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Facebook filed for a $5 billion IPO on February 1.

“There are more than two billion global Internet users, according to an industry source, and we aim to connect all of them,” the company said in its S-1 form, published by the SEC.

Here are some of the best stats and facts from the S-1:

NASDAQ ticker name: FB

Lead IPO underwriters: Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs
Date founded: 2004
Number of employees: 3,200
Number of monthly active users as of December 31, 2011: 845 million 
Number of daily active users as of December 31, 2011: 483 million

Net profit in 2011: $1 billion
Revenue in 2011: $3.711 billion
Revenue in 2009: $777 million

$3.9 billion: Facebook’s cash pile in 2011
$305 million: Facebook’s cash pile in 2008

85: Percentage of revenue derived from advertising in 2011
95: Percentage of revenue derived from advertising in 2010
98: Percentage of revenue derived from advertising in 2009
12: Percentage of revenue derived from Zynga in 2011

$1.49 million: Mark Zuckerberg’s compensation in 2011
$30.9 million: Sheryl Sandberg’s compensation in 2011

Risk Factors:
Increased mobile engagement — Facebook’s over 400 million mobile users are a threat to the company, because ads and commercial content are not displayed on Facebook mobile apps.

Competition — Facebook asserts that its competitors (listed as Google+, Cyworld in Korea, Mixi in Japan, Orkut in Brazil and India, and vKontakte in Russia) could pose a risk to the company’s future revenue by making it more difficult to locate Facebook in search or by “integrating competing social networking platforms or features into products they control such as search engines, web browsers, or mobile device operating systems.”

Source :- http://www.huffingtonpost.com

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Zynga, the social gaming company whose “Mafia Wars,” “FarmVille,” and other games have amassed millions of devoted fans, is now worth billions of dollars and, on December 16, made its debuted on the Nasdaq stock exchange.

The company, which is named after founder and CEO Mark Pincus’ bulldog, “Zinga,” priced shares at $10 a piece and raised $1 billion in its IPO.According to the Associated Press, the gaming company is now second only to Google when it comes to high-value internet IPOs. The search giant raised $1.4 billion when it went public in 2004.

Zynga’s IPO is only the latest in a series of highly-anticipated initial public offerings from technology companies this year. LinkedIn, Pandora, Groupon and Zillow, among others, also made their public debuts.

But how does Zynga compare to these other companies’ IPOs? And how are these “hot” companies faring now?

• Zynga: $1 Billion - Social gaming company Zynga raised $1 billion in its IPO in December, 2011, the biggest web-related IPO since Google, according to the Associated Press.
  Zynga had a valuation of $7 billion before it began trading on the Nasdaq on December 16.

• RenRen: $743 Million - RenRen, the Chinese social networking site, raised $743 million in its IPO in May 2011,according to Reuters.
  At the end of its first day of trading, the company had a market value of $7.4 billion.
  As of December 16, 2011, RenRen’s market capitalization stood at $1.34 billion.

• Groupon: $700 Million - The daily deals site raised $700 million in its IPO in November 2011, valuing the compnay at nearly $13 billion.
  As of December 16, 2011, Groupon’s value was $14.4 billion.

• LinkedIn: $352 Million - LinkedIn, the professional social network, raised $352 million in its IPO in May 2011.
  According to Reuters, the company was worth $9 billon after its first day of trading on the public market.
  As of December 16, 2011, LinkedIn’s value had dropped to $6.35 billion.

• Pandora: $234 Million - Internet radio site Pandora raised $234 million when it went public in June 2011, valuing the company at $2.56 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal.
  As of December 16, 2011, the company had a market value of $1.71 billion.

• HomeAway: $216 Million - HomeAway.com, a vacation home rental site, raised $216 million in its IPO in June 2011,according to MarketWatch.
  In its first day of trading, reports TechCrunch, the company had reached a valuation as high as $3 billion.
  As of December 2011, HomeAway had a market cap of $1.89 billion.

• Demand Media: $151 Million - Demand Media, a web content company, or “content farm,” raised $151 million in January 2011. The Wall Street Journal reports that the company was worth a whopping $1.78 billion after its first day on the New York Stock Exchange.
  As of December 16, 2011, the company’s market cap had fallen to $593 million.
  In the photo above, Richard Rosenblatt, Chairman and CEO of Demand Media, joins Tyra Banks at the New York Stock Exchange on March 15, 2011.

• Angie’s List: $130 Million - Angie’s List, a site where members can review doctors, contractors and more, raised $130 million in its November 2011 IPO, according to VentureBeat.
  The AP notes that at the end of the first day of trading, the company was valued at $904 million.
  As of December 16, 2011, the site had a market cap of $886 million.

• Zillow: $69 Million - According to TechCrunch, the real estate website Zillow raised about $69 million in its July 2011 IPO. The value of the company rose to as high as $1.6 billion on the first day of trading but dropped to $950 million at market close.
  As of December 16, 2011, Zillow’s market valuation was $657 million.

Source :- http://www.huffingtonpost.com

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• Zynga to begin trading on Nasdaq after $10 IPO (sfgate.com)

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Zynga is partnering with Pizza Hut to help fight world hunger. Players on popular Zynga games, includingFarmVille, CityVille, Empires & Allies and The Pioneer Trail can purchase exclusive in-game items for $5. All proceeds from these specific purchases will go to the World Food Programme.

The pieces are both cutesy (see above) and educational. For example, the FarmVille item is the blue horse-drawn cart full of vegetables stamped with the World Food Programme initials. It’s a smart move by Pizza Hut and Zynga to not only have the items be helpful in-game but also support a worthy cause off-line. It’s the first time Zynga has partnered with a brand in this way.

Pizza Hut launched the partnership with Zynga as part of the annual World Hunger Relief campaign, which launches September 26. Pizza Hut has developed an entire website, called “Share a Slice of Hope,” to benefit the 2011 World Hunger Relief, including news updates, donation channels and links to similar campaigns.

Related articles

• FarmVille Addicts Can Help Feed Hungry Children (mashable.com)
• Pizza Hut Launches Share a Slice of Hope™ Campaign to End World Hunger (prnewswire.com)
• Pizza Hut’s Slice of Hope Campaign Integrates With Zynga’s Social Games (shoppingblog.com)
• Zynga partners with Pizza Hut across CityVille, FarmVille and more (games.com)
• Christina Aguilera Stars in New PSA for Yum Brands World Hunger Relief Effort (shoppingblog.com)
• Reason to Worry Before Zynga’s IPO (blogs.wsj.com)

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On Monday, researchers at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Businessreleased a report confirming that Facebook is good for the economy. At least, its apps are.

The study, led by Associate Professor of Information Systems Il-Horn Hann, found that Facebook apps have contributed at least 182,744 new jobs and $12.19 billion in wages and benefits to the U.S. economy. Not bad considering that Facebook itself employs only about 2,000 people.

According to the study, the Facebook Platform launched in 2007 with 85 applications available to its 20 million users. Today, Facebook has over 750 million users, who install 20 million apps per day. For the big app companies, this can mean big money.According to the report, social gaming giant Zynga has roughly the same number of employees as Facebook and is valued at $15 – $20 billion dollars. Between their 49 Facebook apps, among which is CityVille, which AppData reports as Facebook’s most popular app, with over 74 million monthly active users, as of September 19. Altogether, Zynga’s social games attract over 49 million active users a day.

The University of Maryland study took into account jobs that have been created within the app industry, as well as jobs in other sectors of the economy that either support the app industry or influenced by app developers’ increased spending power. Facebook’s app developers make money either through advertisements within the app or special app features that require Facebook Credits to unlock (one U.S. dollar equals 10 Facebook Credits).

According to the report, Facebook hasn’t only created new jobs, but it’s helped kickstart an entirely new industry: companies who develop apps for other companies. Facebook even helps companies find an app developer through their list of 90 Preferred Developer Consultants. Each of these development companies employ engineers, designers, sales people, administrative assistants, and office cleaners.

The numbers from the University of Maryland study probably only represent a fraction of the jobs that have been created because of Facebook. As the report states, there are several components of the Facebook Platform, and this study only looks only at apps that are built directly on the platform. What they admittedly don’t take into account is that a large component of the way websites integrate with Facebook (10,000 new websites integrate with Facebook every day) is through social plug-ins such as the “Like” button. It’s likely that the “Like” button drives jobs creation by increasing the profits of highly-liked businesses, which in turn allows them to expand, hire new people, etc.

“Our findings confirm that social media platforms have created a thriving new industry,” Hann said in a statement on Monday. “As Facebook and other platforms grow, we will continue to see job growth and the ripple effects of these advances in the U.S. economy.”

To put this in perspective, in July Apple announced that downloads from their App Store had surpassed 15 billion, with $2.5 billion (or 70 percent of the revenue) going directly to developers.

While these young “app economies” are flourishing, the U.S. jobs crisis is worsening overall. On September 16, the Associated Press reported that a majority of states saw unemployment rates rise for the third month in a row. That same day, New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg issued the following caution on his radio show, according to the Boston Herald: “We have a lot of kids graduating college, can’t find jobs [...] That’s what happened in Cairo. That’s what happened in Madrid. You don’t want those kinds of riots here.”

Source :- http://www.huffingtonpost.com

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• Facebook App Economy: The Job Impact of Facebookonomics (searchenginejournal.com)
• Facebook Apps Ecosystem Gives Economy $15.7B Boost (readwriteweb.com)
• Facebook Apps Create 182,000 New U.S. Jobs Worth $12.9 Billion (inquisitr.com)
• Have Facebook apps really created $15B in economic value? (gigaom.com)
• Study: Facebook ‘App Economy’ Adds Over 200K Jobs, Contributes More Than $15B To The U.S. Economy (techcrunch.com)
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Zynga Inc., the maker of popular online games such as “FarmVille” and “CityVille,” is being sued for patent infringement by a Texas gaming startup.

Agincourt claims Zynga is violating two of its patents related to systems for redeeming prizes in games. The patents were awarded in 2001 and 2004.

Zynga’s “remarkable growth has not been driven by its own ingenuity or innovations,” Agincourt said. “Rather, it has been widely reported that Zynga’s business model is to copy creative ideas and game designs … and use its market power to bulldoze the games’ originators.”

Zynga has plans to offer an initial public offering of stock. About 230 million people every month play addictive Zynga games such as “Farmville,” “CityVille” and “Texas HoldEm Poker,” much of the time through apps on Facebook. The games are free to play, but Zynga charges small amounts of money to buy virtual items that can help players advance in its games more quickly.

Little is known about Agincourt. The company, based in Plano, Texas, describes itself as a “start-up aggregator and renovator of underappreciated games.” Its website links to an online game called Pantheon.

Agincourt filed the lawsuit Wednesday in the U.S. District Court in Wilmington, Del. Agincourt seeks unspecified damages, attorneys’ fees and a declaration that Zynga infringes its patents.

Zynga declined to comment.

Source :- http://www.huffingtonpost.com

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• Zynga Lawsuit Alleges Company Infringed Agincourt’s Patents (huffingtonpost.com)
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Social gaming juggernaut Zynga will flip the switch later today on The Pioneer Trail, a new social adventure game within FrontierVille.

Unlike all of Zynga’s previous games, Pioneer Trail is a linear adventure with a set beginning and end. Users outfit a wagon and traverse not one, but three different maps with their own unique set of missions and achievements. It also places an emphasis on a storyline where users get to choose their own adventure.

FrontierVille general manager John Osvald explained to Mashable that Zynga wanted to use different social gaming mechanics for this extension of the FrontierVille franchise. In FarmVille, Empires & Allies and Zynga’s other social games, gameplay improves as users add more friends as neighbors or allies. In Pioneer Trail, that concept is discarded. Instead, the game only lets users travel the trail with three of their closest friends, which Zynga hopes will result in more intimate gameplay.

For users who can’t find three friends to join them in Pioneer Trail, Zynga will soon roll out a feature for matching them with existing players. Users can also add computer characters to their team, though the game will progress slower without having friends constantly playing. Osvald says that the typical game will take approximately three weeks to complete, although one set of power users were able to beat the game in 36 hours.

The game features a journey through three separate maps: Beaver Valley, High Plains and Avalanche Pass. Each area has an expansive map that is five times the size of any previous Zynga game, and each one has distinct art. Trekking through each area requires cutting down trees, acquiring Trail Points and helping people along the way. Each friend is given a distinct skill set (doctor, hunter, etc.), all of which are essential to surviving the trail without succumbing to illness or a broken wagon.

Once a team completes the game and reaches Fort Courage (the game’s finish line), users can transfer the prize tickets and resources they earn to their FrontierVille town. Users are scored on how well they played the game (based on the decisions they made, how efficiently they traveled the trail, etc). If users aren’t satisfied with their score, they have the option to travel the trail again. Users can spend the points they earned on previous Pioneer Trail trips on bigger wagons and more resources, making the game easier to complete the second or third time around.

Zynga has been experimenting with new types of game mechanics as its highly anticipated IPO approaches. Although the company’s revenue is booming and has been profitable since 2010, it hasn’t been able to surpass 236 million active users in the past 12 months. The company is hoping that new games like Pioneer Trail will help the company attract those new users.

Source :- http://mashable.com

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• Zynga’s FrontierVille Expands To New Game: Pioneer Trail (forbes.com)
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Google+, the search engine’s recently launched social network, has announced a slew of popular games that will be added to the platform.

Soon, gamers on Google+ will enjoy titles like “Angry Birds,” “Zynga Poker,” “Bejeweled Blitz,” “Sudoku” and many more–all while signed in to a Google+ account.

Games will begin rolling out to users on August 11, according to an announcement posted on the Official Google Blog by Vic Gundotra, Senior Vice President of Engineering.

When the games are live on your account, writres Gundotra, a button for the Games page will live at the top of your Google+ stream.

“[From the Games page] [y]ou can see the latest game updates from your circles, browse the invites you’ve received and check out games that people you know have played recently,” Gundotra explains. “The Games page is also where your game accomplishments will appear. So you can comfortably share your latest high score—your circles will only see the updates when they’re interested in playing games too.”

Just as Google+ prioritizes the user’s privacy preferences, the games were also designed with privacy concerns in mind. Ars Technica notes that updates about Google+ Games will stay within the Games page, where they “won’t clutter the streams of those who aren’t as enthusiastic.”

TechCrunch points out that social gaming giant Zynga, known for its lucrative Facebook games, is one of the many developers on board with Google+ Games. “Google+ won’t have FarmVille or CityVille (those may be exclusive to Facebook via deal the two forged),” says TechCrunch, “but they will have Zynga Poker. And you can be sure other titles are coming.”

The addition of games isn’t exactly a surprise. Soon after Google+ went live, evidence of a social gaming network were discovered within the Google+ source code. But it certainly happened quickly, which seems to be the norm for Google+. Launched on June 28, the network has grown at a fast clip. A recent study published by comScore reports that Google+ attracted 25 million members in just over a month, making it the fastest-growing social network ever.

Source :- http://www.huffingtonpost.com

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FindTheBest, a comparison and decision engine, has completed a $6 million round of financing courtesy of the Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers’ sFund.

The newly secured funds will be used to launch a network of vertical comparison sites and help the budding startup expand internationally.

Founded by DoubleClick creator Kevin O’Connor, FindTheBest launched in August 2010 to help consumers make faster and more informed decisions by objectively comparing information on products and services.

The FindTheBest name is meant to suggest that users can turn to the site to find the best [insert anything here].

One year since launch, the startup claims to attract 2 million unique users per month. It has also expanded its product and feature set to become both a comprehensive machine- and human-powered curation service.

sFund is the $250 million social innovation fund put together by Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers and partners such as Facebook and Zynga. Friend management startup Katango, née CafeBots, was the first startup to receive funding from sFund; it just launched its iPhone app for group and private messaging.

FindTheBest’s $6 million Series A was raised in two parts with the startup first securing $2 million in early December of last year.

Source :- http://mashable.com

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Zynga‘s newest game won’t let you grow corn. But it will teach you about online privacy.

The game, called PrivacyVille, is intended to help users learn more about Zynga’s privacy practices and also gives people access to additional privacy resources.

“We created PrivacyVille by leveraging our creative and gaming talents to build a more accessible (and rewarding!) privacy education experience,” the company said in a blog post.

PrivacyVille is modeled after the game CityVille and gives users rewards for learning about privacy. Users don’t have to be registered or on Facebook to play the game, though if they are, they can collect zPoints to receive items in other Zynga games.

In PrivacyVille, players go on a tour of a small town where the buildings each represent parts of Zynga’s privacy policy. After the tour, users take a quiz to become a Certified PrivacyVille Tour Guide. Afterwards, they can take their zPoints to RewardVille and redeem them for virtual items.

The game opens up to the public today at www.zynga.com/privacy.

Zynga recently filed its S-1 form with the Securities and Exchange Commission in preparation of its initial public offering.

Check out PrivacyVille below:

Source :- http://www.huffingtonpost.com

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Several features of Google‘s new social network are quite similar to Facebook features, and rumor has it that the two will become even more similar with time.

According to Engadget, Google Plus’s source code reveals that a social gaming network may be in the works.

Facebook has had major success with social games like Farmville and Mafia Wars, and it’s likely that Google will take a cue from its biggest competitor in the social space.

In 2010, Google invested over $100 million into Zynga, the social gaming giant that has enjoyed staggering profits from its partnership with Facebook. Engadget predicts that Google’s payoff for that investment may well come in the form of Google+ Games. Zynga is expected to make its initial public offering any day now.

The Google+ source code also indicated that Google may introduce a feature called Questions, which will let users ask and answer questions with each other, similar to Facebook’s Q&A feature of the same name.

Multiple sources also reported to All Things D that Google+ Games are on the way. A Facebook spokesperson, however, was a bit more vague.

“It’s important to keep in mind this is an ongoing project and this is just the beginning,” the spokesperson said. “We plan to add a lot of features and functionality to Google+ over time. We’re just excited to get started.”

Check out our slideshow (here) to see what else Google+ has in common with Facebook.

Source :- http://www.huffingtonpost.com

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