As rumours predicted, the company is looking to raise $5 billion with investment firm Morgan Stanley acting as lead underwriter with Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Merrill Lynch and the Bank of America taking secondary positions. Should Facebook raise the money, it will be on the shortlist of the biggest tech IPOs in history.

The timeline puts Facebook’s public offering to hit the market in mid-May and now has to enter a mandated quiet period, so it could mean that it’s latest Timeline feature is the last new product users will see from the social network until that period is up.

In terms of actual numbers, Facebook reports that it has 845 million active monthly users. The company made $3.71 billion in revenue, with a cool $1 billion in profit in 2011 which had nearly doubled since 2010. This profit is also many times more than Google when they went public a while back – they “only” showed a profit of $106 million. Also – that $1 Billion dollar in profit was also the exact same number used by Justin Timberlake’s character ambitions in The Social Network, which showed the beginning of Facebook. Coincidence?

Founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, owns 28.4% of the company, drawing a $483,000 salary, with a $220,000 bonus in 2011. Facebook credits Zynga with providing 12% of its revenue in 2011. But apparently Zuckerberg is looking to shrink his salary to $1 a year from 2013, just like Steve Jobs did…

Having faced some speculation about who exactly owns what, the SEC website has now presented some hard numbers from the S-1 filing. Co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg owns the most equity of anyone – his 1.1 billion Class B shares give him almost a 57 percent stake — about half of which he owns and half of which are owned by others but over which he exercises proxy voting authority. Class A and Class B shares are differentiated by their voting powers among other characteristics with the Class B shares being the most common. Zuckerberg also holds 42.4 million Class A shares which represents a 36.1 percent stake.

Facebook’s filing has stated that he will sell some shares in the IPO although it doesn’t specify how many.

What is also interesting is the many different people who have received stock options in Facebook during its startup years. New York Times reports that the artist David Choe, who painted Facebook’s first headquarters’ walls asked for stocks instead of cash as payment. That was one very smart move, and that stock might be worth $200 million when Facebook’s stocks go public later this year.

The Telegraph has reported that the documents also reveal that Facebook is under investigation by the SEC for transactions on the secondary market, casting new light on the company’s decision to suspend trading for three days last week which resulted in rumours of an imminent IPO being questioned.

The company will also be focussing on mobile in the future commenting that “We had more than 425 million MAUs who used Facebook mobile products in December 2011. We anticipate that the rate of growth in mobile users will continue to exceed the growth rate of our overall MAUs for the foreseeable future, in part due to our focus on developing mobile products to encourage mobile usage of Facebook.”

Sources: AllThingsD, The Next Web

Facebook has slowly started rolling out the new Timeline profile view for all users, in fact I reckon most readers of this site have probably switched to the new view  already (if not, you will be forced to use it pretty soon). Today Facebook launched a pretty great new tool to hype up the new Timeline view, simply called Timeline Movie Maker. They built the app with Definition6, and it could not be easier to use:

Simply head over to http://www.timelinemoviemaker.com/, and if you are logged into Facebook, a simple green button is displayed to generate your own movie based on your Timeline. The App will request your permission to get some of your details and naturally the photos from your timeline. Using the events and locations in your life, a one minute movie is built that is actually pretty exciting to watch.

Right now it is not yet possible to export this video or share it to sites other than Facebook. This is a pretty great way for Facebook to force users to expand their Timeline events and photos. In fact, if you do not have enough details in your timeline, the Movie Maker will not work.

Photo: Getty

“We think there will be lots of companies that come up with fun, innovative ways for people to extend the Timeline experience,” a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement.

So have you tried out Timeline Movie Maker? Let us know in the comments.

Source: ZDNet

Now club-goers can combine their physical and virtual interactions at the new Facebook club that recently opened its doors in the Amazon region in Brazil.

The club, located in Epitaciolândia, a small town on Brazil’s border with Bolivia, was conceptualised by 30 year old Brazilian businessman Humbert Camacho. During a visit to the club, Camacho told the Guardian  that “The Facebook concept is about sharing ideas, adventures, friendships, parties and photos with your friends. So what we wanted to do was to build a nightclub with this concept, where people could come and share things with their friends, spend a cool night, sharing pictures, experiences and have fun.”

Camacho’s timing couldn’t be better as Facebook recently overtook Google‘s Orkut as the most popular social networking site in Brazil.

For people who cannot be at the nightclub, it will have its own official Facebook page were others can join the party virtually and share in the videos and pictures being uploaded in real time by those who are experiencing it.

While Facebook said it had no official comment on the nightclub a spokesperson expressed surprise at its existence saying “Is it really in the Amazon?”

You might already be accessing your Facebook account more from your phone than your computer, but clearly Mercedes thinks you need Facebook in even more places. At CES, Mercedes Benz is showing off its latest in-vehicle telematics system that will have Facebook access built in.

Obviously driving does not really go with reading your friend’s status updates, but the latest Mercs will instead be integrating into Facebook’s location services. Drivers can search for businesses and friends on the navigation system, which will then search Facebook’s services as well. With Facebook now being built into TVs and other consumer equipment, it was only a matter of time before we would see it land in vehicles. The problem is the implementation.

Safety is of course a concern – but the system does not distract from the existing navigation system. In fact, text entry is impossible once the car is moving. You can however change your status updates with certain preset statements – think “Jim is driving”. Users can also post their destination and route on Facebook – perfect for over sharers. Perhaps more helpful is that the features that enhance the existing navigation system. Instead of only searching for restaurants around you, the few restaurants that your Facebook friends “liked” will be shown first.

It is not only Facebook that is used however – Google and Yelp are included in search results as well. The new Facebook capable telematics system will be available on the latest 2013 SL-class, but also all Mercs that roll out in 2013.

Let us know – do you think it makes sense to have Facebook integration in your car?

Facebook first announced the feature in early September and soon afterwards opened it to the developer community, which the company has revealed led to one million users signing up to beta to access Timeline. Facebook has since commented that the feedback had been invaluable going forward.

Sam Lessin, product director of Timeline told the New Zealand Herald that ”We chose New Zealand to be first – and I’ll probably get in trouble for saying this – primarily because it is an English-speaking country. It’s far away from our data centers, so we can monitor speed and performance.”

Timeline is a way for users to illustrate their entire life on Facebook, rather than just the one they have shared since first joining. Timeline takes a user’s major life events and organizes them chronologically, mapping them on a graphic in narrative format. Although the idea was widely praised, a few privacy concerns were raised including the feature visibly showing a user when they were ‘unfriended’. This, Facebook later said was a technical glitch and has since been resolved.

As Facebook ensures that the new feature is working correctly, it will slowly begin to roll out to all users around the globe.

Image credit: The Next Web

Two South African entrepreneurs have done just that. Rob Sussman and Lance Fanaroff, founders of Integr8 – the largest privately owned ICT Company in Africa, have launched ZunguZ.

By connecting banking systems to the social graph, ZunguZ simplifies the process of transferring money and is the fastest and simplest way for users to transfer money to their friends. The social graph confirms the relationship between contacts in order to simplify money transfer. Users no longer need to use cumbersome banking applications to load their contact’s banking details. Instead they simply load the ZunguZ application within their social network, click on their contacts and send money. The recipient does not even need to have an account, as they can create one as soon as they wish to access their new funds. This allows the ZunguZ user base to grow virally via the Facebook social graph.

Rob Sussman says of the service that “ZunguZ has the potential to influence the purchasing decisions of over 850 million users across the world. And while we gear for the release of the second tier of the platform, we are intercepting the unbanked and low banked population at the point of purchase. We have been overwhelmed with requests from some of the largest banks in the world, as well as the most prominent SA banks, to leverage our platform to deliver their services.”

The concept has evolved over a few years, and led to the commencement of development of the platform over a year ago. After numerous meetings with Facebook to understand their strategy in the payment space, as well as some of the largest financial services and banking institutions, from Silicon Valley to New York, their release of the closed beta caught the eye of prominent tech names in the valley.

After a successful proof of concept and closed beta, they opened up with a soft launch to South African users a few days ago. USA, Mexico and India are currently in negotiations and end point of presence for withdrawals will be available in these regions from the first quarter of next year.

ZunguZ is essentially a multi-tiered platform that has deep integration into the social graph and a host of financial services. While there are a host of diverse P2P, P2B, B2B payment systems in the market, even though ZunguZ is the first platform that allows a Facebook user to pay another Facebook user (with no requirement for a user to have a bank account or email address), ZunguZ does not compete with the likes of PayPal. It is the intelligence that exists in the level 2 and 3 layers where the core ZunguZ business model exists, allowing the referred distribution of purchases to your network. After all, people trust their “friends”.

They have setup ZunguZ offices in the heart of Palo Alto, Silicon Valley, not far from Facebook.

Watch how ZunguZ works in the video below:

First, a music note or newspaper icon appears next to the Ticker story to indicate the type of content that can be viewed then, when hovering over the content a ‘Read’ or ‘Listen’ label appears. Clicking on the label, directs the user to that specific content.  In some cases, the user will have to authorise the app’s installation upon clicking on the link, but if the app has already been installed, the content can be viewed immediately.

As a result, Facebook has allowed users to bounce back and forth between its various affiliated “Read, Watch, Listen” partners in an effortless way. These new buttons may boost user activity for the various applications with more visibility for Facebook’s 800 million users.

It is yet to be determined when this function will roll out to all users.

source: the next web

Google+’s timing for the launch of it’s Business Pages is not only questionable but the new feature appears to fall short of Facebook’s even at this initial stage and it has already received some criticism as lacking in “innovation” and “interest”. Their Business Pages would have to at least possess these qualities in order to justify the timing, give Facebook something to compete with and launch with a sense of excitement and curiosity. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be the case. While the design is typically clean and simple of Google, the initial features are very basic and therefore the Business Pages are in no way distinguishable from any other Google+ user pages in a way that makes any impact or creates buzz.

Google’s networking platform also comes across as inflexible as it seems incapable of integrating with the business’s own apps, service offerings and third party programs. So, without this integration the business pages themselves offer very little engaging content, useful information or incentive for spending time exploring the page. Overall it doesn’t seem to take the user beyond the actual page itself.

At this point, Facebook’s Business Pages offer even superior standard features to Google+. Google+’s familiar clean layout makes for easy readability and its standard features include a list of breaking news posts and links to footage, ability to comment on posts, share posts and of course add the business page to your circle of Google+ users. Photos can be viewed within an album and basic company information is provided. But, even at this initial stage, is this enough? The communication between user and business seems almost non existant as Google+ offers little opportunity for each party to engage with the other in any meaningful way.

In addition to more superior basic features with wall posts, an info page, photos and video pages, locations page and an events page, Facebook has also created a space with which businesses and users can communicate with one another through the wall. This is crucial for businesses who enter into the social media environment. More importantly, Facebook allows businesses to integrate outside apps such as third party content with their Facebook Business Page for a richer more interactive experience. This may include job listings, a Twitter feed or access to company merchandise that takes the interaction between business and user even further. Sooner rather than later Google will have to roll out their API to allow third party developers to do the work for them by building a variety of applications on top of Google+ before users lose interest.

Despite the initial criticism, Google does acknowledges that it has a long way to go before it is satisfied. The official blog stated that “With Google+, we strive to bring the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to software. Today’s initial launch of Google+ Pages brings us a little bit closer, but we’ve still got lots of improvements planned, and miles to go before we sleep. So stay tuned.”

source: Infoworld

After months of speculation and leaks, Facebook has finally officially launched its iPad app now available in the iOS App store. The app has been designed for optimal use on the tablet with a focus on consumption and easy touch screen navigation. The app has large buttons for effective navigation and also takes advantage of the iPad’s special features to do things that are not possible through a Web interface. For example, photos now take up the entire screen and users can pinch them to zoom in and out. Navigating through a photo album can be achieved through the swiping feature on the device and users can also take photos or film high definition videos from within the app.

The App includes a left-hand navigation bar for accessing the News Feed, photos, messages, Groups and settings. As with the website, notifications, chat, status updates, search and other key features are also included. However, the newly announced features, like Timeline, are not included in the iPad app just yet.

There are a number of new features that have been introduced especially for the iPad. Facebook has integrated Airplay into the app which allows users to play and share images and HD videos Apple TV or other Apple devices. Facebook games can also be played in full screen mode and games from EA, Zynga and more will support additional features such as Facebook Credits. Facebook is also making use of location services with Nearby. Nearby shows a map on screen with little icons indicating your friends in the area. Using the ipad functions users can zoom into the map, click on a person’s photo and leave a comment. Users can also check in to their location from within the app.

To download Facebook’s app for iPad click here.

Disclaimer: I am the founder of Tweekly.fm, a service that automatically sends an update of your top artists for the week to Twitter and Facebook.

Recently, Spotify (with Sean Parker’s help) got engaged to Facebook. In short, if your Facebook and Spotify accounts are connected, you will see your friends listening to music in the new ‘ticker’ as they are listening to it. A lot of people have wondered, ‘Is this useful?’, ‘Why would I want to see John listening to Backstreet Boys?’.

Before I answer that. A little background. I started Tweekly.fm in Januray of 2009. The goal was simple. I wanted to make a twitter app. I was (and still am) an avid last.fm user, so I thought it would be great to automatically share your music tastes from last.fm to twitter. At that time #musicmonday was still big. People were sharing their music tastes on Twitter every monday. It was great! Where is it now? And what happened?

The biggest culprit is Twitter’s trending algorithm. They changed it to display only novel topics. In other words, because #mm was trending every monday, it wasn’t exactly novel each time. But why didn’t people continue sharing their music tastes despite this? There was no real return. During 2009 there was also quite a rise in websites that offered the ability to tweet your songs to Twitter. I wrote a blog post on this quite a while ago in April of 2010. It was an exciting arena, one in which Tweekly.fm was competing in as well. Of those sites in that blogpost (besides Tweekly.fm), only tweetmysong are above 450 000 in alexa rankings, and blip.fm remaining at the top (because of its built-in network effects). In short, the small ‘sector’ kinda died. Nobody took the effort to tweet a song they are listening to, because not a lot of people took the effort to listen to it. In other words, little return for both people. If someone shares a song with me, it works better if there is context. For me to like the song, there are two big prerequisites: If it is a good friend, who knows my music tastes, I will absorb the effort to listen to the song. However if it is an artist (and genre) I’ve never heard of, I still have to make up my mind about, because my friend shared it with me, and expects some return. In other words, I have to make an effort to form an opinion on the song. “Hey Simon! What did you think of Portugal. The Man?”, “Uh. It is great. I kinda liked the jazzy sections in the song New Orleans”.

If it is from a ‘musical’ stranger, the only context I have is if the person elaborates on the song. “Listen to Nero – Innocence. Epic dubstep in every way”. Now I know it is dubstep and if I am a fan, I would be more willing to accept the opportunity cost of taking the time to listen to it. However, for the person who shared the song, they still need a return. If I liked the song, I must still do more effort to tell the person that I liked it, and once again the interaction rate drops off heavily.

Why is Tweekly.fm still growing? It is automatic and it has context. There is no effort on part of the listener. They just have to consume their music and it will be shared each week to Twitter. The second factor that Tweekly.fm does to a certain degree is context. 3 artists are shared in the update. This means that if people see one artist they like in the tweet, they will be more inclined to click on it. If there are 2 known artists and one unknown artist, they will be even more likely to click on it.

So why is Spotify and Facebook on the right track? Music sharing works best when it is automatic, because it takes no effort on behalf of person sharing the music. They thus expect little, if nothing in return. Any comments on the artists you  listened to is as they would say in marketing terms: a satisfying experience. Same goes for the consumer. They have no expectation to comment on the artists you share, but will be delighted if they find they share music tastes in common.

However, where their system fails, is music discovery. The only context being employed is the user listening to the music. If you know him to listen to cool electronic music tracks, you will be inclined to find out more AS they are listening to it. If you follow what they are listening to, you might pick up a pattern and then be inclined to look up the tracks yourself (“ooh, I know that song! oooh, I know that one as well! Oooh, I better check this one out, I don’t know it”)… But this I feel, is perhaps way too much effort. It beats the purpose of automatic sharing.

Automatic sharing allows serendipitous behaviour to arise, because of the non-effort to share it. In Facebook’s case, it doesn’t clog up the stream, because it occurs in the ticker. That is great. However, if they really want to ramp up music discovery, they need to use music recommendations to explain the context of songs that people are sharing. If Robert Scoble is listening to bluegrass band that I’ve haven’t heard, the system should preferably show context while he is listening to it. Like when Last.fm recommends new artists, they recommend it based on your current library of artists. In other words, it should preferably match up the closest artist I have listened, while also providing other information (such as genre and current position in world charts for example). This way, I can immediately discern context when music is automatically shared.

Who should be doing this? Last.fm. They have the resources and data available to do this. I can already see what my ‘friends’ on there are listening to, but there is no context. They know what I’ve listened to, they should just bring it together. I wrote a script the other day to test this. Of my 87 friends on last.fm, it returned to me the following dataset:

Of my friends who listened to music the current week and based on last.fm’s current music recommendations to me, I should listen to:

[Beirut] => 4 [Skrillex] => 2 [Björk] => 2 [Gold Panda] => 1 [The Wombats] => 1 [Band of Skulls] => 1 [Cut Copy] => 1 [Röyksopp] => 1 [St. Vincent] => 1 [Cults] => 1

It is very slow, because I have to make several API calls, so it is not available for testing (I might upload it github later). So in other words, what the above code says: “Of the artists we recommend you listen to, your friends listened to Beirut, Skrillex, Bjork, Gold Panda, Wombats, Band of Skulls, Cut Copy, Royksopp, St Vincent and the Cults this week”.

So: What it boils down to. Facebook and Spotify are on the right track. Music sharing works best when it is done ‘frictionlessly’, but now it just needs more context. I hope Last.fm gets there before them, but maybe it is just because I am a bit biased.