Mark Zuckerberg

Finally, Facebook comes to Boston

Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg famously left Cambridge, Mass. to start his company in California. Now, full circle, Facebook is officially launching an engineering office in Kendall Square.

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To live and die in public: That’s Twitter

Twitter is making its debut on the public markets and with that the fortunes of its founders, employees and many of its investors will change. As it crosses into adulthood, Twitter and its new owners need to remember this one thing — Twitter is us!

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CNN interviews Zuckerberg, asks nothing… really

Facebook Mark Zuckerberg is a big draw for television networks — his name assures viewers and that is why these days no one really asks him questions that need answers. CNN’s latest exclusive interview is yet another example.

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A new Babylon and the rise of the tech tycoon

A lot of ink (pun intended) has been spilled on why Jeff Bezos bought the Post, how much Jeff Bezos loves reading and what Jeff Bezos will do with the media company. The right question to ask is: What does it all mean? Find out!

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Why I have issues with Mark Zuckerberg’s FWD.us

Mark Zuckerberg has launched a new political group, FWD.us and has been joined by Silicon Valley luminaries. They want reform in immigration but their focus on technology and innovation centric changes doesn’t take into account the harsh reality of post industrial society & its invisible victims.

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GigaOM Reads: A look back at the week in tech

First the New York Times rankles Facebook and then they release a new feed redesign; technology is making people richer, though not as many billionaires; Time runs out for Time Inc.; some VCs have problems & Spotify has more new competition; and a few stories we recommend.

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Revealed: the finalists for the 2012 Crunchies

Five finalists have been chosen in 20 different categories for the 2012 Crunchies awards, and we’re proud to release the worthy nominees today. Voting for the winners starts today, and the winners will be announced January 31st.

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Report

Appcessories: the march toward a smartphone-controlled world

The same Moore’s law trajectory that has turned smartphones into pocket computers has led to the rise of appcessories. These devices are anything from thermostats to remote controls, and they can be controlled by a smartphone or tablet. The advancement of these products is creating new ways in which companies can differentiate products as well as encouraging the development of new application programming interfaces that mobile developers can tap into.

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Tech startups need/don’t need MBAs? Discuss …

Is an advanced business degree from Harvard or MIT or Stanford something that tech startups really, really want? It didn’t seem so at last weekend’s Harvard Business School Cyberposium. Where do you sit in the on-again debate between the builders and the bean counters?

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How can Europe find its own vision of the future?

You can’t beat Silicon Valley by trying to be Silicon Valley — so why does Europe spend so much time trying? If the continent’s entrepreneurs want to become true leaders, they need to shake off the past and stop playing a game that’s stacked against them.

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Amplification & the changing role of media

As more sources of news start to go direct by posting their thoughts to their blogs, Twitter and Facebook pages, a journalist’s role becomes more about deciding what to amplify and what to ignore.

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Ancestry.com to acquire 1000memories to expand photo digitizing

1000memories, the YCombinator-launched photo company, will be acquired by Ancestry.com, the two companies will announce Wednesday. The startup will allow Ancestry.com members to digitize old family photos and upload them to family trees or ancestor profiles, complimenting the family history website.

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Future of mobile: 5 takeaways from Mobilize 2012

With the future of mobile quickly evolving, what do you need to know now? After a long cross-country flight home, I had plenty of time to digest the key data nuggets from our GigaOm Mobilize 2012 event held last week. Here are five worth sharing.

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Why Facebook is taking the long view on HTML5 mobile development

Mark Zuckeberg declared Tuesday that Facebook’s biggest mistake was focusing too intensively on HTML5 over native apps, but developers said Thursday that the technology isn’t even close to being over at the company, and allows them to scale and reach an increasingly large user base.

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Watch out, Google — Facebook’s social search is coming

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says the social network is already handling a billion search queries per day, and that it is interested in launching a social search engine powered by the activity of its users — something that could turn out to be Google’s worst nightmare.

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Pinterest rival Fancy gets liked by Mark Zuckerberg

Fancy, the social discovery and commerce site, just picked up a big name user: Mark Zuckerberg. The move is interesting because Fancy competes with hot social start-up Pinterest and has figured out a way to make money through social discovery.

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Is Yandex behind Facebook’s rumored Face.com deal?

A flurry of reports suggest Facebook is interested in buying Israeli image recognition startup Face.com. But reports from Moscow suggest the rumor mill could be turning because Russian search engine Yandex wants to sell its stake in the firm to Mark Zuckerberg.

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Facebook’s biggest problem is that it’s a media company

Facebook’s advertising woes, including the highly publicized departure of General Motors, reinforce the fact that while Facebook may function like a social network, on the business side it looks almost exactly like a media company — and that is going to be a major challenge.

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Facebook’s road to IPO: 5 posts you gotta read

The Facebook IPO is coming, and it is one major spectacle. Just look at the wall-to-wall coverage on CNBC and Bloomberg, who haven’t met an IPO they didn’t beat to death. So instead to adding to cacophony, I’ve aggregated the best blog posts for you

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Instagram crosses the 50 million mark

When Instagram launched its Android app in early April, we said that it would only be a couple of weeks before the company crossed the 50 million mark. Well, it took three weeks (interrupted by its $1 billion dollar acquisition by Facebook) to cross that milestone.

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Twitter’s secret bid for Instagram led Facebook to pay up

Facebook’s $1 billion blockbuster deal for Instagram may have been motivated by a desire to keep Instagram out of Twitter’s hands. Twitter reportedly offered hundreds of million dollars for Instagram, which prompted Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg to offer a better deal.

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Here is why Facebook bought Instagram

What is about Instagram that has made Facebook open up its checkbook and spend nearly a billion dollars in stock and cash to buy up a company only in its third year. There are many reasons, and the biggest one is fear.

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What is Curation? [Video]

Curation has been a hot topic of discussion. Twitter, Tumblr and Pinterest are the engines of “curation” Today, Percolate, a startup put up a video about curation that is worth watching. It is an enjoyable video that explains curation in a simple yet articulate manner.

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Women juggle work and family — and now their online identities too

When there are so many social media avenues to present yourself, how do you maintain authenticity and manage your identity? Maybe you don’t. At SXSW Interactive this year, the age-old debate over authenticity and anonymity raised voices as identity and privacy took center stage.

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Why start up in Boston?

It may not be Silicon Valley but the Boston-Cambridge metro area has a lot going for it — infrastructure expertise, a deep talent pool, and VC funding. Facebook famously went elsewhere, but here’s why other local companies started here (and will stay put.)

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Do users really care whether the web is open or not?

Open-web advocates may long for a revolt against walled gardens, but in the end the success of a social network is determined by the willingness of users to put up with its restrictions. For Facebook, that is both its biggest strength and its biggest weakness.

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Facebook just revealed its Kryptonite: mobile

In its IPO filing Facebook mentions the word “mobile” 123 times but didn’t use the term in positive ways. In fact, Facebook’s S-1 filing is one big warning to investors: Its growth is being driven by user behavior that it has so far failed to monetize.

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In one crucial way, Facebook is still a private company

Even after it goes public, Facebook will still be controlled single-handedly by CEO Mark Zuckerberg through a special class of stock and voting agreements. In other words, while you may own stock in the company, you will have virtually no say in what happens to it.

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What a Facebook IPO means for Silicon Valley

Get ready for a blockbuster — and almost nuts — year of technology in 2012. Why? Because Facebook is doing the mother of all initial public offerings. And like Netscape and Google before, the Facebook IPO is going to change not only the company but also Silicon Valley.

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Facebook has nothing to fear, except itself

According to Edward Aten, founder of Swift.fm, Facebook is recreating and competing with nearly every significant Internet product of the last few years. It’s an unprecedented pivot that threatens Facebook’s core products and may eventually benefit the very same startups Facebook is trying to crush.

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Facebook wants to rewire the way the world works

In the letter to shareholders included in Facebook’s IPO filing, co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg makes it clear his vision goes beyond just a social network. He wants to fundamentally rewire the way the world works, from interpersonal interactions to commerce to even government.

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Mark Zuckerberg wants to teach Wall Street “the Hacker Way”

In Facebook’s IPO document filed Wednesday, Mark Zuckerberg dedicated a significant portion of his letter to something a bit out of the ordinary: Teaching potential investors about “the Hacker Way” and dispelling the negative connotation the word “hacker” has gotten in the mainstream media.

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It’s here: Facebook files for $5 billion IPO

The most highly anticipated initial public offering in today’s tech world is officially happening. Facebook filed S-1 documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission Wednesday afternoon to raise a maximum of $5 billion. According to the filing, Facebook made $3.7 billion in revenue in 2011.

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Don’t Be Evil is not a slogan nor a browser extension

Earlier today a Facebook staffer released a browser extension called “Don’t Be Evil,” a not-so-subtle dig at Google’s corporate motto. Unfortunately, both Facebook and Google are two companies who don’t quite understand that “don’t be evil” is more than just words.

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And the CEO of the 21st century is . . .

We are barely into the second decade of this century and already one Harvard Business School academic (who is a former CEO himself) is naming his candidate for CEO of the 21st century. His choice may or may not surprise you. Check it out.

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Dear WaPo: Innovating too quickly is not the problem

Contrary to the concerns expressed by the Washington Post’s ombudsman, the last thing the Post — or any newspaper — needs to worry about is whether it’s moving too quickly. If anything, the pace of change in media is speeding up rather than slowing down.

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Amazon move has Boston-Cambridge in a tizzy

If Amazon opens an office in the Boston-Cambridge area as reported, it would boost a high-tech community that often feels overlooked and undervalued compared to Silicon Valley and Seattle. Amazon is recruiting engineers for an as-yet-unannounced Boston area venue slated to open in 2012.

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Inside Facebook’s final Palo Alto Hackathon

This week, Facebook held its 28th official “Hackathon,” an all-night event where the only rule is that employees can’t work on their daytime projects. This was the company’s final Hackathon at its Palo Alto campus, and GigaOM has exclusive photos and video from inside the event.

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Is the Internet the “Paris” of the new millennium?

I started my European tour with a visit to Loic Le Meur’s annual celebration of the Internet, Le Web. If attendees were an indication, startup culture is everywhere. Perhaps it’s the setting, but this celebration of technology and startups reminds me of another creative age.

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The new whiz kids

Thirty years after Steve Jobs and Bill Gates revolutionized personal computing, there’s a new generation of entrepreneurs focused on bringing people together. Folks like Zuckerberg, Dorsey and Crowley are leading the charge in changing the way people communicate andinteract with each other.

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Zuckerberg’s Harvard moment: What the students are saying

Facebook co-founder (and Harvard dropout) Mark Zuckerberg returned to his alma mater Monday to talk to a few hundred select computer science majors. But first, he did a drive-by for local media, 300 or 400 of which packed the Harvard Yard outside the Lamont Library.

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Sorry, Mark. Facebook needed Silicon Valley

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg this weekend set the Internet ablaze with his comments that if he started his social network today, he would stay in Boston. I disagree. His being in Silicon Valley and being able to hire the right people contributed to the company’s success.

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I wonder how other music services are feeling today

Music services such as MOG, Rhapsody and others were expected to be part of the big Facebook re-launch. They were, except as an afterthought. Somewhat predictably, Mark Zuckerberg brought the CEO of Spotify on stage while competitors were relegated to little icons on a single slide.

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Facebook is winning the war for our online attention

Nielsen’s research shows that the US Internet users spend a disproportionate amount of time on Facebook, a trend that should worry everyone else including Yahoo and Google. I guess, Mark Zuckerberg was right in describing Facebook as a once in 100-years-kind-of-media shift.

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Who owns your social graph — you or Facebook?

Facebook’s blocking of a Chrome extension that allowed users to export their friends’ email addresses has reignited a debate over who should control that kind of data — should you have the right to export it, or is Facebook right to prevent you from doing so?

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For Zuck,There is No “Me” in “Team”

Mark Zuckerberg gets a lot of attention for founding Facebook, but if it were up to him, his employees would be joining him on more of the magazine covers. At a recent conference, Zuckerberg said lavishing credit on a successful company’s founder is a big mistake.

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Online Identity Isn’t a Transaction — It’s a Feeling

Former Twitter CEO Evan Williams breaks the important aspects of identity down into five distinct pieces, including authentication and personalization. But the reality is that what we mean by “identity” can change from moment to moment, and that may be the most difficult problem of all.

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What If Facebook Never Actually Does an IPO?

Facebook is said to be considering a private share offering that could top $1 billion, and would value the entire company at $60 billion. If it continues to raise funds through such private deals, there’s a chance the company may never even do an IPO.

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How Mark Zuckerberg Fooled ’60 Minutes’

Leave it to 60 Minutes to pass off Facebook’s utterly meaningless redesign of the site’s profile pages as some kind of “exclusive” worth lea…

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Facebook’s Social Inbox Wants to Take Over Your Email

Facebook was expected to launch a new email service this morning, but what the company announced was much broader; CEO Mark Zuckerberg said it is a single “social inbox” for every kind of communication people use, including email, SMS, instant messaging and Facebook chat messages.

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Zuckerberg: Keep the Talent Acquisitions Coming

After Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg debuted a new Groups tool to encourage more private and directed interactions between subsets of his more than 500 million users on Wednesday, he sat down with me and Groups product manager Justin Shaffer.

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Is Facebook Worth $33 Billion? It’s Complicated

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s reported pledge to donate $100 million in stock to Newark schools has sparked a heated debate over the valuation of the company, which has been estimated at $33 billion. Some argue this is absurd, but the truth is not quite that simple.

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The Mind of Mark Zuckerberg, Dissected, Again

Interest in who the real Mark Zuckerberg is has reached an all-time high, given the approaching release of the semi-fictional “The Social Network” in October, a movie about the origins of Facebook made without his consent. Today the New Yorker gives him a lengthy profile.

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A Time Capsule of Mark Zuckerberg From 2005

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke freely about the company’s user numbers, revenue and product vision in a October 2005 conversation, shortly after its 5 million user party and just after Facebook Photos had launched. He said Facebook was already making $1 million per month on advertising.

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What Happens If People Believe the Facebook Movie?

They say history is written by the victors, but the reality is Hollywood goes for a sexy story. The upcoming movie “The Social Network” is based on the semi-fictionalized accounts of those jilted during the founding of Facebook. Its popularity could make it popular truth.

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The Facebook Mobile Agenda Starts to Become Clearer

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg didn’t stand up well against the beaming lights and the piercing questions at the D Conference last night. We’re not going to give him a free pass on that, but we do think he provided some good direction on Facebook and mobile.

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Are Facebook's Views on Privacy 'Naive and Utopian?'

Communications studies professor Nancy Baym says Facebook has a “fundamentally naive and utopian” view of what privacy means online, and this stems from the fact that the company is run by “a bunch of computer science and engineering undergrads who don’t know anything about human relationships.”

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The Story of Facebook: The "Jersey Shore" Edition

In choosing two excerpts to publish from long-time Fortune reporter David Kirkpatrick’s new book The Facebook Effect, Fortune went for the “Jersey Shore” version, replete with a trashed summer home and puking in the party bus. It’s enough to make a movie starring Justin Timberlake!

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Facebook's Instant Personalization Is the Real Privacy Hairball

Facebook has given three carefully chosen launch partners — Microsoft’s Docs.com, Yelp and Pandora — have access to a powerful, inventive and creepy tool called “instant personalization.” The company hopes to extend it to other partners but is testing the waters with these sites first.

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Twitter's One Real Problem. No, Not Developers!

In a few hours, Twitter will host its first developer conference, Chirp in San Francisco. There are many questions surrounding the company’s attitudes towards its third party developers and who it might compete with. In reality, the company has a much bigger challenge ahead.

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State Of Facebook

And for his next trick, Mark Zuckerberg will boost the size of Facebook’s 1,000-person staff by as much as 50 percent this year while trying…

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Why Facebook Connect Matters & Why It Will Win

On the surface, Facebook Connect seems to be yet another web ID system. Despite scant details, the system could help build a money-making advertising platform for the fast-growing social networking company. It could also help cement Facebook as a key component of the web infrastructure. Full details inside.

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Live From f8Con

I am hanging out here at the Facebook developer conference, just generally taking in the sights and sounds. The venue is getting…

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GigaOM Interview: Mark Zuckerberg, Founder & CEO Facebook

After the debacle of yesterday’s on-stage interview with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at South By Southwest, I decided to take myself out of the process as much as possible by offering up a Q&A. And I’ll tell you right now: When I asked about money, my questions were quickly shot down.

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Zuckerberg: I Apologize

Really. Here. Also, Facebook is now releasing a privacy control to turn off Beacon completely. “If you select that you don’t want to share s…

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