FACEBOOK’s IPO ends, with a mere $0.23 jump in share prices. This is the kind of movement that happens when Procter & Gamble announces a more absorbent type of Pampers. After all the opening excitement today on the NASDAQ Facebook landed with a thud. Our CEO, Michael Hendrix, has a few ideas on why:
1. It was priced at the absolute top of the range and Facebook underwriters were buying stock at a higher than normal rate. This was unnerving for most investors.
2. It’s NASDAQ’s fault for not offering Facebook stock until 11:30 am EST, 30 min later than planned. The stock exchange had not even finish filling orders for the stock for about two-and-a-half hours. This may have caused confusion and did not do Facebook’s stock any favors.
3. Investors are wary of social media stocks and many still do not understand social media completely.
4. It’s GM’s fault partly for the bad press that surfaced after the company announced this week that it planned to pull all Facebook advertising.
5. Some investors feel that Facebook is overvalued. After all, Facebook is worth more than McDonald’s. Many older investors look at this as impossible considering that McDonald’s is all over the globe with close to 100% brand recognition and hard assets such as real-estate. Not to mention that McDonald’s posted 27 billion in revenues last year and a 5.5 billion dollar profit while Facebook made 1 billion on 3.7 billion in revenues.
6. Retail Investors were able to get the stock at IPO Price which did not allow for higher bids.
So should you invest in Facebook stock? In my opinion, yes, but maybe not for three to four weeks. Here are my reasons why:
1. According to Pleines’ data, no matter how well the recent social media IPOs did on opening day, their stocks were still down across the board the first month.
2. Most stocks are down the first month. This is not just a social media thing.
3. Lets recall what happened to Google’s stock. Google’s stock languished for a month after its debut and only did it trend higher around its third month.
4. Google’s stock even traded as high as $196 for three months straight after about a one month lag.
5. LinkedIn is currently at 170 times forward earnings into 2013, and that makes the stock quite expensive.
6. The comparison of Facebook stock to LinkedIn stock is downright embarrassing: Facebook’s 2011 net profit was $1 billion while LinkedIn managed a meager $12 million (Facebook made 83 times as much money).
I would like to know what your thoughts are. What do you think Facebook is really worth and should we invest in Facebook stock now or later? If you feel that we should invest in Facebook stock, when do you think is the optimal time to do so?
In what will be a bellwether for the mobile gaming industry after Zynga’s deal to buy OMGPOP, Funzio is looking to raise $50 million at a $350 million pre-money valuation, according to sources familiar with the talks. The company declined to comment.
Funzio is the maker of Crime City and Modern War, both graphical RPGs that have held top ranks on the grossing charts on iOS. Their vision is to offer true cross-platform games that work across the web and mobile devices.
So here are pluses: Funzio has a hungry and experienced team. The company’s chief executive Ken Chiu previously sold a startup to Zynga and served as a general manager for a little under a year there. Both he and Anil Dharni were behind Storm8, another mobile gaming company with several top-grossing Android games under its belt, before they split with the other co-founders and started Funzio. The company’s roadmap and traction were compelling enough that they were able to poach Jamil Moledina, an executive who spearheaded third-party publishing efforts for Electronic Arts.
Funzio has a proven ability to launch games on Facebook and mobile platforms. At its peak, Crime City has 7.3 million monthly active users on Facebook, according to AppData. (It now has 1.6 million monthly active users.) The company’s two iOS games have managed to keep grossing rankings in the Top 50 in the U.S. since the beginning of the year. (See the charts below from rankings tracker App Annie.)
A $400 million post-money valuation is not unreasonable when benchmarked against publicly-traded mobile gaming companies. This isn’t a perfect comparison since every gaming company has a slightly different model and target market, but Glu Mobile, a publicly-traded company that has some decently ranked titles but is also saddled with a declining featurephone business, has a market capitalization of $281.8 million. Gameloft, a French mobile gaming company that as a similar target demographic as Funzio, has a market capitalization of 365.5 million euros ($477.6 million).
However, there are also broader industry dynamics that are working against Funzio: User acquisition costs have risen dramatically over the past year. Apple has cracked down on cheaper and arguably more unscrupulous forms of user acquisition like download bots, which has forced marketing costs higher across the board for every game developer.
Why does this matter? Well, roughly speaking: freemium gaming companies earn the spread or difference between their lifetime earnings per user and the cost to acquire a new user. When marketing costs go up, that profit margin narrows. While both iOS and Android have larger reach than they did a year ago, the profit per user is likely lower because of increased user acquisition costs.
It’s also hard to see the iOS or Android platforms lending themselves to a single dominant gaming company in the way that Facebook gave rise to Zynga. Mobile gaming has been far more heterogeneous than Facebook has been. There is more diversity in gameplay. On the iPhone, you can see everything from immersive, console-quality titles like Infinity Blade to platformers like Temple Run to casual, freemium titles like Dragonvale.
Distribution is also fundamentally different. Because users discover games through their friends on Facebook instead of on a top downloaded list, the network effects are far more powerful and lend themselves to more of a winner-take-all effect on Facebook. This hasn’t been the case so far on Android or iOS.
Lastly, while I said earlier that $400 million post-money isn’t crazy compared to publicly-traded companies, investors are obviously going to want a return. So investing at that valuation is essentially a bet that Funzio can either go public or be bought by an existing gaming company at a decent multiple. EA already fired many of its bullets with last year’s deal to buy PopCap Games for up to $1.3 billion. Zynga is open to a deal in the $1 billion range. But you’d really have to have the momentum (or something special in terms of execution) to force their hand in the way that the rapid rise of OMGPOP’s Draw Something cannibalized the player base of Zynga’s hit Words With Friends.
If Funzio does go out at a $350 million pre-money valuation, it’s worth comparing that against valuations in the mobile gaming space from 6 months and a year ago. Around the same time last year, Rovio closed a $42 million round of funding that gave it a post-money valuation of around $200 million. That’s when iOS gaming was more profitable per user because Apple still allowed incentivized downloads and offer walls.
Last fall, there were reports in both Bloomberg and here on TechCrunch that Rovio and Storm8 might raise at a $1 billion valuation last fall. But neither deal happened for various reasons.
So it looks like valuations may have corrected a bit since late last year. Other smaller deals have gone though though. Another mobile gaming company, Addmired, recently renamed itself Machine Zone and picked up $8 million in a round led by Menlo Ventures.
Have your heard of the social network Pinterest? If you have not heard of Pinterest get ready to welcome one of the fastest growing social networks in the Uniterd States! Pinterest has overtaken Linkedin in as the number three most-popular social network in the U.S., behind Facebook and Twitter, according to Experian Hitwise.
According to a new report by Experian Hitwise, shows Pinterest got 21.5 million visits in the last week of January. The site skews female with a 60/40 ration of women to men visitors.
Experian rep Matt Tatham says Pinterest beat its next-closest competitor, LinkedIn, in total visits in February. Tatham says the rankings by total visits for March is as follows:
? 1. Facebook: 7 billion
? 2. Twitter: 182 million
? 3. Pinterest: 104 million
? 4. LinkedIn: 86 million
? 5. Tagged: 72 million
? 6. Google+: 61 million
The report, which tracks visits rather than unique visitors, is based on web traffic and doesn’t factor in visits from mobile sites. According to Experian’s reckoning, Foursquare only got 2.9 million visits in March and Instagram got 10.2 million. ?ComScore, which doesn’t measure mobile traffic either, but ranks sites by uniques rather than total visits, did not include Pinterest in its list of the top 50 web properties in February. However, LinkedIn made number 27 with 36 million visitors. ComScore listed Pinterest as its number three “top-gaining” properties, however, with 17.8 million total visitors that month. ComScore’s March figures were not available at press time.
Every Wednesday & Friday for the next two months we will be FEATURING one of Precise Agency’s FURRY TEAM MEMBERS and the WORK they have INSPIRED. Since seniority rules we bring you Mr. Chippers our favorite little furry creative director working out of Dallas.
This week Mr Chippers inspired a campaign for one of our restaurant groups. The Sushi Axiom campaign is titled “Spring Martinis & Pups”. This campaign comes with its very own doggie menu, making it our furry little friends favorite place for happy hour after a long days working on digital ad campaigns. To see more on Axiom Sushi Lounge, formerly Fin Sushi Lounge Spring promotion click on this link bellow:
http://tinyurl.com/7zeh8us
If you would like to know more about Mr Chippers feel free to checkout his Doggy Space account:
http://www.doggyspace.com/profile/5432
Paws In The City
Facebook fan pages are in our opinion, one of the most revolutionary game changers in consumer to business interaction of the past decade. They have allowed companies both large and small to increase leads and cultivate consumer relationships that could only be done in person. With the announcement from Facebook last month that all fan pages would switch to the Timeline layout a lot of businesses’ have been worried about how this would impact them; especially when it comes to generating new leads.
Not to worry here at Precise Agency we’ve focused a lot of time to worrying for you and we have some solutions we think you will find beneficial. For this week we’re our blog post will focus on getting you ready for switch this Friday.
Today’s change: The Fangate
Love it or hate it the fangate is about to be a thing of the past. Personally we feel they have been a lead generating tool that was over used and under-utilized by many companies. They have been great at generating leads because you were able to get contact info, provide incentives etc. to new users the moment they landed on your page. From now on all users who visit your site will land on your wall first.
If your business utilized Fangates properly as a way to generate leads don’t panic there is a work around. Most users to your Facebook page arrived there from your website. This will still be the case. Have your current fan gate redesigned with the new page width dimension 779px and set it up as an app on your FB page. Then change the “like” link your website to direct to that app. That’s it.
Your Fangate will still work after the switch this Friday but remember new users will not automatically land on the fangate anymore.
The first two months of the year have come and gone, now spring is almost here… Wow how time flies! Here is a final chance to keep your Facebook branding and image ahead of your competition. We here at Precise Agency have created a Facebook checklist to help you stay ahead of the curve:
Facebook Checklist??:
1. Changed Facebook to Timeline Yes No
2. Checked each month and each year’s postings to hide anything inappropriate Yes No
3. Checked my Privacy Settings Yes No
4. Sorted my Friends and contacts into the appropriate Lists Yes No
5. Took a look at my Profile as others see it Yes No
If you are not sure how to do this all that you need to do is to visit your profile and go to “View As …” located at the top of your page.
We suggest if you are using Timelines then you should first click the wheel located next to “Activity Log.” Enter the name of a close friend or a random acquaintance to make sure no one is seeing too much. Click “public” to see how everyone else sees it.
6. Setup Facebook Online Reputation Management alerts Warning??…Facebook makes changes … all the time to its privacy settings! In the past Facebook has added functions and reset privacy settings without making any kind of announcement. Our advise is to that you setup a reminder monthly to go through this type of online reputation management checkup.
Does your business have a Tumblr page? What about you, do you have a personal Tumblr blog? Well, if not, maybe you should consider jumping the Tumblr wagon.
Not only is Tumblr beyond user-friendly, it oozes visual and contextual eye candy; informative, yet entertaining all at once. From a simple, clean categorized “listing” of tags to following the posts of friends, it’s no wonder Tumblr is quickly rising on the list of social media “must-haves”.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, between September 2010 and September 2011, Tumblr’s page views jumped from 2 billion to 13 billion. That’s an 11 billion plus increase in page views. As I type, their traffic is undoubtedly steadily on the rise. For one, I have a personal Tumblr blog that I use for inspirational image cataloging for arts and crafts, weddings, cute animals, fashion…the list goes on and on! But, Tumblr isn’t just for pretty images to ‘oooh’ and ‘ahhh’ at; Tumblr also features news, advertising, business, local, and global business participation among many other “tags”.
Still not convinced? Here’s a quick rundown of the endless possibilities Tumblr has to offer. Oh, and it’s all FREE!
Themes: because really, who doesn’t love to be able to customize their page?!
- Free & premium (a.k.a. paid) themes
- Most themes offer customizable elements such as color, font, and link options
- Want to create your own? No problem! Tumblr hands you simple template tags to make your own, all CSS
Customizable EVERYTHING! (well…almost)
- Tumblr not only allows you to customize your blog’s (read: page) profile picture, taglines, and headlines, they also give you the ability to have your very own custom Tumblr URL. For example, say your company is “The Precise Agency”, the custom Tumblr URL would be: preciseagency.tumblr.com
- Want a custom DOMAIN instead? Fine, that is perfectly accomplished through a simple DIY offered by Tumblr.
More goodies:
- RSS
- Group blog capability
- Multiple Tumblr’s on ONE account
- Auto-share/publish (Facebook & Twitter)
- Post by email, phone, computer…telepathy?!
- Call in audio
Now, if you really aren’t convinced as a business or even as an individual, that’s okay. Why? Well, all of the aforementioned is another apparatus of the giant that is social media. Tumblr will not only increase your SEO presence, but will prove that you are hip to the upcoming trends of the industry. Questions about creating your own Tumblr account or do you simply wish for help to make the most of your Tumblr blog? Contact us, The Precise Agency for more information!
(Article by: Meghan Anderson)
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A large portion of using social media for business has to do with the decision of whether or not to monitor your accounts and actually engage in conversation with your customers and potential clients. Brand interaction is huge. The direction in which marketing is moving in recent years suggests that all companies do this in some way, shape or form. The emphasis on customer service is more important than ever, especially since we have learned so much over the last few years – lessons learned from the economic downturn. Consumers are becoming more and more aware of their choices and are using new ways of finding information.
Of all users of social media, 85.7% actively engage with brands using this platform (statistic from a survey by socialmediatoday). Considering how many users (especially of the Generation Y demographic) participate in social media discussion on the regular, this number is astronomical. I could go further into detail or link to more surveys, but I’m sure by now you see my point.
On the other hand, some brands do interact with social media users. One day, I lost my internet connection at home. I merely mentioned the fact that my Comcast connection was on the fritz, and it just so happened that Comcast is a brand that listens to that little bird. Within minutes, I was greeted by@ComcastBill. I didn’t really need his help, but it did give me an idea for a blog post. Look at his feed, and it’s all brand interaction. Totally opposite end of the spectrum. Also of note: University of Phoenix is a logo. @ComcastBill has a face.
I personally like the idea behind Foursquare, the ubiquitous location-based check-in mobile application. In fact, as a social marketing-type person, it will likely prove to be a very useful tool. I’ve dabbled. Most of the time, I check in when I go out to eat, drink, and socialize. Foursquare allows other users to share information about the venues. This weekend, I checked into a location where one user had proclaimed that the place has “the best coconut shrimp anywhere!”
I passed. Not a shrimp fanatic.
To get to my point, let’s fast forward. I was giving a little more information about social media in general, along with a demo of how Foursquare works to our creative director. I was home at the time, and noticed that someone else in the neighbourhood had set up “Home” as a location. While it might be useful if you’re having a party where you’d like anybody connected to your friend’s Facebook and Twitter accounts to show up, I suppose. If it’s just to tell people “Honey, I’m home!” it’s not exactly providing any useful content.
Then I stumbled across this website. And laughed. Of course, this isn’t a thought that hasn’t been thought before. Why would anyone expose this sort of information to a searchable web service? PleaseRobMe.com is there to raise awareness about the whole phenomenon of the “Foursquare Overshare.” Frankly, it’s just common sense. While I love my active community of Twitter followers and Facebook friends, I don’t know all of them personally and I don’t need the entire internet knowing where I live. We can’t be entirely certain (or overly paranoid) that some shadowy figure is sitting in front of his (or her) laptop, scouring Foursquare, Twitter, and Facebook for potential locations to burglarize. Puts a modern twist on “casing the joint” doesn’t it? As technology like this advances, I wouldn’t rule it out. I believe it has happened before.
I do believe that PleaseRobMe.com brings an important point to the forefront about exercising caution when using social media. These days, the average person has much more of a reach than they used to. On top of that, the average person isn’t always (or simply can’t) know who’s listening.
What are your thoughts on location based social media? Do you use it? Do you check in at home? Leave a comment for me!