&mdash; GWOP MAGAZINE

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is making his first known investment in a startup, a firm called Panorama Education that uses data analysis to attempt to improve education.

The Cambridge, Mass.-based Panorama announced Monday that it raised $4 million in seed funding led by Zuckerberg’s Startup:Education fund. Other investors include Jeff Clavier’s SoftTech VC, Google Ventures, Ashton Kutcher’s A-Grade Investments and Yale University.

Mark Zuckerberg Buys Neighbors Houses for $30 Milllion

By GWOP

October 11, 2013

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg paid top dollar — more than $30 million in total — for the four residential properties located next door and behind his Palo Alto home.

Zuckerberg is one of several prominent tech CEOs who own homes on Palo Alto’s tree-lined streets. Yahoo’s (YHOO) Marissa Mayer and Google’s (GOOG) Larry Page live there, as did the late Apple (AAPL) chief Steve Jobs.

Zuckerberg, who rented for many years, reportedly paid $7 million two years ago for the 5,000-square-foot home in Palo Alto’s Crescent Park neighborhood where he lives with his wife, physician Priscilla Chan. Zuckerberg, whose personal fortune is estimated at $19 billion, also owns a home in San Francisco.

source: Gawker

Facebook Selling Ads for $2.5 million

By GWOP

August 1, 2013

1 Comment

Facebook will sell 15 second long television-style ads, that will appear on its site, for as much as $2.5 million a day. By comparison, 30-second ads on the Super Bowl tend to go for $3.5 million.

Fifteen seconds is the same length as an Instagram video.

Source: Bloomberg

What Most Schools Don’t Teach – Short Film

By GWOP

February 26, 2013

Bill Gates, mark zuckerberg, Will.I.Am

Starring Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, will.i.am, Chris Bosh, Jack Dorsey, Tony Hsieh, Drew Houston, Gabe Newell, Ruchi Sanghvi, Elena Silenok, Vanessa Hurst, and Hadi Partovi.

Directed by Leslie Chilcott.

Facebook Unveils New Search Engine

By GWOP

January 16, 2013

MENLO PARK, Calif. (AP) – If you’ve ever wanted to know the most popular TV shows among your Facebook friends who are doctors, or wanted to see all the photos any of your friends have taken in Paris, the world’s biggest online social network has the answer.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled a new search feature on Tuesday in Facebook’s first staged event at its Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters since its May initial public offering.

Called “graph search,” the new service lets users search their social connections for information about people, interests, photos and places. Until now, Facebook users were unable to search for friends who live in a certain town or like a particular movie. With the new feature, people can search for friends who, say, live in Boston who also like “Zero Dark Thirty”.

Zuckerberg says the search feature is “privacy aware.” That means users can only search for content that has been shared with them.

Facebook Stock Hits All Time Low

By GWOP

September 1, 2012

Facebook stock, which traded at $38 during its May IPO, has plummeted to an all-time low of $18.28.
For Facebook employees who have shares locked up, November can’t get here fast enough. That’s when they’ll be able to sell off their Facebook stock, although who knows what their shares will be worth by then. BMO Capital Markets analyst Daniel Salmon is predicting that shares will have dropped to a flimsy $15 by November.

Facebook Phone coming soon

By GWOP

May 29, 2012

A week after Facebook’s IPO debuted, Mark Zuckerberg and company reports that it’s entering the smartphone market.
The “Facebook-phone”, codenamed “Buffy”, would run on Android, although Facebook has already hired more than a dozen former Apple iPhone developers. Read More

Facebook Has 901 Million Users

By GWOP

April 23, 2012

Facebook disclosed on Monday that it has 901 million users, making it likely that it will pass the 1 billion mark well before the end of the year.

The company, which dropped the stat in its amended S-1 filing, also notes that its network receives 3.2 billion comments per day and 300 million new photos daily. The site also claims 125 billion friendships. Of the 901 million figure, 526 million were described as daily active users in March. Some 488 million people also used Facebook mobile products that month, according to the filing.

When Facebook filed its IPO paperwork with the SEC in February, the network tallied 845 million users. Back in January, Gregory Lyons, a senior analyst at iCrossing, estimated that Facebook would hit 1 billion users by August, a rate of growth that appears plausible based on the latest numbers.

Even before Monday’s latest numbers dropped, Facebook was by far the largest social network in the world. Twitter, which passed 500 million users in February, is number two on the list — although Twitter says that only 140 million of those accounts are active.

Facebook Buys Instagram for $1 Billion

By GWOP

April 9, 2012

1 Comment

Facebook is not waiting for its initial public offering to make its first big purchase.

The social network has acquired Instagram, the popular photo-sharing application, for about $1 billion in cash and stock, the company said Monday. In a Facebook post on a profile page, the company’s chief, Mark Zuckerberg, said he planned to build Instagram independently from the social network. The move will allow users to post on other social networks, follow users not on Facebook, and to opt out of sharing on Facebook.

“For years, we’ve focused on building the best experience for sharing photos with your friends and family,” Mr. Zuckerberg wrote. “Now, we’ll be able to work even more closely with the Instagram team to also offer the best experiences for sharing beautiful mobile photos with people based on your interests.”

Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, which is expected to go public next month.
Facebook announced today that it has reached an agreement to acquire Instagram, a fun, popular photo-sharing app for mobile devices.

The total consideration for San Francisco-based Instagram is approximately $1 billion in a combination of cash and shares of Facebook. The transaction, which is subject to customary closing conditions, is expected to close later this quarter.

World’s Youngest Billionaires via Forbes

By GWOP

March 8, 2012

1 Comment

No matter how much money Carlos Slim, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett have, there’s one thing they can’t buy: youth. There are an elite few who want for neither money nor time, youngsters in their 20s and 30s who have already amassed or inherited more money than they could hope to spend in a lifetime.

The youngest billionaire in the world is 27-year-old Dustin Moskovitz, Facebook’s third employee. Moskovitz was a roommate of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who happens to be only 8 days older. The duo dropped out of Harvard and moved to Silicon Valley together to launch the fledgling social network. Now a world-wide phenomenon, Facebook is set to IPO in 2012, which could further boost the fortunes of the two youngest billionaires.

Checkout What FaceBook Stock Looks Like [pics]

By GWOP

February 8, 2012