Facebook CFO David Ebersman offloads stock

According to documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Facebook’s Chief Financial Officer, David Ebersman, has decided to sell 23,400 shares of Facebook stock.

Ebersman sold 11,700 shares at $58.80 each and 11,700 more at $56.37 each, netting him a total of $1,347,489 in the transactions. He currently owns 309,745 shares of Facebook stock.

As of the close of market Thursday, Facebook’s share value dropped slightly to $56.63.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

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GameStop is Selling Out of PS4s "As Quickly As We Can Stock Them"

by Matt Liebl, GameZone, Posted Jan 22nd 2014 1:45PM

GameStop has acknowledged overwhelming demand for the PlayStation 4 console. Walking into one of its retail stores today, you may find one of Sony's new console on the shelf, but that's not any indication of the type of demand experienced. In a press release announcing the arrival of a new shipment of PS4 consoles, the retailer shed some light on the type of demand it experienced over the holiday season.

"As expected, we experienced tremendous customer demand for the new PS4 console during the initial launch and throughout the holiday season, selling out of the consoles just as quickly as we could stock them," said Darron Nielsen, Senior Merchant for GameStop. Odds are if you were looking for a PS4 this holiday season, you probably already know this. Even now the PlayStation 4 is hard to come by as Sony has admittedly been having a hard time keeping up with consumer demand.

Since its launch in November over 4.2 million PS4 consoles have been sold worldwide as of December 28th. However, the lack of supply has actually hindered the PS4's sales...

Read the rest of the story at GameZone.
Tags: gamestop, gamestop playstation 4, gamestop ps4, PlayStation, playstation 4, playstation 4 demand, playstation 4 sales, ps4, ps4 demand, ps4 sales

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Facebook roundup: stock price and customer satisfaction down, Washington to offer voter registration app, Zuckerberg visits Walmart HQ and more

Facebook stock again below $30 - Amid concerns that Facebook will report lackluster Q2 earnings, the company’s stock closed at $28.76 today. Not even news that Facebook will begin testing search-based ads could bring the share price above $30 where it closed last week. The stock is down more than 6 percent this week and more than 24 percent since Facebook’s initial public offering in May. The company’s earnings call is scheduled for Thursday.

Nasdaq to revise IPO compensation proposal – Nasdaq is expected next week to release a compensation plan for investors who were affected by technical issues during Facebook’s stock market debut. Fox sources say the deal will be all in cash, and likely above the $40 million originally proposed. Nasdaq is continuing to work with the Securities and Exchange Commission on a second draft of the proposal, after its initial plan was met with criticism from investors, who may have lost a combined $200 million or more from the IPO.

Washington state to allow voter registration via Facebook – Washington’s secretary of state’s office said Tuesday it will offer an application on its Facebook page that allows residents to register to vote and then share the story with friends. The app, which is the first of its kind, is expected to launch as early as next week.

Facebook falls in consumer satisfaction – Facebook, already the lowest-scoring e-business company, experienced an even further decline in customer satisfaction, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index. An E-Business Report released in partnership with customer experience analytics firm ForeSee showed Facebook dropped 8 percent to 61 on a 100-point scale, setting a new record-low score for e-business and placing it among the five lowest-scoring companies of the 230 measured by the ACSI. Google+ scored 78 in its first appearance in the ACSI.

Zuckerberg and team looking to foster relationship with Walmart – Facebook’s senior management team, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, are scheduled to spend two days at Wal-Mart Stores Inc’s headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, meeting with executives and discussing ways to “deepen” the company’s relationship, according to Reuters. Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg have already shared photos from their visit, which began today.

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Facebook roundup: stock up to $33, creative execs join Facebook council, Payvment offers 1-click ad buying and more

Facebook stock up 10 percent - Facebook shares closed at $33.05 today, up 10 percent from last Friday. Despite some bad news regarding a legal settlement that will allow users to remove their names from Sponsored Stories, optimism is growing for Facebook’s potential future to create an ad network. The company also announced subscription billing and a move away from its virtual currency Credits toward a broader payments platform that allows developers to sell items in a user’s local currency, i.e., dollars or euros.

Facebook forms creative council – Facebook announce its inaugural Facebook Creative Council, which convened in Cannes this week. Similar to the the Client Council announced last year, the Creative Council will help Facebook identify priorities for agency creatives. Members include Jeff Benjamin (JWT), Colleen DeCourcy (Socialistic), David Droga (Droga5), Rob Feakins (Publicis), Toshiya Fukuda (777), James Hilton (AKQA), Linus Karlsson (McCann), Amir Kassaei (DDB), Nick Law (R/GA), Mike Lazerow (Buddy Media), Tor Myhren (Grey), Rob Reilly (CPB), Mark Tutssel (Leo Burnett) and Mark Waites (Mother).

AmEx and Facebook team up for small business contest – American Express OPEN and Facebook launched its second annual “Big Break for Small Business” contest. Five small business owners will receive house calls from American Express OPEN and Facebook marketing specialists who help transform a business’ social media efforts. Winners will also receive $25,000 in cash to go toward the social strategies they learn. Every small business that enters the contest will get $50 in free Facebook advertising credits. American Express Cardmembers and merchants who enter will receive $100 in advertising on the site.

Users get easier opt-out from notifications - Facebook introduced a new way for users to opt out of notifications from apps, groups, or other sources that send them. People have always been able to opt out on the Notifications Settings page, but now users can opt out directly from the notifications drop down menu.

Facebook adds comment editing - Users can now edit their own comments at any point after they’ve been posted. Previously, Facebook users only had about 12 seconds to edit their comments without removing them. Now comments that have been edited include an “edit history” that anyone can view. This means users can fix typos or clarify a point, but a full record of edits is available so users can’t deny what they wrote before editing it.

Payvment adds one-click Facebook ad buying – E-commerce platform Payvment announced a new one-click Facebook ad buying service this week to give merchants a way to turn promotional Facebook posts into ads and target users based on their shopping patterns.

New Louisiana law requires sex offenders to list status on social sites – Louisiana sex offenders must now state their criminal status on Facebook and other social networking sites. The law, which is the first of its kind in the U.S., requires sex offenders to list the crime for which they were convicted, the jurisdiction of conviction, a description of their physical characteristics and residential address.

Study: 24 percent of top websites integrate Facebook - According to a study by Pingdom, 24.3 percent of the top 10,000 websites in the world include Facebook integration on their homepages, this includes Facebook login and Facebook plugins such as the Like button. A total of 49.3 percent of the top 10,000 sites include basic links to Facebook.

GE launches HealthyShare Facebook app - GE launched a new Facebook Timeline-enabled app called HealthyShare, a tool for people to share their health goals, track their progress and use friends as sources of motivation toward achieving those goals. The app, which was timed ahead of the Olympic Games, was developed in partnership with Facebook.

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Facebook appends its 2005 stock plan to its IPO filing in new amendment

Facebook added a horde of documents to its filing for an initial public offering, including a copy of the 2005 stock plan.

There are also some offer letters to executives, the five-year agreement with Zynga and an agreement from 2010 with Russia’s Digital Sky Technologies when the late-stage investment firm held an 8.2 percent stake in the company.

Perhaps the most interesting thing though is a copy of the 2005 stock plan. In there, you can see how options and restricted stock units for the company were structured.

The Zynga-Facebook agreement is the exact same one the gaming company appended to its IPO filing last year. The redactions are the same.

The only interesting thing about the DST document seems to be that the firm agreed to a longer lock-up period than other investors. They will hold shares as long as 18 months after the IPO, which is longer than the 90-day period afforded to early investors, and then the six-month period for employees. It’s another concession from the Russian firm, which has a reputation for getting into choice deals because it moves fast and gives up trappings that more traditional venture firms ask for like board seats and liquidity preferences.

There’s also a document with a list of subsidiaries including Facebook Ireland Limited (Ireland), which I understand handles revenues through the European arm of the business. Then there is a subsidiary called Vitesse, which was an entity that helped build out the data center in Prineville.

We’ll be updating as we go. Today is our once-a-year Inside Social Apps conference in San Francisco, so apologies if updates are intermittent.

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Zynga CEO: Staff stock renegotiation 'probably wasn't a good idea'

You gotta' love how hindsight is 20/20. During a telling interview with The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), Zynga CEO and founder Mark Pincus reflected on one of the most turbulent times in the company's history: the months before its initial public offering (IPO). While Pincus stands firm behind the results of the IPO, the proverbial founder of FarmVille did express some regrets.

"I realize that that wasn't a model that had been done in Silicon Valley, and we're always as a company trying to invent new models, and not all of them are worth keeping and repeating," Pincus told WSJ in response to whether renegotiating stock compensation offers with early employees was the right move. "That's never been a policy at our company, and probably I'd say in retrospect, given how much that blew up, and questioned traditions in the Valley, I think probably wasn't a good idea."

Pincus's ultimate decision might have resulted in the end of two long-time employee's careers with Zynga, based on the CEO's words. But we imagine Pincus is already looking forward. In fact, Zynga may have already changed its opinions slightly on real-money gambling within social games, a hot topic now that the Department of Justice has shifted its stance on the issue.

"We're watching it with interest," Pincus said to WSJ. "Virtual reality is about the connection between the virtual and the real, and there's just such a close and perfect connection between the virtual and the real when you're gambling, because these chips have real world value."

[Image Credit: Forbes]

What do you think of Pincus's reflections on what happened prior to Zynga's IPO? Would you ever gamble in a Zynga game? Sound off in the comments. Add Comment.

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Facebook Roundup: Germany, Ceglia, Comments Box, Stock, Social Experiments and More

German Privacy Office Condemns Like Button – The privacy office of Northern German state Schleswig-Holstein has called for a ban of the Like button on grounds that it violates user privacy by sending browsing behavior data to Facebook. Starting at the end of September, it plans to sue German websites still using the plugin for 50,000 euro. Facebook says it is operating in compliance with European data and privacy laws, is approved by German’s central government, and the head of the complaining office, Thilo Weichert, is known to be a grandstander. 

Facebook Claims Ceglia Forged Docs – Facebook’s lawyers have revealed that they believe to be in possession of the “real” contract signed between Mark Zuckerberg and Paul Ceglia, who claims to own half of Facebook. The original contract, Facebook’s lawyers say, does not mention anything about Facebook. This same contract was also found on the servers of a law firm in Chicago. [Image Via Facebook]

Comments Box Helps Websites – A side-by-side comparison by the LA Times of Facebook’s Comments Box social plugin and an unauthenticated identity commenting system showed Facebook’s plugin improved civility of comments, drove more referral traffic, and sped up site loading.

Interpublic Group Sells Half Facebook Stake – IPG sold about half its Facebook stake, initially purchased for $5 million in 2006, for about $133 million this week. Now the group will take its profits and buy $450 million worth in shares.

Apple Store Incorporates Facebook - Apple’s online store now incorporates Facebook and Twitter integrations, allowing customers to share what they plan to purchase.

Facebook, Yahoo Test 6 Degrees of Separation – Facebook and Yahoo have partnered for a social experiment to see by how many associations people around the world are connected. The Small World Experiment will test the hypothesis that people are connected by “six degrees of separation.”

Facebook Publishes Security Guide – Facebook has published “A Guide to Facebook Security”, a 20-page .PDF written by security researchers designed to teach Facebook users how to protect themselves. It outlines how to avoid common scams, use Facebook’s security features, and explains that hackers might pretend to be popular apps like FarmVille, but Zynga and other developers aren’t to blame.

Facebook Zip Code Ad Targeting Inaccuracies - ClickZ reports that some early tests by Ads API developer XA.net indicate that in some cases Facebook may be showing that the expected audience for ads targeted to a specific zip code is higher than the census population for that zip code. This could be due to inaccuracy in how Facebook assigns users a zip code based on the city they list in their profile or where the site believes their IP address is located.

Sony’s PSVita to Include Facebook – Sony’s Vita handheld game console will include Facebook and other social apps when or soon after it launches, according to Electronista. The apps will be available for free on the PlayStation store.

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Zynga survey teases FrontierVille Bank, robbers and ... a stock market?

by Joe Osborne, Posted Apr 28th 2011 11:20AM

Yet another one of Zynga's infamous surveys has been released on the FrontierVille fan page, asking players what they would like to see in a Bank feature. Of course, this means that the team is working on a brand new building in FrontierVille that may or may not be released. As we've seen with surveys like the recent Mafia Wars 2 questionnaire, these proclaimed features could be in extremely early development.

However, the questions that Zynga asks in the survey are most important. Apparently, the company is ready to get as deep with this feature as you want it to be. In a series of eight questions, the company considers loans, interest rates, bank robberies (pictured right), foreign currency exchanges and even a FrontierVille stock market. Depending on how overwhelming player responses are one way or the other, the FrontierVille Bank could easily be the deepest, most robust feature to ever launch in the game. If you're interested in making that happen, participate in the survey right here.

Are you excited to see that FrontierVille might be getting a Bank? How deep would you want this feature to go once released? Sound off in the comments. Add Comment.
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Tags: bank, bank robbery, banking, frontierville, frontierville bank, survey, zynga

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