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NY DAILY NEWS - July 30 - Twitter appears to be preparing for its IPO. The company placed job advertisement for a financial reporting manager. The person selected for the position would be “responsible for preparation of monthly reporting materials, quarterly/annual financial statements and Form S-1 when we are ready to go public," the ad states.
by David Knowles
See full article at NY Daily News
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TECH CRUNCH - July 30 - The U.K.’s Streetlife.com, a local social network that lets residents connect and converse with their neighbours, has raised £600K in a new round of funding. The additional capital will be used to give Streetlife a marketing push. The startup plans to raise a further £3M by year’s end. Streetlife has 100K users in 500 “communities".
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MASHABLE - July 30 - Facebook's stock nearly returned to its IPO price for the first time since the company went public on May 18, 2012. The stock hit $37.96 a share in late trading Tuesday, following an impressive Q2 earnings report, which showed better-than-expected progress on mobile user growth and monetization. Facebook stock hit a low of $17.55 a share just more than nine months ago. The all-time high for Facebook's stock is $45 a share, which it hit briefly on the day of the IPO before ending the day at $38.23.
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INSIDE FACEBOOK - July 30 - Facebook’s CTO, Michael Schroepfer sold 270K shares of Facebook stock. The transaction netted Schroepfer $9,155,088. He currently owns 786,689 shares of Facebook stock. On Monday, Facebook was valued at $35.43 per share, its highest value since opening May 18, 2012 at $38.
by Justin Lafferty
See full article at Inside Facebook
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MEMEBURN - July 30 - Bang With Friends, the Facebook app that aids in casual sex hookups, was banned from the Apple App Store in May and now Zynga
is taking it on for trademark infringement. Zynga has filed a complaint
suggesting that Bang With Friends selected its name with “Zynga’s game
trademarks fully in mind,” and that its name contravenes the company’s
trademark, covering titles including “Words With Friends” and “Chess
With Friends. Bang With Friends has yet to respond to the allegations,
but we can’t imagine that it will back down quickly. Its fortunes, with
upwards of 1.1M users, also appear to still be on the up, while Zynga’s
are going very much the other way. In June, Zynga was forced to slash
18% of its staff as it continues to battle to adapt to mobile gaming.
by Stuart Thomas
See full article at Memeburn
See all posts on Bang With Friends
See all posts on Zynga
This post also appears on OnlinePersonalsWatch.
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MOBILE ENTERTAINMENT - July 29 - The number of people who visit social networks via a mobile device in the UK is expected to rise from 65% to ~85% in the next four years. Usage of social networks on mobile is largely amongst a younger demographic - with a projected 10M users being aged between 18 to 34 years old expected by the end of this year, which is almost half of all UK users.
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TECH CRUNCH - July 24 - Facebook’s Q2 revenue is up 53% YOY with net income of $333M. Mobile income as a percentage of ad revenue totaled 41%, up 11% from the preceding quarter. Facebook noted that mobile revenue will soon outstrip desktop incomes. The majority of Facebook’s revenue comes from advertising-related income. However, its payments and fee revenue totaled $214M during the quarter, up 11% YOY. Monthly active users now total 1.15 billion.
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MASHABLE - July 24 - 13-year-old Daniel Singer has created his own messaging app Backdoor. It is billed as a "secret messaging" app. You can send and receive messages, but you don't know who they are from. There are even "clues" to help you figure it out. While there are obvious uses for such an app — flirting, practical jokes — Singer says that "the possibilities are endless." Singer was also the co-creator of YouTell, a site with 2M members that lets you solicit anonymous feedback about yourself from your Facebook friends.
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TECH CRUNCH - July 23 - Enterprise social networking service Hall has raised $5.5M in Series A funding, bringing the AngelPad startup’s funds to ~$6.4M. Hall provides a platform for businesses to communicate from any online device. It also aims to deliver real-time communication across different companies, so users can contact co-workers, employers, clients and friends all in one place. The service serves ~20K businesses and 100K users. Some notable users include Capital One, Razorfish, Sapient and Oracle.
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TECH CRUNCH - July 23 - LinkedIn has launched sponsored updates, where companies and other organizations with company pages can pay to promote their content to LinkedIn users who don’t follow their specific page. Sponsored updates can be priced on either a CPM or CPC basis, and advertisers should be able to view data on their campaigns and tweak their efforts as necessary.
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TELEGRAPH.CO.UK - July 22 - Office workers spend an hour a day doing personal admin at their desks, a study has found. Online banking is the most common personal task Brits carry out at work with more than a third admitting they regularly check their bank account from their desk.
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TECH CRUNCH - July 22 - Facebook For Every Phone, a native app that works on feature phones, has been downloaded 100M times. More feature phones than smartphones are used in developing markets like India, Indonesia and the Philippines. Facebook had 751M monthly active users on mobile as of March 31, 2013, an increase of 54% YOY.
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MASHABLE - July 21 - Biz Stone, one of Twitter's three co-founders, revealed in that he recently started using Facebook again. He believes Facebook should offer a premium option that would let users pay $10 a month to get rid of the ads. In general, the ads on Facebook don’t seem particularly useful or engaging.
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HUFFINGTON POST - July 19 - Roommates is a new app that uses Facebook profile to match users with potentially compatible roommates. The app launched in San Francisco and plans to roll out in New York and Chicago later this year.
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THE NEXT WEB - July 18 - The number of people in the UK using Facebook from their mobile has increased 22% since June last year. Facebook says that the average user now logs in 10 – 15 times per day. In total, the global number of users using Facebook from a mobile was ~751M people, an increase of 54% from the same time last year. ~82% of those users are outside of the US and Canada.
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