by Jason Wilk on August 10, 2009
- Facebook has acquired FriendFeed! No details yet on the acquisition price, but we are guessing somewhere in the $50M range. It’s not quite what Facebook wanted (they original tried to nab Twitter last month for a reported $500M only to be turned down). FriendFeed had been showing steady growth over the last year up until Twitter ‘really took off’ in the past quarter, continuing to grow at an impressive 20% a month.
- It’s clearly a good match. Over the last year or so, Facebook has “borrowed” quite a few of features that FriendFeed popularized, including the ‘Like’ feature and an emphasis on real-time news updates. Facebook has already built out some of FriendFeed’s functionality so there is some overlap, but there are still numerous ways FriendFeed beats out Facebook’s News Feed setup. FriendFeed works a little bit more like a forum, where people can comment on status updates (can’t do this on Twitter), and new activity pushes items back to the top (can’t do this on FB or Twitter).
- Facebook really scored by retaining the founding team which consists of an all-star cast of ex-Googlers such as Paul Buchheit, who is responsible for creating Gmail, pioneering some of Google’s early (and incredibly lucrative) advertising products, and coining Google’s “Don’t be evil” motto.
![[Post to Twitter]](http://tinycomb.com/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/tt-twitter-big4.png)
by Jason Wilk on July 13, 2009
- Facebook investors and employees (not executives however), are finally getting a chance to sell some of their stock. Digital Sky Technologies, the Russian investment firm that in May invested $200 million in Facebook, has made an offer to purchase up to $100 million of Facebook common stock from existing stock and option holders. This would be about $14.77 a share, valuing Facebook at about $6.5 billion; less than the $10 billion valuation of its previous investment (althogh for preferred shares).
“While individuals must make their own decisions about participating in this program, I’m pleased that the price D.S.T. is offering is much greater than the price originally considered last fall,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, in a statement. “This is recognition of Facebook’s growth and progress towards making the world more open and connected.”
- Employees and outside investors are relieved to liquidate some of their holdings. Facebook previously tried a stock buyback program, but it failed several times due to a lack of agreement on an internal valuation. Zuckerberg said this current offering has no effect on the company’s timeline to go public
by Jason Wilk on June 29, 2009
- Facebook quietly chose a new CFO today, months after getting rid of Gideon Yu, for not having enough ‘public company experience’. Former Genentech CFO David Ebersman was officially announced today as the man taking on the task of raising more money for the company and getting it ready to go public in the next 2-3 years. Ebersman has been at the biotech firm for almost 15 years and was relieved of his duties after Hoffman-La Roche acquired Genentech [they had their own CFO]
- Until now, former Netscape exec and VC Peter Currie has served as a stand-in for Yu since he left, although has not been an active financial exec. [Kara, AllThingsD]. Here is the full press release.
PALO ALTO, Calif.–June 29, 2009–Facebook today announced that David Ebersman, the former executive vice president and chief financial officer (CFO) of Genentech, the pioneering biotechnology firm recently acquired by Roche, will become the company’s chief financial officer.
Ebersman will report to Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Founder Mark Zuckerberg. He will oversee Facebook’s finance, accounting, investor relations, and real estate functions. He also becomes a part of the company’s executive management team, which directs all aspects of company strategy, planning and operations. Ebersman will formally start in September 2009.
“We received a lot of interest in the CFO position and had the opportunity to meet with many impressive candidates,” said Mark Zuckerberg. “We quickly recognized that David was the right person for Facebook. He was Genentech’s CFO while revenue tripled, and his success in scaling the finance organization of a fast growing company will be important to Facebook.”
“After meeting with Mark and the rest of the team, I was thoroughly impressed with everyone’s drive and sense of purpose to help people connect and share,“ noted Ebersman. “Mark is constantly pushing the company forward and he’s assembled a world-class team that is achieving remarkable results both for its users and as a business. I’m excited to join this effort and this new industry.”
Ebersman worked at Genentech for nearly 15 years. He served as the firm’s executive vice president and CFO from 2006 through April 2009, when Roche Group acquired the company. Prior to joining the company’s finance organization, he was senior vice president of Product Operations. He joined Genentech as a business development analyst. Previously, he was a research analyst at Oppenheimer & Company Inc.
by Jason Wilk on May 11, 2009
- Facebook today launched Friend List, a useful way to organize and filter your chats on Facebook. Maybe you want to be online with your best friends but offline with your work colleagues. With Friend Lists, you can group friends to more easily share with and view information from specific sets of people. You already can use them to filter your home page, send Inbox messages and manage privacy settings. From the bottom right corner of your browser, go online with Chat and choose which lists you’d like to include in the Chat pane. You can use your existing lists or create new lists directly from Chat.
- To create a new list, select the “Friend Lists” menu on the Chat pane, enter a new list name, and drag the names of people you want to include into the list. You can exclude lists from Chat by unchecking them in the “Friend Lists” menu. If you don’t want your friends grouped in Chat at all, you can simply uncheck all the Friend Lists, and you’ll then see your friends listed alphabetically.
- Facebook finally getting a little more efficient in the chat space. Now they need to work on better placement for the chat box so it doesn’t continue to interfere with that 160×600 ad placement on the right.
by Jason Wilk on April 30, 2009
- According to the New York Post, Facebook has just held informal exploratory meetings with Providence Equity Partners, General Atlantic, Bain Capital, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and others. The article cites Facebook to be looking for fresh capital at a $5 to $6 billion valuation, however no one is willing to shell out for more than a $2 billion to $3 billion range. (Wauters, TC)
- People familiar with the matter, are claiming Facebook’s attempt to raise additional capital is creating quite a stir among existing investors, which includes Accel Partners, Greylock Partners, Meritech Capital Partners, Microsoft and Peter Thiel. Microsoft feeling it the most, jumping in at a $15B valuation with a quarter million dollar investment, that in this state may have earned them about 8% of the company. People like Thiel say it’s time to start making money off of the user base, which at this point is causing the company harm it’s so large (200+ million now)
- Facebook may not have a lot of choice when it comes to what valuation they will take money. The company is burning through at leat $20 million a month in cash and cannot stop their unbelievably quick (but unmonetizable) growth internationally. If things keep going the way they are, Facebook could be out of money by 2011. Time to start charging?
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