"Facebook" articles

The Financial Times reported on Sunday that Facebook is preparing to offer financial services. According to the report, Facebook plans to allow its users to send money to each other and make international money transfers, though details on other potential payments services – such as electronic bill pay or payments for goods and services outside of Facebook’s own ecosystem – are slim.  Facebook’s move into the payments market is not surprising; its top tech competitors...

Facebook has recently announced that it is phasing out Facebook Credits, which once had the potential to become the social network’s own currency. When Facebook Credits launched in 2009, the social network required game developers like Zynga to use Facebook Credits as a payment platform and even tried selling Facebook Credit gift cards on the shelves of stores like Target and Walmart. Industry analysts originally saw the potential for Facebook Credits to eventually become a...

Several friends asked me for advice before Facebook's recent IPO. It is not my habit to give financial advice so I probably saved them quite a few bucks by refusing to tell them if they should or should not buy Facebook shares. However, I did tell them my opinion on the potential of Facebook's business model. In many ways, Facebook is now a platform (for games, movies, music, etc.) rather than a product; and it is only partially monetized. Users increasingly access Facebook on...

Global carrier revenue from SMS air force is decling , and the cause of the slide is a theme of much debate. Movable messaging air force such as WhatsApp, BlackBerry Messenger and Apple’s iMessage are widely believed to have had a tremendous impact on wireless service providers’ messaging revenues, but another company has now been identified as potentially sharing the responsibility for carriers’ dwindling SMS sales. Another method of communication is through Facebook. If...

CBS announced this morning that it would acquire CNET for $1.8 billion. CNET.com is a technology news and information portal but the company also owns several other endemic websites. CBS’ acquisition appears to be synergistic, as CNET’s assets do not overlap substantially with CBS’ media properties. But CNET’s growth has been stagnant at best in recent years and its influence over “technophiles” is waning. So paying a 45% premium for CNET appears a bit “extravagant” for...