Facebook Home Means You'll Never Check Facebook Again (It'll Check You)

At a press conference Thursday, Facebook unveiled Home, a new smartphone software design it cryptically said “isn't a phone or operating system,” but is “more than just an app” and will deliver a "completely new experience."

That "new experience" doesn’t stop at the phone’s screen. What Home seeks to deliver is not only a Facebook environment for our phones, but also a Facebook environment for our lives.

With Home, Facebook has crossed the line between something people check -- that they have control over, and deploy according to their wishes and needs -- to become something that’s always on, checking in with us, fighting for attention, waving people we know in our face. Rather than a tool we use to talk to others, the phone, thanks to Facebook, has become something that communicates to us. And it’s Facebook that gets to do the talking.

Home, which will be available for download on a handful of smartphones next week, is essentially a Facebook-ified version of Google’s Android operating system, modified by Facebook engineers to place the social network at its core. A flow of updates from the News Feed will be the first thing people see when they turn on their phones -- the newly named “cover feed,” a slideshow of friends’ photos and status updates, will take over the phone’s primary screen, though users can swipe past to access other applications. Home also touts “chat heads,” a feature that brings together texting and messaging, replaces names with Facebook photos and lets users message within any application. Ads will be on their way to the cover feed soon, Facebook conceded. And though the social network didn’t say as much, technology observers, such as Om Malik, have pointed out that Home will let Facebook scoop up even more personal information about everything from our locations to our calls.

How To Get 100,000 Facebook Likes For Your Blog Fan Page

Editor’s note: James Altucher is an investor, programmer, author, and entrepreneur. He is Managing Director of Formula Capital and has written ten books. His latest books are I Was Blind But Now I See and 40 Alternatives to College. You can follow him on Twitter @jaltucher.

I wanted to have 100,000 Facebook fans for my blog. I don’t have a product to sell. I’m not trying to get advertisers on my blog. I’m not even trying to get more speaking gigs because of my blog. But I believe in the message of my blog and I enjoy having an audience for it. So I wanted to expand that audience.

We have entered the “Choose Yourself” era.No longer do you have to wait for the big media companies to reach down from the heavens and bless you with a column, a book advance, a TV show, a job, a career, money, or even customers. In 2008 the tide came in, the financial system collapsed, and we saw that the myth of corporate safety was just another example of the brainwashing that we had undergone since we were kids.

[See also: "Self-publishing your own book is the new business card"]

Now, if you want to spread the truths of your brand, of your ideas, of your products, of your message, you have to create your own platform, you have to spread it across all media, and then you have to manage each medium differently. I can’t just link my blog posts on Facebook. Or tweet links to my posts on Twitter. Your message has to be spread across the entire digital landscape and treat each medium as its own channel, with your message, formatted, designed, and massaged to have the greatest impact in that particular channel.

Top Facebook Exec Bret Taylor Leaving To Do His Own Thing, More Departures Could Follow

And so it begins: Facebook CTO and platform guru Bret Taylor is leaving Facebook this summer, Kara Swisher is reporting, off to do a startup with Google App Engine founder Kevin Gibbs. Taylor confirmed the news in (of course) a Facebook update.

This is one of the first in a wave of Facebook departures we’re hearing, as a slew of older employees have hit their four year stock cliffs, and the 90 day IPO lockout fast approaches. According to a source, many Facebook employees including one other executive are already planning what to do next.

It makes sense. With the stock price low, additional RSUs granted to keep people sticking around won’t be nearly as good a retention mechanism.

I’ve also been hearing separately that due to the IPO fallout, Facebook is currently under a modified hiring freeze, with groups that were previously allotted slots for senior-level positions having had those slots reneged. Lower level deals and hires are still happening from what I’m hearing.

So is this a harbinger of a hiring sea change? Facebook has had a monopoly on the best and brightest engineering talent for the past couple of years and it’ll shake the Valley to its core if this is indeed the case.

Well, if the founder life isn’t for you future Facebook refugee, we hear Pinterest is hiring.

Facebook Investors Are Bitter, Ponder Next Move

-- To say that Facebook's debut as a public company was bungled is something like saying Facebook is a website you might have heard of.

Either way, a colossal understatement.

The response from small-time investors has been equal parts frustration, confusion and bitterness. Fed up, some are dumping their shares and accepting the losses. Others, while miffed, are holding on and hoping to ride the stock's eventual success.

Some blame themselves for embracing the hype over a company whose underlying value likely didn't merit the price at which it went public. But many accuse Facebook and its underwriting banks of setting the price too high and for trying to sell too many shares.

Others are pointing fingers at the Nasdaq stock market for botching buy and sell orders on opening day. Or they're angry over brokers who pushed them to buy.

And others are irked over reports that Morgan Stanley, which guided Facebook through its public debut, told only some select clients of an analyst's negative report about Facebook before its stock began trading May 18.

Michael Hines had felt uneasy about Facebook. He thought the shares were priced too high, and the excitement overblown – especially once the company raised its target price for the opening two days beforehand. Yet when the chance arose to buy into the company's $38-a-share initial public offering, he seized it.

"I figured: Nothing ventured, nothing gained," said Hines, 61, a retiree and private investor in Boston.

Now, he wishes he'd listened to his misgivings. Instead, Hines watched with dismay as the stock languished on its first day, then slid on its second. On Tuesday, determined to unburden himself of a nagging headache, he sold his shares at $32.76, taking a loss on his investment. He declined to say how many shares he'd bought.

Meet The Woman Who Manages Mark Zuckerberg's Life

Quora

No list of the most important women at Facebook is complete without reference of Anikka Fragodt, executive assistant to the CEO of Facebook.

In one online forum, Pedram Keyani, a top engineering manager at Facebook, says Fragodt is one of the most influential women at Facebook.

While Zuckerberg is tucked away in his office (or somewhere on Facebook's campus) coding and developing Facebook's products, Fragodt makes sure the rest of his life runs smoothly. That's a big responsibility — managing one of the most important CEOs and entrepreneurs in history.

So, who is Fragodt? 

She's been an assistant and coordinator for a long time.

According to her LinkedIn profile, she's been doing this since 1987. (Yes, that's around the time that Zuckerberg was finally getting out of diapers.)

Fragodt joined Facebook in 2006, around the time that Facebook had 6 million users. She's been Zuckerberg's assistant for about six years, according to her profile.

She's a native San Francisco resident, where she was born, and a fan of Girl Talk according to her Facebook profile. (She's also friends with Jim Breyer, an early Facebook investor, on Facebook.)

She's served as a legal assistant and she says on her profile that she's proficient in legal and financial reporting.

One of her LinkedIn recommendations from an earlier job describes her as "a rock that multi-tasks like a dynamo but she can always be counted on to be there when you need her."

Another Facebook employee said she's "highly knowledgeable, professional and helpful. She's a great person to work with."

She appears to be very passionate about her job—she's very prolific on Quora, a question-and-answer site.

She says on Quora that the executive assistant role demands a "jack of all trades type," which is what she seems to be like. Here are some of her responsibilities at Facebook:

• Review, update and manage Mark Zuckerberg's schedule and managing the agenda and logistics of all weekly and monthly global meetings.

• Communicating with customers, prospects, partners and vendors on a daily basis.

• Keeping Zuckerberg's secret communications and documentation secret—and screen his incoming calls and meetings.

• Organizing and managing his travel arrangements.

• Helping plan conferences and events.

Fragodt is described as Zuckerberg's "trusted personal assistant" in The Facebook Effect, one of the best pieces of literature covering Facebook.

It's pretty clear among everything else that Fragodt is beloved by her peers and is one of those "lynch pins" that holds the team together.

Facebook IPO Furor: Feds Probing Deal Over Insider Bank Warnings

BRENDAN MCDERMID / REUTERS

Monitors show the value of the Facebook, Inc. stock during morning trading at the Nasdaq Marketsite in New York, May 21, 2012.

Facebook’s Wall Street investment banks warned top clients of new doubts about the social network’s financial prospects just days before the company’s IPO, according to a series of reports that emerged Tuesday. After receiving briefings from Facebook executives, analysts at the banks loweredtheir financial forecasts for big institutional clients, some of whom scaled back plans to buy Facebook stock, even as the banks raised the IPO price and number of shares amid a frenzy of hype.

Although Facebook had publicly disclosed mobile advertising challenges, the new revelations raised questions about whether Facebook’s underwriters selectively disclosed information that gave favored clients an unfair advantage over other investors. The revelations, which came as Facebook shares plunged nearly 9% Tuesday, drew immediate scrutiny from federal regulators as well as a subpoena from Massachusetts officials. Now, Facebook has been hit with a shareholder lawsuit for concealing negative information ahead of the offering. Meanwhile, the Nasdaq stock exchange faced a growing chorus of anger — and a class action lawsuit — over its botched handling of the IPO, which has already become the worst-performing three-day start for an offering over $1 billion in the last five years.

Facebook’s highly-vaunted IPO — which was supposed to be a shining moment for the social network, as well as its lead banker Morgan Stanley and the Nasdaq exchange — has morphed into a debacle that’s reinforced some of the worst stereotypes about Wall Street: that corporate executives and their bankers engineer IPOs to maximize profits at the public’s expense; that Wall Street’s own systems have become too complex for its personnel to handle; and that the entire game is a hype-fueled casino, rigged for the house with a sucker played by the average investor.

Facebook Share Price Plunges Again: Valuation Doubts Rise As Social Network's Stock Takes Big Hit

By Suzanne Barlyn and Ryan Vlastelica

(Reuters) - Two top U.S. financial regulators said the issues around the initial public offering of Facebook should be reviewed, putting fresh pressure on the company, its embattled lead underwriter and the Nasdaq.

After Friday's nearly flat close and Monday's 11 percent plunge, Facebook shares closed 8.9 percent lower at $31 on volume of 101 million shares. At that price the company has shed more than $19 billion in market capitalization from its $38-per-share offering price last week.

Investors were still shaking their heads over the botched opening trading of Facebook when Reuters reported late Monday that the consumer Internet analyst at lead underwriter Morgan Stanley cut his revenue forecasts for Facebook in the days before the offering, information that may not have reached many investors before the stock was listed.

JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, which were also underwriters on the deal, each revised their estimates during Facebook's IPO road show as well, according to sources familiar with the situation.

Reuters reported that Morgan Stanley selectively disclosed the change in Facebook estimates, which drew the attention of the main regulator of U.S. brokerages.

"That's a matter of regulatory concern to us and I'm sure to the SEC," said Richard Ketchum, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority's chairman and chief executive. "And without saying whether it's us or the SEC, we will collectively be focusing on it.

A Morgan Stanley spokesman declined to immediately comment on Ketchum's remarks.

Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Schapiro said investors should be confident in investing, but she conceded there were questions to answer as well.

"I think there is a lot of reason to have confidence in our markets and in the integrity of how they operate, but there are issues that we need to look at specifically with respect to Facebook," she told reporters as she exited a Senate Banking Committee hearing.

Inside Job: Facebook I.P.O. Shows System Is Broken

Monday morning’s big fall in Facebook’s stock hardly came as a shocker. It was clear on Friday that, at the offering price of $38 a share, there were more sellers than buyers. The only reason the stock held up was that Morgan Stanley, the lead underwriter on the initial public offering, stepped in and supported it. At the opening of trading this morning, the stock fell $5, to $33, before rebounding a bit. (At 2:30P.M., it was at $34.75.)

That’s bad news for investors who thought their luck was in when they were allocated some Facebook stock. It’s also worrying news for I.P.O.s and the capital markets in general. In fact, a strong argument can be made that Facebook’s shaky start as a public company demonstrates that the entire I.P.O. process, which is supposed to spread the rewards to innovation, is broken. By the time Facebook’s stock started trading on the public market, insiders—the company’s founders, employees, and venture-capitalist backers—had bagged most, if not all, of the company’s value for themselves.

That’s fair enough, you may say. Mark Zuckerberg and some Harvard pals created the company. It was Facebook’s professional managers, such as Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer, and David Ebersman, the chief financial officer, who turned it into a real business. And it was some savvy venture capitalists, such as Jim Breyer of Accel Partners, and David Sze of Greylock Partners, who first spotted its potential. Surely, these are the folks who should be rewarded. (Bono’s investment, which my colleague Virginia Cannon wrote about, also falls into the reasonably early category. In April, 2010, Elevation Partners, a venture-capital firm in which Bono is a partner, paid ninety million dollars for one per cent of Facebook.)