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Facebook is frantically casting around for new sources of revenue, Geoffrey Fowler and Shayndi Raice of the Wall Street Journal report.

One new feature the company is testing is called "Highlight."

Currently live in New Zealand, Highlight allows you to pay up to NZ$2 (~$1.50 US) to be sure that your friends see a post. It's a per-post charge.

(Without this, your post might get pushed down your friends' news feeds before they see it. Or Facebook's algorithms might not put it in your friends' feeds at all.)

This service is similar to the "Reach Generator" feature that the company recently began offering to brands to make sure that most of their "fans" saw their posts.

We understand that social-media posts flow like water and that it's easy for posts to be missed. We also understand that Facebook is eager to generate revenue.

But this idea seems preposterous.

If you want to be certain that your friends see something you have to say, why not just send them an email? Because charging you to ensure that your friends see your posts seems just like Facebook trying to charge you $1.50 per email.

Doesn't it?

We realize email is for dinosaurs (like us). But come on. $1.50 per post? That's 5X more than the cost of a physical letter!

(And imagine how annoying this could be for your friends. Now, they can happily ignore everything you say, and you're none the wiser. With "Highlight," they'll be forced to acknowledge that they saw your post and didn't respond to it!)

Nor is "Highlight" the only revenue-generating feature Facebook is testing or rolling out. There's the App Store clone called App Center. There's the Dropbox clone for filing sharing. And so on.

At Facebook's IPO price, investors are implicitly counting on the company developing vast new revenue streams. And it seems as if Facebook knows that and is trying to provide that.

But we can't imagine paying Facebook $1.50 to deliver a message.

UPDATE: Neowin has some screenshots of Highlight here. The company is apparently testing different price points.

SEE ALSO: Here's Some Inside Information Facebook Bulls Will Love

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Even in this electronic age, even for Facebook, you can still get a paper stock certificate issued.

You covet it, don't you?

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When is Google going to admit the obvious?

Google+, the "social spine" of CEO Larry Page's counterattack on Facebook, is a flop.

That's according to a detailed analysis of user activity by research firm RJ Metrics for Fast Company.

RJ Metrics selected 40,000 Google+ users at random. It then analyzed their public posts.

What they found is that a lot of people start sharing on Google+, then stop. 3 out of 10 made a single public post, then never posted again. Even among people who made five posts, 15 percent had stopped posting.

RJ Metrics said this "decay rate" was disturbing.

Other analysts have found that people spend an average of 3 minutes a month on Google+, versus 7 hours on Facebook.

Now, it's possible that many Google+ users are not posting publicly and are sharing privately instead, as Google+ allows. That's Google's timeworn excuse when asked about Google+ engagement. But Google has refused to give clear statistics about activity on Google+.

"Google is just refusing to answer the question for its own reasons, which is probably because Google+ has far less activity as a standalone social network than either Facebook or Twitter," wrote Google expert Danny Sullivan recently.

Go see the gory details on Fast Company >>

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NEW YORK: Brand owners targeting US mothers could benefit from dividing this audience into segments such as "wallflowers", "mobilisers" and "urban originals", a report has argued. MWW Group, the public relations firm,

SYDNEY: Smartphones are exerting an increasing influence on media and purchase habits in Asia Pacific, new figures show. Google, the online giant and IpsosMediaCT, the research firm, 

NEW YORK: General Electric, the conglomerate, is making greater use of content marketing, leveraging the opportunities provided by digital media to build awareness and directly connect with consumers. Katrina Craigwell, GE's digital marketing...

BEIJING: Overseas companies are significantly outperforming their local counterparts when it comes to successful innovation in China, a study from Nielsen has revealed. The insights provider

BERLIN: A record number of companies utilised mobile advertising to reach consumers in 2011, a trend likely to continue in 2012, a study has revealed. BVDW, the digital industry body,

LONDON: Brand owners such as Innocent, BT and PricewaterhouseCoopers are developing a clear "tone of voice" to improve their communications and enhance customer engagement. Innocent Drinks, the smoothie brand that is part of Coca-Cola's portfolio,...

Hiring is an important stage in every business. At some stage in your business, you will need smart people to complete the business processes. You should devote quality time to hunt for the best if you have to hire your first employees. Once you have found the need for a new role, identify the job description, person specification. If you will be doing the recruitment yourself as founders you should also have your recruitment procedures handy and you should know about employment contracts.

A lot of startups are now considering new ways to hire talent in addition to the usual ways including contracting a third party agency, Offshore Recruitment with the heavy use of the internet. In recent times, startups now also rely on professional referrals, social network recommendations and social media. social media offers recruiting managers and founders a larger applicant pool to work with.Lots of sites have bben created to handle recruitment for small to large businesses.

A lot of startups fall back to their social profiles and reach out to their followers to help me recruit the very best talent. Build your social following, interact and listen and you will find great value in it when the time comes for you to recruit.

Build your own database of contacts to handle the few good ones as you screed further in the process. There are now even tools to help you manage your recruitment with ease. Make prudent use of your resources when hiring. In a perfect  diagram, you can link each of the few candidates selected to the people you know and how they are connected them.

Recruiting for a startup tends to take time and the process is a two-way street because in as much as you expect the your potential employees to impress you and your team, you also have to prove why they should be working with you/why they should choose a startup or an existing corporate enterprise.

You could attract talent to you business or startup by sharing your company culture, values, best practices and what makes you unique with your users, customers or prospective customers. Information about a successful startup are usually shared via blogs, slides, white papers and downloadable materials. Make it easy for people to find you and know about what you stand for.

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2. Why You Should Hire INFECTED People For Your Startup
3. Top 20 Articles On How To Assemble A Startup Team

Wine sale site Lot18, a 100+ person company based in New York, has decided to shut down two verticals which haven't shown strong performances: Gourmet and Experiences.

A spokesperson for the company says the sections combined only contributed 5% to the company's total revenue. Some of the products sold under these sections did perform well, such as glassware, and they'll continue to be sold on Lot18 under other sections.

For now, Gourmet and Experiences will remain on Lot18's navigation bar, but they'll begin shutting down the verticals as soon as next week. The transition will be completed over the summer.

A company-wide announcement was made this afternoon; three employees were let go.

It's been a transitional month for Lot18.  Four executives including Lot18's CMO departed in the last few weeks.

But when you're a startup, you throw a lot at the wall and see what sticks. Lot18 is sufficiently funded with about $50 million from investors, so it won't be going anywhere anytime soon.

"The really important thing is for us to focus on what we're best at," says a company spokesperson who says wine sales continue to remain strong.  

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So much for open defiance against Microsoft. Guise Bule, CEO of TuCloud, has been forced to apologize, reports Ars Technica.

He was ticked off that Microsoft had let a competitor, OnLive, offer a free cloud version of Windows 7 and Microsoft Office to iPad users.

OnLive was violating Microsoft's licensing rules that all the other cloud providers had to live by. 

So he vowed to do the same.

But OnLive didn't really get away with it. Microsoft called them out. And last month, OnLive bent to Microsoft's will and started using the same flavor of Windows that every other Windows cloud desktop provider uses.

At first Bule had planned to go ahead and launch his new service anyway, which promised a cheap version of Windows—daring Microsoft to sue. Not so anymore. He told Ars he was getting ready to apologize.

Bule's site, Desktops On Demand, is still up, though, promising to go live in 7 days.

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Everyone's got an opinion about what Facebook is worth.

But one of the most respected opinions comes from Aswath Damodaran, the legendary NYU finance professor who literally wrote the book on investment valuation.

So, what does he think?

Basically, Damodaran doesn't expected too many fireworks.

Here's an excerpt from his blog:

I don't think that there has ever been an IPO where investment bankers have had more information (from private share market prices to institutional investor feedback) to work with, when pricing the stock, than this one. I would be very surprised, if the stock were overpriced; the bankers and the company have too much too lose. I would be equally surprised if the stock were dramatically under priced; a pop of 50% or even 25% would reflect very badly on the bankers' pricing skills. In short, this is shaping up to be a Goldilocks IPO, at least in the initial hours: a pop of about 10-15% (just right for both the bankers and the company). The question is how long the pop will last. This company is too big and too public to stage manage in the weeks after the IPO. If the pop fades quickly, perhaps even by the end of trading tomorrow, I think it is a very bad sign for the momentum game in all social media stocks.

Damodaran made headlines ago when he dumped Apple after holding the stock for 15 years.  Apple's share price is down 13 percent since he announced his sale.

Read more at Damodaran's Musing on Markets blog.

SEE ALSO: Damodaran Explains How To Invest In Corrupt Companies >

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No need to wait for the IPO. Facebook has already had a massive effect on the San Francisco Bay Area real-estate market.

That's according to San Francisco mortgage banker Julian Hebron, who documented the real-estate boom happening here on his blog, The Basis Point.

But Facebook employees and insiders have been making splashy purchases in the expensive market for years.

(A note: We found many of these homes on Blockshopper, a site which lists recent sales, but we're not linking to them because the posts contain the owners' names and home addresses.)

A senior exec's Menlo Park home

Menlo Park 4BD/3BA, $2.895 million

This top-level executive used to live in Atherton, a leafy suburb favored by venture capitalists and executives at Google, where she used to work. But more recently, she and her family moved to Menlo Park—even closer to Facebook's new headquarters.

Anecdotally, we hear from Facebookers that employees' house-hunting spree has as much to do with the company's relocation from a former HP campus near Stanford in Palo Alto to its new campus on the other side of Highway 101 as the long-awaited IPO.

Facebook engineer's Redwood City home

Redwood City 4BD/2.5BA, $1.86 million

Redwood City is a relatively more affordable alternative to Menlo Park. Plus this place has views of a lake.

Less sought-after neighborhoods in San Francisco and Peninsula and South Bay cities farther away from Facebook's campus aren't seeing the same kind of frenzied activity, but the action is still hot.

A condo in the St. Regis

San Francisco (SoMa) 2BD/2BA, $1.75 million

This former top Facebook executive a got a condo in the St. Regis tower in SoMa. Al Gore is a neighbor.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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Pinterest, the sensational social bookmarking site has raised a whopping $100 million from Japanese e-Commerce Platform Rakuten, at a $1.5 billion valuation today. If you are still new to Pinterst, the social service is a content sharing service that allows members to “pin” images, videos and other objects to their pinboard.

“We see tremendous synergies between Pinterest’s vision and Rakuten’s model for e-commerce. Rakuten looks forward to introducing Pinterest to the Japanese market as well as other markets around the world,” said Rakuten CEO Hiroshi “Micky” Mikitani in a press release.

He further stated that “Initially, the partnership with Rakuten will help support Pinterest’s global expansion,” said Neel Grover, CEO of Rakuten’s Buy.com. “Rakuten’s global investment in e-commerce is illustrated by a presence in 17 countries and regions through 13 group companies. Longer term, there are a number of opportunities for meaningful partnerships between the two companies, as there are tremendous synergies between Pinterest’s vision and our model for e-commerce where both retailers and consumers are more social, interactive and empowered.”

Pinterest had raised about $37.5 million through its Series A, Series B and angel rounds before the latest investment from Rakuten.

Rakuten ranks among the top 10 internet companies in the world. Among its numerous online properties, its flagship B2B2C (business-to-business-to-consumer) model e-commerce site Rakuten Ichiba is the largest e-commerce site in Japan and among the world’s largest by sales.

Related posts:

1. Can Pinterest Sustain The Growth In 2012?
2. This Week In Startup Funding: These 11 Startups Raised Over $100 Million
3. Socialize Around Images with Pinterest

Twitter forged a small number of super-powerful users a few years back when it rolled out its suggested users list. This is a list of recommended users that new sign-ups were presented with. Accounts on that list accumulate many thousands of followers, but a one-size-fits-all approach isn’t always the best. Now Twitter is changing the [...]

MSNBC's Morning Joe is one of the few places on cable news where you can find genuine ideological cross-talk.  It's not surprising then that the program hosted this week University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann and co-author of the new book "The Spirit of Compromise: Why Governing Demands ... Read More

“For its first [physical] pop-up shop, the online design retailer Fab is focusing on color. Until May 22, it is populating the FLOR carpet showroom in SoHo with more than 150 products in brilliant hues.” - Fab Pops Up in FLOR’s SoHo Space - NYTimes.com

Facebook is finally going public tomorrow.

It's priced its shares at $38, which means the company is worth more than $100 billion. It's already worth more than most of the tech companies publicly traded today—combined.

But there's a lot you probably don't know about the company and its founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.

While you wait for it to make its trading debut, we've assembled a list of a bunch of facts about the company and its CEO that aren't widely known.

We've collected them from previous stories and an excellent profile that appeared in Bloomberg BusinessWeek this morning.

When Facebook goes public, it will be worth more than eBay, Yahoo, Groupon, LinkedIn, Netflix, IAC, AOL, Zynga and Pandora combined.

When it starts trading, Facebook will be worth more than Amazon—but just barely.

Facebook cofounder Eduardo Saverin renounced his U.S. citizenship.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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Facebook is finally going public.

It'll be worth about $105 billion when it debuts at $38 a share, and there's guaranteed to be a pop once it starts trading.

That means that Facebook — an eight year old company — is worth more than some of the largest, most successful companies in the world that have been around for decades.

Even some of the top tech companies that have been on top of Silicon Valley for decades have fallen behind the Web 2.0 wunderkind.

Here are some of the most interesting ones:

• Hewlett-Packard, one of the largest PC makers in the world, is smaller than Facebook. It's worth $44 billion — less than half of Facebook's titanic $105 billion valuation. HP also just laid off about 25,000 employees. 

• Facebook is four times larger than Dell, another super-giant PC and server maker. Dell has a market cap of about $26 billion. It's still trying to find its way in the post-PC era.

• It's bigger than Salesforce.com, a company that is more or less partially responsible for the cloud computing revolution. Salesforce is only worth around $20 billion — and its interns end up as high-ranking officials from time to time.

• Starbucks, the coffee chain that literally appears twice on every corner. Starbucks is worth about $40 billion — less than half of Facebook. We hear plenty of horror stories about Starbucks.

• The New York Times, one of the most prestigious content publishers in the world, is a blip compared to Facebook. Sharing is apparently worth 105 times more than some of the best content available on the Internet. The New York Times is worth slightly less than $1 billion. A bunch of New York Times staffers are actually planning to quit.

• Target, a huge big-box retailer similar to a higher-end version of Walmart, is worth less than half of Facebook. Target has a market cap of about $37 billion — well short of Facebook's expected valuation. Target actually raised its guidance this week, raising its value.

• Facebook barely edges out Amazon, the largest online retailer in the world. Amazon is worth about $100 billion, while Facebook is worth just a smidge more. Amazon's Kindle has been a bit of a bust so far.

• Disney is worth about four-fifths of what Facebook is worth. The owner of ESPN and a ton of other properties is worth about $80 billion. Disney could soon be replaced by Rovio as one of the biggest media properties in the world.

• Yahoo is worth practically nothing compared to Facebook. It's $19 billion versus Facebook's massive $105 billion valuation. Yahoo just changed up its chief executives... again.

• Facebook is worth about 10 Nokias put together. Nokia, one of the largest phone manufacturers in the world (not smartphone), is worth about $10 billion. The Nokia Lumia 900 is actually pretty nice, though.

Not much of a surprise, though. Facebook is making a world-changing piece of technology, and it also happens to pay its engineers better than most other companies in Silicon Valley — so it attracts the best talent.

But Facebook still isn't bigger than the typical tech giants: Google, Microsoft and Apple. Microsoft is worth about $250 billion, while Google is worth $204 billion and Apple is worth about $500 billion.

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