We didn't know much about Russian investment firm Digital Sky Technologies before it invested $200 million in Facebook this spring. But it's been in the news a lot more recently: Russian newspaper Kommersant reported Thursday that the firm has purchased more Facebook stock, sending its stake in the massive social network past 5 percent at a $10 billion valuation. Its original stake was 1.96 percent. It's reportedly still looking to buy more.
A Facebook representative told CNET via e-mail that because it's a private company it opts not to discuss shareholder percentages.
According to the Russian-language publication (first referenced in English by Quintura), DST's increased stake comes from its offer to purchase employee stock as part of the buyback program announced this summer. It's continued to pay $14.77 per share, Kommersant added. But if DST's stake is indeed over 5 percent now, it's purchased far more than the $100 million originally stipulated in Facebook's terms (its total stake is now over $400 million, according to Kommersant).
That's not all DST has been up to. Earlier this week, social gaming company Zynga--arguably the most profitable company to grow out of Facebook's developer platform--announced that DST had led a $180 million funding round designed to "fuel Zynga's growth and...facilitate liquidity for employees and investors." It's a "passive investor," meaning that it will not take a seat on the company board.
"Our earlier investment in Facebook and now in Zynga underscores our premise that social networking and social entertainment will define the next generation of the web," DST head Yuri Milner was quoted as saying in a release from Zynga.
Additionally, earlier this month another Russian newspaper reported that DST was in talks to acquire ICQ, an instant-messaging service that AOL is looking to sell off.
This post was updated at 7:56 a.m. PT with comment from Facebook.
Google Finance now offers streaming news related to the stock market.
(Credit: Screenshot by Tom Krazit/CNET)Google has added a few new features in hopes of attracting more users to Google Finance, blending financial stories from Google News right into the mix.
Yahoo owns the online financial information market with Yahoo Finance (rated first in its category by ComScore with 22 million unique visitors in September), but Google is trying to carve out a niche for itself by adding a so-called "real time" stream of news to Google Finance pages. On the main Google Finance page, users can now click on a news tab that brings up what appears to be a constantly updated Google News-powered stream of news stories related to the general market or specific portfolios set up as part of a profile.
The stories seem to update every minute or so, but Google will only turn on the streaming service between 8 a.m. ET and 5:30 p.m. ET, 90 minutes before and after the U.S. stock market trading hours. Google also said it has added a list of the recent quotes users look up on the service, as well as real-time streaming of stock prices on pages dedicated to individual stocks--all services currently available on Yahoo Finance.
Facebook is changing the structure of its company stock to a dual-class system, a move that hints the company may be looking toward an initial public offering--even though it says it has no plans to do so yet.
Here's how it works. Existing Facebook shareholders currently have Class A stock. That'll be converted to Class B stock, which has 10 times the voting power of Class A. Should those shareholders sell their stock when Facebook goes public, they'll be converted back into Class A stock--otherwise, they'll stay the way they are.
The story was first reported by The Wall Street Journal, which added the detail that this stock structure change will give founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg more power unless he opts to sell stock during an IPO. But while Zuckerberg and other executives have said that they eventually plan to take Facebook public, they continue to say that there are no concrete plans for it. Two years ago, Zuckerberg said that it was "years out."
"This revision to the stock structure should not be construed as a signal the company is planning to go public," a statement from Facebook read. "Facebook has no plans to go public at this time."
Chase announced Monday a partnership with Facebook to power the finance company's inaugural "Community Giving" campaign, which will allocate a total of $5 million to small, local nonprofits voted on by Facebook members.
The campaign takes the form of--you guessed it--a Facebook Platform application, in which members can choose their favorite of more than 500,000 nonprofits. Naturally, then, they're encouraged to use the hallowed "social graph" to encourage their friends to do so as well.
The winner gets $1 million in a grand-prize announcement slated for February 1; five runners-up get $100,000 apiece, and then the entire top 100 receives $25,000 apiece. There's an advisory board consisting of celebrities and Chase execs, as well as Facebook vice president of communications Elliot Schrage.
The publicity effort for Community Giving, which reached out to celebrity Twitter users in both the entertainment and nonprofit space in addition to the mainstream press to spread the word, says it's been an early success: over 12,000 Facebook members signed on in the first day.
That's not quite as many as the hundreds of thousands who rallied to support a prospective Stephen Colbert presidential campaign in the matter of a week, or the tens of thousands who opted to follow actor Neil Patrick Harris in his first 24 hours on Twitter, but for something that's a legitimate charity effort rather than a goofy viral meme, it's respectable.
Facebook has traditionally been hands-off about partnerships on its application platform, but nonprofit and public interest-related projects have been the exception: the social network forged several media-outlet deals during the 2008 presidential election, partnered with nonprofits to create virtual gifts for its "Facebook for Good" campaign, and synced up with the Huffington Post for a "social news" experiment.
It was less than two years ago that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said that corporate philanthropy wasn't an immediate goal for the social network because, at the time, it simply didn't have the profits.
Mint launched a new tool on Thursday that gives users real-time updates on the latest personal-finance topics hitting Twitter.
Dubbed Money Tweets, the personal-finance service's new feature tracks tweets about everything from investing and saving to the most popular finance-related topics at any given time. It also has a "question of the day" option where Mint poses a question and displays all the tweets that answer it.
Money Tweets in action on Mint.com.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)To ensure Money Tweets doesn't list any tweets that might be offensive or contain links to potentially malicious sites, the tool's Topics section includes tweets from trusted sources, like The Wall Street Journal and Morningstar. It also displays messages from prominent bloggers who write about the respective topics.
Aside from finances, Mint even added a "Tweets about Mint" option. When a user clicks on it, they will see all the tweets that reference Mint. It even displays tweets from users who have bad things to say about Mint. That's commendable.
I had a chance to check out some of the content in Money Tweets. You can check out useful content on several topics. And since many tweets feature links to outside content, you'll probably find yourself visiting several finance sites with a lot of interesting financial content. Overall, I like Money Tweets. It's a nice addition to Mint's current slate of services.
Click here to check it out.
LOS ANGELES--Twitter didn't rake in $100 million because it was about to run out of money, investor and board member Bijan Sabet of Spark Capital said in a panel at the 140 Conference on Tuesday morning.
There was still money left over, Sabet explained, from what the company had raised from Benchmark Capital and Institutional Venture Partners in February, which followed Twitter's Series C round in the spring of 2008. Twitter, according to Sabet, raised the money from Insight Venture Partners and T. Rowe Price last month because it wanted to grow up: hire new people, launch new products, strike partnerships, and the like. Contrary to Twitter's reputation for "fail whale" errors, Sabet insisted that the money wasn't needed for an emergency server shopping spree or anything. (Some may disagree.)
"The expectation when you raise a lot of money, it's a statement that you want to build a company, an independent company," Sabet said when moderator Robert Scoble asked him what he thought of the fact that Twitter has not yet put forth a long-term business model. "We didn't need the money...it was a very purposeful kind of commitment to try to make a company."
A billion-dollar valuation is pretty nice to have, too.
A correction was made at 2:13 p.m. PT: a source with knowledge of the deal confirmed that Twitter's April 2008 and February 2009 rounds of funding are considered to be separate rounds.
This morning, Fred Wilson introduces us to one of Union Square Ventures' portfolio companies that is coming out of stealth and launching publicly. Tracked.com is a sort of re-imagining of a business information service that provides personalized information on businesses and the people associated with them.
The start-up is positioned to be a competitor to Google and Yahoo Finance, which are largely ticker-based, as well as user-driven information sites like CrunchBase, Wikipedia, and, to some extent, LinkedIn.
Conceived by Mike Yavonditte, formerly of Quigo, Tracked.com, of course, provides extensive information on ticker-based companies, including company financials, much like Google and Yahoo Finance do, but it's not just a stock service. Its strong point is that it also tracks privately held companies, gathering any available information on them. For all of these companies, Tracked shows a wealth of information and news as well as the people associated with the company, complete with fleshed out profiles on them as well.
Tracked helps you keep an eye on the companies and people that you find important in the business world. It has a completely customizable "My Tracker" section that allows you to pick what companies and people to watch. For public companies, it has more robust functionality than Google or Yahoo Finance. It even calls out a lot of interesting data like executive compensation. For example, you can view a list of the executives with the highest compensation in 2006. For private companies, Tracked might be the most extensive, publicly available database in existence (aside from Wikipedia) and it's sure to grow even more.
One thing that is notably different about Tracked as compared to Wikipedia or CrunchBase is that users cannot edit current entries or add new ones. This ensures that the data on Tracked is accurate since the team can check all of the data that comes in. The downside to this is that it cannot possibly include as much information as a user-driven site.
Overall, Tracked.com is a strong, customizable alternative that will pull some users away from Google and Yahoo Finance. It is a convenient and highly addictive way to browse through information on public and private businesses as well as people. The information is so extensive and interesting that you should plan to burn a couple of hours the first time that you check the site out.
You may notice that Tracked.com is operating a little slow right now with the surge of traffic from its launch. Hopefully, as they work out the kinks, performance will improve.
Here are some additional screenshots to give you a better idea of the site's functionality, but you should really just check it out yourself. ... Read more
Hot on the heels of its appointment of a chief technology officer last week, News Corp.'s MySpace on Monday announced that Mark Rosenbaum has been hired as its chief financial officer.
Although the appointment marks the first time that the social network has had a CFO, it is Rosenbaum's second stint at News Corp. He headed up financial operations at Gemstar-TV Guide International, when it was owned by the Rupert Murdoch-helmed conglomerate. More recently, Rosenbaum served as a consultant to MGM.
Mark Rosenbaum's MySpace profile picture.
(Credit: MySpace)In his new position, Rosenbaum report directly to Owen Van Natta, the former Facebook executive who became MySpace's CEO in April, after the departure of co-founder Chris DeWolfe.
Less than two months after Van Natta's hiring, MySpace announced a layoff of nearly 30 percent amid stagnant growth and what was increasingly a losing battle against Facebook in its quest for social-networking dominance. The company called its aim at financial efficiency a "return to start-up culture."
Hiring a chief financial officer is, as a result, a logical step.
"Having led companies at every stage of their development, Mark understands both start-up culture and mature businesses, and is well-suited to guide MySpace's financial organization through its next phase of growth," Van Natta said in a release announcing Rosenbaum's hire. "We're thrilled to add someone with his pedigree and experience to the team."
This week, I'm joined by CNET security expert Elinor Mills in a discussion with Mint CEO Aaron Patzer, whose personal finance site is being acquired by Intuit. We grill Patzer on why he sold the company, the future of Quicken, and the security of online financial data.
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I really enjoyed recording this podcast. We had the start-up CEO of the moment in to talk about why he sold his personal finance company, Mint, to Intuit--the company he built Mint to compete with in the first place.
Also, Elinor grills Patzer on the security safeguards in his system. Patzer tells us getting access to Mint data is like initiating self-destruct on the Starship Enterprise: You need three people to give their individual passwords at the same time or no go. Play the podcast for the full content, and for our show notes, including some bonus content from a post-show discussion, keep reading.
... Read moreFinancial software maker Intuit has signed an agreement to acquire personal finance service Mint.com for $170 million.
"With this transaction, Intuit will gain another fast-growing consumer brand and a highly successful Software as a Service (SaaS) offering that helps people save and make money," Intuit CEO Brad Smith said in a statement Monday. "This move will enhance Intuit's position as a leading provider of consumer SaaS offerings that connect customers across desktop, online and mobile."
TechCrunch reported the deal Sunday night, citing unnamed sources.
Mint, a start-up launched two years ago that tracks personal finance data, became a CNET Webware 100 winner in 2008 and again in 2009. It was also the 2007 winner of the TechCrunch50, which kicks off once again Monday in San Francisco.
Mint's features have apparently helped it attract a younger, more diverse demographic than Intuit's Quicken Online. Mint founder and CEO Aaron Patzer told CNET News last year that 40 percent of his company's users are women. He claimed Quicken's demographic was still "85 percent men." Assuming that's true, it would appear that Intuit can significantly expand its base with the Mint acquisition.
When the deal is made final, Mountain View, Calif.-based Mint will become part of Intuit's Consumer Group, which includes both Quicken and TurboTax. Patzer will become general manager of Intuit's Personal Finance group.
Although Mint and Intuit's Quicken Online are direct competitors, Intuit said it plans to maintain both products. According to Intuit, they serve "separate and equally important purposes."
The acquisition is expected to become final in the fourth quarter, pending regulatory review.
