Facebook is about to find out just how much status updates, puppy photos and billions of “likes” are worth on Wall Street, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg ringing the Nasdaq Stock Market opening bell Friday morning from company headquarters a continent away.
Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/yahoo-shares-climb-report-alibaba-deal-near-142941920--sector.html
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Shorting the Facebook IPO on its first day of trading will not be for the faint of heart.
As the hottest initial public offering in recent memory, Facebook has drawn 1990s-style tech-mania interest from mom and pop investors and big institutions alike.
That intense appeal means even short-selling veterans are a bit wary, at least for now.
“I have no interest in shorting a cultural phenomenon,” hedge fund manager Jeffrey Matthews of Ram Partners in Greenwich, Connecticut, told Reuters in an email interview.
Asked if this was because such stocks trade without regard to normal market valuation, he wrote back, “Bingo.”
Short sellers looking to get in are facing an uphill battle. Traders interviewed said the stock is going to be hard to borrow, at least for a few days, and only the best-sourced hedge fund managers will able to find lenders.
A prime broker at one of the top underwriters of the IPO said the firm will not be lending shares at least until the initial settlement in three business days.
“I don’t know how many shares will be available for shorting,” said the broker, who requested anonymity. “We would only provide them once the deal has stabilized.”
The bigger-than-usual percentage of retail-investor ownership of the shares may make shorting more difficult, as those investors don’t tend to lend their shares for those who want to take a short bet.
“It will likely be difficult to get shares to borrow,” said Adam Reed, professor of finance at UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
“In our research, we found that around 70 percent of IPOs are borrowable on the first day, but many of those names were only borrowable by well-placed investors.”
The stock priced at $38 a share Thursday.
Those who are able to short will need nerves of steel. The borrowing cost will be high, and short-sellers may find the trade hard to get out of by buying back the stock in the open market, and could face a lender calling in their shorts if the stock rallies sharply.
Still, some have started laying the groundwork to short Facebook well before trading started.
“I’m doing the legwork now and calling all the brokers,” said a hedge fund manager earlier in the week. “Goldman and Credit Suisse are our prime brokers, so I am in contact with them about this.”
“This is about as bubbly as you can get,” he said. “My mother asked me if she could get Facebook shares and she has never been interested in IPOs before. A cab driver asked me about the IPO too. That’s when you want to short it.”
The hedge fund manager asked not to be named as he expected to be involved in trading the stock on Friday.
Some hedge funds, remembering the heady days of the tech bubble in the late 1990s, have been sensing the blood in the water in the recent flurry of social media and networking IPOs, including Groupon, LinkedIn, and Zygna.
Many believe those stocks’ valuations are too high, given expectations for their growth and revenue outlook. Should shares surge to $70 or so in short order, it will be an opportunity for managers when the initial flurry of retail interest fades in coming days or weeks.
However, Facebook may be an exception.
“I think it’s going to be an extraordinarily successful IPO and it’s going to be a must-own stock institutionally, besides the massive retail demand, for obvious reasons – it’s the dominant factor in social media, social networking,” said Doug Kass, president of Seabreeze Partners in Palm Beach, Florida.
Kass hasn’t been afraid of shorting hot IPOs in the past – he made quick, short bets on LinkedIn in the initial days after it began trading in May 2011. That stock had a small float of just 7.84 million shares, compared with the 421 million shares Facebook sold.
At the $38-a-share IPO price, Facebook would trade at over 100 times historical earnings, versus Apple Inc’s 14 times and Google Inc’s 19 times.
Even among the skeptical, there is a good deal of caution in facing down what is likely to be a stampede. As economist John Maynard Keynes famously noted, the market can stay irrational longer than investors can stay solvent.
“Facebook is the kind of stock that, if you don’t like it, you simply avoid it,” said Mohannad Aama, managing director at Beam Capital Management LLC in New York.
(Editing by David Gaffen and Bernadette Baum)
Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/shorting-facebook-first-day-tough-even-gutsiest-143541938--sector.html
NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Facebook Inc shares opened 11 percent higher on Friday, after the pioneering online social network raised as much as $18.4 billion in one of the biggest initial public offerings in U.S. history.
After a delay in the opening print that drove up anxiety levels among traders and onlookers outside the Nasdaq, the company’s closely watched stock began trading at $42.05, compared with an IPO price of $38.
To rapturous applause from employees, Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg — flanked by Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg and Nasdaq Chief Executive Robert Greifeld — rang the bell to kick off trading at the company’s Silicon Valley headquarters at 6:30 a.m. Pacific time.
The 28-year-old billionaire founder hugged and high-fived Sandberg and other employees in celebration after he pressed the remote button.
The area outside Facebook’s offices at 1 Hacker Way was packed with throngs of photographers, more than 12 television trucks, and a TV news helicopter hovering overhead as the excitement reached fever pitch.
With a value of $104 billion, Facebook became the first American company to debut at over a $100 billion. It is larger than Starbucks Corp and Hewlett-Packard combined.
“A 15 to 20 percent pop is in the realm of possibility,” said Tim Loughran, a finance professor at the University of Notre Dame, before the start of trade.
“Given they already moved their IPO range up and increased the size, that’s bullish to begin with.”
Facebook priced its offering at $38 a share on Thursday, but the price could be higher when shares begin trading under the FB symbol on the Nasdaq at 11 a.m. Eastern time (1500 GMT).
Cameramen gathered around the Nasdaq building in New York’s Time Square early on Friday as press throngs joined tourists and workers in the area. One of the billboards in the area prominently displayed the Facebook logo.
On Twitter and in office elevators the morning talk was betting how much Facebook’s initial price would rise by the end of trading.
Some expect shares could rise 30 percent or more on Friday, despite ongoing concerns about Facebook’s long-term money-making potential. An average of Morningstar analyst estimates put the closing price for Facebook shares on Friday at $50.
The IPO, expected to mint more than a thousand paper millionaires at the company, has received wall-to-wall media coverage and sparked hopes of a boom in sales of everything from San Francisco Bay area real estate to automobiles.
Facebook employees marked the event with an all-night “hackathon” at the company’s Menlo Park, California, headquarters starting on Thursday evening, a tradition in which programmers work on side projects that sometimes turn into mainstream offerings.
The website, founded in a Harvard dorm room in 2004, has grown into the world’s dominant social network with 900 million users.
At $38 a share, Facebook would trade at more than 100 times historical earnings versus Apple Inc’s 14 times and Google Inc’s 19 times.
For all the high expectations surrounding Facebook, the company faces challenges maintaining its momentum.
Some investors worry the company has not yet figured out a way to make money from the growing number of users who access Facebook on mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones. Meanwhile, revenue growth from Facebook’s online advertising business, which accounts for the bulk of its revenue, has slowed in recent months.
General Motors said on Tuesday it would stop placing ads on Facebook, raising questions about whether display ads on the site are as effective as they are in traditional media.
(This story has been corrected to amend opening price to $42.05, not $43)
(Additional reporting By Edwin Chan in San Francisco and Yinka Adegoke in New York; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)
Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/facebook-prices-top-range-landmark-ipo-005337198--sector.html
(Reuters) – Comcast Corp said on Thursday it will introduce a trial for usage-based billing for its Internet subscribers in a move seen to pre-empt more complaints the cable company favors its own Web video service over rivals.
Usage-based pricing would allow Comcast to charge its customers for the amount of data they use with a utility meter rather than pay a flat fee like they do today. Currently, that flat fee is priced on Internet speed and also features a 250 GB data cap each month.
Comcast, the No.1 U.S. residential Internet service provider, said the cap would now be raised to 300 GB for those in the usage trial, the equivalent of downloading about 50 high definition movies. It did not give a time frame for the trial which will take place in two of its markets.
Comcast executive vice president Cathy Avgiris said the average Comcast customer doesn’t come close to its current limits.
Executives on a conference call said the changes were being made to adapt to a changing marketplace and technology, but several industry watchers pointed to a recent high profile complaint by Netflix as a possible reason for the move.
In April, Netflix Inc Chief Executive Reed Hastings raised concerns that Comcast was favoring its own Xfinity TV app on the X-box because watching TV through the app did not contribute to a user’s Internet cap.
Comcast senior vice president David Cohen said the decision had nothing to do with Netflix or Xfinity.
Crucially in markets which are not part of its trial, the company will suspend enforcement of its current 250 GB cap.
Internet usage-based pricing has previously been a controversial subject for ISPs, particularly Comcast and the No.2 cable operator Time Warner Cable.
Time Warner Cable was forced to cancel a trial of Internet usage-based billing after an uproar in 2009 when customers thought they were being overcharged.
In February, Time Warner Cable launched another trial with more flexible pricing.
Comcast for its part will be keen to avoid sparking a regulatory inquiry into its pricing or business practices — given that it has been on a relatively short leash on Capitol Hill since it took control of NBC Universal last year.
Cohen said caps would be a thing of the past. “Today, we’re getting out of the cap business.”
But the company did immediately allay long held suspicions usage-based pricing is a way to charge higher fees to customers.
“The notion Comcast would charge an exorbitant rate for additional bandwidth — while continuing to exempt its own traffic under its Xbox deal — illustrates Comcast is really trying to discourage subscribers from experimenting with online video alternatives,” said Joel Kelsey of Free Press, an advocacy group.
(Reporting by Yinka Adegoke in New York and Jasmin Melvin and Washington D.C.; Editing by Bernard Orr)
Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/comcast-trying-internet-usage-pricing-dropping-caps-204508425--sector.html
(Reuters) – Investors are bracing for Facebook’s Wall Street debut on Friday after the world’s No.1 online social network raised about $16 billion in one of the biggest initial public offerings in U.S. history.
Valued at $104 billion, Facebook is larger than Starbucks Corp and Hewlett-Packard combined, sparking intense speculation on how much higher its valuation will rise once shares start trading.
“A 15 to 20 percent pop is in the realm of possibility,” said Tim Loughran, a finance professor at the University of Notre Dame. “Given they already moved their IPO range up and increased the size, that’s bullish to begin with.”
Facebook priced its offering at $38 a share on Thursday, but the price could be higher when shares begin trading under the FB symbol on the Nasdaq at around 11 a.m. Eastern Time.
Some expect shares could rise 30 percent or more on Friday, despite ongoing concerns about Facebook’s long-term money-making potential. An average of Morningstar analyst estimates puts the closing price for Facebook shares tomorrow at $50.
The IPO, expected to mint more than a thousand paper millionaires at the company, has received wall-to-wall media coverage and sparked hopes of a boom in sales of everything from San Francisco Bay Area real estate to automobiles.
Facebook employees marked the event with an all-night “hackathon” at the company’s Menlo Park, California headquarters starting on Thursday evening, a tradition in which programmers work on side projects that sometimes turn into mainstream offerings.
Facebook’s 28-year-old founder and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg was expected to ring a bell at the company’s Silicon Valley headquarters on Friday morning to kick off trading on the Nasdaq.
Founded in a Harvard dorm room in 2004, Facebook has grown into the world’s dominant social network with 900 million users.
At $38 a share, Facebook would trade at over 100 times historical earnings versus Apple Inc’s 14 times and Google Inc’s 19 times.
For all the high expectations surrounding Facebook, the company faces challenges maintaining its growth momentum.
Some investors worry the company has not yet figured out a way to make money from the growing number of users who access Facebook on mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones. Meanwhile, revenue growth from Facebook’s online advertising business, which accounts for the bulk of its revenue, has slowed in recent months.
“With mobile usage growth exceeding desktop, monetization in the near term could be reduced given little-to-no ad coverage on mobile, challenged by limited screen sizes,” said a report last week from Susquehanna Financial Group.
GM said on Tuesday it would stop placing ads on Facebook, raising questions about whether display ads on the site are as effective as traditional media.
(Reporting By Edwin Chan; Editing by Ryan Woo)
Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/facebook-prices-top-range-landmark-ipo-005337198--sector.html
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A lot of loyal Facebook fans and occasional investors are discovering a hard truth this week: Money and connections talk, especially when it comes to a hot deal handled by Wall Street.
The scramble for shares in what is one of largest initial public offerings in U.S. history quickly divided the haves from the have-nots on Thursday. Those with big brokerage accounts and a long history as customers of Wall Street firms likely got at least part of their orders for Facebook shares filled, but would-be buyers who had no such ties were lucky to get any.
At stake may well be the chance to cash in on a big pop in the shares — some in the market expect a gain of 50 percent or more — when they start trading on Friday.
“This is worse than not scoring an invitation to the best party in high school,” said Fran Carpentier, 57, a publishing and marketing consultant in New York City who wanted to get in on the social media company’s IPO but could not figure out how.
Facebook raised about $16 billion on Thursday by selling roughly 421 million shares at $38 each. That is approximately half a share for each of its 900 million active monthly users.
It may end up raising even more, bringing the total to $18.4 billion, if an option for underwriters is exercised.
Demand for the long-awaited deal has been surging, helped by wall-to-wall media coverage. Orders for Facebook shares outweigh the supply by a ratio of more than 20 to 1, according to traders’ estimates.
Aside from wanting the cachet of owning the next big thing, investors are eager to buy something that may deliver big, even astronomical returns — a rare opportunity in today’s low-yield and turbulent markets. IPOs often offer an early pop, even if the shares stumble later, and Facebook is seen initially climbing further than most.
UNCOMFORTABLE
Facebook and underwriters, as usual, kept mum about overall demand ahead of the IPO. Facebook, which will trade under the ticker FB, did not return calls for comment.
There have been growing expectations in the market that small investors, as opposed to big pension and mutual fund managers, have snapped up as much as 30 percent of the deal. That’s a bigger chunk than the 10 percent to 15 percent that is typically allocated to retail investors. It is a result of efforts by Facebook executives to make shares available to more users.
Underwriters are accommodating Facebook’s wishes and there were signs late on Thursday that they were releasing more shares to individual investors than previously expected.
For example, Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, which is the brokerage arm of one of the lead underwriters, Morgan Stanley, emailed its wealth advisers late on Thursday afternoon to say that it had raised the cap for individual investors to 5,000 shares, from an initial 500 shares, according to sources who spoke on condition of anonymity.
“Retail got a lot more than I thought they did,” said Scott Sweet, senior managing partner of research firm IPO Boutique. “I don’t know what the final split was, but some of the retail clients who called me today were getting 15,000 or 20,000 shares.”
But the allocation may still not be nearly enough to meet demand. And even Sweet, who has been a client of Morgan Stanley for 15 years, hadn’t heard by late Thursday exactly how many shares he was going to get – he had earlier been told he would get less than 500.
That puts financial advisers and brokerage houses in the uncomfortable position of not having enough shares to satisfy Main Street investors clamoring to be a part of the hottest IPO since Google’s 2004 debut.
One of those investors is Mary Furlong, who runs a marketing firm for baby boomers in Lafayette, California. “I want to buy shares. I missed the Google opening,” she says, but did not end up getting hold of any shares.
Google, whose founders made “Don’t be evil” a core principle, in 2004 issued its stock through a more transparent process known as a modified Dutch auction. Underwriters gathered bids from investors regardless of their connections or size of their portfolios.
That created more of a level playing field for potential investors. Google’s shares were priced at $85, climbed to $100 on Day 1 and are now trading at about $623.
Facebook is selling its shares through a traditional Wall Street IPO, a more subjective process, one managed by investment bankers.
“The deal is probably not ‘fair,’ but there’s no way it can be,” said Bruce Foerster, owner of South Beach Capital Markets and former head of global equity syndicate at Lehman Brothers. “If you don’t have ties to Facebook management, if you don’t have accounts and an investment history with firms that are co-managing the deal, why should you get any stock?”
MANAGING EXPECTATIONS
Mindful that customers would be frustrated, Morgan Stanley Smith Barney early on distributed a script to its brokers on how to handle requests from clients, said one veteran broker.
“The minute someone says ‘Facebook,’ we’re supposed to say, ‘Yes, we’re the lead, but we can’t talk about it,’” the broker said. “I heard from three or four clients, and I told them there is no way I’ll be able to get them shares because I haven’t done IPO business in years.”
Other brokerages are in the same boat. Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch brokerage is limiting retail clients to a maximum 2,000 shares per account, according to brokers at the firm.
Wells Fargo Advisors, the brokerage arm of Wells Fargo Co, has a scoring system for allocating shares among its more than 15,000 brokers. It weighs brokers’ annual revenue production, how much IPO work they do and how long their clients held positions in prior IPOs, according to one Wells Fargo broker.
Then, in turn, brokers score their clients based on assets with the firm, how much they have traded in the past, and how long they’ve held onto previous allocations of shares in IPOs.
“I can’t just get Facebook shares for my buddy,” said one Wells Fargo adviser, who declined to be named because he is not permitted to speak to the press.
At Fidelity, the funds and brokerage giant, Facebook shares will be reserved only for clients with at least $500,000 in assets, excluding 401(k) plans, or those who make at least 36 trades a year with the firm, according to Fidelity spokesman Stephen Austin.
Loyalty helps: Fidelity customers who have being doing business with the firm for the longest periods get higher priority in the IPO food chain.
While excluded investors may feel spurned, there’s nothing illegal about banks selling shares to their best customers. Whether it is fair to everyone is another question.
“People have argued that it leaves other investors out, especially for hot IPOs, where in the after-market the prices are likely to be much higher,” said Jill Fisch, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
Maurice Costello, a former broker who works as an accountant in the Boston area, says he has ordered Facebook at $37 a share through his E*Trade account. But he has no idea how many shares he might ultimately receive.
The online brokerage, which typically caters to small investors, is one of 33 firms named by Facebook to distribute its newly issued shares. E*Trade would not comment on the Facebook IPO.
For some investors, buying into the IPO doesn’t necessarily mean holding on to the stock. Richard Laermer, who is CEO of social network ThankBank, is clamoring to get Facebook shares and flip, or sell them, at a profit.
“I am going to do what I did with LinkedIn, Groupon, Google, Research In Motion, AOL, Netscape, Dunkin Donuts … plus a host of 90s stocks that I can’t even recall,” Laermer wrote in an email to Reuters. “Buy on Day One, sell on Day Three. It never fails.”
(Additional reporting by Alistair Barr, Olivia Oran, Jessica Toonkel, John McCrank, Jennifer Cummings, Jed Horowitz, Andrew Longstreth and Lauren Young; Editing by Jilian Mincer, Martin Howell, Steve Orlofsky and Muralikumar Anantharaman)
Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/insight-got-facebook-ipo-shares-fairness-may-not-043300524--sector.html
When you get a lot of smart and interested people together to make a prediction in aggregate, it can be scary accurate. Anyone who has read the James Surowiecki business science classic The Wisdom of Crowds, and a host of corroborating authors such as Malcolm Gladwell, knows that.
So what if you applied that brave new world of expert prediction markets, of crowdsourcing the future, to the Facebook IPO?
That’s what famed investor Chris Sacca wondered aloud on Twitter, and programmer James Proud endeavored to find out. And thus was born Facebookipodayclosingprice.com, Proud even buying the exact URL Sacca had idly requested Tuesday.
By end of day Thursday, it had garnered more than 1,400 predictions, mostly from the Valley’s top luminaries — entrepreneurs, investors, analysts and others who know a thing or two from IPOs. And it was getting up to 20 visitors every second.
Pollsters and prediction market experts will tell you you need more than a thousand inputs for a good aggregate result with a low margin of error. So what did this prediction market come up with? And could you — or Sacca — get very rich in one day by banking on the result?
In theory, yes. Facebook’s launch price Friday morning will be $38. This site is predicting, in aggregate, that the stock will hit $54 by close of market Friday, for a total valuation of $135.7 billion.
Buy enough shares, and that $16 difference would make for a tidy one-day profit.
Of course, prediction markets have never been tested in this kind of circumstance. IPOs are inherently nerve-wracking wild rides. The Twitterati have been known to be wrong before. We certainly won’t be opening our wallets on the basis of this prediction.
But we will be eager to check back in at the closing bell, 4pm ET Friday, to see how close the prediction market came. Join us then!
Article source: http://feeds.mashable.com/~r/Mashable/~3/tAe42Mf3kFU/
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.
This is more good news for Samsung, which became the world’s biggest phone maker in Q1 2012. The company is also the undisputed king of the Android market: Its smartphone sales represent about 40% of all Android-based smartphone sales worldwide.
Samsung Galaxy S3 hits Europe on May 29, followed by a US launch in June.
It sports a 4.8-inch touchscreen, a 8-megapixel rear-facing and 1.9-megapixel forward-facing camera, and comes with the latest version of Android — Ice Cream Sandwich.
[via Reuters]
Article source: http://feeds.mashable.com/~r/Mashable/~3/Gqb3zXJ0I3o/
Veteran reality TV competition America’s Next Top Model will let viewers help determine, for the first time ever, which aspiring model must pack her belongings and go home.
The CW revealed the audience voting addition, a new judge and a new stylist Thursday during its programming upfront in New York City. Meanwhile, the show’s Twitter account spent the day sharing the news and retweeting excited fans.
For 18 seasons, creator Tyra Banks and her ever-changing judging panel have chosen the eliminated contestant. But now viewers get to vote at CWTV.com. Adding online voting for the college-themed cycle 19 in the fall season will give fans only some power, however, as their votes and the judges’ votes will collectively decide who stays.
Reality shows — new and old — are trying new ways to keep viewers engaged, particularly with fresh social media-driven voting methods.
Most recently, The Voice introduced for season two voting via a Facebook Timeline app. In October 2011, X Factor began allowing votes to come in from direct messages on Twitter. And for season 10 of Idol, producers let viewers vote on a dedicated Facebook page.
SEE ALSO: Britney Spears, Demi Lovato Break ‘X Factor’ News on Twitter, PathThe CW also announced Rob Evans, a globally known model will join Banks and fashion publicist Kelly Cutrone on the judging panel. Stylist Johnny Wujek will become part of the cast, too. Evans and Wujek replace America’s Next Top Model staples Nigel Barker, J. Alexander and Jay Manuel.
This cycle’s college theme is fitting, considering Banks received a diploma from Harvard University in February.
On Thursday, @CW_ANTM took the photo of Banks with her diploma from February and plastered an America’s Next Top Model logo on it (see below).
Hey ANTM fans! Your votes will now help decide who stays and who goes at judging!
— ANTM (@CW_ANTM) May 17, 2012
Flashin lights, celebs and gettin asked for pictures/autographs, life is good right Now,and this is just the begining..
— Rob Evans (@the_robevans) May 17, 2012
You get a say in who stays and goes on #ANTM Cycle 19! Vote, sound off and join in starting next week! twitter.com/CW_ANTM/status…
— ANTM (@CW_ANTM) May 17, 2012
A crop of new and returning reality shows, comedies, talent competitions and dramas will vie for your attention on your TV screens, web browsers and mobile devices this summer.
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Premieres: May 14 on NBC
Social media: America’s Got Talent ushers in a new judge this season: shock jock Howard Stern, who’s already igniting buzz across social networks with his recent jabs at the American Idol‘s too-soft judging panel. Anticipate his critical judging style to incite significant social chatter. Meanwhile, AGT‘s Facebook Page has been pushing multimedia, including Spotify playlists from Stern and fellow judge Sharon Osbourne.
Photo courtesy of Mark Seliger/NBC
Premieres: May 20 on E!
Social media: The mega succesful Keeping Up With the Kardashians returns for a seventh season after having spawned spin-offs Kourtney and Khloé Take Miami, Kourtney and Kim Take New York and Khloé Lamar. A new show companion app for Android, Blackberry and iPhone lets viewers see the Twitter feeds of Kim, Kourtney and Khloe, watch video clips and flip through photo galleries.
Photo courtesy of E! Entertainment
Premieres: May 24 on Fox
Social media: Heavy online commentary from fans of So You Think You Can Dance started in January after producers announced the show would dwindle its two-night format to one night, killing the often weekly, drawn-out results show. Fans are still waiting for the show to begin posting official performance videos on YouTube — which would help the show reach more eyeballs — just like The Voice and American Idol did this past fall.
Premieres: May 24 on ABC
Social media: Star-studded Duets is trying something new with the traditional singing-competition scheme. Instead of having its celebrity panel — Kelly Clarkson, John Legend, Jennifer Nettles and Robin Thick — judge or mentor, they will perform with contestants on stage. The show’s website has a “Discuss Duets” page at which viewers can find Twitter handles for the four stars and host Quddus (of TRL fame), see relevant hashtags and chat with fellow fans.
Photo courtesy of ABC
Premieres: Summer 2012 on Syfy
Social media: Alphas, a scripted drama about people with super powers, touts its interactive Alpha Powers online portal, where fans can take a 10-question assessment to discover whether they’re Alphas material. The website also lets viewers submit Alpha sightings (a.k.a. citizens doing extraordinary things in the real world).
Photo courtesy of Justin Stephens/Syfy
Premieres: May 28 on History Channel
Social media: Hatfields McCoys, a three-part miniseries about a legendary decades-long family feud, will have help from a strong History Channel initiative on Facebook. “History just launched a new Facebook game for its new show Hatfields McCoys a trend A+E Networks is at the forefront of,” Natan Edelsburg, writer at social TV blog Lost Remote, told Mashable.
Photo from History.com
Premieres: May 29 on Comedy Central
Social media: Funnyman Daniel Tosh is back to host Tosh.0, a series that pokes fun at viral videos, celebrities and everything pop culture. The “What You’re Saying” page on the show’s website highlights the best tweets mentioning the Tosh.0. Viewers also can suggest their favorite on-air moments to be shared on the site.
Photo courtesy of Ian White/Tosh.0
Premieres: May 30 on CBS
Social media: CBS is letting the dogs out on-air with Dogs in the City, an unscripted series about doggy dilemmas. New York City dog “guru” Justin Silver will help solve any pet issues people have with their canines. As we’ve learned from our time on YouTube, anything about dogs and puppies is bound to go viral.
Photo courtesy of Brian Friedman/CBS
Premieres: June 3 and 4 on MTV
Social media: MTV unveiled the trailer for Teen Wolf on May 6 with a challenge to its audience: Get the trailer to 5 million views and the first 10 minutes of season 2 will be unlocked ahead of the June 3 and 4 two-part premiere. The season begins after the MTV Movie Awards.
Photo courtesy of MTV
Premieres: June 4 on Bravo
Social media: Three new faces join the cast of The Real Housewives of New York City for season 5. The show often spawns significant buzz on Twitter and GIFs across the web. A “Tweet Tracker” on BravoTV.com displays tweets from and about each housewife in real time and lets viewers send tweets on the platform.
Photo courtesy of Michael Rosenthal/Bravo
Premieres: June 5 on ABC Family
Social media: Murder Mystery Pretty Little Liars capped last season with a revealing episode that received the most social media buzz in TV history. Topics about the show regularly trend on Twitter, with about 50 trending during the season 2 finale.
Premieres: June 7 on NBC
Social media: A new host (comedian Jenny McCarthy) and a new location will help spice up the action on season 2 of dating show Love in the Wild. As the title implies, the singles will compete for love in a tropical paradise. Challenges lead to rewards and finishing at the bottom yields not-so-favorable living conditions with another single. Look for McCarthy’s wild personality and commentary to spark entertaining reactions from social media users.
Photo courtesy of Trae Patton/NBC
Premieres: June 10 on HBO
Social media: “True Blood will no doubt take over social conversations for another year,” says Edelsburg, echoing how many insiders and fans feel about the hit HBO series about vampires and other superhuman characters. HBO has been teasing season 5 with new trailers, art and photos on Facebook (10 million Likes). Most of the images feature hashtags as HBO tries to build a bigger following on Twitter. Last season, its Facebook Page pimped “Immortalize Yourself,” an interactive app that pulls Facebook data to create a video starring the user and his or her friends. Don’t be surprised if HBO delivers another digital gem leading up to season 5′s premiere.
Premieres: June 13 on TNT
Social media: “The Dallas reboot on TNT has been garnering positive buzz,” says Scott Ellis, VP of marketing at social TV company Peel, in an interview with Mashable. The show’s Facebook Page, for example, includes entries dating back to 1978 — told in the voice of character J.R. Ewing — to help viewers get a taste of the original Dallas episodes and feel for the modern-day ambience.
Premieres: June 28 on FX
Social media: “Everyone will tune into FX’s Anger Management with Charlie Sheen, who we’ll definitely see using his social influence to promote the show,” says Edelsburg. Sheen plays Charlie, a therapist specializing in anger management. Sheen’s social media antics played out for the world to see in 2011, after he joined Twitter, set a Guinness World Record for reaching 1 million followers the fastest, and then eventually accidentally tweeted his phone number to 5 million followers. Keep your eyes tuned to Twitter as Sheen will likely leverage his now 7.2 million-strong following to support Anger Management.
Premieres: July 1 on Showtime
Social media: Dark comedy Weeds enters season eight filling in the holes from the prior season’s finale. The show’s app for Android and iPhone allows fans to watch exclusive clips, read episode guides and use the Weeds photo booth, where they can create show-themed images and share them across social networks.
Photo courtesy of Jordin Althaus/Showtime
Premieres: July 2 on Showtime
Social media: Web Therapy, a televised comedy that started as an Internet series, stars Lisa Kudrow as therapist Fiona Wallice. A feature on Showtime’s website lets fans ask Fiona a question and get an answer straight from her lips.
Photo courtesy of Showtime
Premieres: July 10 on USA
Social media: White Collar, a drama about a con man and the FBI, has one of the most interactive websites out of all the summer offerings. The “Character Chatter” page shows which characters are garnering the most buzz online, while a slew of games and features immerse fans deeper into the White Collar world.
Photo courtesy of David Giesbrecht/USA Network
Premieres: July 12 on CBS
Social media: Veteran reality TV show Big Brother has roped in viewers since 2000. Now in its 14th season, the show is no stranger to causing moments that spread quickly online. CBS also makes live streams available to fans who want more than what’s televised and care to pay for the live footage.
Photo from CBS.com
Premieres: Sometime in July on AMC
Social media: “Breaking Bad‘s final season will be huge, especially after the buzz it created after last season’s finale,” says Edelsburg. The drama series’s website offers several spiffy interactive features, including a graphic novel game, case files and a criminal aptitude test.
What shows will you be watching? Let us know if we missed your favorites.
Photo courtesy of AMC
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Premieres: May 14 on NBC
Social media: America’s Got Talent ushers in a new judge this season: shock jock Howard Stern, who’s already igniting buzz across social networks with his recent jabs at the American Idol‘s too-soft judging panel. Anticipate his critical judging style to incite significant social chatter. Meanwhile, AGT‘s Facebook Page has been pushing multimedia, including Spotify playlists from Stern and fellow judge Sharon Osbourne.
Photo courtesy of Mark Seliger/NBC
Premieres: May 20 on E!
Social media: The mega succesful Keeping Up With the Kardashians returns for a seventh season after having spawned spin-offs Kourtney and Khloé Take Miami, Kourtney and Kim Take New York and Khloé Lamar. A new show companion app for Android, Blackberry and iPhone lets viewers see the Twitter feeds of Kim, Kourtney and Khloe, watch video clips and flip through photo galleries.
Photo courtesy of E! Entertainment
Premieres: May 24 on Fox
Social media: Heavy online commentary from fans of So You Think You Can Dance started in January after producers announced the show would dwindle its two-night format to one night, killing the often weekly, drawn-out results show. Fans are still waiting for the show to begin posting official performance videos on YouTube — which would help the show reach more eyeballs — just like The Voice and American Idol did this past fall.
Premieres: May 24 on ABC
Social media: Star-studded Duets is trying something new with the traditional singing-competition scheme. Instead of having its celebrity panel — Kelly Clarkson, John Legend, Jennifer Nettles and Robin Thick — judge or mentor, they will perform with contestants on stage. The show’s website has a “Discuss Duets” page at which viewers can find Twitter handles for the four stars and host Quddus (of TRL fame), see relevant hashtags and chat with fellow fans.
Photo courtesy of ABC
Premieres: Summer 2012 on Syfy
Social media: Alphas, a scripted drama about people with super powers, touts its interactive Alpha Powers online portal, where fans can take a 10-question assessment to discover whether they’re Alphas material. The website also lets viewers submit Alpha sightings (a.k.a. citizens doing extraordinary things in the real world).
Photo courtesy of Justin Stephens/Syfy
Premieres: May 28 on History Channel
Social media: Hatfields McCoys, a three-part miniseries about a legendary decades-long family feud, will have help from a strong History Channel initiative on Facebook. “History just launched a new Facebook game for its new show Hatfields McCoys a trend A+E Networks is at the forefront of,” Natan Edelsburg, writer at social TV blog Lost Remote, told Mashable.
Photo from History.com
Premieres: May 29 on Comedy Central
Social media: Funnyman Daniel Tosh is back to host Tosh.0, a series that pokes fun at viral videos, celebrities and everything pop culture. The “What You’re Saying” page on the show’s website highlights the best tweets mentioning the Tosh.0. Viewers also can suggest their favorite on-air moments to be shared on the site.
Photo courtesy of Ian White/Tosh.0
Premieres: May 30 on CBS
Social media: CBS is letting the dogs out on-air with Dogs in the City, an unscripted series about doggy dilemmas. New York City dog “guru” Justin Silver will help solve any pet issues people have with their canines. As we’ve learned from our time on YouTube, anything about dogs and puppies is bound to go viral.
Photo courtesy of Brian Friedman/CBS
Premieres: June 3 and 4 on MTV
Social media: MTV unveiled the trailer for Teen Wolf on May 6 with a challenge to its audience: Get the trailer to 5 million views and the first 10 minutes of season 2 will be unlocked ahead of the June 3 and 4 two-part premiere. The season begins after the MTV Movie Awards.
Photo courtesy of MTV
Premieres: June 4 on Bravo
Social media: Three new faces join the cast of The Real Housewives of New York City for season 5. The show often spawns significant buzz on Twitter and GIFs across the web. A “Tweet Tracker” on BravoTV.com displays tweets from and about each housewife in real time and lets viewers send tweets on the platform.
Photo courtesy of Michael Rosenthal/Bravo
Premieres: June 5 on ABC Family
Social media: Murder Mystery Pretty Little Liars capped last season with a revealing episode that received the most social media buzz in TV history. Topics about the show regularly trend on Twitter, with about 50 trending during the season 2 finale.
Premieres: June 7 on NBC
Social media: A new host (comedian Jenny McCarthy) and a new location will help spice up the action on season 2 of dating show Love in the Wild. As the title implies, the singles will compete for love in a tropical paradise. Challenges lead to rewards and finishing at the bottom yields not-so-favorable living conditions with another single. Look for McCarthy’s wild personality and commentary to spark entertaining reactions from social media users.
Photo courtesy of Trae Patton/NBC
Premieres: June 10 on HBO
Social media: “True Blood will no doubt take over social conversations for another year,” says Edelsburg, echoing how many insiders and fans feel about the hit HBO series about vampires and other superhuman characters. HBO has been teasing season 5 with new trailers, art and photos on Facebook (10 million Likes). Most of the images feature hashtags as HBO tries to build a bigger following on Twitter. Last season, its Facebook Page pimped “Immortalize Yourself,” an interactive app that pulls Facebook data to create a video starring the user and his or her friends. Don’t be surprised if HBO delivers another digital gem leading up to season 5′s premiere.
Premieres: June 13 on TNT
Social media: “The Dallas reboot on TNT has been garnering positive buzz,” says Scott Ellis, VP of marketing at social TV company Peel, in an interview with Mashable. The show’s Facebook Page, for example, includes entries dating back to 1978 — told in the voice of character J.R. Ewing — to help viewers get a taste of the original Dallas episodes and feel for the modern-day ambience.
Premieres: June 28 on FX
Social media: “Everyone will tune into FX’s Anger Management with Charlie Sheen, who we’ll definitely see using his social influence to promote the show,” says Edelsburg. Sheen plays Charlie, a therapist specializing in anger management. Sheen’s social media antics played out for the world to see in 2011, after he joined Twitter, set a Guinness World Record for reaching 1 million followers the fastest, and then eventually accidentally tweeted his phone number to 5 million followers. Keep your eyes tuned to Twitter as Sheen will likely leverage his now 7.2 million-strong following to support Anger Management.
Premieres: July 1 on Showtime
Social media: Dark comedy Weeds enters season eight filling in the holes from the prior season’s finale. The show’s app for Android and iPhone allows fans to watch exclusive clips, read episode guides and use the Weeds photo booth, where they can create show-themed images and share them across social networks.
Photo courtesy of Jordin Althaus/Showtime
Premieres: July 2 on Showtime
Social media: Web Therapy, a televised comedy that started as an Internet series, stars Lisa Kudrow as therapist Fiona Wallice. A feature on Showtime’s website lets fans ask Fiona a question and get an answer straight from her lips.
Photo courtesy of Showtime
Premieres: July 10 on USA
Social media: White Collar, a drama about a con man and the FBI, has one of the most interactive websites out of all the summer offerings. The “Character Chatter” page shows which characters are garnering the most buzz online, while a slew of games and features immerse fans deeper into the White Collar world.
Photo courtesy of David Giesbrecht/USA Network
Premieres: July 12 on CBS
Social media: Veteran reality TV show Big Brother has roped in viewers since 2000. Now in its 14th season, the show is no stranger to causing moments that spread quickly online. CBS also makes live streams available to fans who want more than what’s televised and care to pay for the live footage.
Photo from CBS.com
Premieres: Sometime in July on AMC
Social media: “Breaking Bad‘s final season will be huge, especially after the buzz it created after last season’s finale,” says Edelsburg. The drama series’s website offers several spiffy interactive features, including a graphic novel game, case files and a criminal aptitude test.
What shows will you be watching? Let us know if we missed your favorites.
Photo courtesy of AMC
Article source: http://feeds.mashable.com/~r/Mashable/~3/Xel5zFpe-60/
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A lot of loyal Facebook fans and occasional investors are discovering a hard truth this week: Money and connections talk, especially when it comes to a deal handled by Wall Street.
The scramble for shares in what is one of largest initial public offerings in U.S. history quickly divided the haves from the have-nots on Thursday. Those with big brokerage accounts and a long history as customers of Wall Street firms likely got at least part of their orders for Facebook shares filled, but would-be buyers who had no such ties were lucky to get any.
“This is worse than not scoring an invitation to the best party in high school,” said Fran Carpentier, 57, a publishing and marketing consultant in New York City who wanted to get in on the social media company’s IPO but could not figure out how.
Facebook raised about $16 billion on Thursday by selling roughly 421 million shares at $38 each. That is approximately half a share for each of its 900 million active monthly users.
Demand for the long-awaited deal, meanwhile, has been surging, helped by wall-to-wall media coverage. Orders for Facebook shares outweigh the supply by a ratio of more than 20 to 1, according to traders’ estimates.
Aside from wanting the cachet of owning the next big thing, investors are eager to buy something that may deliver big, even astronomical returns — a rare opportunity in today’s low-yield and turbulent markets. IPOs often offer an early pop, even if the shares stumble later, and Facebook is seen initially climbing further than most.
Some analysts expect Facebook shares to rise by as much as 50 percent, or even more on the first day.
Facebook and underwriters, as usual, kept mum about overall demand ahead of the IPO. Facebook, which will trade under the ticker FB, did not return calls for comment.
There have been growing expectations in the market that small investors, as opposed to big pension and mutual fund managers, will get as much as 30 percent of the deal. That’s a bigger chunk than the 10 percent to 15 percent that is typically allocated to retail investors. It is a result of efforts by Facebook executives to make shares available to more users.
Underwriters are accommodating Facebook‘s wishes. But the allocation may still not be nearly enough to meet demand.
That puts financial advisers and brokerage houses in the uncomfortable position of not having enough shares to satisfy Main Street investors clamoring to be a part of the hottest IPO since Google’s 2004 debut.
One of those investors is Mary Furlong, who runs a marketing firm for baby boomers in Lafayette, California. “I want to buy shares. I missed the Google opening,” she says, but did not end up getting hold of any shares.
Google, whose founders made “Don’t be evil” a core principle, in 2004 issued its stock through a more transparent process known as a modified Dutch auction. Underwriters gathered bids from investors regardless of their connections or size of their portfolios.
That created more of a level playing field for potential investors. Google’s shares were priced at $85, climbed to $100 on Day 1 and are now trading at about $623.
Facebook is selling its shares through a traditional Wall Street IPO, a more subjective process, one managed by investment bankers.
“The deal is probably not ‘fair,’ but there’s no way it can be,” said Bruce Foerster, owner of South Beach Capital Markets and former head of global equity syndicate at Lehman Brothers. “If you don’t have ties to Facebook management, if you don’t have accounts and an investment history with firms that are co-managing the deal, why should you get any stock?”
MANAGING EXPECTATIONS
The demand for Facebook shares has put immense pressure on the 17,000-plus financial advisers at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, the brokerage unit of Morgan Stanley, one of the IPO’s lead underwriters.
On Monday the company told advisers that its retail customers would be limited to a maximum 500 shares per account, only to increase the limit to 5,000 on Thursday, according to sources familiar with the situation.
Mindful that customers would be frustrated, Morgan Stanley early on distributed a script to its brokers on how to handle requests from clients, said one veteran broker.
“The minute someone says ‘Facebook,’ we’re supposed to say, ‘Yes, we’re the lead, but we can’t talk about it,’” the broker said. “I heard from three or four clients, and I told them there is no way I’ll be able to get them shares because I haven’t done IPO business in years.”
Other brokerages are in the same boat. Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch brokerage is limiting retail clients to a maximum 2,000 shares per account, according to brokers at the firm.
Wells Fargo Advisors, the brokerage arm of Wells Fargo Co, has a scoring system for allocating shares among its more than 15,000 brokers. It weighs brokers’ annual revenue production, how much IPO work they do and how long their clients held positions in prior IPOs, according to one Wells Fargo broker.
Then in turn, brokers score their clients based on assets with the firm, how much they have traded in the past, and how long they’ve held onto previous allocations of shares in IPOs.
“I can’t just get Facebook shares for my buddy,” said one Wells Fargo adviser, who declined to be named because he is not permitted to speak to the press.
At Fidelity, the funds and brokerage giant, Facebook shares will be reserved only for clients with at least $500,000 in assets, excluding 401(k) plans, or those who make at least 36 trades a year with the firm, according to Fidelity spokesman Stephen Austin.
Loyalty helps: Fidelity customers who have being doing business with the firm for the longest periods get higher priority in the IPO food chain.
While excluded investors may feel spurned, there’s nothing illegal about banks selling shares to their best customers. Whether it is fair to everyone is another question.
“People have argued that it leaves other investors out, especially for hot IPOs, where in the after-market the prices are likely to be much higher,” said Jill Fisch, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
Maurice Costello, a former broker who works as an accountant in the Boston area, says he has ordered Facebook at $37 a share through his E*Trade account. But he has no idea how many shares he might ultimately receive.
The online brokerage, which typically caters to small investors, is one of 33 firms named by Facebook to distribute its newly issued shares. E*Trade would not comment on the Facebook IPO.
For some investors, buying into the IPO doesn’t necessarily mean holding on to the stock. Richard Laermer, who is CEO of social network ThankBank, is clamoring to get Facebook shares and flip, or sell them, at a profit.
“I am going to do what I did with LinkedIn, Groupon, Google, Research In Motion, AOL, Netscape, Dunkin Donuts … plus a host of 90s stocks that I can’t even recall,” Laermer wrote in an email to Reuters. “Buy on Day One, sell on Day Three. It never fails.”
(Additional reporting Alistair Barr, Olivia Oran, Jessica Toonkel, John McCrank and Jennifer Cummings; Editing by Jilian Mincer, Martin Howell and Steve Orlofsky)
Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/insight-got-facebook-shares-fairness-may-not-come-210950655--sector.html
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