Facebook’s initial public offering just keeps growing. The social network announced this morning via an amended S1 filing that it will add around 84 million shares to its IPO, an increase of around 25 percent.

Come Friday, when the company is scheduled to begin trading on the Nasdaq under the symbol “FB,” Facebook will be floating around 421 million shares. The company’s stock is expected to receive its official pricing on Thursday, and Facebook says it will be in the $35 to $38 per share range.

If Facebook’s stock gets priced at the $38 high-end, its IPO would raise over $16 billion, and would make it the largest technology public offering ever, Forbes points out. AT&T Wireless, the current technology IPO leader, raised over $10 billion in 2010.

The additional shares are coming from current Facebook investors Peter Thiel, Tiger Global Management, and James Breyer from Accel Partners, and not from Facebook itself. For that reason, the added shares won’t increase Facebook’s valuation.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s voting power will be reduced from around 57.3 percent to about 55.8 percent due to the new shares. That’s not ideal news for Zuck, but as long as he maintains his majority voting power, he’ll still be able to rule the company as he sees fit. The additional shares likely were a bid to appease the company’s existing investors.

Facebook yesterday added an additional $50 million shares to its IPO, with the caveat that they were part of an “over-allotment” option. We also heard yesterday that General Motors is planning to stop running ads on Facebook, after determining that they were ineffective.

Today, Fab.com is launching its third and most ambitious version of the site, and CEO Jason Goldberg said it’s going to remind you of window-shopping with your best friends.

“Imagine you’re shopping with your friends, and one of them picks up a shirt and says, ‘Oh, that’s cute!’ We think we can replicate that online,” the founder told VentureBeat in a recent phone call.

Fab is accomplishing this not just with a few dinky plug-ins or add-ons, but with a wholesale redesign that will “really get the experience of shopping with friends — not just what they bought, but what they’re tweeting, what their pinning, what they’re liking,” Goldberg said.

Fab.com 3.0

The relaunched Fab homepage will feature algorithmically derived featured products based on real-time activity from Fab members. It will also show you a ticker for what’s being bought at any given moment.

Starting today, members can see what their friends from various social networks are noticing and buying in real time. They can also choose to pin items on Pinterest or even make a purchase directly from this live feed.

And Fab is bringing a much-needed search module to the site, so you can drill down for specific products, designers, and categories.

The new Fab.com will also feature Smile pages to give members in-depth profiles and stories about the designers behind Fab’s product inventory.

“It’s about making people smile,” said Goldberg. “We’re showing them that e-commerce can be fun. … We care more about that, about the long-term relationship, than just about making money.”

Here’s a sneak peek at the new designs:

Getting social shopping right

“We want to take the fab product and design up another level … we want to reimagine social shopping.”

As a longtime Fab fan myself, I cringe at the thought of bringing more noise and clutter to the clean, lean shopping experience I’ve grown to appreciate. But Goldberg and the rest of the Fab team, ever focused on great design, are several steps ahead of me, natch.

“Everything we do has to be well-designed,” the CEO said. “Social can’t be a bolt-on; it has to be part of the core experience and designed really, really well. I personally design everything that goes on the screen … a virtual product doesn’t get on Fab unless I think it’s a great product.”

Last year, Fab brought its members a live feed feature to show Fab members’ buying, fave-ing, and liking activity in real time. The decision to focus on the social side was a direct result of Fab’s organic social activity: More than half its members as of last December had come to the site through social channels.

“It has to be authentic,” Goldberg told us. “Up to 40 percent of our traffic comes from social feeds. You can’t force that. Social isn’t just a way to get something from the user; it’s a way to give value to the user. The traffic will come when you deliver a great experience.”

In the end, the live feed turned out to be a huge success, with 15 percent of visits to the feed resulting in an actual purchase. That metric proved to the Fab team that a more social direction could also be more profitable.

The growth continues

As previously mentioned, Fab’s growth has been a bit legendary in the tech startup scene.

One of its more recent success stories involved integrating with Facebook’s Timeline. The startup saw a 50 percent increase in traffic from Facebook since its Actions integration) at the beginning of 2012.

As a result of that and other factors, Fab more than doubled its membership in the first quarter of 2012 (from 1.2 million at the end of 2011 to a whopping 3 million members in March 2012.

“Now, we’re at 3.25 million users in the U.S., nearly 4.25 million worldwide, and we’re a couple weeks shy of our first birthday,” said Goldberg.

One area of growth that’s still a bit mysterious is Pinterest. “We get about 2 percent of our traffic from Pinterest today,” said Goldberg. “That number came out of nowhere in February, and it’s held steady since then.”

But Fab users have expressed a deep and abiding love for Pinterest, and the Fab team is making pinning more integral to the Fab.com experience. That 2 percent might see a bit of an increase as a result.

Combating feature creep

Fab’s new-feature rollout schedule is unrelenting, but Goldberg said he and the rest of the team have an eye on feature creep and will always aim to maintain Fab’s simplicity — one of the things that makes the site such a pleasure to use in the first place.

“Keep it simple. The best design gets out of users’ way and lets them do what they want to get done,” he told us.

“A lot of sites end up building silos of features. If you go to Fab.com today, in our top navigation, there are eight different items. We’re simplifying that to four in the new release.”

He concluded, “Even when you add, you make it simpler.”

Fab.com launched in June 2011 and has received $51.3 million in funding to date. Its most recent cash infusion was a stunning $40 million Series B last December.

Image courtesy of Robbi, Shutterstock

The partnership kicks off with some impressive additions: You can listen to NPR and Public Radio International shows on Flipboard, even while reading other content on the graphics-heavy aggregator. You can find these programs in the content guide under a new Audio category. To play or pause your current audio track from anywhere in Flipboard, tap the music icon on the top of the screen (iPhone) or lower corner (iPad).

In another great use of sound, Flipboard has added VoiceOver features that let visually impaired users listen to articles on the app.

If you already use SoundCloud, just add your login on Flipboard’s Accounts screen and SoundCloud will appear as a new tile on your main Flipboard page, alongside your other topics such as photography, tech, or fashion. Tap, and you’ll be taken to a SoundCloud landing page where you can navigate to your stream and see what sounds friends and family have shared, as well as your SoundCloud Likes, Sounds, Sets, and Groups.

Just last week, SoundCloud unveiled the beta version of its new web app, Next, which featured continuous play and improved social features. The move towards social makes the company a natural fit for Flipboard, which already lets you add accounts for 10 other popular social services, including Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader, Instagram, Tumblr, 500px, and Sina Weibo.

Flipboard has also added support for Readability and Pocket to make it easier to enjoy content in-depth later. There is also a new Japanese version of the app, released today.

A week after previewing the revamped Bing, Microsoft has released the latest version of its search engine to people in the U.S. Head over to Bing.com/new to test out the new social features as well as annoy your friends with questions in the process. It doesn’t have all of the new bells and whistles announced last week, and you can only sign in with a Facebook or Windows Live account — though Quora, LinkedIn, and Twitter support should be coming soon.

New Bing has a gray sidebar on the right that, once you login with Facebook, shows all the new social features. When you search a topic, new Bing will list friends who might be able to answer your question and help with the search based on whether they’ve “liked” or mentioned something with that keyword in it. It even shows any relevant images they’ve posted.

You can then post a question directly to Facebook or specific friends in the know from the sidebar. If you find something useful while searching or want to answer a buddy’s question with a link, you can post the URL directly to Facebook from the sidebar. Relevant Twitter results from random people are also sometimes shown at the bottom of the box under “People Who Know”.

Most of my test searches showed no “Search With Friends” results, even for things I know my friends love and post about often such as cats, cheese, Dollywood, robots, or the Maker Faire.

Earlier this year when rival company Google first attempt to mashup your social graph and search habits via “Search Plus Your World,” the results seemed invasive and annoying. Second-place Bing seems to have learned a bit from Google’s stumbles, cordoning off the social element on the far right side of your screen.

However, even if the social/search feature was more helpful, I’m not sure there’s a big need for this kind of integration. Most people have mastered searching for things themselves, or posing questions to Facebook. If they haven’t, I usually send them to lmgtfy.com.

via Search Engine Land

Oh, boyfriend. Pop superstar Justin Bieber has joined video-sharing sensation Viddy.

The “Boyfriend” singer took a mini break from promoting his coming-soon album “Believe” on Twitter to solicit a little Viddy love from his almost 22 million Twitter followers — and give back a little something with footage of himself shirtless at a photo shoot.

Viddy is the Los Angeles-based startup that makes an iPhone application for shooting 15-second clips that can be enhanced through “production packs,” otherwise known as video effects. The service, which has more than 27 million users, is often likened to Instagram for its ease of use and simple sharing tools. The company just announced a massive $30 million funding round.

“Photoshoot was….well u will see. #viddy #abouttogoIN,” Bieber tweeted Tuesday afternoon. “Follow me on @viddy – @justinbieber,” he added.

Just a few minutes later, the teen heart-throb posted his first Viddy — an update of himself shirtless (we’ve confirmed that “justinbieber” is his official account). Clearly, the Biebs knows what the ladies like. The account added more than 3,000 followers in the first few minutes following Bieber’s tweets, and the viddy is racking up comments and likes as we speak.

The Biebs joins a growing cadre of celebrity Viddy users — some of whom have actually decided to invest — sharing stylized quickie vids with their fans. Viddy celeb members include Bill Cosby, Rihanna, Snoop Dog, Terrell Owens, and newbie Katie Couric. Even Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently got in on the Viddy action.

Viddy has more than 27 million registered users, and is adding 500,000 new users per day. It feels like it wasn’t that long ago when the startup first announced hitting 10 million users — oh wait, it wasn’t. In fact, just a little over two weeks ago the service touted the 10 million milestone. Today, that seems like small potatoes.

With Bieber on board, who knows what crazy member-milestone the company will surpass next.

Photo credit: Justin Bieber/Instagram

The first fruits of a multi-year deal with Verizon are starting to pay off for live video-broadcasting startup Color. Thanks to Verizon’s match-making skills, sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live will be using Color to broadcast unscripted, backstage footage to show fans.

Color is the unproven $41 million-backed Palo Alto company betting the house on live video clips broadcast from mobile devices. The startup makes iPhone and Android applications, hooked into Facebook’s Open Graph, that stream 30-second video clips live to friends. Last week, the company connected with Verizon to release a special, Verizon 4G LTE network-optimized version of the application with higher quality video and audio.

Saturday Night Live will use the new-and-improved Verizon-Color technology to broadcast live clips (using a Verizon Wireless phone, of course) from this week’s rehearsals. The show will also put Color to use backstage during its May 19 season finale episode, which features host Mick Jagger and musical guests Foo Fighters and Arcade Fire.

Color users who are either fans of Verizon Wireless or SNL on Facebook will receive automatic notifications each time SNL starts shooting live video. We’re told this is the first time SNL, which has 2.5 million fans on Facebook, has used a mobile application to provide show fans with backstage access.

The backstage deal, which promises fans exclusive behind-the-scenes access, could go a long way in attracting new users to Color — the startup has roughly 1 million active users. It certainly doesn’t hurt that Verizon is also running an ad (seen below) to promote the three-way, late-night hookup.

Cull TV, a site that features curated playlists of music videos from indie artists, has been acquired by social video network Twitvid, the companies announced today.

Cull TV is sort of what the internet version of Mtv would probably look like if it was still about music instead of godawful teen reality shows staring quasi-famous celebrities. The site’s user interface is focused on a full “lean back and watch” experience, similar to watching a TV channel. Videos are curated by members of the community as well as an in-house team, but  you can also create your own music video channel stream by adding videos that you’ve watched on the site or elsewhere. The site has over 2 million videos in its library and features 25 standard channels. Cull TV is primarily for discovering new content, which is why its a perfect fit for Twitvid.

“Cull TV is an intelligent, connected social service that can curate content in a different way than what we’re doing on Twitvid,” said Twitvid founder Mo Al Adham in an interview with VentureBeat.”We plan on adding that technology and know-how from (Cull’s) team into the site over the next few months.”

Twitvid relaunched from a complimentary video site for Twitter into a completely new social video network back in December 2011, as VentureBeat previously reported. Users can check their stream of video content from sites like YouTube, Vimeo and others that are shared by friends on various social networks, such as Twitter and Facebook. Twitvid users can also create their own custom channel of content that others can tune in to watch. The site currently brings in over 15 million unique visitors per month.

As part of the acquisition deal, Cull.tv will remain in operation for now, but its future hasn’t been determined, Al Adham said. And while Twitvid will gain a strong community of music video watchers from the new acquisition, it’ll also get Cull TV’s underlying curation technology. Twitvid’s stream is already optimized for video content, but it’ll probably gain a greater degree of sharing and discovery functionality.

Founded in 2009, the San Francisco, Calif.-based startup previously raised a $7 million round of funding from Azure Capital and Draper Fisher Jurvetson in September 2011. Financial terms of the Cull TV deal were not disclosed.

General Motors plans to stop running ads on Facebook after the company assessed its social ads were not effective, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

While GM did not outright confirm the news, GM marketing chief Joel Ewanick told the Journal that GM “is definitely reassessing our advertising on Facebook, although the content is effective and important.” GM will continue marketing on Facebook, but its display ads will be going away.

With Facebook’s IPO happening this Friday, this isn’t the kind of news the social networking titan wanted coming out just prior to going public. Facebook’s IPO could end up pushing the company’s valuation to more than $100 billion.

Just yesterday, Forrester analyst Nate Elliott wrote about the challenges of marketers on Facebook and how it has not provided enough tools for measurable marketing and advertising.

“Marketing on Facebook doesn’t work very well, and marketers can’t count on things improving anytime soon,” Elliott wrote in a blog post. “We wish we could predict this IPO would serve as a new beginning for Facebook’s marketing offering, and that a new focus on becoming a grown-up business would inspire the company to put even half the energy into serving advertisers that it does into serving users.”

GM reportedly spends about $40 million annually to maintain its Facebook presence, but only a fourth of that goes directly into Facebook’s pocket for ads. The rest of that cash is for content and maintenance of GM Facebook pages (see above).

Yahoo’s Flickr photo-sharing community has been in makeover mode of late and is getting incrementally better with subtle upgrades. Tuesday, Flickr released a reworked photo page layout with a new look that’s nearly impossible to miss — especially on large displays.

Flickr’s “liquid” layout, as it’s called, is a dynamic format for each photo page that now features newly supported hi-res images on the main photo page. The layout also automatically adjusts the photo page and image size based on the user’s browser window size to feature the biggest photo size appropriate for each photo viewer.

“Flickr is known for its outstanding image quality that enables people to showcase the amazing details of their photographs,” Flickr’s head of product Markus Spiering told VentureBeat. “With our new, larger hi-resolution images and liquid design each photo page on Flickr comes alive.”

The new liquid layout is powered by an algorithm that accounts for browser width and height size, and displays content at a width that will best showcase the most common 4:3 photo ratio while also ensuring the photo title and sidebar are visible on the page, engineer Ross Harmes explained in a blog post on the technology behind the update. The algorithm also favors native photo sizes, never upscales images, and should allow for faster page load times.

The layout ultimately makes for an enriched new way to browse photos on Flickr, especially on large displays, and represents Yahoo’s renewed commitment to the photo property it let languish for far too long (we’ll have to wait and see how Flickr fits into interim CEO Ross Levinsohn’s plan for beleaguered Yahoo). But it might be too little, too late to win back or attract photo-sharers who’ve migrated to Facebook and mobile apps such as Instagram. For consideration: Flickr members upload 3.5 million photos per day; Facebook members upload 300 million photos per day.

The liquid layout featuring hi-res images has been pushed live for all Flickr users. The new photo sizes have also been added to Flickr’s API and now appear in the “All Sizes” menu.

The Internet is abuzz over the appearance of 50.6 million extra Facebook shares potentially up for sale, as listed in the company’s seventh amendment to its S-1 document.

Potentially is the key word as these shares are simply part of an “over-allotment option” that Facebook may or may not sell through its offering. The inflated 388,027,654 share count is listed front and center in the S-1, but it comes with an all important caveat. The footnote clearly states that the number, “Includes additional shares that the underwriters have the option to purchase to cover over-allotments, if any.”

Facebook amended its S-1 early Tuesday to include an offering price range between $34 and $38, a maneuver likely made in response to high demand for its shares. The company is still officially selling 337,415,352 shares through its offering, but could sell an additional 50.6 million shares for a total of 388,027,654 shares.

The amendment also formally confirms that Facebook will be listed on the NASDAQ under the “FB” ticker symbol, and indicates that the Instagram buy may not close in the second quarter as previously stated.

The over-allotment option, informally known as a “greenshoe,” has actually been listed in Facebook’s offering since it first revealed how many shares it would sell. The option allows Facebook’s underwriters to sell the additional shares, set aside specifically for this purpose, if demand exceeds expectation. Underwriters can also buy back the stock at the offering price if it trades lower than priced.

So with Facebook’s IPO, which is said to be oversubscribed, the underwriters would use the over-allotment option of 50.6 million extra shares to stabilize the offering by increasing or decreasing share supply based on demand. Should Facebook and its underwriters exercise the over-allotment option, the social network will raise as much as $14.7 billion through its offering at the $38 price point.

Facebook will open on the NASDAQ this Friday, May 18 at a valuation likely between $92 billion and $103 billion. The company is doing a remote ceremony with CEO Mark Zuckerberg and team ringing the opening bell from Facebook’s Menlo Park headquarters. Thursday, after market close, Facebook will release a final amendment to its S-1 to include its official opening day stock price.

Photo credit: CapturedElegance/Flickr

Facebook users don’t trust the company with their private data, rarely click on display advertisements, and split on the social giant’s investment status prior to the impending IPO, according to a new poll conducted by CNBC and the AP.

Shockingly, the poll data only confirms what we already know — Facebook users are wary of Facebook.

According to the poll results, 59 percent of people distrust Facebook on user data, 57 percent of users said they never click on display ads, and 26 percent said they only rarely click ads. For a company that derives over 80 percent of its revenue through ads that are powered (in part) by that private user data, this could be an issue for Facebook. The company has also done a poor job of monetizing ads via mobile devices, which is increasingly how users are accessing the site.

Facebook has plans to grow its Facebook Credits business as well as making the site a platform for financial transactions, which poll respondents were also wary of. The poll indicated that 54 percent of users don’t trust the site enough for these types of purposes. Honestly, I think this is an area where Facebook will grow despite the current emotions of people who still associate the site with trivial things like social gaming and keeping up with people you knew in the first grade. Once upon a time, the majority of people were also just as wary about using their credit card to buy things from online retail stores. And as Amazon, eBay, and others have proven, this is no longer the case.

As for Facebook’s overall valuation, the poll respondents are divided on both the company’s $100 billion valuation as well as if it’s a good investment, with people under 35 taking a more favorable stance. But not everyone is convinced Facebook’s stock will hit a home run.

“My opinion is that the IPO is taking place too late for future investors to see any benefit, so I’m basically watching it as if it’s a cash-out event for early-round investors,” writes investment blogger Lucas Krupinski. Basically, that means the stock will do great if you bought it prior to going public, but after IPO day everyone will likely dump it. However, that doesn’t say much for its long-term value.

Facebook no longer expects its $1 billion acquisition of photo-sharing startup Instagram to close by the end of the second quarter, according to the latest version of Facebook’s S-1.

The social networking titan is facing much scrutiny this week as it readies for its IPO on Friday. The S-1 document, as revealed earlier, indicates Facebook has offered up a potential 50.6 million extra shares with a price range of $34 to $38 per share.

Facebook’s buy of Instagram was seen as a hasty by some who questioned whether Instagram was worth $1 billion. But Facebook’s biggest risk in its IPO is mobile penetration and making sure it can generate revenue from its mobile experience. Instagram, with its more than 40 million users and strong interest from iOS and Android owners shows Facebook is thinking about mobile. Facebook also overhauled its mobile apps yesterday.

The last S-1 issued by Facebook suggested that the Instagram buy would close in the second quarter of 2012, with language saying:

This acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions, including the expiration or early termination of all applicable waiting periods under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvement Act of 1976, as amended (HSR), and is currently expected to close in the second quarter of 2012.

The just-released S-1 filing says:

This acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions, including the expiration or early termination of all applicable waiting periods under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvement Act of 1976, as amended (HSR), and is expected to close in 2012.

While timing the Instagram deal might not be as smooth as Facebook wanted, there’s almost no doubt it will be worth it to the company to have more opportunities to sell ads to mobile users.

Mark Zuckerberg photo: Jolie O’Dell/VentureBeat

Image hosting service Imgur is now serving up more than 1 billion images per day and has doubled its monthly page views to 2 billion in less than six months, the company announced today.

Imgur branded itself as the “simple image hosting service” because its tailor-made for social news sharing sites like Reddit and Digg. (In fact, a large percentage of total links submitted to Reddit are from Imgur). Imgur’s main selling point is the speed to which you can share a photo or goofy image. Without needing an account, users can upload a single image or group of images to the site by dragging and dropping the files directly on the webpage. Each image has a unique URL that users can then send to friends or share on social networks. It’s probably faster to use Imgur in most cases than it is to send a file over email.

“Speed is a huge priority to us, because Imgur is all about instant gratification,” Imgur founder Alan Schaaf told VentureBeat in an interview. “So, we need to be able to serve our pages and our images as quick as possible.”

Schaaf said the site is experiencing average traffic and upload growth of about 20 percent per month, which started happening after the company began using content delivery network EdgeCast to speed up its delivery of images back in June 2011. In addition to its massive page view traffic growth, Imgur also sees about half a million images uploaded daily, and over three million unique visitors per day. To give you some perspective on where the company stands against other dedicated image services, Imgur’s Alexa U.S. traffic rank is 29 compared to professional photo service Flickr’s rank of 37.

But probably the most interesting thing about Imgur is that its managed to turn a profit soon after launching in 2009 — with five employees and no outside funding raised. The company was named the best bootstrapped startup at the 2011 Crunchies Awards. That doesn’t mean the startup isn’t interested in taking on some funding at some point, but for now it isn’t necessary, Schaaf told me.

“We don’t exactly need funding right now,” he said, adding that its more than capable of funding itself with the direction the company is going. Schaaf said his startup has already been approached by a handful of firms and angel investors that are interested, and that “we’re totally open to taking on money when the need arises.”

Schaaf didn’t specifically mention what that “need” might be, but did acknowledge that funding would be necessary if Imgur ever decided to take on Yahoo-owned professional photo service Flickr. Imgur currently offers a pro account option for $24 annually, which gives you more storage space for images, image compression limits of up to 5MB, and no advertisements. However, Schaaf said this isn’t Imgur’s main focus, nor is it interested in competing with Flickr more directly at this time.

The majority of Imgur’s revenue comes from advertising. Last month, the company reached an agreement with ThoughtLeadr to bring a self-serve advertising to the site. In addition to speeding up Imgur’s performance, the San Francisco-based company is also focused on growing its own community of image sharer.

Photo via Imgur

By now, the cat is somewhat out of the bag on Sean Parker’s mysterious Airtime, a stealthy application for social video that some testers have found snooze-worthy.

According to Airtime beta testers, the app is a sort of Chatroulette clone with a layer of interest mapping — all in all, it sounds a lot like Rounds, a Tel Aviv-based startup that’s been doing roughly the same thing for some time.

Rounds is a bit like Chatroulette, a bit like a Google+ Hangout, and it’s all tied together by Facebook’s social graph connections. Today, the company is announcing a new algorithm that, like Airtime’s, will match you up with people like you for video chats, game play, and more.

Rounds reps tell us the startup can mine your Facebook likes, your social graph, your location, and your basic and not-so-basic demographics to find a video chat buddy who might be the perfect match for you — at least as close a match as a social software algorithm can make.

The Rounds team also said it’s gathered data from more than 250 million sessions and uses that data to “tweak and customize” each user’s account until he or she reaches video chat nirvana, whatever that looks like.

And that body of data alone, Rounds spokesfolks claim, raises this startup head and shoulders above Airtime.

Here’s a demo/explanation/cartoon about how the app works:

“With our new social matching algorithm, we are allowing our users to easily broaden their social circles and actually meet new people that we know will be of interest to them, as opposed to just randomly friending someone that Facebook recommends,” said Rounds CEO and co-founder Dany Fishel in a release this morning.

“This is a very powerful feature that sets us apart from any competitor and will allow us to continue our explosive user base growth.”

Still, whose app has the better algo — and whose app is actually going to be more fun to use — is still very much up in the air.

Rounds was founded in 2008 and has raised a total of $5.5 million in funding from a range of investors, including a $3 million Series A late last year from Rhodium, Verizon Ventures, DFJ’s Tim Draper, and other angels.

Image courtesy of Cienpies Designs

Facebook is likely preparing to increase its starting price for shares of Facebook stock. The previously announced price range was $28 to $35; new reports are pegging the starting price range between $35 and $40.

UPDATE 6:45pm Pacific: The Wall Street Journal reports that Facebook in fact raised its target price to $34 to $38 per share late today, putting the company’s valuation at $93 billion to $104 billion.

CNN Money reporter Maureen Farrell writes that the social network’s cadre of underwriters for the deal are slated to bump up the price range as soon as tomorrow.

At its earlier range, the Facebook IPO could have raised up to $11.88 billion. At $40 per share, Facebook stands to raise $13.5 billion.

In private trading on secondary markets, Facebook shares sold just last month for around $44 each shortly before the company halted private trades in preparation for its IPO.

Facebook stock is likely to enjoy a quick growth spurt in share price, especially in the first few days and months of trading. Analysts have compared this initial public offering to Google’s in 2004. Google’s share price started at $85 and currently sits at around $600, with the company recently announcing a stock split.

However, newer tech IPOs can also be more vulnerable to volatility in the general market, as we’ve seen recently with Groupon and LinkedIn stock during March’s downturn.

We recently went around the VentureBeat office and asked everyone, from execs to reporters, what they thought a fair price for the shares would be; here’s their analysis.

Good news, Windows Phone owners. Professional social network LinkedIn, in its quest to master mobile, has released another stunning mobile application — but this one is just for you.

The application, the company’s first official release for the platform, is a full-featured release that plays perfectly with the Windows Phone operating system, and even incorporates the unique Microsoft Metro style and design. (Check out our gallery of screenshots below.)

And, as a little bonus gift, LinkedIn said that the Windows Phone application offers users more functionality in the companies and jobs sections than it offers in its apps for iOS and Android.

“You can find and connect with millions of professionals worldwide, quickly access a real-time update stream with news and information from your professional connections, read timely news impacting your industry, keep up-to-date with your professional groups, search for jobs, and follow your favorite companies’ news,” LinkedIn’s mobile product manager Tomer Cohen said.

LinkedIn for Windows Phone is out now and works on devices running version 7.5 or higher of the operating system.

The professional social network now has more than 150 million members and is performing well on the public market. The company recently reported strong first quarter earnings of $188.5 million in revenue and $5 million in net income.

Here’s our slideshow of screenshots from the app:

Photo credit: coletivomambembe/Flickr

Twitter wants to bring the best of your timeline directly to your email inbox.

The new email service takes a digest approach. In a post on the company blog, growth and international director Othman Laraki writes that the email summary will feature “the most relevant tweets and stories shared by the people you’re connected to on Twitter.”

If it were any more old school, they’d be printing it out and having a child on a vintage bicycle hurl it at your front door.

These Twitter-in-your-inbox emails will feature 140-character missives, of course, but they’ll also bring you links to articles, pages, and blog posts that were shared a lot on Twitter by the people you follow.

Here’s what it’ll look like:

Also, the emails won’t just feature tweets and linked posted by people you follow; rather, they’ll include content that was deemed interesting by the people you follow, perhaps as determined by retweets, favorites, and other metrics for determining the Twitter popularity of a given piece of content.

Laraki continues to note that the email will feature content similar to what you’d find in the Discover tab, a feature of the “new-new” Twitter overhaul from about six months ago.

The email digest will also denote “who shared each story beneath summaries to help you decide which ones matter most to you,” Laraki continued. “Click any headline to finish reading the story, add your take by tweeting directly from the email, and see related tweets from the people you follow.”

A little bird tells us Twitter’s inbox project is a product of the Summify team, which joined Twitter after an acquisition in January. Since Summify’s mission was all about this kind of culling and curation of web-based information based on the interest level of your social graph, it makes sense that the team would build something similar for Twitter.

Every Twitter user should have access to the new feature within the coming weeks. Laraki wrote that Twitter will email users about the digest service soon.

On IPO day, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will be staying local and the social network will ring the opening bell remotely at its 1601 Willow Road, Menlo Park campus, VentureBeat has confirmed with a source familiar with Facebook’s plans.

“News Alert: Facebook to ring opening bell remotely from Menlo Park HQ – Zuckerberg will stay at Menlo Park headquarters $FB,” CNBC tweeted Monday.

VentureBeat has independently confirmed that the details of the tweet are accurate and that Facebook is still determining how much of an executive presence it will have at the NASDAQ in New York.

The remote bell-ringing decision is not unique in the consumer Internet space. Social gaming company Zynga, which went public on the NASDAQ in December, rang the bell remotely from its San Francisco headquarters and celebrated opening day with an elaborate exchange-style setup.

Facebook is anticipated to make its debut this Friday, May 18. The social network is currently finishing up the last leg of its investor roadshow, which started last week in New York with a mini kerfuffle over Zuckerberg’s hoodie and demeanor.

The company also recently amended its prospectus to warn investors that mobile is a bigger risk than first anticipated. Recent comScore data also suggests that, because U.S. Facebook users are now accessing the social network more from mobile devices than computers, mobile users are becoming a problem of financial significance for the company.

Still, according to some reports, the offering is already oversubscribed and the social network will stop accepting orders tomorrow.

Facebook’s mobile momentum continues as it ramps up for its IPO later this week. The social network has quietly released a new look for all three of its mobile apps, one that will make the Facebook mobile suite bigger, brighter, and more visually stunning than ever before.

In the new mobile version of News Feed, images take center stage.

“Now photos are up to 3x larger, and all posts will fill your mobile screen from edge to edge,” writes a Facebook staffer on the Facebook Mobile page.

This new design is now available for iOS, Android, and mobile web versions of the Facebook app.

Check out the old design compared to the new screenshots:

Facebook’s biggest weakness, at least according to its original S-1 filing, has been its mobile competency, or perceived lack thereof. In fact, part of the company’s recent Instagram acquisition was likely to boost its mobile skill set. The social network also recently acquired Glancee, another mobile startup, presumably for the same reasons. Facebook also recently snapped up TagTile, yet another mobile-focused startup.

Aside from acqui-hiring and acquiring strong mobile companies and individuals, Facebook is also focusing internally on one of the most cutting-edge aspects of mobile standards and development: the mobile web.

Facebook recently open-sourced its mobile browser testing suite, Ringmark. Also, the company has been a vocal advocate in Silicon Valley’s escalating war for the mobile web.

Bree Olson made hundreds of porn movies in her career until she got mixed up with Charlie Sheen and retired from the business last year. But she still has 360,000 Twitter followers and fans galore. Now she is going to be able to charge those fans money to have one-on-one conversations with her, thanks to internet voice technology from Verified Call.

In a rare partnership between an adult entertainer and Silicon Valley, Olson (pictured above) has signed on to provide celebrity endorsement for Verified Call. In return, she gets a way to interact one-on-one with her fans in a secure fashion — and she also picks up some stock options in Verified Call.

With Verified Call, fans can place direct and anonymous voice-over-internet calls to Olson, without needing to know her phone number. Olson can charge for the call — her going rate is $8.99 a minute — and fans can pay directly with their phones or PayPal with a simple verification process. Olson simply embeds the Verified Call icon within her web site, BreeOlson.com (NSFW). Fans click on it, and enter their phone numbers. Within 15 seconds, Verified Call places a call to both the fan and Olson, who can indicate whether she wants to take calls or not. The system immediately bills the caller for a given number of minutes that the customer chooses, then the call goes through. The system can also schedule calls for later.

“I can post to Twitter and say I’m ready to take calls,” Olson said in an interview with VentureBeat. “It’s a new generation of simplicity for me. I’m an Apple fan and I like this clean design and an easy user interface. It’s very classy and easy for both parties.”

For fans, it’s a chance for an “intimate,” one-on-one conversation with a celebrity. For an entertainer like Olson, it’s a safe system where she doesn’t have to give out her phone number, and it’s more manageable than a computer webcam, where she would have to sit in front of her computer. With the phone, she could have a chat with a fan — and make money from it — while stuck in a traffic jam.

“I like it because I’ve been curious about who some of the fans are,” Olson said. “I can tweet when I want to take a call. Most of the webcams are huge chat rooms and the guys don’t really get to say anything. It’s one-sided. This is so personal.”

This Silicon Valley-meets-entertainer meme seems like it’s becoming more common. The adult industry has always been an early adopter of technology, from the VCR to DVDs to the internet. But recently even mainstream stars have gotten in on the Silicon Valley action. Ashton Kutcher, for example, has embraced technology and even invested in a wide variety of startups.

Vogner mentioned that uber angel investor Ron Conway is a star who should charge $500 per hour or more for his advice. Olson said, “I would pay $500 to talk to him! I love the tech scene.”

You can kind of think of Verified Call as a tool for 21st-century celebrity life management. Olson, who has given up porn to focus on a mainstream acting career, still has lots of fans and she likes the idea of using technology to stay in touch with them. (To be fair, her website still shows plenty of skin, and she’s continuing to make money on the 230 adult films she made during her career, and her work is all over the internet.) She has been on Twitter for five years and has a crazy-active channel on YouTube (officialbreeolson9) with videos like “Naked for Kony 2012,” which has more than 600,000 views.

Verified Call started with a focus on web-based conference calls. But the team evolved the system to focus on one-on-one conversations. And it built the technology to include individual accounts, promotion, billing, and scheduling.

Vogner (pictured on the left) met Olson at the AVN Awards, the Oscars of adult films, in Las Vegas earlier this year. Olson, who vaulted into broader celebrity fame after she had a relationship with actor Charlie Sheen, hosted the show and Verified Call showed up to target adult performers with its technology.

“After five minutes of talking, we both knew we wanted to work together,” Vogner said. “Bree has hundreds of thousands of conversations in her lifetime. To not be able to monetize that is a shame.”

The system isn’t just for porn stars, or retired ones. Lawyers, psychiatrists, and any other people who bill by the minute can adopt the system.

“Our first customers were attorneys because they are accustomed to charging for time,” Vogner said. “This is classy too because you won’t find a list of hundreds of people to call on our web site. This is a link that goes directly into Bree’s own page.”

At first, Olson will take calls for at least an hour a week. In that one hour, she could earn $539. Vogner says that if Verified Call can get a couple of hundred celebrity users, it will have a nice business that will generate a lot of its own publicity.

“There’s a gap in the market for professionals and entertainers who can monetize their interactions with customers and fans,” Vogner said. “For the fans, this is a lot better than getting an autograph.”

As an advisor for Verified Call, Olson is also providing help to help refine Verified Call’s features. She wants the company to add a bidding system where the highest-bidding caller wins out when lots of people want to talk to her at once. The billing is set up to prevent billing disputes; if Olson hangs up on the caller before the paid time limit is reached, the caller isn’t charged. But if the caller hangs up first, then the caller is charged. If weirdos call, Olson can hang up. And those callers can be banned from placing requests for call backs in the future. Webcam software and Skype don’t have such features such as the billing mechanisms.

Verified Call is self-funded and was founded by Vogner, a former vice president at Match.com and an early contributor at SFGate.com, in 2011. The company has six employees, not counting Olson. Rivals include traditional computer webcam services and My Phone Site. Olson didn’t like the video on webcams because “people don’t realize that us girls don’t look perfect all of the time.”

“This way, I can say I’m free and talk to respectful fans who are curious about talking to someone like me,” Olson said. “My adult entertainment fans have transitioned over with me on the mainstream side, with comedy roles. And I’m gaining a whole new set of fans. They are generally interested in my day-to-day life. I never thought people would be interested if I said was visiting San Francisco. They want to talk about anything.”

[Photo credit: Dean Takahashi]

The result of this merging of business and consumer applications is a new class of general and vertical apps that are as social as they are powerful. These new applications are increasingly easy to use, collaborative, and based in the cloud.

While IT managers may cringe each time they hear “can you help me connect my iPad to the company server,” here are seven reasons businesses should embrace the consumerization of IT.

1. Real-time communication
In their personal lives, people are becoming more and more accustomed to web-based communication channels outside of email. When people are used to FaceTime, chat, and instant messaging at home, the act of sending an email to a vendor, or even sending a fax to a lawyer, seems like an artifact from a different, and far slower, era. If I can chat with my friends on Facebook, why can’t I interact with co-workers on our CRM system? Why I can’t I have a secure instant message session with my lawyer?

The socialization of enterprise applications gives workers, clients, colleagues, customers, and vendors better tools to communicate in real time. These tighter communication loops should ultimately drive key performance goals for any business, including employee productivity, operational efficiency, and customer satisfaction.

2. Greater accessibility
While traditional enterprise systems trap data in a single location, the cloud makes applications and business data available to more users on more devices in more locations. For employees, this can be a game changer, as the information they need is right at their fingertips – whether they’re at a client location, on route to a meeting, at home, or on vacation.

3. End-user buy-in
Ultimately the success of any technology initiative hinges on the ability to convince employees to actually use the software, device, or process. When employees clamor to bring their own tools into the workplace, there’s no risk that a new tool will sit idly by.  Throwing employees in front of a stodgy application is hardly a recipe for success. Rather, end users are more likely to use those tools that evoke the same look and feel of their friendly social networks and consumer apps.

4. Shorter end-user learning curve
A savvy workforce, familiar with its own favorite tools, can dive right into technology that leverages consumer elements in the corporate environment. Training costs go down, and employees can be productive with their new tools right out of the gate.

5. Affordability
Cloud-based applications shift the financial costs from the upfront capital expense of purchasing software licenses to an ongoing operating expense. When calculating the total cost of ownership, the benefits of cloud-based tools go beyond the cost of subscription vs. software seat to include: lower management costs, lower provisioning and upgrade hassles, and lower hardware costs. A 2009 report from Forrester Research concluded that Google Apps costs less than a third as much as on-premise email for equipping 15,000 employees with email.

6. Security
While data is often the chief concern holding businesses back from the cloud, web-hosted applications can actually increase data security, particularly for those small to mid-sized companies that don’t have proper in-house technical expertise or resources like a dedicated, lockable server room. In these cases, off-premise storage removes the company’s sensitive data from on-premise risks, such as access by cleaning staff, employee error, even physical threats like earthquake and fire.

7. Productivity
Consider for a moment who is behind the consumerization of IT. While Apple may benefit greatly as iPads and iPhones cross over to the enterprise, it’s the employee and not Apple who is pushing to use these devices for work. At the heart of this trend is the simple idea that employees know which tools can make their work day easier and, hopefully, happier.

The key question to ask is: If employees are asking to use their own tools so they can be more productive in the office or catch up on work after hours, is that such a scary prospect?

Jack Newton is CEO and co-founder of Clio, a Vancouver-based company that offers web-based practice management software for solo practitioners and small-to-medium sized law firms.

[Top image credit: Goodluz/Shutterstock]

Mobile is Facebook’s advertising Achilles’ heel, a fact the social network was not only quick to point out to investors in its first S-1, but also anxious to emphasize in the latest prospectus amendment.

Data from comScore, which shows that U.S. Facebookers are now accessing the social network more from mobile devices than computers, adds more than a little credence to the idea of Facebook’s mobile users becoming a problem of increasing financial significance for the company.

The average U.S. Facebook user spent 441 minutes, or 7 hours and 21 minutes, accessing the social network’s mobile properties in March, according to comScore. For comparison, the average time spent on Facebook via computer in the U.S. was just 391 minutes in the same month, comScore confirmed to VentureBeat.

We also know, courtesy of Facebook’s filings with the SEC, that in March Facebook had 488 million mobile monthly active users (MAUs). The figure is up more than 14 percent from December when the company said it had 425 million mobile MAUs.

And, according to comScore, Facebook’s 18-and-up smartphone audience in the U.S. topped 78 million unique visitors in March, meaning the social network reached more than 80 percent of all U.S. adults on mobile in the month. (For those curious, 80 percent accessed Facebook via mobile application and 20 percent through the mobile browser)

These big numbers are one big, bad problem for Facebook, which made 82 percent of revenue during the first quarter of 2012 from its advertising business. Why? Facebook admittedly shows an “immaterial number” of sponsored stories in mobile users’ News Feeds.

“We believe this increased usage of Facebook on mobile devices has contributed to the recent trend of our daily active users (DAUs) increasing more rapidly than the increase in the number of ads delivered,” the company warned investors in an amendment to its S-1.

So while the gargantuan mobile numbers would seemingly represent global reach and social network dominance, they’re also mighty troublesome for Facebook, because more users on mobile means fewer opportunities to serve ads.

Case in point, Facebook’s revenue for the first quarter of 2012 came in at 6 percent less than revenue for the fourth quarter of 2011. The social network attributed the decline in revenue to seasonal trends in ad spend. It’s hard not to also make a correlation between an increase in mobile over web usage and a decline in revenue, especially when Facebook connects the two in its latest filing.

With its initial offering slated for May 18, Facebook’s mobile numbers and a seemingly Wall Street-indifferent CEO may give some investors pause.

Photo credit: Alex E. Proimos/Flickr

Imagine this. You and your girlfriend walk into a neighborhood bar, order a cocktail, and, unbeknownst to you both, a camera above is scanning your faces to determine your age and gender. Your deets are combined with data on other bar patrons and then spit out to looky-loo mobile application users trolling for a good-time venue with the right genetic make-up.

This isn’t make believe, folks. Rather, it’s a very real scenario that you may have already experienced thanks to a Chicago-based startup called SceneTap, which went live in San Francisco at 25 bars on Friday.

SceneTap is a maker of cameras that pick up on facial characteristics to determine a person’s approximate age and gender. The company works with venues to install these cameras and track customers. It also makes web and mobile applications that allow random observers to find out, in real-time, the male-to-female ratio, crowd size, and average age of a bar’s patrons. And no one goes unnoticed. “We represent EVERYONE in the venue,” SceneTap proudly proclaims on its website.

Launched in Chicago last July, SceneTap is now live in seven markets, including San Francisco and Austin, and has tracked more than 8.5 million people at 400 partner venues. Bamboo Hut, Bar None, milk bar, The Abassador, Fluid Ultra Lounge and 20 other San Francisco locations now have the i-spy cameras in place.

The technology walks the thin line between creepy and fascinating. SceneTap promises that all data is collected anonymously and that nothing is recorded or stored. For nightlife-lovers, it’s a fail-proof way to get a preview of a bar or club. Venues can offer specials, and are given tools to gauge the effectiveness of their campaigns. Did that happy hour margie discount, for instance, bring in more ladies?

Okay so, some may think, no big deal. What’s the harm in a little anonymous profiling? In fact, the company said it’s already fast-approaching 100,000 users (we’d like to know the demographic breakdown of those people).

But others may find it disconcerting, sketchy, and perfect for the opportunist. Do we really want the bad eggs of the world to know when a bar or restaurant is overpopulated with young women? My colleague Jolie O’Dell likened it to creepster application Girls Around Me, recently calling SceneTap, “an absolute sewer of an application.”

What’s most troubling about SceneTap, at least to this social media enthusiast who often overexposes herself by way of public Foursquare check-ins and tweets, is that the consumer has no say in the matter. Walk into one of these bars and you’re being digitally sized up — and there’s nothing you can do about it. And who’s to say SceneTap won’t start collecting other traits such as height, weight, ethnicity, or wealth?

We do know that SceneTap hopes to put its facial detection cameras to work in other markets. The startup already has its eyes on the retail sector. Let’s just hope the cameras don’t find their way into dressing rooms.

SceneTap is seed funded and has 17 employees. The startup said it’s in the process of raising a Series A round of financing.

“When my kids were born, my dad bought them Disney shares, and we framed them and hung them up on the wall. They’re excited to know that they are a part of Disney.”

Mike Jones, MySpace’s onetime CEO, told VentureBeat that story a few months ago when we asked him if he planned to buy Facebook stock.

“People will just want to own the stock,” he said. “People will log into E-Trade and buy Facebook stock because they love it and use it everyday.”

Buying a nominal number of Facebook shares as a novelty or to “be part of” the company’s history might be the latest social media trend. The company is going public at the end of next week, and the web is buzzing with opinions and early decisions about the IPO.

While financial heavy-hitters and tech experts are loudly sounding their Facebook-stock-buying plans and giving the proletariat voluminous opinions on how much to buy (and when to sell), normal Facebook users are eyeing the stock in the same way you’d eye a tchotchke in a gift store window at your favorite zoo or theme park. It’s a memento of the day, a reminder of a time and a place when so many memories were made on this one social network.

Whether or not Facebook stock retains its value into the future — heck, whether or not Facebook itself still exists in the future — isn’t of too much concern to these buyers.

Tech PR pro Brian Kramer said the thought of buying a couple of Facebook shares “has actually crossed my mind, just to see what shakes out.” He continued that he’d be making the purchase as a “novelty for now, but you never know.”

“You never know” seems to be something of a theme among these casual traders. Twitter user @uberfuzzy told us he planned to buy a few shares “first as a novelty (and to get the financial docs), possibly more later for investment if they don’t MySpace themselves.”

Most normal Facebook users won’t be buying any shares, but the what-the-heck buyers are almost equal in number to those planning to buy for long-term investment or short-term gains, according to our own limited man-on-the-street polls.

Shares of Facebook stock are likely to enjoy a quick value growth spurt, especially in the first few days and months of trading. Analysts are comparing this IPO to Google’s in 2004. Google’s share price started at $85 and currently sits at around $600, with the company recently announcing a stock split.

If Facebook’s stock follows the same trend, these just-for-fun shares could increase their value many times over, potentially ending up worth hundreds of dollars within a few years. One or two shares alone won’t pay anyone’s tuition; still, it’s a fascinating timestamp of the moment when nearly a billion people gathered online at the most important social destination in the world: Facebook.

Facebook is scheduled to makes its debut on the Nasdaq Friday, May 18, 2012. Shares will start selling in a price range between $28 and $35, but prices are expected to rise dramatically and quickly.

Just a week into Tumblr’s grand money-making scheme, the company’s head of brand strategy has packed his bags and hit the road.

Matt Hackett, who was the trendy blogging platform’s head of brand strategy and marketing since September 2011, announced Friday via email that he was leaving Tumblr, Reuters journalist Matthew Keys first reported.

Hackett confirmed his exit on his personal tumblelog with a goofy, animated “memorial GIF” and a note indicating that today was his last day at the company. “I will definitely miss you guys,” Hackett wrote.

Tumblr is currently in the midst of its first serious advertising push. Last week, the New York-based company unveiled two advertising products — Tumblr Radar and Tumblr Spotlight — that it has started selling to approved sponsors for a minimum $25,000 package commitment. The move was largely seen as a turnabout for a company with a headstrong leader once vocally opposed to running advertisements.

Hackett is the second high-profile departure for five-year-old Tumblr, which has 55 million users and $125 million in funding but no real revenue to speak of — yet. Hackett follows Tumblr president John Maloney out the door. Maloney, in his position for four years, announced his departure at the end of April, just days prior to the company’s ad suite unveiling. Maloney said that he would continue to stay close to and advise CEO David Karp.

Tumblr did not immediately return a request for comment.

Photo credit: Matt Hackett/Tumblr

Facebook ranks number one for moms in the U.S., something that comes as no shock to the thousands of kids embarrassed by their parent’s status updates. In March 2012, three out of four moms visited the social network, which adds up to 27.9 million mothers.

Fifty percent of moms are using social networks through their mobile phones, compared to only 37 percent of women in general. Perhaps they are trying to keep up with their kids’ antics at all times.

Moms also make up a substantial percentage of bloggers. One in three bloggers are mothers, and 52 percent have children under the age of 18.

Pinterest is another hot website for this market, with 4.9 million moms flocking to the site in March. Mothers are also 61 percent more likely to visit Pinterest than the average American. Considering the site is overflowing with pictures of home decor, recipes, and fashion, it makes perfect sense that millions of mothers are behind all those pins.

Check out the infographic below for more details, and don’t forget to wish your mom, or the awesome person who raised you, a happy Mother’s Day.

Mom and kid with laptops image via Shutterstock

This sponsored post is produced by TiE.

Successes such as Instagram, has got the whole tech community up in restless excitement. At least 2 developers approached me the day the Instagram acquisition was announced. They needed to do something. If not here, surrounded by the startup frenzy in the Silicon Valley, then where else, they said.

This is the right time, the right economy, the right place and everyone wants a ride on the startup train. And TiEcon is the biggest Entrepreneurship Conference, which has something for everyone – from Entrepreneurs, Investors, to Engineers, Recruiters.

Entrepreneurship – What it takes

The rosy successes and all – there is a lot that goes into entrepreneurship. What people to hire, who to pick for your founding team, who to partner with, when & how much to take to market, when to raise funds and if you are lucky like Instagram & many others before, when & whether to sell. Do you have what it takes? The Entrepreneurship panel at this year’s TiEcon , gives you food for thought.

Entrepreneurship for Women

Entrepreneurship, is perfect for women! And here is why. For one, it destroys the myth of the Glass ceiling (A woman Entrepreneur – To be or not to be) exposes Gender socialization (Deborah Gruelfeld at TiEcon on Mastering the Body Language for Power and Influence) and only your technical, social and business skills are the ones on the line. There is no limit to your creativity.

What goes into making your startup a success

If you are on the entrepreneurial track, there are many things that go into making your startup, a success. Whether to bootstrap, or take money from Angels or VCs or How to take your product to market? A startup is about a team with the perfect complementary skill-sets. So how do you build your winning team or judge whether you are part of that winning startup team. Once your startup is off the ground, does it have the belts and buckles in place for the journey up the hockey stick curve? And well – if you are young, right out of or in school/college and wondering how you could start a company– there is the Young entrepreneur’s guide to getting started doling out advice on it, at the TiE Youth Forum.

For the Geeks in us

‘What if Im not an entrepreneur’, ‘What if I love coding and and, building things?’ Well, this year’s TiEcon fuels the developer’s passion and knowledge as well.

The Social Panels talk about the next frontiers in Social Gaming, how internet commerce has been impacted by Social media, and what the emerging trends and opportunities are in the Social space.

The Mobile panels talk about the latest mobile trends and opportunities. You could learn best practices from mobile companies for deployments in the enterprise space.

The Energy panels talk about the upcoming applications and emerging trends in energy fields, the hottest opportunities in the cleantech area, and the evolution of energy efficiency in the automobile sector.

The Life Sciences Panels talk about Medical device innovation in emerging markets, and opportunities in Mobile health.

The Cloud Panels talk about how Cloud & SAAS are being used in the real-world, emerging trends and opportunities in Cloud and how Consumerization in the Enterprise is driving opportunities in the Cloud.

What the Stars foretell

And that’s not all. This year’s TiEcon 2012 (May 18 – 19, 2012) also has some amazing Keynotes from Dr. Vishal Sikka, Head of Technology at SAP and Carlos Dominguez, Cisco SVP. In the Breakthrough Thinkers keynote, Dr. Deepak Chopra, talks about Prosperity and Leadership. And finally, Sam Pitroda tells the story of how innovation was ignited in India, which has led to the Internet revolution there and the new booming economy that we see there today.

And this isn’t all. At the TiEcon Expo you will find 100 or so startups displaying their latest products and innovations. And in the corridors of the convention, you will find endless opportunities to Network and talk to the smartest of entrepreneurs, investors, passionate developers who are on the cutting edge of technology. A boundless, priceless opportunity to connect, network, learn, grow and prosper…

In a blow to Uncle Sam, Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin has renounced his U.S. citizenship ahead of the company’s hotly anticipated initial public offering.

Facebook is expected to make its public stock market debut on May 18. The company priced its shares in the $28 to $35 range last week, and will raise as much as $11.8 billion with a $96 billion valuation through its offering.

Saverin, the famed co-founder of Facebook, is listed on a April 30, 2012 IRS document that includes the names of individuals losing their U.S. citizenship, a fact first reported by Bloomberg.

“Eduardo recently found it more practical to become a resident of Singapore since he plans to live there for an indefinite period of time,” Saverin spokesperson Tom Goodman told Bloomberg.

Practical indeed. The expatriate’s stake of the social network, pegged at around 4 percent, could be worth as much $3.84 billion on IPO day. With Saverin giving up his U.S. citizenship and taking up residency in Singapore, the Brazilian billionaire and startup investor will save big on his tax bill. There is no capital gains tax in Singapore, and Saverin will be beholden to the U.S. government for far less since he renounced citizenship prior to Facebook’s IPO.

Saverin isn’t the first person to change locations just prior to a transaction in order to avoid a tax hit. Gilbert Hyatt moved from La Palma, Calif. to Las Vegas before receiving a patent for inventing the microprocessor. The relocation caused a lengthy legal battle with the California Tax Bureau. And big businesses such, as Tyco, Seagate, and Halliburton have been known to relocate their corporate headquarters to save some dough.

Still, the news appears to have tech circles split in their reaction. Some are applauding Saverin’s timely relocation as savvy, while others are chastising the decision.

As for Facebook, the IPO appears to be on track, despite a rumored investigation by the FTC into the company’s purchase of mobile photo-sharing service Instagram. The offering, which will be the biggest Internet IPO to date, is either seeing weaker than expected demand or is already oversubscribed, depending on who you choose to believe (we’re leaning toward the latter here).

Photo credit: Eduardo Saverin/Facebook

Streaming music service Spotify is rolling out a new version of its desktop software for Windows and Mac today, adding a handful of new features and improved functionality.

Version 0.8.3 of Spotify includes the ability to create custom radio stations based on a particular playlist or album, much in the same way Pandora does with artists or genres. That station will then play music that’s similar to the playlist/album of your choosing. The feature is sure to delight the subset of people who like to mix corny hip-hop with twangy country oldies.

The new version also includes a new “Instant Search” feature, which allows you to hover over search suggestions as you type to get instantly rendered results in the main view. While this is a small change, it’s definitely the little things that count, such as past additions like crossfading and gapless playback.

The company is also boosting Spotify’s social sharing capabilities in the latest software version. The HTML code that will embed a “play button” on other websites/blogs, which launched last month, can now be obtained by right clicking on any album, playlist, or track. The company has also added custom short URL spoti.fi for Twitter as well as deeper Tumblr integration that lets users share music content from Spotify directly to their Tumblr page. Sharing is a key component of Spotify’s success, with Facebook’s Timeline integration being attributed to its massive user growth in the last year.

Spotify is also trying to raise awareness of its new app platform, which brings tons of social features to the streaming service. Yesterday, the startup added two apps — Tastebuds.fm and Fellody — that allow its users to find a new romantic interest base on their musical tastes and discover new music from their social circles.

The new version of the app is rolling out to users now, and it should be completed over the next few days. Those who don’t want to wait can download the update from Spotify’s website.

Screenshots via Spotify

Facebook is testing a feature in which users can choose to pay money to highlight their status updates for their friends.

The feature is fairly simple: add a status update just like you would ordinarily, then pay to have it highlighted. Highlighting will ensure that your friends actually see the status update, something you can’t otherwise count on. You can pay with their preferred credit card or PayPal.

Typically, only 10 percent of your Facebook friends may see a status update, although that number grows when you post something that attracts attention in the form of likes and responses.

Facebook is always testing small changes and enhancements; most of these features never see the light of day. A Facebook representative confirmed to VentureBeat the social network is testing this new feature “with a small percentage of people… We’re constantly testing new features across the site. This particular test is simply to gauge people’s interest in this method of sharing with their friends.”

The rationale for Facebook is understandable; it lets the company make more money. And there’s utility for users too; they get a bigger megaphone. But creating a gateway for users to pay to increase the reach of their status messages is hugely problematic for at least three reasons.

1. Noise

First, this might increase the amount of noise on Facebook and decrease the utility of the algorithms used to sort through each user’s news feed. Users presented with too many picayune, annoying, or irrelevant messages could stop using Facebook as regularly. This would be exacerbated if their friends were broadcasting mini-ads or commercial messages.

There’s a reason Facebook’s friend- and content-ranking algorithms only show us around 10 percent of what our friends post on Facebook: It’s not all terribly interesting. Fiddle with that balance, and our interest in Facebook might diminish.

2. Conflict of interest

Facebook already carefully regulates how many of our friends’ status updates we see. Their algorithm, EdgeRank, carefully determines what we see or don’t see. EdgeRank uses a combination of affinity, “edge weight,” and timeliness to make a decision on whether or not to show you an update. Affinity grows when you interact with people, photos have more edge weight than text updates, and recent updates are ranked higher.

Theoretically, that determination is made in Facebook’s estimation of your best interest. But if Facebook were making money by force-feeding potentially irrelevant messages to users, it would be to Facebook’s economic advantage to reduce the efficiency of your ability to communicate with friends.

That conflict, however carefully managed, could cause problems. Even the appearance of inappropriate ranking would be a big black eye for Facebook. However, Facebook has successfully managed to integrated branded and paid content on other parts of the site without users’ revolting, so time will tell if this feature would actually cause a widespread negative reaction.

3. Counter to the company’s social philosophy

Perhaps most important of all, Facebook is predicated on a social philosophy of connecting people. Mark Zuckerberg said it himself in the Facebook IPO documentation, wherein he wrte, “Facebook was not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission – to make the world more open and connected.”

He continued, “At Facebook, we build tools to help people connect with the people they want and share what they want, and by doing this we are extending people’s capacity to build and maintain relationships.”

I don’t see how those statements are compatible with charging users to send their status updates to friends.

Facebook was built to connect friends, help them share updates, and enable them to build and extend meaningful relationships. Making people pay for the privilege now seems to fly in the face of that mission.

Image courtesy of Sean MacEntee

via Stuff