Looks like Baidu and Zynga are the most recent victims of a bogus press release stunt. This morning, a company called PR*Urgent put out a press release saying that Baidu — known as the “Google of China” — wanted to acquire Zynga, the social gaming giant. It claimed Baidu offered to pay $10 per Zynga share in cash. But a PR representative for Baidu has categorically denied the news. “Baidu had nothing to do with this news release,” he told TechCrunch.

The release recalls an incident from November last year, when a press release agency called PRWeb distributed false news that Google would be buying WiFi technology company ICOA for $400 million. The news was picked up by a lot of outlets (including TC, I hate to admit), but both companies debunked the news, and PRWeb apologised for the hoax. Like PRWeb, PR*Urgent offers a “free” distribution service.

As with the Google/ICOA incident, it looks like the Baidu/Zynga news may have been put out either as a prank, or an attempt to boost Zynga’s stock price, or lower Baidu’s.

Zynga closed Friday trading at $3.19 per share, and is up 3.45% in pre-market trading. Baidu closed Friday at $86.43 per share. Both Zynga and Baidu will be reporting their quarterly earnings this week, Zynga on April 24, and Baidu on April 25.

The bogus release claims that Baidu’s interest in Zynga was based on its foray into real-money gambling. “The acquisition will enable Baidu to supercharge Zyna’s new ‘real money’ gaming and will enhance competition in mobile and internet gaming,” the fake press release notes. “Baidu’s user base would be a huge boost to Zynga’s business model, Baidu has upwards of 500 million users. Given the company’s recent setbacks, Zynga really needs a win—and if that comes via real people gambling real money, then all the better.”

Back in the real world, Zynga, of course, really is embarking on a real-money gambling business — pursued as Zynga looks for further ways to monetize its gaming platform amid overall growing competition in social and mobile gaming. That strategy finally saw its first launch earlier this month, in the UK. There are further rollouts expected in Europe, Asia and the U.S.

While most rubbish like this isn’t worth reporting, we’re putting this out because at this moment, the release is coming up near/at the top of Google News searches for both companies.

And if you know anything about Baidu’s business — strong on search, but looking to grow that by going big on mobile, increasing moves into gaming and other content, and international growth — there’s just enough of a kernel of truth there to give some pause to people browsing if they don’t bother to look a little deeper.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Facebook’s first earnings report is out, and on top of a decent quarter, the company also shared some new stats about the user base. Basically, it’s still growing.

Worldwide, the site had 955 million monthly active users in June, up 55 million from the 900 million it had announced in April. Meanwhile, daily active users account for more than half of the monthly total now, at 552 million for June — broadly, this fits the historical trend of more than half of all users coming back every day.

Meanwhile, within that 955 million monthlies number, mobile has also continued to grow, reaching 543 million last month. A look at year-over-year percentage growth shows mobile’s growing importance. While MAU grew by 29%, and DAUs by 32%, mobile MAUs grew by 67%.

Zooming back to the quarterly changes, MAUs grew by nearly 12%, while DAUs grew by nearly 20%. Mobile, meanwhile, increased by nearly 22%.

On the call today, founder Mark Zuckerberg also said that usage numbers were looking strong across demographics.

If you were to make a list of the business models most popular among tech startups today, a snail mail-based subscription service probably wouldn’t be at the top of the list. On that level, the Los Angeles-based Quarterly is somewhat of an outlier, having created a design-oriented subscription service and accompanying web platform, which allows anyone to sign up and receive receive curated, physical gifts from influential contributors like President of the Rhode Island School of Design, John Maeda, Behance Founder Scott Belsky, and Alexis Ohanian of Reddit, Breadpig, and Hipmunk fame — by mail.

Tapping into the piping hot collaborative consumption movement, with notable designers and tech entrepreneurs contributing original products, it appears that Quarterly’s quirky cause has not gone unnoticed among investors. Today, we’ve uncovered a SEC Form D filing, which shows the startup recently closed a $1.25 million round of Series A financing, led by Tony Conrad and True Ventures as well as Craig Shapiro’s Collaborative Fund.

We first covered Quarterly back in December, when it launched its subscription service into the wild. At the time, founder Zach Frechette (formerly Editor-in-Chief of GOOD Magazine) told us that Quarterly sprung out of our increasing reliance on digital technologies to interact and communicate with each other.

With digital blinders on, people forget the pleasure of tangible, more traditional interaction and sharing, so Quarterly wanted to bring the tastemakers of digital technology and social networks into the real world to facilitate an old school connection between influencers and the people who “follow” them. And, because it’s essentially a universal truth that people love to receive cool stuff in the mail from people they love, or are inspired by, Quarterly naturally chose the United States Postal Service as its distribution service.

Having worked in media, Frechette draws an analogy to magazines, explaining that, instead of subscribing to receive words on a page, Quarterly users pay $25 every three months to receive packages that “tell a compelling story crafted and narrated by the contributor.” What kind of “packages” do subscribers actually receive? It depends, but they are meant to help you better understand or connect with them, as well as to support the “process of creatives,” so if the contributor is a novelist, a user might receive the same kind of notebook they used to plot their bestseller.

With revenue models still in development, the startup raised a round of seed funding pre-launch to help it get off the ground. Investors included Craig Shapiro, Behance Co-founder and Pinterest early investor Scott Belsky, CEO of Sugar Inc. Brian Sugar, and Co-Head of IDEO NY, Ryan Jacoby, among others.

Quarterly isn’t giving any details at this point on its Series A raise, so it’s not clear what other firms, if any, participated in the raise beyond the follow-on contributions of Collaborative Fund and first-time investor, True Ventures.

The team is also being tight-lipped about its progress since launch, but at the time, it was adding a new subscription every 5 minutes. Quarterly’s website does give some indication, however, saying that “due to high demand,” it has temporarily closed the service to new subscribers. The website also seems to make mention of some new contributors on deck, so we’ll update when we learn more.

Readers can check out Quarterly at home here.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

The official numbers are in for Google’s new social network, Google+. Beating out most previous third-party estimates that we’ve seen, the company said today that it now has 90 million users worldwide. Presumably this means monthly uniques visitors given that the earnings release says “now,” but we’ll try to get more clarification around engagement numbers when we get on the quarterly call in a few minutes.

The most recent third party stats we’ve seen (from comScore) have indicated it had around 67 million unique visitors as of November. Worldwide December numbers from the measurement firm aren’t out yet, but US ones are: they showed G+ bringing in 15.9 million November then growing healthily to 20.6 million last month.

Google is evidently so pleased with this growth — or so eager to refute doubts about it — that the company led off the release with a statement from chief executive Larry Page on the matter. ”I am super excited about the growth of Android, Gmail, and Google+, which now has 90 million users globally – well over double what I announced just three months ago. By building a meaningful relationship with our users through Google+ we will create amazing experiences across our services. I’m very excited about what we can do in 2012 – there are tremendous opportunities to help users and grow our business.” (As Dan Frommer notes, Page seems to be especially fond of the “super excited” California colloquialism.)

Like I said, engagement numbers are key to understanding what’s really going on with the search engine leader’s social network. The heavy integration of G+ across other Google properties could be leading lots of people to check it out once but not come back. But enough skepticism, this growth is very impressive no matter how you look at it, especially in such a short amount of time. For the many G+ fans/users out there (especially all you TechCrunch commenters), and for companies looking to use it as a new developer or marketing platform, this is a big day.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

What if you could subscribe to your favorite bloggers, writers, and designers, and they would send you a heartfelt gift every three months? You probably wouldn’t enjoy my packages, because I would just send you those small M&Ms packets, and there’s nothing fun about fun-sized candy. But, in most cases, it would be appealing. This, coupled with the fact that monetizing content has been a slog for digital content producers over the past few years, is why Quarterly has chosen an alternative path: “A subscription service for wonderful things”.

Quarterly is a young startup from LA, founded by Zach Frechette, the former Editor-in-Chief of GOOD Magazine. Basically, Frechette is betting that his startup will be able to leverage that part of us that loves to be part of a community — and loves to receive something in the mail — for good. It goes back to when we, as younguns, used to write letters to our favorite baseball players, checking the mail every day for their response, or waiting for parents or loved ones to send us care packages at summer camp. (Read Zach’s blog post explaining the genesis for Quarterly here.)

As Frechette’s background is in design and (editoral) curation, he’s chosen designers and writers to be Quarterly’s initial contributors. The initial list is impressive, including the likes of “Moonwalking with Einstein” author Joshua Foer, The Atlantic Senior Editor Alexis Madrigal, President of the Rhode Island School of Design John Maeda, hilarious tweeter and Mule Design Founder Mike Monteiro, author of The Happiness Project Gretchen Rubin, to name a few. (Check out the full list here.)

Each of these authors and designers have been chosen by the Quarterly team, yet as the site grows, Frechette says, subscribers will be able to suggest contributors. Subscribers will pay $25 every quarter (hence the site’s name) to enter the subscription service, and the price of entry will entitle users to receive a package every quarter that wil range from consumer products, be they interesting books chosen by your favorite authors to a tube of earth-shattering toothpaste. Shipping is included.

Frechette says, however, that Quarterly is about more than just finding a different pay-for system. It’s not intended to be a one-for-one exchange, it’s about supporting the process of writers and designers, inspiring real connections between package recipients and their creators. We spend an inordinate amount of time connecting with people online, and Quarterly is attempting to find an alternative (and complementary) way for people to connect offline, through curated and unique packages that “while uniquely brilliant in [their] function, will also have a story, and through that story take on new meaning”. Thus, the intent is to tie real world In each package, there will be a letter from the contributor, describing the item inside and the thought process that led to them choosing it.

To help Quarterly in its mission, the startup is today officially announcing that it has receive a round of seed funding from Craig Shapiro and Collaborative Fund, Behance Co-founder and Pinterest investor Scott Belsky (who is also a Quarterly contributor), CEO of Sugar Inc Brian Sugar, and Co-Head of IDEO NY Ryan Jacoby, along with several other entrepreneurs and angel investors.

Shapiro said that his interest in Quarterly results from the fact that he sees the potential for a really strong brand, which blends great design with a great user experience, in the same vein as similarly-focused companies, like Kickstarter, Pinterest, Fab.com, and Skillshare.

I, personally, am inclined to see Quarterly as a suped-up, design-centric Secret Santa service that builds upon old magazine subscription model. The value proposition extends beyond design, and as Quarterly moves forward, it will be moving beyond design to focus more broadly on other consumer verticals. Quality control could be a bit tricky, but with an impressive list of contributors who are known entities in their own right, and with a staff that will expand thanks to this infusion of capital, scaling the business will hopefully become more manageable.

As to how the business is going to make money? For now, Frechette says, Quarterly is operating somewhat like a typical wholesaler, in that they are essentially buying products at a low price and marking them up at sale. Because many designers and authors see this as a unique marketing opportunity and a great way to connect directly with their audience, they are offering their service (and products) for free.

Having only been operating in beta for about three months, the service is still incipient, but it will be interesting to see how it grows as it scales. The more opportunities that Quarterly can provide for consumers and fans to connect with their favorite authors and designers, whether that be through Facebook and Twitter, and learn more about them, the more successful this model will be.

For more, check out Quarterly at home here.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Facebook’s Page again topped our quarterly list of the top Pages by the number of Likes, as measured by our PageData tool. As with past lists, the majority of the names on this one remain unchanged even as all of them grew. Both Facebook and Zynga’s Texas Hold’em Poker reached over 50 million, with several others above 40 million Likes.

The number of Likes that Pages on our list had ranged from Facebook’s 54 million down to MTV’s 28.3 million.

See how other top brands are maximizing their returns on their Facebook campaigns in the Facebook Marketing Bible. See the list below:

1. Facebook – 54,031,990

2. Texas Hold’em Poker – 51,151,002

3. Eminem – 47,880,731

4. YouTube – 46,059,390

5. Rihanna – 45,905,971

6. Lady Gaga – 44,288,366

7. Michael Jackson – 41,557,728

8. Shakira – 41,109,665

9. Family Guy – 38,543,871

10. Justin Bieber – 36,690,985

11. Harry Potter – 35,671,699

12. Katy Perry – 35,636,341

13. Linkin Park – 35,393,553

14. The Simpsons – 35,382,429

15. Cristiano Ronaldo – 35,016,634

16. Coca-Cola – 34,714,743

17. South Park – 34,329,509

18. Lil Wayne – 31,878,344

19. Bob Marley – 31,737,524

20. AKON – 31,301,325

21. Disney – 28,914,893

22. Megan Fox – 28,851,053

23. Music – 28,774,416

24. Beyoncé – 28,585,631

25. MTV – 28,338,730

Article courtesy of Inside Facebook

Seasoned investment advisor Frank Quattrone took the stage with Bill Gurley at Web 2.0 Summit today to talk about the difference between the climate in 2010 and when Quattrone began his career in the pre-IPO-boom 1980s.

What’s the same, according to Quattrone? “The creativity and risk taking and the passion that people have as entreprenuers and also the infrastructure to support people who take risks.”

What’s different? In the late 80s there were 285 public tech companies valued at a 237 billion dollar market cap, whereas today there are 6,000 public tech companies worth trillions of dollars. Tech is a much more fundamental part of economy.  While the IPO market incentivizes entreprenuers to take risks, Quattrone said, “It’s a lot easier to go public than to be public,” because right now there are 6000 companies you need to compete against.

Gurley asked Frank to give the startups in the audience a quick Frank Quattrone IPO tutorial. Quattrone said that companies considering going public should ask themselves the following questions:

1) How important is it for us to be a public company?

2) Do you have the 5-10 year snapshot or better video of your strategy?

3) Are you sure you’re not a trick pony?

While IPOs can be great especially if you’ve got employees itching to exercise liquidity options, companies need to give it some thought before they hitch themselves to the quarterly wagon. “Sometimes it’s great to have a report card about what you’re worth every day and sometimes it’s not so great.”

Quattrone emphasized his “not always so great to go public” point with the above slide, with so many top tech companies with money to burn the M&A market is also currently a really attractive option.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Like any large company, Facebook is forming an entire ecosystem of merger and acquisition activity. While Facebook itself has been buying an increasing number of small companies, primarily for talent, the market leaders and and venture capitalists operating on or around its platform have continued to make bigger deals.

In our most recent Facebook Quarterly Review, released last week, we listed 24 significant investments and acquisitions that have taken place recently, including among Facebook rivals. Two notable events were the Hi5 funding round by Crosslink Capital and the Slide acquisition by Google, detailed below.

Hi5

In retrospect, Hi5′s $14 million funding round led by Crosslink Capital in December looks even more interesting today. Hi5 has sought to convince game developers that social gaming on Facebook will be a short-lived phenomenon because Facebook is mismanaging how the platform serves users. Yet the whole time it has been trying to turn itself from a social network into more of a social gaming platform.

Other investors also saw opportunities beyond Facebook. In the same month as the Hi5 investment, December 2009, Union Square Ventures, an early investor in Zynga, led a $3 million round into Heyzap, which specializes in cross-platform distribution for games on the web. Meanwhile, existing developers like RockYou and Zynga looked for positioning in Asia, where Facebook isn’t strong.

Despite some MAU decreases among the top five developers on Facebook, there’s no sign of Facebook failing as a gaming platform yet. But there is still room for revenue growth, and expansion to other platforms. Facebook and other sites on the broader web can coexist as social gaming destinations — in fact, Facebook’s growing influence with Connect suggests that it will continue to play a part, wherever gaming goes.

Slide

Bought for $182 million in August by Google, Slide fell far short of the $2 billion exit founder Max Levchin originally said he wanted. But the company will still play a vital role in Google’s plans to take on Facebook, with Levchin becoming a vice president of engineering.

Slide’s specialty is in social sharing and virality, the much needed human-touch that could make Google a viable competitor. With other Google investments, Slide begins to look like part of a team. Google was responsible for five of the 24 deals we counted, spending hundreds of millions of dollars and covering its bases with buys like Jambool (virtual currency) and SocialDeck (cross-platform gaming).

For now, social games companies still look reasonably pricey, due to Disney’s up-to-$750 million July acquisition of Playdom, while investors are wary of the constant changes taking place on Facebook. However, we’re still expecting to see more M&A activity in the coming quarter; Facebook is simply too large, and too fast-growing, to scare away investors for long.

The second and third quarters of 2010 saw dozens of funding and acquisition events, each noted and detailed in the Facebook Quarterly Business Review. The Facebook Quarterly Business Review provides a comprehensive overview of hundreds of individual changes and developments, from in-depth looks at the subjects mentioned to including strategy, investments, important executive appointments, competitors and acquisition activity. The Quarterly Business Review is available through Inside Facebook Gold.

Article courtesy of Inside Facebook

Facebook has had one of the most exciting years in its history in 2010, presenting extraordinary opportunities alongside substantial challenges. As part of its growth, the Facebook ecosystem is now more diverse and complex than ever.

To further understanding of the key opportunities on Facebook today, we are proud to announce the latest edition of the Facebook Quarterly Business Review, Q2/Q3 2010, our detailed report tracking Facebook’s financial growth and corporate strategy.

The Facebook Quarterly Business Review examines all major business developments affecting Facebook from the beginning of Q2 2010 through now, and is only available through Inside Facebook Gold, our research and data membership service.

As we close the third quarter of 2010, Facebook is now rapidly bridging online identity, content distribution, and monetization. Social media is now driving more traffic than search to many publishers, while developers of virtual goods-based businesses are profitably leveraging social platforms to connect with hundreds of millions of direct-paying customers. All of this change is supporting (and supported by) Facebook’s own in-house advertising platform – the powerful monetization system that has enabled the company to announce that it had become “free cash flow positive” one year ago this month.

The purpose of the Facebook Quarterly Business Review is to provide readers with a detailed overview of every key aspect of and change affecting Facebook’s business since the close of the first quarter of 2010.

The Facebook Quarterly Business Review is available as a part of your membership to Inside Facebook Gold. To join Inside Facebook Gold, and download the Facebook Quarterly Business Review, click here.

The full table of contents is below:

Article courtesy of Inside Facebook

I’ve always believed that computers, in a general sense, are not a panacea for developing nations. By slapping a laptop down on the desk of every student in Africa or Brazil you’re doing little more than forcing that kid to learn to type and then offering him or her the opportunity to look at porn. Without proper supervision and education, the Internet and, to some extent, computing itself is a timesink and an educational black hole.

Well now we have a modicum of proof.

Some folks at Columbia University did a study in 2009 on a Romanian project designed to offer vouchers to families for computers. This kids who didn’t get a computer complained that they wanted a computer but little else changed. But the kids who got a computer:

In a draft of an article that the Quarterly Journal of Economics will publish early next year, the professors report finding “strong evidence that children in households who won a voucher received significantly lower school grades in math, English and Romanian.” The principal positive effect on the students was improved computer skills.

Read more…

Article courtesy of TechCrunch