Today was Apple’s annual shareholder meeting, an occasion for CEO Tim Cook to spend some time kicking it with the folks who own their own little slices of the company. AllThingsD reports that, as you might expect, the subject of the company’s drooping stock (malingering at $449.13, far from last fall’s great Read More
Today, Zynga is hosting the press (and their dogs) at its San Francisco HQ for something called “Unleashed,” where the company will presumably be “unleashing” some new games. Let’s hope they’re a little more entertaining than that pun, because, as the New York Times points out, the company could use some help.
It’s not like Zynga’s woes are a secret: Shares are currently at $6.07, having debuted at $10 and spent time under $5. More people are gaming on mobile devices, and Facebook’s growth is slowing. The company shelled out $180 million for Draw Something, which is currently cratering. That just goes to show you how quickly games fall out of fashion, which makes planning awfully hard.
Also, just yesterday, EA launched the open beta of its social take on SimCity, which was previously announced with a trailer proclaiming “more city, less ville,” to the sounds of Best Coast’s “The Only Place.” Ouch, guys. Read More
NASDAQ cops to “arrogance” and “overconfidence” in the lead-up to the Facebook IPO. [Wall Street Journal]
When will people learn that you can’t sue Google for linking to something embarrassing? Otherwise the search engine would be worthless. [TechDirt]
Teens lie about what they do on the Internet. In other news, the sun rose in the east this morning. [TG Daily]
Conde Nast mags including Wired and The New Yorker are cooling on Flipboard, just as the Times ramps up its relationship. [AdAge]
A team of scientists managed to hack RSA’s supposedly ultra-safe SecurID 800 security device, which we assume means more than a few Wall Street IT pros are being pulled into emergency planning meetings right this minute. [Ars Technica]
Microsoft buys Yammer, to the surprise of absolutely no one. [Microsoft Blog]
Ringing the closing bell at NASDAQ at the F.ounders NY 2012
This is a guest post from Gary Sharma (aka “The Guy with the Red Tie”), Founder & CEO of GarysGuide and proud owner of a whole bunch of black suits, white shirts and, at last count, over 40 red ties. You can reach him at gary@garysguide.com.
“First time at F.ounders?”
“Yeah, how about you?”
“I attended the one in Dublin last year.”
“Nice! Did you guys really hang out with Bono?”
“Yeah man, it was crazy!”
“I heard Obama might show up tonight.”
“No kidding. Really?”
“That’s what I heard.”
The two young twenty-something multi-millionaire startup founders looked expectantly towards the stage, wondering when POTUS would make an appearance.
Ok, so Obama was not on the agenda. But the fact that folks believed there was even a possibility speaks volumes for the quality and reputation of the event that Paddy Cosgrave, a charming 29-year-old from Ireland, had put together. Now in its third year, F.ounders is a must-attend, invite-only, ultra-exclusive annual event bringing together 150 (yup, there’s that dunbar number again) startup founder rockstars, along with a medley of top-tier investors, journalists and executives.
Bloomberg calls it Davos for Geeks. The Next Web calls it the Rolls Royce of conferences. And Mashable calls it the best event they’ve ever been to. I love basketball so I’m-a-gonna call this the “Michael Jordan of Tech Events!” Because it simply doesn’t get any better than this.
We were informed that, “Given that the CEOs and founders of over quarter of a trillion worth of ‘start-ups’ will be in Times Square on Friday, security is going to be very tight.” A quarter of a trillion. Yup, that number has a nice ring to it. Read More
Betabeat has the distinct pleasure of working a few blocks from the NASDAQ MarketSite, so we decided to venture over and see what the scene looked like on the day of the biggest-ever tech IPO. We arrived just as Facebook released its shares and watched the prices flash up and down on the TVs. “FB NASDAQ Listed” read the big screen facing Times Square. Read More
It's Zuck's World We're Just Living In It
It appears NASDAQ’s campaign to convince Facebook to list its I.P.O. with them over the New York Stock Exchange has proven successful: inside sources told the New York Times today that Facebook has chosen NASDAQ. “The social network will list its shares on the Nasdaq under ticker symbol ‘FB,’ according to people familiar with the matter, who demanded anonymity because the discussions were private,” said the Times. Read More
In order to win its war against the New York Stock Exchange, NASDAQ has put together a little video outlining “What it means to be Made in NYC.” The logic goes something like: (1) this video convinces the next Mark Zuckerberg to launch in New York (2) Zuck 2.0 invents Facebook 2.0 (3) when it comes time to go public, he/she looks back fondly at the inspirational video that brought him/her here and gives Duncan Niederauer the finger.
The video is cute and charming and makes New York sound like one big happy family, well except for the sobering presence of recently-defoundered Naveen Selvadurai, of course. But the U-Haul advertisement also veers dangerously into caricature. Read More
It's Zuck's World We're Just Living In It
Mark Zuckerberg still hasn’t announced which stock exchange he wants to call home, but that hasn’t stopped NASDAQ and the New York Stock Exchange from sniping at each other in the press.
Their bitter rivalry is underscored by the fact that their business is “being eroded by other global exchanges and upstart electronic-trading venues,” reports the L.A. Times. Read More
It’s official. No one at NASDAQ has been reading The Game. Today NASDAQ, which already boasts a Look at me! I’m one of you! Tumblr, made its designs on the local startup scene obvious by partnering with the mothership: New York Tech Meetup. The press release says that the partnership will be “focused on engaging, educating and promoting New York City’s technology community in unique and relevant ways,” but leaves out the implied plea to future Mark Zuckerbergs of the East: Don’t forget us when its time to IPO! Read More
The NASDAQ and New York Stock Exchange would both love for Facebook to IPO its stock there. Last week, it was reported that Facebook had reserved the symbol FB for use “on either exchange,” which gave some business news readers pause. Wait a second, a two-letter symbol? Doesn’t that mean anything anymore?
It used to be that traders could tell at a glance whether a company was listed on the NASDAQ or NYSE: the former used a four character symbol convention and the latter allowed for one to three character symbols. But the vanity tickers became a bargaining chip in the battle for IPOs between the exchanges, which has grown increasingly heated. Most companies want a symbol that fits with their brand, like LNKD, AMZN, GRPN, AAPL, or NYT. Read More
