Stock Markets

Hepcat Michael Wolff: Facebook is 'Square'

When you're trying to decide what's hip and what's square, there's really only one place to look: Michael Wolff writing in USA Today. Wolff is a serial Internet failure who is nevertheless a highly successful self-promoter. The two don't go together at all, especially considering that he promotes h ... More >>

Yes, We Can Blame Facebook and its CFO for Stock Debacle

It's easy, and to a large degree proper, to blame the people who bought into Facebook's dog of an IPO for their own losses. It was no secret that the company's prospects were highly uncertain. But that doesn't mean that others can't be blamed as well, or that investors are the only ones hurt by the ... More >>

Investing in Buzz Is a Loser's Game

There will likely never again be anything quite like the dotcom boom-and-bust of the late '90s. But that doesn't mean that everybody learned their lesson about investing in companies with questionable business models -- or at least in those with outsized expectations for growth. It only means that t ... More >>

Facebook's Swoon a Symptom of Wall Street's Sickness

Facebook's newly issued shares lost 11 percent of their value on Monday, their first full day of public trading after Friday's snafu-filled IPO. That's a loss of $11.5 billion. Tuesday, the fall continued, taking the stock down another 3 percent. Too many shares were issued at too high a price by an ... More >>

Sorry, Twitter, if You're in the Media Business, You're a Media Company

​Given how Silicon Valley moguls flee from the term "media company," you'd almost think it was as bad as "child-porn merchant." But whether they like it or not, companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter are media companies. They don't have precisely the same business models as News Corp., Disne ... More >>

GoDaddy's Wall-to-Wall Awfulness

​Every time GoDaddy makes the news, as it has over the past week by supporting the widely reviled Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA), the question naturally arises: Waitaminute, this is a domain registrar, right? Right. GoDaddy is in perhaps the dullest business this side of term life insurance, and ... More >>

Zynga Pressures Employees to Give Back Stock Ahead of IPO

Mark Pincus​Social-gaming company Zynga, along with a handful of other large tech businesses, was successful earlier this year in getting the city of San Francisco to forgo its share of tax revenue on the firm's stock options. Now it appears that wasn't enough: Zynga CEO Mark Pincus has reportedly ... More >>

Groupon's Big Bowl of Problems

​Groupon, it appears, means to get rich or die tryin'. On Friday, it updated a regulatory filing indicating that it is scaling back its IPO plans. Less than five months ago, when it first filed, the company said it planned to raise about $750 million. Now that's been reduced to $540 million. The e ... More >>

How Google Ended the 'Browser Wars'

​Today is the 16th anniversary of Netscape's initial public offering. It occurs to me that many of you might be only vaguely aware of Netscape, and of what it meant to us in the mid-'90s. That's because many of you were toddlers, or perhaps not even born yet. That's depressing and mindblowing ... More >>

Pandora Goes Public for $3 Billion. Happy Face?

Ninety million users, zero profits.​First, a word of congratulations to Pandora, the Oakland-based Internet radio service whose initial public stock offering today resulted in a nearly $235 million windfall to its investors. The company is now valued at $3 billion. You can buy its stock on the New ... More >>

Unpacking Pandora's 'Risk Factors'

​Every time a company offers stock to the public, it must submit a form called an S-1 to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The form must provide a prospectus, which includes financial information as well as the risks potential investors would face in buying shares. Because lawyers and accoun ... More >>

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