investment Corp - is hoping it could buy a stake in Facebook, large enough "to matter", the Shanghai Daily reported.
Financial firm Citibank is reportedly trying to acquire as much as $1.2 billion worth of Facebook stock on behalf of two sovereign wealth funds - one from China and another from the Middle East, the daily said.
The sovereign fund did not comment on the issue.
Facebook is not available on the Chinese mainland. Its founder Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly keen to invest in the Chinese market, which has more than 400 million internet users.
Facebook is currently one of the most popular social networking websites with over 500 million users.
Zuckerberg is expected to visit Shanghai in September for his second trip to the country. In 2010, the 27-year-old met leaders of top Chinese internet companies, including Baidu, Sina, Alibaba and Tencent.
Source: economictimes.com
BEIJING: A state-owned fund in China is reportedly interested in buying a stake in social network Facebook, said a media report.
A source told US business magazine Business Insider that China's sovereign wealth fund - the China Investment Corp - is hoping it could buy a stake in Facebook, large enough "to matter", the Shanghai Daily reported.
Financial firm Citibank is reportedly trying to acquire as much as $1.2 billion worth of Facebook stock on behalf of two sovereign wealth funds - one from China and another from the Middle East, the daily said.
The sovereign fund did not comment on the issue.
Facebook is not available on the Chinese mainland. Its founder Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly keen to invest in the Chinese market, which has more than 400 million internet users.
Facebook is currently one of the most popular social networking websites with over 500 million users.
Zuckerberg is expected to visit Shanghai in September for his second trip to the country. In 2010, the 27-year-old met leaders of top Chinese internet companies, including Baidu, Sina, Alibaba and Tencent.
Source: economictimes.com
RE: Facebook launching Skype-powered chat?
Less than a week after the resounding launch of Google+ and its new “Hangouts” feature that allows users to video chat with one another through their browser in real-time, Facebook issued a statement that they would launch an “awesome” new product this week. A number of analysts are predicting that Facebook will reveal that feature to be in-browser video chat, much like Google+ Hangouts.
A number of Facebook’s recent hires have been in the video space, and the company is also expected to announce a partnership with Skype, who’s help Facebook will enlist in building and rolling out the video chat service. We’ll have to wait until later this week to see what Facebook has in store, but it would make sense for the social network to launch its own video chat product now, especially right after Google+ has appeared.
Presumably, Facebook’s video chat service would hook in to Facebook chat and allow in-browser Skype calls to other Facebook users. The most recent beta of Skype for Windows supports Facebook Chat already, which is another clue that if Skype is involved, it’ll have something to do with in-browser video chat.
If there were a partnership at hand, it could open the door for Skype to access some of Facebook’s 750 million users, and definitely make Microsoft, Skype’s new owners, happy about the broadening reach of their newly purchased company.
At the same time, the question remains whether or not Facebook users would actually use video chat services, and how they would be integrated into the user experience. With Hangout, users have to start or join video chats in progress that they have access to: you can’t just start a video session with someone because you’re connected to them.
It would be unlike Facebook to change Facebook Chat significantly to give users that kind of privacy, so expect video icons on Facebook from users who support the service in the future, and unexpected video calls from friends you haven’t spoken to in years, or from relatives who “just want to catch up.”
Source: geek.com
Less than a week after the resounding launch of Google+ and its new “Hangouts” feature that allows users to video chat with one another through their browser in real-time, Facebook issued a statement that they would launch an “awesome” new product this week. A number of analysts are predicting that Facebook will reveal that feature to be in-browser video chat, much like Google+ Hangouts.
A number of Facebook’s recent hires have been in the video space, and the company is also expected to announce a partnership with Skype, who’s help Facebook will enlist in building and rolling out the video chat service. We’ll have to wait until later this week to see what Facebook has in store, but it would make sense for the social network to launch its own video chat product now, especially right after Google+ has appeared.
Presumably, Facebook’s video chat service would hook in to Facebook chat and allow in-browser Skype calls to other Facebook users. The most recent beta of Skype for Windows supports Facebook Chat already, which is another clue that if Skype is involved, it’ll have something to do with in-browser video chat.
If there were a partnership at hand, it could open the door for Skype to access some of Facebook’s 750 million users, and definitely make Microsoft, Skype’s new owners, happy about the broadening reach of their newly purchased company.
At the same time, the question remains whether or not Facebook users would actually use video chat services, and how they would be integrated into the user experience. With Hangout, users have to start or join video chats in progress that they have access to: you can’t just start a video session with someone because you’re connected to them.
It would be unlike Facebook to change Facebook Chat significantly to give users that kind of privacy, so expect video icons on Facebook from users who support the service in the future, and unexpected video calls from friends you haven’t spoken to in years, or from relatives who “just want to catch up.”
Source: geek.com
