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FACEBOOK IPO LIVE: The social network goes public

It’s Facebook‘s big day.

The site, which was born in a dorm room eight years ago and has grown into a worldwide network of almost a billion people, is making the most talked-about stock market debut in years.

Here’s some of what Associated Press reporters are finding. Check back all day for updates. All times EDT.

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5:22 p.m.

ABOUT THAT $38 FLOOR

For most of the last half-hour of trading, Facebook was at, or pennies above, the offering price of $38 per share. But it never traded at $37.99, or at any other price that would have put it in the red for the first day.

No coincidence, said Jay Ritter, a finance professor at the University of Florida: The banks that underwrote the IPO put in enough “buy” orders at $38 to keep the price from dropping below that level.

Underwriters are allowed under regulatory rules to buy back, for 30 days, a certain amount of the shares they sell on the open market.

Ritter said that his research showed 9 percent of IPOs close at exactly the offering price on the first day, 16 percent of IPOs fall, and 75 percent increase in value.

Facebook made it into the “increase” category, but just barely.

— Pallavi Gogoi, AP Business Writer

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4:56 p.m.

SEC LOOKING INTO NASDAQ GLITCHES

The Securities and Exchange Commission is looking into glitches in the trading of Facebook stock around the time of scheduled debut Friday on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

The glitches caused traders problems changing and canceling their orders and delayed the start of trading by about a half-hour. Nasdaq said around noon that it was “investigating an issue in delivering trade execution messages” for Facebook stock.

The SEC staff “will review the incident with Nasdaq to determine its cause and steps that will be taken to address it,” agency spokesman John Nester said.

— Marcy Gordon, AP Business Writer

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4:47 p.m.

NASDAQ ON GLITCHES

Nasdaq posted a message on one of its websites telling investors who had problems buying or selling Facebook stock between 11:11 and 11:30 a.m. to call Nasdaq before 5 p.m. with their order information.

Nasdaq went on to say:

“Our intention is to reach resolution of those trades today through an offline matching process If at the end of that process, a firm continues to have questions or concerns, the firm needs to submit a formal accommodation request to us through the normal channels. Those requests will be reviewed and ruled upon and further information will be forthcoming concerning those. This is a voluntary process and the normal accommodation rule process is available to those that do not want to participate will be made available.”

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4:26 p.m.

FINAL STAT CHECK

Facebook closed at $38.23, a gain of 23 cents, or 0.61 percent.

About 570 million shares were traded on its first day as a public company. For perspective, that is roughly equal to the combined trading volume of 28 of the 30 stocks in the Dow Jones industrial average — every Dow stock except Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase.

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4:16 p.m.

CHECKING BACK IN WITH AN EARLY INVESTOR

Alper Aydinoglu, the student at DePaul University in Chicago who got 50 shares via Etrade at $38, said that he was “disappointed with the first day of trading.”

His gain on paper: $11.50.

Before Etrade’s standard commission of $9.99.

He called it an excellent learning opportunity, though. Plus this: “On top of everything, I now have the bragging rights that I participated in one of the most popular IPOs of all time.”

— Pallavi Gogoi, AP Business Writer

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4:09 p.m.

ZUCK: PLAY ALONG AT HOME II

The closing stock price of $38.23, multiplied by a holding of 503,601,850 shares, gives CEO Mark Zuckerberg a stake worth $19,252,698,725.

And 50 cents.

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4:02 p.m.

‘LIKE KISSING YOUR SISTER’

There’s the close on Facebook: $38.23.

All that excitement for a gain of — 23 cents. And it took a rush of buyers in the final minutes to achieve even that. Facebook was hugging the $38 mark for much of the final hour of trading.

In theory, closing near the IPO price is good. It means that the banks that took the company public judged demand almost perfectly, and got the most money possible for selling stockholders.

But in practice, it’s bad: The institutions that buy from the sellers — typically big investors like hedge funds, mutual funds and pension funds — have come to expect big profits on the first day.

“This is like kissing your sister,” said John Fitzgibbon, founder of IPO Scoop, a research firm. “With all the drumbeats and hype, I don’t think there’ll be bar room bragging tonight.”

— Bernard Condon, AP Business Writer

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3:46 p.m.

ZUCK: PLAY ALONG AT HOME

If you want to figure up Mark Zuckerberg’s wealth at the end of the trading day, here’s the math: He still holds 503,601,850 shares of Facebook after the initial public offering.

If the stock closes at $38 — and it is hovering just pennies above that level with about 15 minutes of trading left — that would make Zuckerberg’s stake worth about $19.1 billion.

— Barbara Ortutay, AP Technology Writer

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3:30 p.m.

TEACHABLE MOMENT

The Associated Press spoke earlier with Ann Sherman, an IPO expert and associate finance professor at DePaul University, and asked her to check back in with her thoughts at the end of the trading day.

With Facebook almost back to its offering price of $38 per share, she said that even the best stocks can be over-hyped.

Sherman added: “From now on, I’ll be able to use Facebook as the perfect example of what I tell the students in my IPO and venture capital class — that even apparently hot IPOs can be risky to price, and that no company can perfectly control the timing of their offering.”

— Pallavi Gogoi, AP Business Writer

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3:23 p.m.

MAD MONEY

Earlier this week, Mad magazine imagined a Facebook stock certificate, complete with a photo of Mark Zuckerberg smiling from inside an oval, like George Washington on the dollar bill.

“Thank you for funding our ongoing effort to collect and control every single piece of personal information on the Internet,” the certificate says. “Every photograph, every song, every social cause, every event listing, every opinion, every breathless description of a recently eaten pulled-pork sandwich.”

Facebook is drifting back toward its offering price of $38. It’s up just 10 cents for the day now as volume nears half a billion shares.

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3:11 p.m.

TILL THURSDAY

Bruno del Ama, the CEO of asset management firm Global X Funds, said that he will wait five full trading days, until after the market closes Thursday, to get in on Facebook.

“On the first day you see a tremendous amount of volatility,” he said. By the fifth day, investors should see more stability, he said.

He believes Facebook is here to stay: “Once companies have built a network, it’s really difficult to displace them,” he said. He added that while massive companies such as Google are trying to compete with Facebook, and may even have better technology, “we care about where our friends are.”

— Barbara Ortutay, AP Technology Writer

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3:02 p.m.

AN HOUR TO GO

Facebook stock is trading at $39.02, up a little more than a buck. Volume just passed 450 million shares.

It’s another bleak day for the rest of the market, by the way. The Dow Jones industrial average appears headed for its 12th loss in the past 13 trading days. The Nasdaq composite, representing Facebook’s stock exchange, is down 1 percent.

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2:54 p.m.

BUT SERIOUSLY, FOLKS

Twitter users are joking about the Facebook IPO.

From Conan O’Brien: “Today, Facebook went public, just as MySpace’s last user went private.”

And from the Twitter feed of the website Someecards: “My favorite Facebook public offerings are still your beach photos.”

— Peter Svensson, AP Technology Writer

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2:29 p.m.

WE ARE THE ONE-QUARTER PERCENT

Conversations about the Facebook IPO accounted for 0.25 percent of all online discussion during the first part of the workday, according to NM Incite, a company that tracks social media traffic.

That may sound small, but it’s an increase of 5,000 percent compared with the buzz about the Facebook IPO a month ago. It is also four times greater than the chatter for the LinkedIn IPO and 10 times greater than the Groupon IPO.

— Scott Mayerowitz, AP Business Writer

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2:18 p.m.

POP CULTURE

Francis Gaskins, president of IPOdesktop, a market research company, said that it wasn’t a bad thing that Facebook didn’t get a “pop” on its first day, similar to what happened during the 1990s dot-com frenzy.

He said that most tech companies going public want a big rise in their debut to show they’re “strong, dynamic companies standing out in the crowd” but that Facebook already has that image, and so may not care.

Gaskins said that the banks taking Facebook public have learned from the IPOs of social media companies in the past year and are better able to gauge demand and supply for a new stock.

He said a rise of 5 percent to 8 percent in this “tough market” is a success.

Facebook stock is up 5.5 percent as volume approaches 400 million shares.

— Bernard Condon, AP Business Writer

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2:13 p.m.

ZUCK ON WHAT TODAY MEANS

CEO Mark Zuckerberg, speaking before he symbolically rang the opening bell for the Nasdaq from Menlo Park, Calif.:

“Right now this all seems like a big deal. Going public is an important milestone in our history. But here’s the thing: Our mission isn’t to be a public company. Our mission is to make the world more open and connected. In the past eight years, all of you out there have built the largest community in the history of the world. You’ve done amazing things that we never would have dreamed of, and I can’t wait to see what you guys all do going forward.”

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2:05 p.m.

VITAL SIGNS

With two hours to go in the trading day, Facebook is at $40.50, or $2.50 higher than its offering price. Volume has just passed 380 million shares.

By comparison, Bank of America, frequently the most active stock in the Standard Poor’s 500 index, has traded only 155 million shares today. The next most active stock in the SP, JPMorgan Chase, is at 59 million.

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1:57 p.m.

THE RUSH FROM SMALL INVESTORS

TD Ameritrade, the online brokerage, reports that in the first 45 minutes that Facebook was trading, it accounted for a record 24 percent of trades executed by its customers.

By comparison, on its first day back on the stock market, in November 2010, General Motors represented 7 percent of overall trades on TD Ameritrade. For the LinkedIn IPO, in May 2011, the figure was 5 percent.

Steve Quirk, who oversees trading strategy at TD Ameritrade, said that about 60,000 orders were lined up before Facebook opened.

“The volume has been unbelievable even though the stock hasn’t moved dramatically,” Quirk said. “It’s a hot topic in our chat rooms, and most people expected to see the stock move more than it has.”

— Pallavi Gogoi, AP Business Writer

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1:47 p.m.

UPDATE ON SOCIAL MEDIA STOCKS

Facebook stock is trading at about $41.25, a healthy gain of more than $3, but the gain is not translating to other social media companies, especially those with ties to Facebook.

LinkedIn is down 3.3 percent, Groupon is down 6 percent, and Zynga, which is trading again, is down more than 8 percent.

— Bree Fowler, AP Business Writer

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1:23 p.m.

CALIFORNIA DREAMING

Gov. Jerry Brown of California must not have seen “The Social Network.”

In an appearance on “CBS This Morning,” Brown said that his state is the land of innovation and that it was where Facebook was invented. He added: “Not in Texas, not in Arizona, not in Manhattan and certainly not, you know, under the White House or the Congress.”

But interviewer Charlie Rose pointed out that CEO Mark Zuckerberg and others developed the site at Harvard University, all the way across the country in Cambridge, Mass.

Brown responded that the Facebook inventors quickly came to California, “where all the other innovative people are.”

— Juliet Williams, AP Sacramento bureau

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1:16 p.m.

EXPERIENCING THE FACEBOOK IPO ON FACEBOOK

Facebook’s IPO has Wall Street abuzz. But what about Facebook’s 900 million users?

Some were debating whether they should get in on the buying frenzy. Others were guessing the closing price. Several were lamenting that they hadn’t thought to invent the social media site themselves.

A few treated even the company like a person, congratulating it on the public offering as they might a friend on the birth of a child.

“Hey Facebook! Have a good first day on the stock market,” a swimming pool maintenance and repairman from Petaluma, Calif., wrote from a mobile device. Within two hours, eight other Facebook users had “liked” the post.

Not all Facebook users were obsessed with the company’s entrance to the stock market. The went along with their everyday lives, posting photos of drunken debauchery that they might one day regret, weighting in on the presidential election, celebrating Haitian flag day or just welcoming the start of the weekend.

— Scott Mayerowitz, AP Business Writer

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1:05 p.m.

NASDAQ ON THE DELAY

Seconds before noon, with demand for Facebook stock overwhelming, Nasdaq issued a message on one of its websites saying that it was “investigating an issue in delivering trade execution messages” from the Facebook IPO.

Nasdaq initially planned the first trades of Facebook stock for 11 a.m., then 11:05 a.m. The stock opened at about 11:30.

Facebook is trading at about $41, or $3 higher than its offering price. Volume is approaching 320 million shares traded.

— Tali Arbel, AP Business Writer

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12:55 p.m.

A FUND MANAGER WEIGHS IN

Chris Brown, manager of the Pax World Balanced mutual fund, made a roughly $14 million investment when his $1.9 billion fund acquired private shares of Facebook on a secondary market before the IPO.

As shares traded publicly for around $40 at midday Friday, Brown said the rise from the stock’s $38 opening price was unsurprising.

“Going into the IPO, there has been a lot of skepticism from investors, in particular institutional investors, questioning anything from whether the price of the stock is fair, to whether Facebook can successfully monetize and sell ads,” he said.

“We’re long-term investors. It’s nice to have the stock up for one day, but it’s only one day. It’s hard to extrapolate much as to the future of the company.”

In coming days, Brown expects plenty of ups and downs for the stock, as investors assess a company whose prospects are hard to pin down because of its evolving business model.

“You’re going to see obviously an extreme amount of volatility over the next week as people evaluate the stock,” Brown said.

— Mark Jewell, AP Personal Finance Writer

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12:50 p.m.

THE OUTSIDER’S VIEW

“I’m part of the 99 percent. I don’t buy stock shares,” Jerry Urban said as he waited for a bus in Baltimore. “I wish them good luck. Tell them to stop selling my information.”

Facebook stock is at about $40.50, or $2.50 higher than its offering price.

— Alex Dominguez, AP Baltimore bureau

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12:24 p.m.

SHOULD YOU BUY? A VIEW FROM ONE BANKER

Facebook stock is up about 6 percent from its offering price. More than a quarter-billion shares have been traded.

Blessing Oguguam of Nashville, Tenn., a vice president in business banking for Wells Fargo who has worked in commercial lending for 15 years, said he was not comfortable buying Facebook stock:

“I’m thinking it’s great for now. But 10 years from now, is that crave still going to be there? So if I go ahead and invest now, I know Facebook is not producing any product. It’s just a social media site. So in 10 years to come, if this hype dies down, then what happens to my investment?”

— Lucas L. Johnson II, AP Nashville bureau

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12:19 p.m.

WATCHING OTHER SOCIAL STOCKS

Some recent quotes from other social media stocks:

LinkedIn: Down 2.2 percent.

Groupon: Down 6 percent.

Zynga: Down 13 percent, and apparently halted. Its last trade was about 40 minutes ago.

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12:17 p.m.

ELSEWHERE IN TECH LAND

It’s a good day for some other big-name technology stocks.

Stock in Yahoo is up more than 5 percent after a report from All Things D, a website devoted to technology news, that Yahoo was close to selling part of its valuable stake in the Chinese Internet company Alibaba Group.

Apple, which has fallen more than $100 per share from its all-time intraday high of $644 on April 10, is up 1.3 percent at $537. Google is up 0.3 percent at $624 per share.

Meanwhile, Facebook has nudged back over the $40 level, and volume has surpassed 250 million shares traded.

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12:02 p.m.

BACK UP FOR THE DAY

Facebook stock has climbed back to about $40 as trading volume surpasses 220 million shares. The stock had opened at $42.05 and sunk back to $38, its offering price, but did not cross below that level. That indicates heavy buying interest in the stock at $38.

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11:50 a.m.

DRIFTING BACK TOWARD $38

Facebook stock, which opened with a gain of about $4 over its offering price of $38, has steadily drifted lower in the first half-hour of trading. It is hovering now at about $38. Trading volume is closing in on 200 million shares.

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11:47 a.m.

150 MILLION SHARES

Facebook’s trading volume is surging. It passed 150 million shares traded about 15 minutes after its debut on the Nasdaq. The price has drifted back toward the offering price and is now at about $39, a rise of $1.

The stock of another Internet company, Zynga, responsible for the popular FarmVille game on Facebook, appears to be halted for trading after it plunged minutes into the Facebook debut. There is no immediate word on why.

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11:38 a.m.

BIG VOLUME

Facebook topped 100 million shares traded in the first four minutes after its debut on the Nasdaq. By comparison, Amazon.com has traded about 2.2 million shares today and Google about 2 million.

Seven minutes after its first trade, the stock was hovering at about $40, a $2 gain over its offering price.

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11:32 a.m.

FACEBOOK STOCK OPENS

More than 80 million shares have traded in the first minute at the Nasdaq. The stock opened with a jump of about 11 percent, at $42.05, or $4.05 higher than the listing price.

— Seth Sutel, AP Business Writer

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11:28 a.m.

REPORT OF DELAY AT NASDAQ

The Wall Street Journal reports that traders are experiencing problems changing and canceling their orders for Facebook stock ahead of the debut. There is no immediate comment from Nasdaq.

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11:19 a.m.

SNAGGING SOME SHARES

Alper Aydinoglu, a student at DePaul University in Chicago, said that he got 50 shares via an Etrade account that he opened specifically to buy Facebook shares.

“It’s my first IPO experience,” Aydinoglu said.

He added: “I bought the stock for a couple of reasons. No. 1, there’s so much hype about Facebook and everybody is going to be getting in on it, so there will likely be a huge pop in the stock today. Another reason is that Facebook is a great company. Mark Zuckerberg created something huge.”

He said that if the stock rises 15 percent to 50 percent, he may sell half and keep the rest. If the stock drops, he said, he plans to get out altogether.

— Pallavi Gogoi, AP Business Writer

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11:07 a.m.

WAITING IN TIMES SQUARE

People are huddled outside the windows of the Nasdaq site in Times Square, waiting for the stock to open. People are holding up cell phones and cameras pointed at the Nasdaq board, waiting to get a picture of the first price change.

— Joseph Pisani, AP Business Writer

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11:02 a.m.

A WARNING FROM GERMANY

A German data protection official has warned Facebook investors that the site’s $38 starting share price is based on practices that may breach European privacy rules.

Thilo Weichert, data protection commissioner for the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, said shareholders should be aware that if European privacy authorities have their way, “Facebook’s business model will implode.”

Weichert was quoted by German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on Friday saying Facebook could be ordered to stop transferring user information to the United States.

Facebook’s IPO prospectus warns investors that its business is subject to “complex and evolving U.S. and foreign laws and regulations regarding privacy, data protection, and other matters” that could harm its business.

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10:52 a.m.

THE ARGUMENT AGAINST JUMPING IN

The banks helping take Facebook public want us to value this 8-year-old upstart at as much as $104 billion, more than Disney or Kraft Foods, though those companies earn three and four times more. That top valuation is also more than 100 times Facebook’s earnings last year, versus 13 times for the average company.

At such a high price, it will take years for this so-called earnings multiple to fall to a more reasonable level, and that’s assuming the company can maintain its torrid earnings growth.

To make money in Facebook, you’re betting that other buyers will be just as willing as you to hold their nose at the valuation, and keep doing so for years.

Facebook grew its earnings 65 percent last year, faster than at most companies, so you should pay more for it than you would the typical company. But how much more? Profits at Apple grew 85 percent last year. Its stock is trading at 13 times earnings per share.

— Bernard Condon, AP Business Writer

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10:47 a.m.

THE REACTION ONLINE

Facebook’s IPO was trending on Twitter, but it wasn’t the No. 1 item. God, a retiring Chicago Cubs pitcher, Kanye West’s new film and Haitian Flag Day all were trending higher in the U.S. at 10:30 a.m.

Down at No. 9 was “$FB,” a tag used to talk about the offering. At the top of the list? The hashtag “ThingsWeAskGod2helpUsWith,” along with news about the possible retirement of Cubs pitcher Kerry Wood and “Cruel Summer,” the name of Kanye West’s short file that will debut at the Cannes Film Festival.

The IPO was No. 2 in trending Google searches, right after the death of disco queen Donna Summer.

— Scott Mayerowitz, AP Business Writer

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10:40 a.m.

AT INTRADE, BETTING ON A BIG FIRST-DAY GAIN

Intrade, the online betting market, is getting in on the early Facebook action. Its top item for bidding is a wager on Facebook’s share price at the close of the first day of trading.

Based on its orders to date, Intrade said that the market is predicting a 77 percent chance that the close is $45 or higher. A closing price of $45 would represent a first-day gain of 18 percent for the stock.

The odds that the price would close at $60 or higher were only 15 percent. But there was a widespread assumption the stock would finish up for the day. Intrade put the odds of a close of $40 or higher at 92 percent.

To bet on a prediction, you need to open and fund an account at Intrade.com.

— Dave Carpenter, AP Personal Finance Writer

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10:33 a.m.

ONE ARGUMENT FOR BUYING

Facebook will sell on the open market for 20 times the company’s projected 2012 revenue, based on its IPO price of $38. Google, by comparison, is trading at about six times its projected revenue for this year.

But Facebook hasn’t been as aggressive as it could have been about selling ads or finding other ways to make money where its visitors, on average, dwell for an average of 6½ hours per month, according to comScore Inc.

Instead of ramping up revenue, Facebook has concentrated on attracting users — an emphasis that is bound to pay off.

Facebook also has a big personnel advantage: Sheryl Sandberg, hired as the company’s chief operating officer in 2008. She played a key role in expanding Google’s advertising system during its first few years as a publicly held company, a period when the company’s stock hit its peak so far.

— Michael Liedtke, AP Technology Writer

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10:24 a.m.

THE RIPPLE EFFECT: OTHER IPOs?

Ann Sherman, an expert on initial public offerings and an assistant professor in the department of finance at the DePaul University, said that the IPO will lead other technology companies to go public.

“Facebook is unique in so many ways, but its IPO will certainly inspire other companies to try an IPO if they are already thinking of it,” she said.

But other companies won’t get a reception anything like Facebook’s, she said. They will face much more muted investor demand, like that for Groupon and Linkedin, she said.

— Pallavi Gogoi, AP Business Writer

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10:15 a.m.

A POP FOR THE NASDAQ

The stock market is flat so far, but it’s a good day for one stock in particular — Nasdaq OMX Group, which operates the Nasdaq Stock Market.

Facebook announced in April that it would list its shares there, under the stock ticker symbol “FB.” The Nasdaq is also home to Google and Microsoft.

Stock in Nasdaq OMX Group is up 1.7 percent for the day. The Nasdaq composite index is up just 0.06 percent.

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10:04 a.m.

MORE FROM THE NASDAQ SITE

In Times Square, people walking by are taking pictures of the giant Nasdaq billboard, which today features the Facebook logo. Some are “checking in” to the Nasdaq on Facebook.

Frederick Nolde, 31, of Richmond, Va., is in New York for meetings. He said that he bought 100 shares of Facebook through E(asterisk)Trade. He thinks the company is worth $100 billion, but he said the real question is how Facebook performs with mobile users.

“If they can figure that out, they’ll do well,” he said.

— Joseph Pisani, AP Business Writer

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9:56 a.m.

STATUS UPDATE

On Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook page, under recent activity, was this, posted shortly after 9:30 a.m. EDT:

“Mark listed FB on NASDAQ.”

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9:52 a.m.

VIEW FROM THE NASDAQ

At Nasdaq’s streetfront location in Times Square, Dennis Hitchings, a retiree from Columbus, Ohio, was peering through the window at Nasdaq’s board of constantly changing stock prices.

He said that he doesn’t think Facebook is worth $100 billion — “They don’t have the revenue” — but he did say he would buy the stock at $38.

— Joseph Pisani, AP Business Writer

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9:39 a.m.

TALE OF THE TAPE

How Facebook stands up against one of its Internet rivals, Google, based on the most recent available data:

Annual revenue — Google $38 billion, Facebook $3.7 billion.

Advertising revenue — Google $36.5 billion, Facebook $3.2 billion.

Annual net income — Google $9.7 billion, Facebook $668 million.

Employees — Google 33,100, Facebook 3,500.

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9:33 a.m.

THE OPENING BELL

Wearing his trademark hoodie and standing before a huge crowd in Menlo Park, Calif., CEO Mark Zuckerberg symbolically opened trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

Facebook stock won’t begin trading until later in the morning. The broader market opened slightly higher, with the Nasdaq composite index up about 10 points, or 0.3 percent.

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9:27 a.m.

SOME PERSPECTIVE ON MARKET VALUE

The IPO price values Facebook at $104 billion. By comparison, here are the top five companies in the Standard Poor’s 500 index by market value, based on Thursday’s closing stock prices:

Apple, $496 billion

Exxon Mobil, $383 billion

Microsoft, $250 billion

IBM, $229 billion

Wal-Mart Stores, $210 billion

— Seth Sutel, AP Business Writer

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9:15 a.m.

FLASHBACK: GOOGLE’S DEBUT

The last technology stock to go public with this level of attention was Google, which made its debut Aug. 19, 2004. Here’s how The Associated Press covered it:

SAN JOSE, Calif. — In the most highly anticipated Wall Street debut since the heady days of the dot-com boom, shares of Google surged nearly 20 percent on their first day of public trading Thursday as the quirky Internet company completed its much-hyped initial stock offering.

Despite the first-day jump, the debut generated much less money than the company envisioned after it launched an unorthodox auction designed to open the stock beyond large investors who typically get first crack at new stock issues.

Google shares finished the day at $100.34, up 18 percent, and the stock offering raised $1.67 billion. The company originally hoped to open at between $108 and $135, generating as much as $3.6 billion and making the company worth up to $36 billion.

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8:54 a.m.

THE RIPPLE EFFECT: CALIFORNIA CASH

Besides minting Internet billionaires, the Facebook IPO should provide a little help for the cash-starved state of California.

The state’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office says the IPO will generate $1.6 billion to $2.6 billion for the state through the middle of next year as shareholders cash in their stock.

California badly needs the money: Gov. Jerry Brown said over the weekend that the projected state deficit has swelled to $15.7 billion for the coming fiscal year. In January, it was projected at $9.2 billion.

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8:48 a.m.

POP AND DROP

Several of last year’s must-have IPO stocks aren’t exactly must-haves anymore.

Pandora, an Internet radio company, went public June 15 at $20 a share. You could have bought the stock during the day for $26. It’s now trading under $11.

Groupon, the online daily deal company, priced its stock at $20 a share on Nov. 4. It traded above $31 the first day and is now under $13.

And LinkedIn, a social network for professionals, more than doubled from its $45 offer price within minutes of hitting the market last May 19. It reached $122.70 on the first day before closing at $94.25. It’s back to about $105.

— Dave Carpenter, Personal Finance Writer

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8:41 a.m.

THE KID BILLIONAIRE

CEO Mark Zuckerberg is selling about 30 million shares of Facebook as part of the initial public offering. At $38 each, he pockets $1.15 billion. He will remain Facebook’s largest shareholder, will more than 32 percent of Facebook’s total shares. At the $38 share price, his stake in the company is worth $19.1 billion.

Zuckerberg will control the company with 56 percent of its voting stock as a result of agreements he has with other shareholders who promise to vote his way.

Here’s his bio:

AGE: 28. Born May 14, 1984.

RESIDENCE: Palo Alto, Calif. Grew up in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.

EDUCATION: Philips Exeter Academy, class of 2002. Studied computer science at Harvard University before dropping out.

PROFESSIONAL CAREER: Co-founded Facebook in his Harvard dorm room in 2004. Has served as CEO since.

FAMILY: Mother, Karen; father, Edward; sisters Arielle, Donna and Randi Zuckerberg.

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8:30 a.m.

NEXT STOP: 1 BILLION

Have a look at how explosively Facebook has grown. According to the company, this is when the site passed milestones for its number of active users, defined as someone who logs on at least once a month:

1 million — End of 2004.

5.5 million — End of 2005.

12 million — End of 2006.

20 million — April 2007.

50 million — October 2007.

100 million — August 2008.

150 million — January 2009.

175 million — February 2009.

200 million — April 2009.

250 million — July 2009.

300 million — September 2009.

350 million — End of 2009.

400 million — February 2010.

500 million — July 2010.

608 million — End of 2010.

750 million — July 2011.

800 million — September 2011.

845 million — End of 2011.

901 million — March 2012.

___

HEDGE FUND VIEW: HE’S IN

Andrew Schneider, a hedge fund adviser and CEO of San Francisco-based Schneider Family Office, was busy selling shares of Apple and LinkedIn on Thursday to free up cash for buying Facebook.

He planned to spend at least $20 million, or 8 percent of his firm’s liquid assets.

“You’ve got 900 million users, and you’ve got real solid revenue, and the company is earning money,” Schneider said.

He’s not concerned about plowing such a large proportion into one company: “We feel very strongly and very comfortably about this.” Nor is he rattled by General Motors’ announcement that it would stop buying display ads on Facebook. He calls that “a very, very small amount.”

Schneider pointed out that there were naysayers when Google went public in 2004, priced at $85 a share. It closed Thursday at $630.

“A lot of people went on the short side of Google when it opened,” said Schneider, who is also CEO of Global Hedge Fund Advisors. “And boy, were they wrong.”

—Christina Rexrode, AP Business Writer

___

HEDGE FUND VIEW: STEERING CLEAR

Whitney Tilson said that his hedge fund, T2 Partners, avoids newly public companies as a rule because companies tend to go public only when things are going well.

T2 Partners prefers to look for battered stocks that it can scoop up cheaply. It bought more stock in JCPenney this week. Tilson admits, though, that avoiding initial public offerings doesn’t always work. Google, he says, “turned out to be a great deal.”

Tilson said he expects Facebook’s stock will rise over the long term. Facebook, he says, “does look and smell a lot like Google.”

— Christina Rexrode, AP Business Writer

___

INSTEAD OF A RED CARPET, RED INK

Facebook isn’t getting much of a welcome to the neighborhood.

Thursday was one of the worst days of the year for stocks. The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 156 points and has fallen 11 of the past 12 days, mostly because investors are nervous about turmoil in debt-burdened Greece.

The Nasdaq composite, representing the stock exchange where Facebook will trade, fell 2 percent on Thursday. The composite was up almost 20 percent for the year at the end of March, but that gain has withered to 8 percent.

— Erin McClam, Financial Markets Editor

Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/facebook-ipo-live-social-network-goes-public-123137118--finance.html

Avaya and IDG Debut the CIO Collaboration Network

FRAMINGHAM, Mass.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–

To provide an online destination for content and discussion related to
business collaboration and communications, The CIO
Collaboration Network is a destination for IT executives who can
access content, share views, collaborate, and network with peers based
on topics developed by the community manager and CIO Collaboration
Network members. The site—which features specially produced articles,
multimedia content, and commentary by the manager and members—also
includes content from around the web. Forrester and The Harvard Business
Review will produce content for the site that will appear along with
articles from CIO
and Network
World.

The CIO Collaboration Network is a forum that brings to life Avaya’s
tagline -“The Power of We”- by bringing together a community of IT
executives with the right information and context for them to make
better business decisions.

Earned, Paid, and Owned Media
With referrals from the CIO
Executive Council—a community of strategic thought leaders who are
passionate about driving the evolution of the IT profession—IT
executives will be interviewed along with Avaya subject matter experts.
The interviews will be conducted via the Internet with Avaya’s One
Touch Video product as part of the technology marketing program.

Among the key topics are video, business, and mobile collaboration. To
share discussion on those topics and primary research conducted on the
CIO Collaboration Network, IDG will produce CIO Community Pulse guides.
The research findings will also be detailed in Research Briefs. To aid
Avaya sales professionals, IDG will create a summary of content in the
site and provide tips on how Avaya sales can use the CIO Collaboration
Network with their prospects and clients.

“The CIO Collaboration Network combines the power of earned, paid, and
owned media,” said Ozzie Solares, senior manager, Global Brand
Management, Avaya. “The information and social networking are a focal
point for education and collaboration among peers: The Power of We.”

IDG’s Community Works at the Core of Avaya Network
IDG
Community Works services produce “a social web activation” plan built
around content and a dedicated community manager. Program components for
the Avaya-sponsored, March-September 2012 CIO Collaboration Network,
include: recruit bloggers to post articles related to site themes;
establish Community Threading in several appropriate online communities
to provide relevant content and tweets to draw visitors to www.ciocollaborationnetwork.com;
and, connect the site to social networks such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and
YouTube.

“The Avaya Community is one of the most comprehensive examples of
Community Works,” said Charles Lee, senior vice president, Strategic
Programs and Custom Solutions, IDG Strategic Marketing Services and IDG
Enterprise, Strategic Content Services. “The production of multimedia
content valued by IT buyers and prospects tied to extensive social
outreach and curation and interaction is a powerful combination for B2B
IT marketers.”

The community manager is Dave
Michels who is an established commentator in the enterprise
communications industry. Avaya
is a global provider of business collaboration and communications
solutions, providing unified communications, contact centers, networking
and related services to companies of all sizes around the world.

Promotion and Metrics
A range of social outreach including
Community Threading, influential bloggers, and executive IT moderators
and contributors will attract visitors to the site. IDG will also
promote the CIO Collaboration Network on CIO.com.

To highlight information of interest, a weekly newsletter will be sent
to members who complete a brief registration form.

The six month program that supports Avaya’s technology marketing
campaign “Power of We” will be measured by share of conversation around
topics, social engagement, number of registrations, and site data such
as page views per visit, visit duration, and repeat visits.

About International Data Group
International
Data Group (IDG) is the world’s leading technology media, events and
research company. IDG’s media brands – including CIO®, CSO®,
Computerworld®, GamePro®, InfoWorld®, Macworld®, Network World®,
PCWorld® and TechWorld® – reach an audience of more than 280 million
technology buyers in 97 countries.

Online, IDG’s network features more than 460 websites spanning business
technology, consumer technology, digital entertainment, and video games
worldwide. The IDG TechNetwork represents more than 460 independent
websites in an ad network complementary to IDG’s media brands. IDG® is
also a leading producer of more than 700 technology-related events,
including Macworld | iWorld, E3 Expo, DEMO®, SNW™, and IDC Directions®.

IDG’s marketing services include lead generation with IDG Connect®,
custom publishing, social web marketing with IDG Amplify® ads and IDG
Social Scout™ analysis and program development, and IDG Market Fusion™
research and content optimization.

IDC®, a subsidiary of IDG, is the premier global provider of market
intelligence; advisory services; and events in IT, telecommunications,
and consumer technology markets. Over 1,000 IDC analysts in more than
110 countries provide global, regional, and local expertise on
technology and industry opportunities and trends.

Additional information about IDG, a privately held company, is available
at http://www.idg.com.

Trademarks and registered trademarks are owned by International Data
Group, Inc. All product and company names are trademarks of their
respective companies.

Article source: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/avaya-idg-debut-cio-collaboration-184900177.html

Facebook and the Limits of the Network Effect

By the conventional understanding of the network effect, which states a service is as valuable as the number of people using it, Facebook can only benefit, right? The social network has 845 million users logging on to the site multiple times a day and only has plans to get bigger as it just went public this morning and needs to keep growing to prove its value. But, in Facebook’s case, as the site grows and its network gets bigger, it will also get more annoying and less useful. Facebook’s network effect isn’t exponential, it’s more of a curve, that will, at some point, start its downhill trajectory.

RELATED: Is Facebook Turning Us Into Lonely Robots? Or Worse?

The essence of a social network is that it connects one person to another person. That’s its value for regular people. And, Facebook’s mission is to do just that, “the make the world more open and connected,” as it describes in its S1 filing on that glowing web of connectivity over there. More connected means getting more people on the network. It also means getting them to share more things on the network. (Think: Open Graph.) For Facebook users, finding more and better ways to connect with friends or “friends” is the reason we use Facebook. That’s the network effect in action. If none of our friends were on Facebook, for whom would we post those memes and vacations photos? We wouldn’t. And the theory goes: the more people on there too share various things with, the more useful the product. 

RELATED: How Facebook’s ‘Like’ Button Is Taking Over the Internet

Facebook has succeeded at its mission. The site has millions of users and has shown steady growth since its inception. (See: Graphs below, from the S1.) And with its new Open Graph strategy, our sharing extends beyond photos and status updates to “verbs.” So we are more connected in more ways with more people. But, that mission is flawed, if Facebook wants to provide a useful service. Making our worlds more connected only makes the service less useful. As it grows, Facebook connects us with people we don’t want to be connected with all the time. Sometimes our friends turn into “friends” over time and we end up sharing things with this network that we don’t really care about.One could limit their Facebook network to a select group of friends — sans “friends” — but at this point, not accepting a Facebook friendship is a social faux pas. Plus, whose mother hasn’t guilted them into accepting a Facebook friendship? (This must be a trend if there was a Modern Family story line about it.)

RELATED: Facebook’s Middle East Censorship Problem

RELATED: Prius Drivers Will Get Their Own Social Network

And, as Facebook inspires more sharing of more things we do, we have even more opportunities to share things we don’t want with certain groups of people. Sure, one can limit privacy controls. But, how much can we or do we want to micromanage our sharing? At some point it will feel easier to split our social lives on different networks with different friends. Instagram for that set; Path for that other one. And Facebook will have gotten so bloated we won’t want to hang out there at all.

RELATED: Boston Venture Capitalists Ponder the Facebook Billions They Missed

This migration might come naturally, but Facebook’s business plans almost ensure the site will become an unpleasant Internet space. Facebook’s business pitch relies on a growing audience. From the S1: “Reach. Facebook offers the ability to reach a vast consumer audience of over 800 million MAUs with a single advertising purchase.” Facebook sells itself as the Super Bowl of Internet sites: All the eyes are here. The more eyes the better (for businesses) and, worse for users. So it must grow. But it also needs to get better at selling these eye-balls. Facebook earned an average of $1.21 per Facebooker each quarter, Google earned $7.14. To make more money off of each user — and stop losing advertisers — it needs a more convincing advertising model, which probably means a more annoying user experience. Because who likes anything ad related? (Not even Mark Zuckerberg!)

Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/facebook-limits-network-effect-202053919.html

Commentary: 'Challenge Network'

WASHINGTON, May 17 (UPI) — The British-led Challenge Network attracts thinkers about the future, companies geared to 2020-40 and former government leaders with future scenarios based on their experience of muddling through.

On the bridge of Challenge Network is Oliver Sparrow, a former head of planning at Royal Dutch Shell and a former director of Chatham House, Britain’s most prestigious think tank. He put together a set of scenarios for the year 2040 and invited futuristic brains from around the world to react to them.

One of those asked to participate is Richard O’Neill, who heads the Highlands Forum, a one-time Pentagon think tank that has brought together a brain trust of some 500 out-of-the-box thinkers from all forms of human endeavor –from astronauts to spelunkers — and from all sciences.

What the world needs urgently, says O’Neill, “is a number of new institutions and mechanism to cope with easily foreseeable difficulties.” And the Challenge Network explains why this probably won’t happen.

“Emergent economy middle classes will outnumber the entire industrial world population by several times” by 2025, “which will give rise to its own forms of friction.” And “the primary impact will be on those least able to pay or least able to deploy technology.”

“The quality of their lives,” says the Network, “will be diminished by 2025, whatever the ostensible economic growth (and) the result is predictably fractious.”

“The prospect for rapid solidarity among the Asian proletariat is augmented both by information technology and a tradition of solidarity,” it explains, and this could have “momentous consequences (such) as the unionization of China that would then have major impacts on labor and politics in the West.”

Those with “neither mass solidarity nor good prospects may look to other means — the more focused and technologically-aware use of terror,” says the Challenge Network document.

The Network has come up with three scenarios for 2040: Waking Up, Yesterday’s Future and Neglect and Fracture. They explore “two key dimensions.” At the “crudest level, the wealthy world must accept radical curbs on its accustomed behavior and the billions of poor aspirants must submit to a degree of external management and narrower horizons.”

Their “negotiating strength, which their demographic and economic numbers imply, and the moral high ground that they occupy in negotiation, imply that the rich, powerful world has to cede the most.”

Yesterday’s Future is “a long twilight period in which 9 billion people learn to live together, doing so under more and more pervasive transnational control of the choices that are open to individual lives. People in the poor nations have few bright horizons, middle-income lives are bound up with restrictions on mobility, energy use; middle-income lives are bound up with restrictions on mobility, energy use; the rich world is preoccupied with maintaining stability around growing demand and static or costly resources.”

The Yesterday’s Future world is “of course dotted with locations and situations where negative forces have taken over … dominated by populist voices that deny the need for change and the right of others to impose their views.”

If the protection of local interests prevails — “natural status, commerce, employment” — a large part of the world “will drift into the probably irresolvable world of NF” — “Neglect and Fracture.”

This translates into a world “dominated by short-term accommodations, increasingly erratic supply costs and sharp economic discontinuities.”

“The poor world is quickly and finally affected and, in some cases, this drift may turn into a catastrophic and rapid downturn for even richer and more established nations.”

“A significantly NF world,” says the Network, “would skirt an aptly named archetype: Fearsome Chaos.”

The Challenge Network says that Moore’s law extrapolated “gives us a laptop with human level processing power in 2026 and the processing power of the entire human race in about 2030. It is not unlikely, therefore, that what we now see as cellphones and tablets will become aware of the owner’s general situation and able to hold conversations and dispense advice.”

And in 2040, the Network predicts, the world will have something “around 60 times as much deployable science as we have today” and “a commerce that is using tools as distinct from those of today as those of Victorian England.”

On the optimistic side, sensors we are told “can now watch up to 7,000 genes turn on and off in real time.” And next year, the ability to “sequence a human-sized genome for under $1,000.”

There are undoubtedly countless millions — 60 percent of the world’s population is 20 or younger — “whose life will be getting worse in coming years. Higher costs for the poor do not always mean higher wages.”

“A generation in Africa and Central Asia,” predicts the Network, “will be immersed in a culture of blame and hopelessness.”

“Incoherent anger” is the key ingredient in “terror used as a tool by sophisticated and cynical quasi-criminal or would-be dictators.”

The Challenge Network in one of its conclusions says this is a “frightening prospect … that may find considerable resonance in the disaffected of the industrial world.”

Article source: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Analysis/de-Borchgrave/2012/05/17/Commentary-Challenge-Network/UPI-67301337250600/

Network Branded Prepaid Card Association Will Attend Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Field Hearing on Prepaid …

MONTVALE, N.J., May 18, 2012 /PRNewswire/ — The Network Branded Prepaid Card Association (NBPCA) will attend the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s field hearing on prepaid cards in Durham, N.C., May 23, 2012. As the nation’s leading voice on prepaid debit cards, NBPCA will provide research and information to consumers, stakeholders and lawmakers about how prepaid cards work and the valuable role they play in helping individuals manage their personal finances. More and more Americans, particularly young adults of Generation Y, are seeking financial tools that fit their lifestyle, giving them choices to access their money in safe, innovative ways beyond brick and mortar banks.

Members of the NBPCA also will join the association in Durham and provide testimony to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The event is open to the public.

Prepaid cards are an extremely popular and rapidly growing segment of financial services. Studies show that the top reasons consumers choose prepaid cards over other financial services options are that the cards allow them to budget, control spending and save money. In November 2011 the Pew Health Group’s Financial Security Portfolio conducted focus groups of consumers and found most participants preferred using prepaid cards over checking accounts because card providers “were up front about their fees and cost for the services.” They said they preferred paying the $2 or $3 card fees to avoid hidden bank fees and “the potential of a $35 overdraft fee on their checking accounts.”

The National Foundation for Consumer Credit Counseling (NFCC) 2012 Financial Literacy Survey included consumer responses related to prepaid debit cards for the first time in its history. The study revealed 13%, or about 30.5 million Americans, typically use prepaid debit cards to pay for everyday transactions such as groceries, gas, dining out, paying bills and shopping online.  It also found that 73% of card users feel the cards are safer than carrying cash while another 72% use prepaid cards because they keep them from overspending or spending money they don’t have.

Businesses, universities and governments have also found that prepaid cards reduce their overall costs – especially when compared to making routine payments by check or cash. Providing payments in a prepaid card form is not only more secure than checks or cash, but is less expensive to manage, providing savings and benefits across the board. 

Issued by highly regulated banks, general purpose reloadable prepaid cards offer a variety of consumer protections including FDIC insurance on a pass-through basis and the card brand’s zero liability protections against lost, stolen or fraudulent charges. Additionally, the majority of general purpose reloadable card issuers voluntarily provide Regulation E protections that apply to payroll cards. 

About the NBPCA
The Network Branded Prepaid Card Association (NBPCA) is a non-profit, inter-industry trade association that seeks to educate, advocate, protect and promote on behalf of network branded prepaid debit cards and represents the common interests of the many types of companies who come together to deliver the wide variety of prepaid products. For additional information, visit www.NBPCA.org.

Article source: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/network-branded-prepaid-card-association-120000284.html

Kenya ready to roll out $500 mln 4G network by 2013

NAIROBI (Reuters) – Kenya aims to roll out a high-speed fourth-generation (4G) mobile data services network by 2013, at an estimated cost of $500 million, to meet growing demand for wireless access to the internet in east Africa’s largest economy.

Bitange Ndemo, permanent secretary at the ministry of information and communication, told Reuters that all Kenyan mobile phone firms had signed up to the new project and it was now awaiting approval from the ministry of finance.

“We need to have it (the network) before the next elections (due in March 2013). That is what we are targeting,” he said late Thursday on the sidelines of a U.S.-Kenya conference on infrastructure projects.

So-called 4G LTE (long term evolution) networks promise download speeds more than five times those of 3G and are designed for data, rather than voice, as well as supporting high-definition video conferencing.

Data is seen as a major growth area in the telecoms sector, prompting firms to invest heavily to offset the impact of falling voice revenues on the back of a price war.

At present, Safaricom, 40 percent owned by Britain’s Vodafone, is the only network in Kenya to have fully rolled out a 3G network across the country and is already testing the LTE technology at five sites.

Other firms with 3G licences are Telkom Kenya, controlled by France Telecom’s Orange, and the Kenyan unit of India’s Bharti Airtel. Both Orange and Airtel are in the process of rolling out 3G networks countrywide.

The first phase would involve rolling out the 4G network to the country’s 47 counties at a cost of $100 million, a figure that would rise further in the next phase that would see the new service connected to the entire country’s network.

“We have finished with the study. We have sent it to the Ministry of Finance. we are just waiting for the approval and then we hit the road,” Ndemo said.

“Phase one… we will go to the counties, and leveraging on the existing base stations, but by the time we cover everywhere it would be even up to $500 million,” he said.

DATA HUNGRY

Mobile carriers worldwide are increasingly upgrading to LTE networks that support high-speed wireless services as consumers use tablet computers and smartphones to surf the web.

In September, the ministry said potential investors should have at least a 20 percent Kenyan shareholding and the financial and technical capability to roll out commercial services to the country’s 47 counties within a year of forming a partnership with the government.

Mobile phone users in the country of 40 million people grew by 12.5 percent to 28.1 million in the last quarter of 2011.

Internet users nearly doubled to 17.4 million in the period, thanks to an increase in mobile phone subscriptions, the industry regulator said.

Safaricom said it was looking to increase performance of its data segment through increased investments in fibre during the release of its 2011 results last week.

Ndemo said once the 4G project got a green light, it would take six to seven months to be rolled-out countywide. The government’s plan is to give the 4G spectrum to operators, and for the companies to fund network deployment.

The second phase of the project would involve connecting all the country’s mobile phone base stations to fibre optic cable. In addition to the mobile operators, data network operators and equipment suppliers would take part in the project.

“It’s an open access model. We can’t set it (the special purpose vehicle for delivering the project) up until we get the approval from Treasury. They can take one month, or two months. But it’s going to be very soon,” Ndemo said.

Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/kenya-ready-roll-500-mln-4g-network-2013-082904536--finance.html

Big Ten network cuts academics, citing low ratings

The Big Ten cable network has been an unchallenged success promoting conference sports to a national audience and making money for its members. The academic programming its leaders had promised hasn’t panned out.

When the Big Ten Network launched in 2007, officials said it would promote the scholarly work done at its 11 schools. The network, Commissioner Jim Delany said, would broadcast up to 60 hours of non-sports programming from each school every year, providing ”the ability to highlight academic achievement throughout the universities.”

Five years later, the network is running less academic coverage than ever as it generates tens of millions in revenue for the conference and boasts of 51 million subscribers. Citing low ratings and poor production quality, the network and university presidents agreed to slash academic programming and emphasize quality and ratings over quantity.

That means more time to air revenue-generating sports such as football, even in the offseason. Ratings are up. The network also said it has followed through on its promise of covering an equal amount of men’s and women’s live events, shows everything from lacrosse to softball, and has given nearly 300 students experience in sports television production.

League officials say the 660-hours goal turned out to be impractical. A show about one university alienated other viewers, and universities had varying levels of video capability.

”Most of them didn’t have the resources to produce the shows. It was always set up to be at their cost, not the network’s,” Delany said. ”We were willing to give the time, but the universities had to create the shows. When we came up with the number of hours, we didn’t know what the schools were capable of producing.”

”There’s fewer hours now, but the ratings are better and the production value is much better – top-notch, in fact.”

The change, though, is a disappointment to some of the people who produced non-sports documentaries.

”I think they should hold true to what their mission was when they set out, which was to give a voice to all these campuses and allow us to tell our own stories,” said Alison Davis Wood, an Illinois producer who had a hand in producing programs on figures such as Nobel Prize-winning professor John Bardeen.

For three years, Kecia Lynn hosted a program produced by the University of Iowa on the network where she interviewed authors such as Michael Cunningham (“The Hours”) and others associated with the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She said she was told last year the show was cancelled.

”I understand the Big Ten network and that there is a lot of revenue generated by having this. At the same time, when you look at Iowa specifically and the literary reputation here, it’s a missed opportunity,” she said. ”My show reached out to people who didn’t know about this aspect of the university.”

Penn State, which had been among the most prolific at producing shows, has cut programming by 95 percent, a spokesman said.

Mark Silverman, president of the renamed BTN, said it was clear the initial plan wasn’t working after just a year.

”We were getting 20 hours from one school and none from others,” he said, adding that production quality on many programs wasn’t good enough to draw and keep viewers. ”It doesn’t matter how much you have on the air if no one’s watching it.”

Non-sports programming proved to be similarly problematic for the Mountain West Conference network. Spokesman Hayne Ellis said only a handful of conference schools ever provided programming and it is now down to a single half-hour show from San Diego State.

The Longhorn Network, the University of Texas partnership with ESPN, has been on for less than a year but plans to air 900 hours of academic programming by the end of those 12 months, ESPN spokeswoman Kerri Potts said. That programming includes commencement ceremonies – broadcast live and then replayed multiple times – and class lectures, neither of which were part of the BTN’s plans.

The Pac-12 Network, set to launch in August, plans to air non-sports programming but isn’t yet sure how much, spokesman Kirk Reynolds said.

The BTN wound up hiring a firm to produce a series, ”Impact the World,” which debuted in January and featured episodes about research at every school. It got higher ratings than prior academic programming, officials said, and a second season is expected later this year.

The network, a joint venture between the league and Fox Sports, paid the Big Ten more than $74 million in 2010, according to its latest tax return. The money made up part of the $20 million in total revenue the conference sent to its member schools under their revenue-sharing agreement.

Overall ratings were up 11 percent this year, said Big Ten network Vice President Elizabeth Conlisk. ”Impact the World” drew several times as many viewers as individual campus programs did, she added, and other features are in the works.

As for Lynn’s program, she said it was Iowa’s decision to cancel the show.

Scott Ketelsen, director of Iowa’s marketing and media production, said viewership ”fell off the table” when such programming was aired, and everyone agreed change was necessary. In the end, he said the network was a business that was pouring cash into school programs. He has hired two campus videographers with money from BTN.

”You can make both sides of the argument as far as the type of programming that should be viewed on there and I understand that,” he said. ”But in this day of tight budgets and purse strings being pulled tight, something like BTN being successful and infusing money back into the universities is huge.”

–

Mercer reported from Champaign, Ill. AP Sports Writer Larry Lage contributed to this report.

Article source: http://sports.yahoo.com/news/big-ten-network-cuts-academics-201840419--ten.html

Media Decoder Blog: CW Network Unveils a Remake of Its Schedule

The CW network announced on Thursday a complete remake of its weekly schedule, with new dramas on three nights and new time slots for several returning series, including “90210″ and “America’s Next Top Model.”

The only hour that’s not changing is the 8 p.m. hour on Thursday, where “The Vampire Diaries” will remain in the fall. Every other hour will have something new in the fall, beginning with Mondays at 8 p.m., where “90210″ will lead into the sixth and final season of “Gossip Girl.”

The TV season traditionally starts in September, but the CW will wait until early October to start the new seasons of its shows. This may help the network reduce the number of repeats and interruptions later in the season.

The schedule shakeup “signified change,” Mark Pedowitz, president of CW, said in response to a question from a reporter after the upfront presentation, “and change here is very important.”

“This year is a year of transformation,” he said. “It’ll be a process.”

Some programs that had long been on the CW schedule “were beginning to show their age,” Mr. Pedowitz said, so executives turned to new programming.

A new drama, “Emily Owens, M.D.,” about a surgical intern at a hospital that feels more like a high school, will be shown on Tuesdays at 9 p.m., following the returning series “Hart of Dixie.” Another new drama, “Arrow,” based on the DC Comics franchise Green Arrow, will be shown Wednesdays at 8 p.m., leading into “Supernatural” at 9 p.m. Thursdays, too, will feature a new series, “Beauty and the Beast;” it will be shown at 9 p.m., following “The Vampire Diaries.”

“America’s Next Top Model,” which had been shown on Wednesdays, will move to Fridays at 8 p.m., displacing “Nikita,” which will move to 9 p.m. In addition to new time slot, there will be “an all-new cast of judges and experts,” Mr. Pedowitz said. And for the first time the audience will get to vote for winners.

The CW will hold back two dramas for midseason. One of them, “The Carrie Diaries,” already has a tentative time slot: Mondays at 9 p.m., succeeding “Gossip Girl” after that series ends. The other, “Cult,” does not yet have a time slot.

CW executives also announced that they would start CW Digital, an internal studio devoted to producing short video content like Web series that will appear online, in venues that include the network’s’ Web site, and on its Facebook fan page.

The initial four offerings from CW Digital will include “Stupid Hype,” a Web series that will be created by, and feature, Wilson Bethel, a cast member of “Hart of Dixie.” Other Web series will include an animated show, “Gallery Girls,” and another, “Fandemonium,” that will combine a game show and a reality competition show and incorporate social media like Facebook and Pinterest.

Mr. Pedowitz, speaking to reporters, said that one of the four CW Digital productions “has a true potential” to be considered as a series for television, but declined to say which one.

Article source: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/17/cw-network-unveils-a-remake-of-its-schedule/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Struggling CW network offers big schedule revamp

NEW YORK (AP) — The young CW network is hoping to turn around a year of disappointing ratings by making changes this fall on each of the five nights it broadcasts.

The network said Thursday that its new series include a modern take on “Beauty and the Beast,” an action drama “Arrow” based on comic book characters and “The Carrie Diaries,” a prequel to “Sex and the City” about Carrie Bradshaw‘s life in the 1980s.

“The Carrie Diaries” begins on Monday nights in January after the final season of “Gossip Girl” finishes.

The Nielsen Co. says the CW saw its ratings slip by 17 percent this season and 20 percent among the young women who make up its target audience.

Its executives reacted with a dramatic schedule shuffle. It will move the soapy “90210″ from Tuesdays to Monday at 8 p.m. ET. The sophomore drama “Hart of Dixie” switches from Monday to Tuesday, preceding a new series, “Emily, Owens, M.D.,” about a young doctor who finds her hospital much like high school.

“Arrow” will air on Wednesdays, followed by the returning drama “Supernatural,” which moves from Friday nights.

“The Vampire Diaries” remains on Thursday, followed by the new “Beauty and the Beast,” where a female detective finds a handsome doctor who’s a beast in his spare time.

“America’s Next Top Model” moves to Friday nights, joining the drama “Nikita.”

The CW, a joint venture of CBS Corp. and Time Warner Inc.’s Warner Bros. unit, does not program for the weekends. The network says it is moving toward less serial programming, emphasizing series where viewers don’t feel they’ve lost the story line if they miss a week or two.

Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/struggling-cw-network-offers-big-schedule-revamp-141209484.html

Dish: FCC timeline for wireless network unrealistic

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Dish Network Corp told U.S. communications regulators on Thursday that their proposed timetable for Dish’s planned wireless network was unrealistic and carried too harsh a penalty for failing to meet requirements.

The second-largest satellite TV provider in the United States proposed that it have four years to reach an initial milestone, instead of the three years proposed by the Federal Communications Commission.

That initial phase would reach 60 million people under the Dish proposal, rather than the 30 percent of the U.S. population that the FCC proposed, roughly 90 million people.

Dish also urged the FCC to adopt more flexible sanctions for failing to meet buildout milestones, “rather than requiring a draconian outcome such as automatic license termination,” the company said in a filing with the regulator.

Dish is seeking to diversify its business beyond pay TV. The company spent more than $3 billion last year to buy spectrum from DBSD and TerreStar.

The FCC in March approved Dish’s license to acquire the spectrum, but denied the company’s request for a waiver to allow it to build a terrestrial wireless network.

Instead the agency opted to initiate a rule-making process, proposing a path for making the satellite airwaves that Dish acquired available for mobile broadband use.

“We’re optimistic that the FCC can complete its rulemaking by the end of the summer,” said Tom Cullen, Dish’s executive vice president.

Dish argued in its comments to the FCC that the buildout requirements and penalties in the proposed rulemaking were more stringent than rules adopted for all other terrestrial services.

Spectrum licensed to Deutsche Telekom AG’s T-Mobile USA has a 15-year buildout term, and Verizon Wireless and ATT Inc each have 10 years to cover 75 percent of the population using certain airwaves that they hold, Dish said.

Verizon Wireless is a joint venture of Verizon Communications Inc and Vodafone Group Plc .

The current FCC proposal would require Dish to deploy service to 70 percent of the population within seven years.

Dish said that it understood the agency’s urgency to make additional airwaves available and could agree to an aggressive seven-year buildout if certain adjustments were made.

“We’re prepared to help meet the challenge as soon as reasonable modifications to the rules are approved,” Cullen said in a statement.

The company argued that its revised seven-year plan would give it time to build and test the network, upgrade service and billing systems and find partners to develop chipsets and devices to run on the network.

Instead of automatic license termination as a penalty, the company advocated for case-by-case consideration of enforcement action such as monetary penalties.

Dish said it is prepared to spend billions of dollars to deploy a cellular network utilizing Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology, bringing another competitor to the wireless market.

(Reporting By Jasmin Melvin; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)

Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/dish-fcc-timeline-wireless-network-unrealistic-170601925--sector.html