Facebook Wants To Hire This 17-Year-Old But She Hasn’t Decided If She Wants The Job

Wednesday, 27 June 2012

BUSINESS INSIDER | By Owen Thomas
Nive Jayasekar created a mobile app for Home Depot over a weekend and won $10,500—and got an offer to work at Facebook.

She’s only 17.

The Social-Loco conference organized a hackathon event held June 16-17, sponsored by big brands like Home Depot.

Jayasekar entered, drawn by the prizes. She decided to develop a project organizer for the home-improvement chain as a Windows Phone app, because that was a special prize category.

She swept the event with her app, which made it easy for both novices and experienced gardeners to find materials for landscaping projects. (Those were originally separate prize categories; she developed a single app that addressed both audiences.)

But she barely made it to the conference to accept her prizes. After she found out she won, her mom had to drive her to San Francisco.

It was good timing: Because she was late, she got to present her winning app right before Emily White, Facebook’s director of mobile partnerships, was due to speak. They met backstage and White offered her a summer internship.

“Nive is amazing and I’m going to be working for her someday,” White said at the conference.

But here’s the thing, and it tells you everything you need to know about the war for talent in Silicon Valley right now: The recent graduate of Monta Vista High School in Cupertino, Calif., who’s headed to Carnegie Mellon University in the fall, wouldn’t say whether she’d taken Facebook up on the offer.

“The recruiting process is still going on,” she said.

Facebook couldn’t comment on where things stood.

Let’s review: A 17-year-old just got an internship offer from Facebook, on the spot after winning a programming contest. And she hasn’t decided whether she’s taking the job yet.

Meanwhile, she’s porting the app to Apple’s iOS devices and Android smartphones.

Don’t Miss: 9 Impressive College Students Every Company Should Try To Poach >

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Facebook camera app vs Instagram

Monday, 11 June 2012

Times of India
Facebook's new camera appmakes sharing photos on the social media site a breeze. It's an improvement on posting photos using its main mobile app. But other camera apps such as Instagram and Hipstamatic still reign supreme. Facebook Camera doesn't have the same level of addictiveness or the range of tools for sprucing up images. Many people were perplexed when Facebook released its own camera app late last month, just weeks after snapping up the popular Instagram photo-sharing app for $1 billion. The two apps, both free, have some similar features. Both have a scrollable feed of photos posted by your friends and other people you choose to follow. They also have a set of tools, or filters, which let you adjust contrast, color and other attributes. But they are different enough that Facebook's camera app is more of a complement to the main Facebook app than a challenge to Instagram. Facebook's camera app is only available for Appledevices, while Instagram recently came out with a version that works on Android phones and tablet computers. The app is easy to use with intuitive taps and swipes. When you open it, you see a scroll of your friend's photos - the ones you would see if you clicked the photo tab in the Facebook app or on Facebook's website for regular computers. Tap on a photo to see a larger version, optimized on your phone. Above that is a bar that shows you the most recent pictures in your device's camera library - all the photos you have stored on the iPhone or iPad. You can swipe down the feed of your friends' Facebook photos to see more of your own pictures, which you can then choose to post on Facebook. You can comment, tag and 'like' photos, just as you can with the main app or website. You simply tap icons that hover over the photos. Change your mind? Just swipe away the comment box, and it disappears. It is kind of a shock to suddenly see your whole photo library within a Facebook app. Before I got comfortable with the navigation, I was slightly paranoid I would accidently post a photo on Facebook without meaning to. But once I got used to the easy navigation within the app, that was less of a worry. Once you select a photo from your library (or take one within the app by tapping the camera icon), Facebook Camera gives you much better editing options than the main site or app. You can crop the photo to any dimension, or straighten it slightly - something I almost always need to do. You can tweak images with 14 filters that have such names as "Cool" "Light" and "Rouge." For people used to the dramatic filters of Instagram and the wacky lenses and film-like options of Hipstamatic, the filters on the Facebook Camera are underwhelming. They didn't make a dramatic difference on photos I used them on, and I doubt I would use them before using Facebook Camera to post a photo. For those who like a lot of editing control, Facebook Camera lacks the full-featured photo-adjustment capabilities available in PhotoToaster or Snapseed (which is usually $4.99 in the app store but is free until Friday, so snap it up!). But I was pleased with the ease with which I could post photos to Facebook with its camera app. I will probably use it whenever I post a photo to the site now. Unlike the regular app, Facebook Camera makes posting multiple photos easy as well, although there's no ability to create albums on Facebook without going to the main site. Still, it's not going to replace Instagram for me. I follow an assortment of people on Instagram based solely on the quality of their photos, ranging from gorgeous landscapes to gritty street scenes. I'm always excited to check out new pics. I friend people on Facebook for different reasons - and it's not because of the quality of their photos. As a result, the stream on the Facebook Camera app has a random feel. It also has a bit of a dilutive quality when I check the main Facebook app at work (ahem, not that I ever do that) or at home. Since I've already seen most of the photos, the main Facebook news stream feels less "new." So think of Facebook Camera less as competition for other camera apps, and more of a complement - like Facebook's other standalone apps, for messaging and for managing business brand pages - to the main Facebook site.

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Facebook Adds New Analytics Tool for Brands

Wednesday, 30 May 2012

Facebook stock, as of now, sits at $33.03, and some speculate that there truly is no limit on how low it can go. One of several factors that might’ve contributed to the sensational IPO’s less than stellar performance is a possible fear regarding the company’s future, especially since the mobile version of the site, which more and more users are accessing, offers even less ad content than the desktop version. Some have even speculated that Facebook was aware of this, and may have issued a reduced earnings guidance on the eve of its IPO, which is a company’s forecast of how good business will be in the future. Either way, Facebook stock has essentially tanked, and the social network is scrambling to figure out how to make more money from ads, especially after GM discontinuing their campaign with the company, which made headlines.

Yesterday, the social network made a change which allowed advertisers to bypass Facebook sales reps while purchasing ads – Facebook home page and news feed ad space can directly be set up through Ads API and Power Editor tools, without having to consult with a Facebook ad representative. The platform continues to roll out new features related to ad content sans any official announcements, most recently adding a tab that displays the percentage of brand page fans who were reached as well as ‘liked’ posts. Here are some screen grabs of these new feature:

Page owners now have an extra analytical tool to get a better handle on how well their brand is doing on the social network. Facebook told Mashable that the new feature is available for the old-style pages, as well as the newer timelines, but adds that “we are slowly rolling this back to Page owners with a slightly updated design.” It can be assumed that the “updated design” is the timeline, which seems to be slowly be taking over the entire site.

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Facebook plans to raise $10.6 bln in mega IPO

Tuesday, 29 May 2012

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc aims to raise about $10.6 billion in Silicon Valley's largest IPO, dwarfing the coming-out parties of tech companies like Google Inc and granting the world's largest social network a market value close to Amazon.com's .

The eight-year-old social network that began as Mark Zuckerberg's Harvard dorm room project indicated an initial public offering price range of between $28 and $35 a share on Thursday, which would value the company at $77 billion to $96 billion.

The size of the IPO reflects the company's growth and bullish expectations about its money-making potential as a hub for everything from advertising to commerce.

"We certainly haven't ever seen a tech IPO on this grandiose a scale," said Lise Buyer, a principal with the IPO advisory firm Class V Group.

Buyer, who worked on Google's 2004 IPO, said the question about a company "that's already this big and that is raising this much money is how many of the glory days of growth are in the past versus how many are ahead."

Facebook stands to raise as much as $12 billion at the upper end of its planned range. If an over-allotment or "greenshoe" option is triggered, the company could sweep up a maximum of $13.6 billion, according to a Thursday prospectus.

Facebook is only getting about half, or $5.6 billion, of the estimated $10.6 billion that it would raise at the midpoint of its planned IPO range. About $4.9 billon will go to some existing shareholders.

Facebook's stock could begin trading as soon as May 18, according to a road showschedule obtained by Reuters. The offering's price range can be adjusted depending on Wall Street's response during the road show.

Investors are expected to flock to the highly anticipated IPO, although there have been growing concerns about the social network's longer-term growth and Zuckerberg's majority control.

Facebook will trade at 13 to 16 times the revenue that GreenCrest Capital analyst Max Wolff believes it will generate this year. By comparison, Google, the world's dominant Internet search engine, currently trades at 5.5 to 6 times expected 2012 revenue, he said.

Google's valuation was higher when it went public in 2004, though Facebook's IPO valuation is still higher than Google's was back then, Wolff noted.

But some observers said the rich premium was unlikely to deter investors.

"People are going to be very comfortable with this valuation," said Sam Schwerin of Millennium Technology Value Partners, which owns Facebook shares worth roughly $200 million. The firm is not selling in the IPO.

"A price range of $28 to $35 will be a relief to some people who are concerned that they may try to take the highest possible price because of high demand," he said.

"The amount being raised is noteworthy. Selling stockholders are raising about $5 billion in the IPO, which is a lot."

Facebook executives are due to hit the road on Monday, presenting their investment case to audiences. They will start in New York, go to other major cities such as Chicago and Boston, and end up on Facebook's home turf in Menlo Park, California, according to the schedule.

Zuckerberg is expected to participate in the two-week road show, a source has said, although Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg and Finance Chief David Ebersman will lead the briefings.

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