Feeling overwhelmed with all the Facebook chatter? Is all this talk of the IPO making you yearn for the weekend already? Well, we are going to make life a little easier for you and find you best stuff for you to read from all around the social web. Keep checking back often – and remember, the newest links are at the top. And if you find something great that we missed, post it in the comments.
6:46: A historic moment is recorded — where else — as a Facebook status update:
6:43: Looks like someone in the TV caption-writing game needs a spelling lesson:
6:40: Ryan Holiday at Forbes says there’s one reason why the media loves writing about companies in their pre-IPO period — because they can say whatever they want and the company can’t comment:
It’s not just about capturing a popular SEO-term. The real reason is much more insidious. It all comes down to exploiting a single fact: the reporter has complete freedom to write the “facts” however they want while the company is gagged by the SEC’s quiet period regulations.
6:38: Here’s a shot of Mark Zuckerberg ringing the opening bell:
6:35: It seems as though everyone is excited about the potential of buying Facebook stock, based on this tweet:
BUY BUY BUY!
—Jesus Christ (@jesus) May 18, 2012
06:23: Watch Zuck ring the bell live here in a few minutes.
06.10: The Atlantic says Facebook is a weapon of mass distraction.
“Facebook’s greatest asset is its immense capacity to distract us. The best social media companies manage to get 10% of their users to come back each day, according Foursquare/Tumblr/Twitter/Zynga investor Fred Wilson. Ten percent isn’t cool, Facebook contends. You know what’s cool? Fifty percent.”
06.01: Eduardo Saverin, the “Brazilian” on the eve of the IPO on his Facebook page:
On the eve of the Facebook public float, 8 plus year in the making, I as co-founder wanted to look back and cherish Facebook’s early beginning. Congrats to everyone involved in the project from day one till today, and I especially wanted to congratulate Mark Zukerberg [sic] on keeping tremendous stead-fast focus, however hard that was, on making the world a more open and connected place.
05.56: The New York Times: General Mark Zuckerberg
“We heard from people close to Mr. Zuckerberg that part of his leadership skills can be attributed to his penchant for playing games that involve conquering virtual worlds. A favorite video game of his as a boy was ‘Civilization’, the object of which is to ‘build an empire to stand the test of time,’ a friend of Mr. Zuckerberg’s told The New York Times. The person added that ‘Civilization’ was the ‘training wheels for starting Facebook.’”
I clearly should stop wasting my time on Tetris -Om
00.01: Want to predict the closing price of Facebook IPO on first day of trading? Play this game -facebookipodatclosingprice.com! I am betting it ends up in the $60-$75 range. – Om
One of the cool things about that closing-price prediction site is that creator James Proud set it up after angel investor Chris Sacca asked for just such a thing in this tweet. - Mathew
00.00: CNBC: India Set to Overtake US as Facebook’s Largest Market
“India is set to overtake the U.S. as the world’s largest Facebook market by number of users as early as 2015, according to social media analysts, driven by growing internet penetration and high rates of growth in mobile connections. As Facebook’s third largest market, India is home to over 45 million users, behind Brazil and the United States with 47 and 157 million users, respectively, according to the latest data from Facebook’s advertising platform.”
This is not necessarily a good thing. It is hard to monetize the overseas traffic and many Internet companies have learned this the hard way. – Om
