The Social Analyst

Facebook's aggressive approach to solving its mobile problem

Facebook knows mobile is its Achilles' heel, but I didn't expect the company to take such aggressive actions to solve its mobile problem.

The social network admitted to the weakness earlier this month when it amended its IPO filing. "If users increasingly access Facebook mobile products as a substitute for access through personal computers, and if we are unable to successfully implement monetization strategies for our mobile users, or if we incur excessive expenses in this effort, our financial performance and ability to grow revenue would be negatively affected," the company explained in its amended S1.

Facebook isn't more

Dear new Yahoo CEO: End the Facebook patent lawsuit

Congratulations on being named Yahoo's new interim CEO. We all wish it had come under better circumstances, but now it's your job to stabilize Yahoo and turn the company around. You have a difficult road ahead, but I hope you have better luck than your predecessors.

I know you have a lot of work to do in order to clean up the mess Yahoo is in. There is no way the company can recover, though, if you don't deal with the albatross around Yahoo's neck. I propose that you make one of your first acts as more

Four ways Facebook has transformed the tech IPO

In one week, Mark Zuckerberg and friends will ring the NASDAQ bell, and we will witness the largest Internet IPO in history. Facebook will likely raise more than $10 billion at a valuation I suspect will skyrocket past $100 billion.

The best part: all of this will happen under the direction of a 27-year-old CEO with absolute control over his company. Some investors are complaining about his nonchalant attitude towards the IPO (oh no, Zuck isn't wearing a suit!), but there is no shortage of investors who want in on this IPO.

Facebook has not bent the traditional rules more

Tech world is out for blood -- Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson's

commentary Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson will likely come to regret his decision to declare a patent war against Facebook. Even if Yahoo does manage to win its case in the courts, he won't be sticking around to savor the victory.

The former PayPal president is under attack by Yahoo investors and the tech world for allegedly inflating his college credentials. His official Yahoo bio said he earned a bachelor's degree in accounting and computer science from Stonehill College, when he only has an accounting degree from his alma mater.

Yahoo called the issue an "inadvertent error" before removing more

Growth, revenue, focus: How to get an investor's attention

When it comes to courting investors, especially venture capitalists, for your startup, the recipe is simple: stop worrying and start focusing.

Most investors have a singular goal -- to fund a startup that eventually becomes a large, independent, defensible company. Finding an Evernote, Airbnb, or Instagram provides the kind of return that makes or breaks a venture capital firm.

But how do VCs find a company that is going to become big? It's not an easy task, but there are a few clues investors look for in order to determine your chance at hitting the jackpot. Here are a more

5 commandments for choosing a co-founder

"What matters is not ideas, but the people who have them," Y Combinator partner Paul Graham said in 2005. "Good people can fix bad ideas, but good ideas can't save bad people."

I've seen hundreds of startups blow up because of teams that didn't know or respect each other. I've heard of everything from money laundering to sabotage. Starting a company is one of the most stressful things you can do -- you had better make sure that your team can withstand the pressure.

So how do you find the right co-founder? What makes for a more

Five things you need to know about Facebook-Instagram

Facebook and Instagram consistently defy convention though, and that's one of many things you need to understand about both companies -- they are anomalies rather than the norm, even in the fast-paced world of tech startups.

I've seen countless reporters and bloggers question the valuation (that's understandable), but some are even comparing it to the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme (that's just ridiculous). Regardless, there are a lot of questions still surrounding the deal. Answering them requires a deeper understanding about how both companies operate.

Here are five very important things you need to understand about Facebook, more

Why Facebook needs to build a browser

Sometime in the next 12 months, Google Chrome will become the world's most popular browser, knocking Microsoft's Internet Explorer off the mountain it has ruled for more than a decade.

This fact should scare the pants off of Facebook.

In July 2008, IE controlled 68.5 percent of the market, according to Statcounter, while Chrome wasn't even on the market. Now Microsoft's browser is down to 34.8 percent market share while Chrome controls 30.9 percent of total browser usage. Chrome has grown by a percentage point the last few months, while IE has dropped more

Facebook vs. Groupon: The tale of two IPOs

Facebook and Groupon are two of the world's largest Internet companies, but their trajectories couldn't be any more different. One will become the largest Internet IPO in history, while the other can't find a way to stop its freefall.

I can't help but feel sorry for Groupon. In just the last two weeks, Groupon revised its fourth-quarter revenue downward due to higher merchant refunds, was hit with a shareholder lawsuit and took a beating from the press.

The result: Groupon's stock price has fallen off a cliff, and then some. Once worth $26.19 per more

Why the coming patent crisis is inevitable

A week isn't complete in the tech industry without somebody suing somebody else over patents.

This time, Facebook is countersuing Yahoo, charging that Yahoo violated 10 of its patents. This move, of course, comes less than a month after Yahoo sued Facebook for allegedly infringing on 10 of its patents.

Facebook's countersuit shouldn't surprise anybody; it was always going to fight fire with fire, especially since Yahoo started this unnecessary fight. It's the same reason Facebook purchased 750 patents from IBM last month -- it needed more ammunition in a patent arms race that is quickly more