One of the most influential figures in the world IT-industry, Mark Zuckerberg, arrived in Moscow on September 30. This news captured the minds of Russians, especially of Russian students, for two days. The purpose of Zuckerberg’s arrival was the meeting with Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. But Russian experts (for instance, the founder of IBS Group, Anatoly Karachinsky) say that “Zuckerberg visited Russia on a world tour of programming contests, World Hack, to identify and attract new talent.”

Exploring Moscow

The founder and CEO of Facebook managed to visit plenty of places on his first day in Moscow. Brand-new photographs of him visiting different places were uploaded to his Facebook page. Firstly, Mark decided to go sightseeing – he took a walk through the Red Square with Ekaterina Skorobogatova, a Facebook Development Manager. She held an excursion for Zuckerberg. Later on Zuckerberg went to try “Russian” McDonald’s, which is near to the Red Square. Surrounded by his bodyguards, other foreigners and Russian people, Mark looked very fresh and cheerful.

“It was interesting for Mark to see everything, he liked the Red Square very much. He smiled all the time,” the people who accompanied him said.

Attending Important Meetings

On October 1, Mark Zuckerberg had a meeting with Medvedev. It was a big surprise for followers who got used to seeing Mark wearing his favorite outfit to see that he ditched his trademark hoodie and jeans for a suit and tie for his meeting. The main themes of their discussion were the Russian IT-business and innovation projects on the “Skolkovo” base, IT-communications, which are mutually beneficial, and copyright law in the Internet. They have also discussed the possibility to open a Facebook Office in Russia. This question was kept in Mark’s mind, but it was not the main point of Facebook strategy. At the end of the meeting Dmitry Medvedev was given a T-shirt with his Facebook link on it as a present.

The same day, Zuckerberg attended a meeting with winners of the “Facebook World Hack” contest at the Digital October center. Winners are supposed to get an invitation to join the Facebook Team. Programmers can continue their career paths at the Facebook headquarter in California.

Sharing the Experience

The following day, Zuckerberg came to Moscow State University in order to hold a speech for the students. When he came out to the scene, he was greeted with applause. The speech was arranged as an interview with Mikhail Lyalin, the creator of the most popular game, “Cut The Rope,” on ITunes and Play Market.

Mark started his 40-minute speech with these words: “When I started using the Internet, I was very shocked knowing that the previous generation had no opportunity to use it. They could not find any information about people or things. While creating and establishing Facebook, I had one main goal. I wanted to create something incredible, something which will help people to communicate and to keep in touch with their friends.”

Mark has also faced the question about giving up Harvard. When he got the idea to create Facebook, he took half of the year to work and develop the idea. “If Harvard gave me only 2 options – to leave or not to leave- by all means, I would stay. But is not it great that you have an idea and you can work on it?” he said. He stressed the point that he wanted to give the world something which may be considered very important; that is why his company was not sold at its early stages, though the sale of it could bring a lot of money.

Speaking of competitors, Mark Zuckerberg noticed that users end up choosing a more comfortable social network. It means that users choose Facebook because the Facebook Team always improves and makes their site more and more comfortable for its users. The Team always creates and develops new applications. Zuckerberg noticed that Facebook reached an audience of almost a billion people, and it is an advantage if we compare the site to its competitors.

After the speech, the Facebook’s CEO answered some students’ questions. Surprisingly, he could not give a name of his favorite book, though he emphasized the fact that he reads a lot.

At the end of the meeting, the MSU Rector, Viktor Sadovnichy, presented Zuckerberg with a souvenir with the main building of the University on it. In return, Mark Zuckerberg presented the Rector a hoodie with the logo of the social network.

Unfortunately, Zuckerberg could answer only 3 questions. His assistant stepped in to say that Mark has to go to the airport. Mark promised to come back to continue the discussion with students and disappeared.  All fans can do is hope for him to come back very soon.

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A great amount of money was kicked out of Facebook’s founder and CEO personal fortune and now more members of the Zuckerberg family are working for Google.

Social media phenomenon Facebook was developed by Mark Elliot Zuckerberg in 2004 while he was an undergraduate student at Harvard University studying computer science.

Facebook became a publicly traded company on May 18. It was listed under the ticket FB on the NASDAQ, and the first sale of stock by the company to the public was priced at $38 per share. This was one of the biggest Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) ever, and during the first day of negotiations the share reached the price of $45. Zuckerberg’s social network was the only U.S company that went public with a market value over than $100 billion.

Facebook’s shares hit a new low of $19.01 on August 17 after the tech company released 271.1 million shares on Thursday and early investors got the green light to sell for the first time. This is more than one-half of the 421 million shares that were sold when the tech company debuted in May.

Compared to the opening price, Zuckerberg’s social network has lost nearly 50 percent of its value since the floatation. Half of investors’ capital has vaporized in three months because of this disaster. Wall Street bankers were paid $176 million in fees in order to sell the $16 billion of share they sold on the Facebook Initial Public Offering.

Meanwhile, the investors who bought Facebook’s share on the IPO have lost nearly $8 billion by now. Lynn Cowan of the Wall Street Journal reports that Facebook’s bankers are divvying up another $100 million they made on Facebook’s shares. That means they are shorting Facebook’s stock, so bankers are actually betting against their own clients.

According to Bloomberg, Facebook is now the worst-performing IPO since records began. But what does this mean exactly? It means that most current and prior employees at Facebook are now worth far less than they were a few months ago.

The Los Angeles Times ran an article stating that there are many who believe that Mark Zuckerberg should stand down and let someone else run the $10 billion company. Sam Hamadeh head of research firm PrivCo, Barry Ritholtz, head of research firm Fusion IQ, Chris Whalen, senior managing director at Tangent Capital Partners in New York and Scott Sweet, senior managing partner of Tampa-based IPO Boutique, are some of the investors who believe that the company should hire an experienced CEO to run things.

The founder and CEO of Facebook has lost $600 million because of the company’s decline on Friday, and the young entrepreneur has dropped out of the world’s top 10 technology billionaires’ club, the Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index.

James Goodnight, the co-founder of SAS Institute, is now worth more than Facebook’s CEO and replaced Zuckerberg as the 10th-richest person on the list. But don’t worry, because even though Zuckerberg’s personal fortune has dropped $600 million, he is still worth nearly $10 billion.

Earlier this month during a company-wide meeting, which was held in order to boost company morale, Zuckerberg admitted that the stock’s decline is “painful” to watch for some employees. In the coming months, experts expect the company to lift more sales restrictions in order to maintain Facebook’s stock at a state of stagnation for quite some time yet. David Kirkpatrick, author of ‘The Facebook Effect,’ thinks that Zuckerberg isn’t really concerned about the diminishing value of his own stake in the company.

But stocks are not the only thing Zuckerberg’s company is losing. Last Tuesday, Google obtained Wildfire, the social ads marketing firm, where Zuckerberg’s sister, Arielle, works. Arielle Zuckerberg is now officially an employee at Google, Facebook’s biggest rival. Mark Zuckerberg reportedly tried to persuade Arielle to work for Facebook, but she wanted to pursue an independent route.

Mark’s other sibling, Randi Zuckerberg, left Facebook last year in order to begin her own media company. Randi commented on Twitter about her sister’s career move, saying that now there are officially more Zuckerberg family members working for Google than Facebook.

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London, England – Financial and mobile issues might prove the least of Mark Zuckerberg’s problems claims a report out this week from top ten award winning independent market research agency Conquest into the social media habits of 14-24 year olds. It reveals that Facebook’s core audience- teenagers-are starting to fall out of love with the website and that activity may have peaked amid a mounting groundswell of dissatisfaction and concerns over privacy and bullying.

While Facebook’s pre-eminence is assured in the short term, “Fuicide” (the attempted or successful deletion of the account) is on the rise as are complaints about the damaging impact of regular and prolonged Facebook use. Grievances triggered by Facebook’s culture include obsession with appearance and acceptance of sexually provocative behaviour; increased negative self-esteem, vulnerability to bullying, depression caused by jealousy and comparing one’s life to peers and inability to project one’s true self. Conquest used its avatar driven methodology Metaphorix to capture respondent’s authentic feelings about social media.

The Evidence :

• Over 30% of the group have had sufficiently bad experience online to recently attempt or succeed in deleting their accounts, with 13% of regular users planning to lower their presence over the coming 12 months.
• Concerns about privacy, bullying and Facebook ‘making me feel down about life’ are the most cited reasons:-
• Specifically: vulnerability to bullying was stated by 44% as reason for feeling unhappy about using the site, as well as increased negative self-esteem (28%); depression sparked by unfavourable comparisons with other people’s lives (25%); and plain jealousy of others (24%).
• Nearly half of all young women (45%) felt that Facebook intensifies an obsession with appearance. Moreover, 33% of males concurred, with over a quarter stating that it boosts the acceptance of sexually provocative presentation.
•  A growing frustration was articulated with the Facebook culture’s inability to enable authentic expression of character. This is offset by young men’s relish at the opportunity afforded to exaggerate the facts about themselves, with 44% admitting to this.
• Generally speaking it is unsurprisingly young women who suffer more from the adverse effects of Facebook than their male counterparts with more female deleters and complainants of harmful consequences.

New and different sites (like Pinterest and fashism ) have experienced phenomenal growth in 2012 while Myspace has remained a stalwart for those musically minded, challenging Facebook’s monolithic status. Commented David Penn MD of Conquest and inventor of the Metaphorix methodology: “Could the future of social media be more niche networks catering for particular interests- those which users select in order to feel more comfortable, more inspired and ultimately more themselves?”

Conquest canvassed 300 regular Facebook users aged between 14 and 24 years old, equally balanced by gender and nationally representative on region.

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Facebook has launched its latest tool where users can share that they are an organ donor, in the hope that it will help save more lives on a daily basis. Facebook users have to go to their timelines, where under ‘Life Event’ they will see a health and wellness section and then you can click to become an organ donor and share your story about when, where or why you decided to become a donor.

More than 114,000 people in the United States are awaiting organ donations, 79 people daily receive a transplant while 18 die, according to Organdonor.gov. In the UK, National Service Health Service (NHS) pointed out that there are over 10,000 people on the waiting list for an organ, while an average of three people a day die waiting for a transplant.

The new Facebook feature is working in the United States, UK, and Australia but it is expected to expand in other parts of the world. The US previously averaged about 506 new registrations per day, but since Facebook introduced the tool on April 30 more than 24,000 people have registered to donate their organs, according to Donate Life America.

Facebook added the organ donation feature to raise awareness to the issue after CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, took a personal interest in it, partly because of his friendship with Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. Jobs’s liver transplant extended his life several years.

The move will raise awareness about the critical shortage of organs for people in need of life-saving transplants. It may also create social pressure to inspire Facebook friends to consider registration.

This solidary initiative is seen by many skeptics like another way to obtain personal information concerning our health. Once we become an organ donor our privacy is stripped away, no matter how good Facebook´s intentions, sharing our data with the social network entails releasing information to an unknown companies without our consent. In an indirect way behind our altruistic behavior many big firms will make a killing exchanging information.

This donor program might bring about many successful and happy stories about saving lives, but in the end you are also an information donor, giving away your personal information to a company that can make profit off of it. Medical insurance companies will use our personal medical information to determine our eligibility for insurance coverage for their own protection, allowing health businesses to capitalize on insurance payments for the healthy, whereas others with bad medical history will be overcharged.

Another concern about organ donation is that medical information on Facebook is not protected by U.S. laws. According to the state´s Uniform Anatomical Gift Law, being an organ donor on Facebook is just as good being on the state´s organ donation registry.

Organ donation has never been “private” as it is openly displayed upon a public identification card. The choice of being an organ donor is personal and has to be respected. With the new Facebook feature, this choice becomes a public identity marker, something to be socially shared, commented upon, and potentially, conspicuously absent.

The advocacy group Donate Life American found that many people decline to became an organ donor for diverse reasons: citizens fear that they are not healthy enough or they are too old to donate their organs; others are concerned that doctors will not try their best to save them if they are known to be an organ donor; some people believe there is a black market where organs or tissues are sold; and some citizens question whether or not a person can recover from brain death.

Organ donation, as displayed through Facebook, is at once a deeply personal decision about death and the body, and a public display of generosity, fear, and/or general health. Whether you think that Facebook has made a strong move in a positive direction, or has once again taken sharing too far, the organ donation feature on Facebook embodies the categorical fusion that represents a connected era.

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Ever since Facebook’s launch in 2004, the young and talented programmer, Mark Zuckerberg, has been on everyone’s radar. A representative of Facebook Vietnam, Huynh Kim Tuoc, recently confirmed that Zuckerberg is in Hanoi. Mark Zuckerberg and his longtime girlfriend, Priscilla Chan, arrived in Vietnam on December 22 on a two-week visa.

The communist southeast Asian country may not allow its citizens to use Facebook, but that did not stop the couple from spending Christmas there. According to the Associated Press, Mark Zuckerberg and Chan spent Christmas Eve in Ha Long Bay. The couple has been dating since Zuckerberg was a sophomore at Harvard.

Vietnam Net reports, “Zuckerberg and his group of nine members spent a night on the Ha Long Bay, which has been recognized as one of the new natural wonders of the world. The Facebook’s CEO rowed a kayak himself to make an excursion on the bay and then visited some caves of the bay.”

Since Mark Zuckerberg and Chan were accompanied by nine others, this visit may have been more than a romantic getaway. It is no secret that Zuckerberg wants Facebook to be accepted in communist countries like Vietnam and China. Indeed, it was this time last year when Zuckerberg and Chan made a surprise visit to Thailand and China. However, the Vietnamese mass media believes that the trip was strictly for pleasure. Some sources have said that the couple would go to the Con Dao Island, a well-known site in Vietnam. According to the Vietnamese website, Tuoitre News, the pair has spent about $6,000 on traveling by a private helicopter.

Vietnam Net reports that Facebook has 4 million members in Vietnam. Some sources say that during Mark Zuckerberg’s stay in Vietnam, he would meet with Nguyen Trong Khoa, the founder of thatlac.com.vn, a networking site that helps people reunite with those whom they’ve lost contact with. Khoa was the marketing director of FPT (General Corporation for Financing the Promoting Technology); however, he left the group in 2009 to start his own business.

According to the Wall Street Journal, diplomats in Hanoi say the government is worried that if access to Facebook is given, uprisings like those in the Middle East may happen as people would be able to organize protests. As a result, most of Vietnam’s population of 90 million cannot access Facebook. People around the world see this blockage as a way of limiting freedom of speech and expression in the country.

Until today, it is still unknown when Facebook’s CEO will return home to the United States.

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Facebook recently made a statement that former White House chief-of-staff Erskine Bowles has joined its board of directors. Bowles was recently appointed as the co-chair of President Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform in 2010.

Together with his co-worker Alan Simpson, a former Republican senator from Wyoming, he had released a proposal to greatly reduce government spending which called forth a lot of criticism from the Democrats. Another blow from the Democratic Party: He ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in 2002 and 2004 on the Democratic ticket.

Also a former president of the 17-campus University of North Carolina (2006 to 2010) and a former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton (1996 to 1998), Bowles serves on the boards of several other companies, including Morgan Stanley, Cousins Properties Inc., Norfolk Southern Corp. and Belk Inc.

His appointment expands Facebook’s board to seven members.”Erskine has held important roles in government, academia and business which have given him insight into how to build organizations and navigate complex issues,” Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, said in a statement.

“Along with his experience founding companies, this will be very valuable as we continue building new things to help make the world more open and connected.” Reuters reported on Wednesday that the company, which is expected to go public at some point next year, doubled its revenue to $1.6 billion in 2011′s first half.” Facebook has clearly emerged as a transformative force in the world,” Bowles said.”

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Facebook has grown impressively over the past year and is said to be worth somewhere near 65 billion U.S. dollars. As the leading social network, Facebook has more than 500 million users worldwide. From January to November of 2010 the Facebook received 8.9 percent of all Web visits in the United States, said the New York Times.

In June, Facebook accounted for nearly one third of all Internet display advertisement impressions in the United States, more than the combined total of Yahoo, Microsoft Corp, Google and AOL Inc., according to a report given by analytics firm comScore. Facebook is now worth more than eBay, Yahoo and Time Warner.

Investors are taking note of Facebook’s financial success and are prepared to put their money into the popular social network site. According to information the New York Times gained through e-mails, Goldman Sachs and a Russian investor recently put about $ 50 billion in Facebook, raising the social network’s worth immensely.

Goldman Sachs and the Russian investor now have an early “claim” on stock in Facebook. And with this large investment, Facebook has more power to recruit top employers and develop new products, according to the New York Times. Additionally, interest in Facebook shown by Goldman Sachs speaks to the might and success of social network site, since Goldman Sachs is considered one of  Wall Street’s “savviest investors.”

Many investors are taking positions for a possible Facebook initial public offering (IPO), after analyzing the viability and recently reports on the company’s profitability.

Reuters said it is expected that Facebook will go public in 2012. Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has often declined to comment on the company’s earnings or future business plans. But it is clear that Facebook is facing increased competition from Google in the social sphere.

The search-giant recently released Google+ which reportedly added more than 10 million members in its first two weeks, becoming the world’s fastest growing social network. According to the New York Times, analysts are now confirming that Facebook’s sales volume is around 2,000 million dollars annually.

The social network has doubled its revenue during the first six months of the 2011, compared with the same period in 2010. In the first half of the year, Facebook earned around 1,600 million dollars, as published by Reuters, according to a source close to the social network.

The social network site is on the rise and the public waits in anticipation to see if Facebook will reach out for stockholders this coming year.

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It is undeniable that Facebook’s like button nowadays has been already ubiquitous on the Internet. The new born of Google’s +1 button available to third-party  websites at the end of March is considered  a challenge to Facebook’s like spreading out across the web. As a result, we have added the Google +1 button to the top bar of all sites.

As same as Facebook’s like button idea, Google’s + 1 button also want to encourage user engagement and social interaction.  With a single click, Google users can recommend a service, a website, an article, or a topic. Consequently, their friends, families, networks or even the rest of the world may easily see their recommendations. Both Facebook’s like and Google’s +1 button aim to increase users’ exposure and awareness to an association of persons of the same trade, pursuits or mutual interests, and subsequently gather them through a social network.

Even though both the Google +1 and the Facebook Like buttons are social sharing button, they still differ from each other. The significant difference to Facebook like is the fact that Google will be able to personalize the users’ search result and search ads. With the help of the +1 button, people with Google accounts who are signed in may see the recommendations from people in their Gmail or Google Talk chat list people in their My Contacts group in Google Contacts, and people they’re following in Google Reader or Google Buzz.

Whereas, a Facebook Like Button will post what you have in concern to your profile on Facebook – only your friends will see it, a Google +1 Button will appear on the Google search results, and consequently everyone using Google search function will see it as well. Therefore, it could be forecasted that in the near future, the Google +1 button might have much more influence on social networks than the Facebook like one. In short, it should be emphasized that Google’s intention with +1 button is to make search much more relevant as well as more social, making a whole lot faster process of searching for users and the latter searchers could benefit from the former ones.

Evidently, like a simple tool, +1 button, might create a string to Google users network in specific and to the Internet users in general.

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Facebook keeps surprising us, and it is incredible all the comforts and facilities that it keeps providing to its users. People have the chance to interact by diverse ways such as sending messages, posting walls, chatting, showing photos, tagging, linking videos, creating groups, events, and much more. But the company is always thinking one step ahead, and now, “the users will be able to stream and share music through the social network” (Matthew Perpetua, Rolling Stone Magazine).

“Listening to music is something that people do with their friends,” Mark Zuckerberg stated. “Music, TV, news, books — those types of things I think people just naturally do with their friends. I hope we can play a part in enabling those new companies to get built, and companies that are out there producing this great content to become more social.” Facebook wants to bring its users all kind of applications they can imagine. And it is thinking of how to make it possible for its users to share their favorite multimedia, such as songs, albums, series, news etc.

The New York Times says: “Facebook, which has nearly 700 million users, would not comment on its plans. But analysts and media executives said the company’s move into media was part of its ambition to become a hub for all types of activities on the Internet. And as the company sees it, people increasingly define themselves through the media they consume, they said”.

All the procedures and developments are confidential information, and Facebook is not providing too much details, they only stated that: “We’re always looking for better ways to help people discover the most relevant content on Facebook but have nothing to announce.”

On the other hand, a Spotify spokesman said:” We’re continuously working together to make the social experience on Spotify the best it can be and welcome relationships with any company looking to innovate by building more social value into the user experience.”

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