What do Facebook’s less than stellar IPO and Bankia’s downgrade by S&P have in common? If you’re uncertain, you’re right. Facebook’s IPO was marred by uncertainty. In the days leading up to its public offering, the talk surrounding Facebook was quite optimistic. Yet, somehow uncertainty crept in. My guess is that it had something to do […]
Today the worlds of technology and finance collide yet again in the first day of public trading of Facebook stock. Facebook is not the first online social networking site (Remember Myspace? Or for that matter TheSquare?). Nor is it the first overhyped IPO. What Facebook does teach us, though, is that even in a weakened […]
Sergey Brin, one of the co-founders of Google, spoke recently with UK newspaper The Guardian in which he stated that “very power forces [have] lined up against the open Internet on all sides and around the world.” Brin levies this charge against the restrictive policies of certain governments, the entertainment industry’s efforts to address piracy, and walled […]
Last week, Gawker received a curious document. Turned over by an aggrieved worker from the online freelance employment site oDesk, the document iterated, over the course of several pages and in unsettling detail, exactly what kinds of content should be deleted from the social networking site that had outsourced its content moderation to oDesk’s team. […]
Break-ups can be long and complicated, taking days, months or even years. They can involve many tense conversations and stretches of indecision. Breakups take work. Sometimes, faced with the possible work of a breakup, people will try to take a shortcut. They will break up on Valentine’s Day. There is a cost – you are […]