Samsung Received 9 Million Pre-Orders for the Galaxy S3 [REPORT]

By Stan Schroeder | Mashable  –  samsung-galaxy-s-iii-books-600 Samsung has received 9 million pre-orders from more than 100 international carriers for its upcoming flagship smartphone , the Galaxy S3, Korea Economic Daily reports . Samsung’s smartphone factory in South Korea is running at full capacity, which is 5 million units per month, according to the same report. [More from Mashable : Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 Highlights Android’s Tablet Problem [REVIEW]] This is more good news for Samsung , which became the world’s biggest phone maker in Q1 2012

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By Stan Schroeder | Mashable – 

Can Facebook Ads Ever Beat Google? [INFOGRAPHIC]

By Stephanie Haberman | Mashable  –  General Motors is pulling its entire $10 million advertising budget from Facebook , mere days before the IPO.

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Radical! 12 Tumblrs for ’90s Nostalgia

By Christine Erickson | Mashable  –  1.

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This Bot Turns Your Tweets into Rhyming Couplets

By Stephanie Haberman | Mashable  –  You’re just a shiver looking for a spine.

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By Stephanie Haberman | Mashable – 

10 Best Android Puzzle Games

By Carter Dotson | Mashable  –  1. World of Goo The goo balls in this game are used to build structures that get you to your final goal.

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By Carter Dotson | Mashable – 

Facebook IPO Sends Tech Stocks Surging

Facebook filing for IPO Wednesday did good for more than just the social network. Companies associated — even tangentially — saw their stocks soar in trading Thursday

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Facebook filing for IPO Wednesday did good for more than just the social network. Companies associated — even tangentially — saw their stocks soar in trading Thursday.

As the largest Internet IPO to date, Facebook’s plan to raise $5 billion lured investors to pour money into similar web companies.

[More from Mashable: Social Media Has Turned Super Bowl XLVI Teams’ Marketing Upside Down]

Zynga did particularly well on the market Thursday, following a statement in Facebook’s S-1 saying the social game maker generates 12% of the company’s revenue. Zynga rose 16.84% in trading, finishing the day at $12.39 per share.

“We currently generate significant revenue as a result of our relationship with Zynga, and, if we are unable to successfully maintain this relationship, our financial results could be harmed,” read Facebook’s S-1.

[More from Mashable: Are Google Search Trends Better Election Predictors Than Polls? [INFOGRAPHIC]]

Facebook takes a 30% cut of all virtual goods sold through Zynga games such as FarmVille and CityVille, which results in significant profits. Of Facebook’s $3.71 billion in sales in 2011, $445 million was generated by Zynga. While some investors had considered Zynga a risky investment due to its dependent relationship with Facebook, it became clear Wednesday that Facebook too is dependent on Zynga.

Despite no direct business relationship, professional social network LinkedIn saw a 6.37% increase in share values. Renren, often called China’s Facebook, saw shares rise 8.18%. The revenue generated by Facebook, as was detailed in the S-1, likely encouraged investors to buy stock in social networking companies.

Other Internet companies such as Groupon, Netflix and Pandora also saw their shares rise in trading Thursday.

Take a look through the gallery below to see the details of how Internet stocks fared Thursday. Do you think this is a good sign for Internet companies or could we be approaching another dot-com bubble burst? Sound off in the comments.

1. Zynga (ZNGA)

Previous close: $ 10.60

Closing: $ 12.385

Net change: 16.84%

Traded on NASDAQ

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Thumbnail image courtesy of Katrina.Tuliao and Crunchies2009 via Flickr

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Facebook IPO: How Will the Social Network Be Affected? [POLL]

Facebook’s $5 billion IPO filing yesterday took the social media world by storm, but if you woke up today and logged into the social network, you probably noticed nothing’s changed — yet. Yes, Facebook Timeline is in the process of rolling out to all users, so it may actually have looked different to you, but yesterday’s filing won’t create any immediate changes to the service that 483 million of us log into every day. [More from Mashable: 10 Standout Quotes in Zuckerberg’s Facebook IPO Letter] Contained in the 213-page S-1 document was Mark Zuckerberg’s letter to potential shareholders, in which he wrote that Facebook was “built to accomplish a social mission – to make the world more open and connected.” He also talked about Facebook’s culture of “The Hacker Way,” writing that “the vast majority of hackers I’ve met tend to be idealistic people who want to have a positive impact on the world.” But the Facebook IPO filing means it will now be beholden to shareholders and a board, and while its offices may be filled with idealists, they’ll still have an obligation to generate revenue.

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Facebook’s $5 billion IPO filing yesterday took the social media world by storm, but if you woke up today and logged into the social network, you probably noticed nothing’s changed — yet.

Yes, Facebook Timeline is in the process of rolling out to all users, so it may actually have looked different to you, but yesterday’s filing won’t create any immediate changes to the service that 483 million of us log into every day.

[More from Mashable: 10 Standout Quotes in Zuckerberg’s Facebook IPO Letter]

Contained in the 213-page S-1 document was Mark Zuckerberg’s letter to potential shareholders, in which he wrote that Facebook was “built to accomplish a social mission – to make the world more open and connected.” He also talked about Facebook’s culture of “The Hacker Way,” writing that “the vast majority of hackers I’ve met tend to be idealistic people who want to have a positive impact on the world.”

But the Facebook IPO filing means it will now be beholden to shareholders and a board, and while its offices may be filled with idealists, they’ll still have an obligation to generate revenue. The company already laid bare a comprehensive list of risks that could hamper its ongoing prosperity. Certainly things will change — but the question is how much.

[More from Mashable: The IPO Won’t Change Facebook. Online Ads Will]

Let us know in the comments and take our poll: How do you think Facebook IPO will affect the social network?

How do you think Facebook’s IPO will affect the social network?

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Facebook IPO: No, It’s Not Groundhog Day for the Bubble

Facebook’s $5 billion IPO is not the biggest of all time, but it’s up there, which means it’s faced with the same gimlet eye as every other big Internet public offering.

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Facebook’s $5 billion IPO is not the biggest of all time, but it’s up there, which means it’s faced with the same gimlet eye as every other big Internet public offering. The word “bubble” has been floated. That’s unfortunate since there is nothing bubble-like about Facebook.

People, though, are insistent.

[More from Mashable: Far Side of the Moon Captured on Video for the First Time]

“This is the beginning,” I’ve been told. Others put Facebook’s filing among a growing chain of Internet IPOs (Zynga, Groupon, LinkedIn), making it like a rather ungainly bauble in a charm bracelet. It’s a bad sign, they theorize, because the Internet cannot sustain a bubble. I simply want to tell them they are wrong. Facebook’s IPO is about as much like Groupon’s or Zynga’s as your local food truck stand is like McDonalds Inc., and this is not a rerun of the Turn of the Millennium bad times.

How do I know these things? I was inside the original bubble.

[More from Mashable: Glassdoor Can Mine Your Facebook Friends to Help You Land a Job [VIDEO]]

In 1999, I worked at Deja.com. It was a crazy 12-month ride. The company started as DejaNews in 1995 and was primarily an organized front end for a vast array of UseNet discussion groups. I came onboard just as the company pivoted (we did it before anyone was using the word). The new Deja.com was still about talk, but also wanted to leverage all that chatter into a commerce play. Site visitors were always talking about the best products (especially tech), so why not let them shop for them too?

Like most startups at the time, Deja spent a lot of time, resources and money developing its own technology and designs. We built a powerful shopping engine. It looked and worked great. Our goal was to join everyone else online and go public. We were gonna be huge. We weren’t profitable or successful, but an IPO would change everything. I owned thousands and thousands of stock “sloptions.” I call them that because they were ultimately worth less than the paper they were printed on.

Our strategy and product was rejected by virtually every original DejaNews user. Within six months of my arrival, Deja abandoned the IPO plan. Its new goal became “getting bought.” In particular, we wanted Yahoo to buy us (I know, that’s rib-tickling funny now). It didn’t work out. By the time I left, Deja was being sold in pieces to eBay (our shopping engine) and Google (the discussion groups).

SEE ALSO: Will the IPO Change Facebook Forever?

We weren’t alone. Over a span of 18 months, dozens of other Bubble brands went poof, including Pets.com, Webvan, Kozmo, Flooz, eToys, Boo.com, MVP and countless others. Most of these destinations never made it to IPO, but virtually all were planning it. I’m not sure if any of them were even close to profitable, but so many people saw the potential in becoming Internet entrepreneurs and, potentially, Internet millionaires with other people’s money.

Now, let’s look at the new crop of Internet stars. Is there a little too much hype around recent IPOs for LinkedIn, Groupon and Zynga? Yes. I think they’re being watched by people who do not understand the process: What it means for a private company to become a publicly traded one. I’m no finance guy, so my understanding is rather shallow, too. Still, I know not to take every stock rise and every fall as a sign of success or doom. Stocks perform over a long haul; not over days, but over weeks, months, years.

Facebook, though stands lone. It’s clearly bigger than these other IPOs, and with good reason. Facebook has more users (845 million and seems to be adding millions every month), is far more diversified in its offerings and has almost incomparable reach thanks to its Open Graph and APIs.

Oh, and one other thing: Facebook is making money. Lots of it. Deja, and many of the companies that went phffft! in 2000 or 2001 were running in the red and had no actual strategy for making money (Deja had one but it did not work). Facebook does. Is it relying a bit too heavily on Zynga? Yes, but that platform for selling virtual goods and using credits to buy real stuff should extend quite nicely beyond Farmville’s picket fences.

Facebook’s $5 billion IPO is not a Groundhog Day-like replay of previous Internet Bubble fiascos. It is, in fact, the start of something big for the world’s most successful social brand and a sign that social networking is a real and grown-up business.

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Bonus: 10 Facebook Investment Risk Factors

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1. Competitors

“Users increasingly engage with competing products.”

Image courtesy of Flickr, Mukumbura

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Additional Facebook IPO Coverage

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This story originally published on Mashable here.

NASA Launches Facebook Game to Test Space Program Knowledge (Mashable)

How much do you know about the NASA space program, Earthling? [More from Mashable: Facebook Post Seals Guinness World Record] NASA has launched a multi-player Facebook game to test just that. Space Race Blastoff poses a series of surprisingly tough questions — for example, who launched the first liquid-fueled rocket?

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How much do you know about the NASA space program, Earthling?

[More from Mashable: Facebook Post Seals Guinness World Record]

NASA has launched a multi-player Facebook game to test just that. Space Race Blastoff poses a series of surprisingly tough questions — for example, who launched the first liquid-fueled rocket? — that cover a range of space-related topics including history, technology and science. There’s even a pop culture category.

Users play the game by choosing an avatar then answering a series of 10 multiple-choice questions. They can compete with other players or just play solo. Players can also earn additional points if they are able to correctly answer bonus questions following the initial 10-question round.

[More from Mashable: Facebook Timeline and Users: Not Quite a Love Affair [POLL RESULTS]]

NASA released the game through Facebook to leverage the social network’s massive audience and make the game something players could enjoy with friends.

“Space Race Blastoff opens NASA’s history and research to a wide new audience of people accustomed to using social media,” David Weaver, NASA’s associate administrator for communications, said in a press release. “Space experts and novices will learn new things about how exploration continues to impact our world.”

Space Race Blastoff is NASA’s first multi-player online game, but the agency has a history of adeptly using social media to connect with the public. In September, NASA announced plans to invite 150 of its Twitter followers to a “tweetup” event at a live spacecraft launch. A number of astronauts have active Twitter accounts as well; Ron Garan, or Astro_Ron, even has more than 88,000 followers.

Will you play Space Race Blastoff? Why or why not? Let us know in the comments.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Twitter Is Not a Media Company, CEO Says (Mashable)

“Twitter is not a media company,” Twitter CEO Dick Costolo declared on stage at AllThingsD ‘s media conference in Laguna Nigel, CA, Monday evening.

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“Twitter is not a media company,” Twitter CEO Dick Costolo declared on stage at AllThingsD‘s media conference in Laguna Nigel, CA, Monday evening. The statement was surprising given Twitter’s well-publicized role as a platform for breaking news, entertainment and other communications. “You [even] sell advertising,” AllThingsD‘s Peter Kafka pointed out.

[More from Mashable: Twitter CEO: We Are Not Censoring the Web]

“We’re in the media business, but we’re not necessarily a media company,” Costolo elaborated. “We don’t create our own content; we’re a distributor of content and traffic. We’re one of the largest drivers of traffic to other media properties, [namely] to other online web properties, even to films.”

Costolo pointed to a Super8 campaign Paramount Pictures ran on Twitter last June. The studio promoted the hashtag #Super8Secret, through which it offered advanced screening tickets to the film. The film performed “50% better” during opening weekend than Paramount expected, Costolo said.

[More from Mashable: Behind the Scenes of Twitter’s No-Cost Viral Recruiting Video]

Kafka and Costolo went on to discuss the origins of Twitter’s advertising business. “When you came [to Twitter] in 2009, Twitter’s business model wasn’t clear,” Kafka recalled. “Now it’s solidly an ad business. Did you push the company in that direction?” he asked.

“I was certainly involved in it,” said Costolo. “The honest answer is that i was a key participant in it, certainly advocated for it. By no means was it my idea to create and launch the products we have now.”

Kafka asked Costolo if the company explored any other business models at the time, but Costolo evaded the question. “The notion that there were other ideas we considered and that I disposed of makes it sound too palace intrigue-y,” he complained. “It makes it sound a little too Hamlet. The reality of life is that it’s a lot more Tom Stoppard than Shakespeare,” he said.

Costolo likewise skirted questions about whether Twitter would have its first profitable year in 2012 — “We don’t discuss financials,” he said — but did stress the health of Twitter’s advertising business. In particular, he noted that engagement in several recent Promoted campaigns was above 50%, and that the cost per customer acquisition rate — by which we assume he means the cost per follower acquisition rate — is “fantastic.”

At the moment, Twitter is less interested in developing new products or revenue streams than growing the ones it’s already developed, Costolo suggested. “It’s all about scaling that now, launching these products globally,” he said.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

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