Uh oh! It seems that it's not a good day to be a Verizon Wireless user. Based on an overwhelming number of reports in support forums, the cellular provider's customers are experiencing 3G and 4G data outages across the U.S. right now.
We've reached out to Verizon for more information about the issue and will update this story once we hear back, but in the meantime we're checking on the complaints in Verizon's own support forums.
Users are reporting trouble maintaining a steady data connection as well as misleading connectivity statuses (some devices are displaying icons which suggest connectivity, but no actual connection occurs). According to the folks at The Verge — who have been keeping track of the origins of the posts — the reports are coming in from "pretty much everywhere" including California, Rhode Island, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Nevada, New Jersey, and New York.
Are you a Verizon customer and experiencing issues with your data connection? Please let us know in the comments below.
Update: Verizon Wireless responded to us with a brief note stating that things should be getting back to normal:
Verizon Wireless 4G LTE service is returning to normal this morning after company engineers worked to resolve an issue with the 4G network during the early morning hours today. Throughout this time, 4G LTE customers were able to make voice calls and send and receive text messages. The 3G data network operated normally.
Wireless analyst Jeff Kagan chimed in to point out that it's not particularly surprising that an outage like this occurred in the first place. "As the wireless world becomes more about wireless data we can experience more of these outages," he says. He also offers some words of warning:
Expect wireless data traffic to explode during the holidays starting this week with Chanukah, then Christmas and the weeks following. We should brace for impact of all those users gobbling all that wireless data. Sounds like the right atmosphere for outages and slowdowns.
Updated at 6:45 p.m. ET: Verizon Wireless said it has fixed the data service problem, the second high-profile service problem this month for the company. The carrier said the problem with its 4G network was resolved by 2 p.m. ET, with data service restored for all customers of the 4G network late in the day. Verizon did not explain the cause of the problem. While some customers had complained online of problems with the older 3G service on Wednesday, company spokesman Tom Pica said 3G devices had not been affected. Verizon Wireless said that voice and text services had not stopped working — Reuters
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Rabu, 21 Desember 2011
Senin, 19 Desember 2011
When it comes to Facebook apps, Android wins
The Facebook for Android app has just leapfrogged ahead of Facebook for iPhone in the number of daily active users.
The latest report from Appdata.com shows that the Android app is the more popular mobile Facebook option, making it the first time that has been the case.
To be specific, as of December 2011, Facebook for iPhone has 57.6 million daily active users while Facebook for Android has 58.8 million.
This metric is just the latest in a growing set of statistics that show Android is a more widely used platform than the iPhone.
When it comes to monthly active users, Facebook for iPhone is still the leader, but Android will assumedly catch up on that statistic over time as well.
Comparing numbers like this between the iPhone and Android has always come with a footnote, since Android is available throughout all carriers and on a wide range of devices, while the iPhone is carrier-restricted and only counts a handful of different models.
So it has become pretty black-and-white that Android is the more popular platform, but any one of the iPhones is a much more popular phone.
(tgdaily.com)
The latest report from Appdata.com shows that the Android app is the more popular mobile Facebook option, making it the first time that has been the case.
To be specific, as of December 2011, Facebook for iPhone has 57.6 million daily active users while Facebook for Android has 58.8 million.
This metric is just the latest in a growing set of statistics that show Android is a more widely used platform than the iPhone.
When it comes to monthly active users, Facebook for iPhone is still the leader, but Android will assumedly catch up on that statistic over time as well.
Comparing numbers like this between the iPhone and Android has always come with a footnote, since Android is available throughout all carriers and on a wide range of devices, while the iPhone is carrier-restricted and only counts a handful of different models.
So it has become pretty black-and-white that Android is the more popular platform, but any one of the iPhones is a much more popular phone.
(tgdaily.com)
Jumat, 16 Desember 2011
Zynga goes public - investors eye CEO, growth potential with doubts
Online games developer Zynga Inc scored badly as it went public on Friday, dashing hopes for the year's hottest tech IPO, as investors frowned on its over-reliance on Facebook, dimming growth prospects, and outsized control by CEO Mark Pincus.
Zynga's stock fell 5 percent below its $10 initial public offering price to close at $9.50 on Nasdaq on Friday, dealing losses to IPO buyers used to racking up gains on a stock's first day of trading.
Investors had eagerly awaited the IPO as a way to get a slice of Facebook's growth before the leading social networking website goes public, possibly in 2012. Zynga makes money on Facebook by selling virtual items such as jewelry and poker chips in its games such as "FarmVille" and "CityVille."
At least one analyst said on Friday that some investors may have been turned off by Chief Executive Mark Pincus' large voting stake and control over the company. He has a special class of shares that grants him 37 percent voting power even though his equity stake is much lower, and public shareholders will have less than 2 percent of votes.
"We believe that having a CEO/owner-controlled board is particularly dangerous for investors in young companies," said Cowen and Co analyst Doug Creutz.
Creutz, who has a neutral rating on the stock, added that history is full of examples of CEOs who have built young companies but cannot manage them when they mature.
Asked about his voting shares, Pincus told Reuters he decided to retain such huge control over Zynga because he believed from the start that he was the best person to lead the company.
"Investors who want to see the company deliver long-term value are going to be better served by the fact that I can continue to ensure the company keeps its focus on the long term and we don't let short-term swings and opportunities reduce that," he said in an interview.
Based on Friday's closing share price, the value of Pincus' holdings fell to $1.05 billion from $1.1 billion at the IPO price.
Friday's flop stunned investors who had expected a strong showing because the company is profitable, unlike other recent high profile Internet IPOs such as Groupon and Pandora .
"I was stunned when I saw this. This is a disaster for them. The way you're supposed to price deals is to give investors a 15 percent IPO discount to compensate them for the risk of backing a relatively new company," said Dan Niles, chief investment officer of AlphaOne Capital Partners, who did not buy shares.
"It makes me wonder about the underlying health of the market. IPOs like this can change the whole tenor of the market," he added.
Investors said Zynga's stock performance could hurt other private companies in the pipeline such as Yelp and even Facebook. Some investors regard Zynga's IPO as a proxy for Facebook, because 95 percent of its $828 million in revenue in the past nine months comes from Mark Zuckerberg's social network.
"Now we have an exciting IPO and people don't want it and that's a big concern for when Facebook comes out," said Jeff Sica, president and chief investment officer of SICA Wealth Management.
The cooling off in the IPO markets could hurt Facebook's estimated $100 billion valuation, BGC analyst Colin Gillis said.
Zynga's reliance on the platform was supposed to attract investors looking to bet on Facebook's growth. With Facebook's IPO expected to be at least several months away, Zynga is one of the few indirect ways to bet on the website's future.
Facebook takes a 30 percent cut of the revenue Zynga derives from the social network, which features more than 222 million monthly active Zynga users.
Zynga CEO Pincus said he was looking beyond the share price drop and said the company went public at the right time.
"We're going to focus on the products and business results we deliver in the next four to eight quarters and hope the stock market values and appreciates that as they see us deliver it," he said.
In San Francisco, hundreds of employees got to work early to watch Pincus ring the bell to open Nasdaq trading and wore T-shirts saying "I love play" featuring the ZNGA trading symbol printed on the sleeves. Cinnamon buns and hot cocoa were served before the ceremony.
CONCERNS WEIGH
The company, which competes with Electronic Arts, sold 100 million shares of Class A common stock at $10 per share in the IPO, roughly 11 percent of its shares on a diluted basis, at the top end of the $8.50 to $10 indicative range.
The IPO values Zynga at $8.9 billion. In November, the company had been valued at roughly $14 billion, according to an internal estimate in a regulatory filing.
But that lowered valuation may still have been too rich for some, said Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia.
Zynga's near $9 billion valuation is less than videogame maker Activision Blizzard Inc's $13.6 billion and higher than Electronic Arts Inc's $6.7 billion. In the last four quarters, Activision and Electronic Arts generated more revenue than Zynga.
Analysts and investors have also expressed concern over how it profits from less than 3 percent of its players who buy items in its free games.
Plus, its reliance on Facebook appears unhealthy to investors who want to see Zynga diversify its revenue sources. Pincus on Friday said the company's 13 million daily users of its mobile games is a good start, and doesn't trail its daily users on Facebook as much as people assume. Zynga had 50.5 million daily users on Facebook on Friday, according to AppData, a website which tracks Facebook applications.
Yet Zynga's growth rate of bookings - the money it makes up front when users buy items, is slowing - which most analysts said is a red flag and could hurt Zynga's future revenue.
Zynga is the second online games company selling virtual items to slip in its trading debut this week. On Wednesday, Nexon Co shares fell following its $1.2 billion IPO, which was Japan's biggest offering this year.
At $1 billion in proceeds, Zynga's IPO is still the largest from a U.S. Internet company since Google Inc raised $1.9 billion in 2004.
(csmonitor.com)
Zynga's stock fell 5 percent below its $10 initial public offering price to close at $9.50 on Nasdaq on Friday, dealing losses to IPO buyers used to racking up gains on a stock's first day of trading.
Investors had eagerly awaited the IPO as a way to get a slice of Facebook's growth before the leading social networking website goes public, possibly in 2012. Zynga makes money on Facebook by selling virtual items such as jewelry and poker chips in its games such as "FarmVille" and "CityVille."
At least one analyst said on Friday that some investors may have been turned off by Chief Executive Mark Pincus' large voting stake and control over the company. He has a special class of shares that grants him 37 percent voting power even though his equity stake is much lower, and public shareholders will have less than 2 percent of votes.
"We believe that having a CEO/owner-controlled board is particularly dangerous for investors in young companies," said Cowen and Co analyst Doug Creutz.
Creutz, who has a neutral rating on the stock, added that history is full of examples of CEOs who have built young companies but cannot manage them when they mature.
Asked about his voting shares, Pincus told Reuters he decided to retain such huge control over Zynga because he believed from the start that he was the best person to lead the company.
"Investors who want to see the company deliver long-term value are going to be better served by the fact that I can continue to ensure the company keeps its focus on the long term and we don't let short-term swings and opportunities reduce that," he said in an interview.
Based on Friday's closing share price, the value of Pincus' holdings fell to $1.05 billion from $1.1 billion at the IPO price.
Friday's flop stunned investors who had expected a strong showing because the company is profitable, unlike other recent high profile Internet IPOs such as Groupon and Pandora .
"I was stunned when I saw this. This is a disaster for them. The way you're supposed to price deals is to give investors a 15 percent IPO discount to compensate them for the risk of backing a relatively new company," said Dan Niles, chief investment officer of AlphaOne Capital Partners, who did not buy shares.
"It makes me wonder about the underlying health of the market. IPOs like this can change the whole tenor of the market," he added.
Investors said Zynga's stock performance could hurt other private companies in the pipeline such as Yelp and even Facebook. Some investors regard Zynga's IPO as a proxy for Facebook, because 95 percent of its $828 million in revenue in the past nine months comes from Mark Zuckerberg's social network.
"Now we have an exciting IPO and people don't want it and that's a big concern for when Facebook comes out," said Jeff Sica, president and chief investment officer of SICA Wealth Management.
The cooling off in the IPO markets could hurt Facebook's estimated $100 billion valuation, BGC analyst Colin Gillis said.
Zynga's reliance on the platform was supposed to attract investors looking to bet on Facebook's growth. With Facebook's IPO expected to be at least several months away, Zynga is one of the few indirect ways to bet on the website's future.
Facebook takes a 30 percent cut of the revenue Zynga derives from the social network, which features more than 222 million monthly active Zynga users.
Zynga CEO Pincus said he was looking beyond the share price drop and said the company went public at the right time.
"We're going to focus on the products and business results we deliver in the next four to eight quarters and hope the stock market values and appreciates that as they see us deliver it," he said.
In San Francisco, hundreds of employees got to work early to watch Pincus ring the bell to open Nasdaq trading and wore T-shirts saying "I love play" featuring the ZNGA trading symbol printed on the sleeves. Cinnamon buns and hot cocoa were served before the ceremony.
CONCERNS WEIGH
The company, which competes with Electronic Arts, sold 100 million shares of Class A common stock at $10 per share in the IPO, roughly 11 percent of its shares on a diluted basis, at the top end of the $8.50 to $10 indicative range.
The IPO values Zynga at $8.9 billion. In November, the company had been valued at roughly $14 billion, according to an internal estimate in a regulatory filing.
But that lowered valuation may still have been too rich for some, said Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia.
Zynga's near $9 billion valuation is less than videogame maker Activision Blizzard Inc's $13.6 billion and higher than Electronic Arts Inc's $6.7 billion. In the last four quarters, Activision and Electronic Arts generated more revenue than Zynga.
Analysts and investors have also expressed concern over how it profits from less than 3 percent of its players who buy items in its free games.
Plus, its reliance on Facebook appears unhealthy to investors who want to see Zynga diversify its revenue sources. Pincus on Friday said the company's 13 million daily users of its mobile games is a good start, and doesn't trail its daily users on Facebook as much as people assume. Zynga had 50.5 million daily users on Facebook on Friday, according to AppData, a website which tracks Facebook applications.
Yet Zynga's growth rate of bookings - the money it makes up front when users buy items, is slowing - which most analysts said is a red flag and could hurt Zynga's future revenue.
Zynga is the second online games company selling virtual items to slip in its trading debut this week. On Wednesday, Nexon Co shares fell following its $1.2 billion IPO, which was Japan's biggest offering this year.
At $1 billion in proceeds, Zynga's IPO is still the largest from a U.S. Internet company since Google Inc raised $1.9 billion in 2004.
(csmonitor.com)
Sabtu, 10 Desember 2011
Jack Dorsey, left, co-founder and chairman of Twitter, and Dick Costolo, the company's chief executive, announce the new version of Twitter on Dec. 8, 2011, in a handout photo. The new design is intended to draw new users, keep them on the social network longer and, ultimately, attract more advertisers. (Twitter via The New York Times) -- NO SALES; FOR EDITORIAL USE ONLY WITH STORY SLUGGED TWITTER FUTURE BY SOMINI SENGUPTA. ALL OTHER USE PROHIBITED.
What is Twitter?
Almost six years after it stumbled into existence, that remains a surprisingly hard question to answer. And with hundreds of millions of users, with many of its social media peers lining up to go public, and with more than a billion dollars of private capital invested, you might think the pressure is building on Twitter to better define itself -- and, not incidentally, figure out a way to make more money.
But you'd be wrong. For the moment, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo makes it clear that the company known for instantaneous communication is going to take its own sweet time figuring out what it wants to become.
Running Twitter "doesn't come with a sense of pressure," Costolo said this week. "It feels like an opportunity I have to seize."
Costolo joined the company two years ago as chief operating officer, and took the CEO seat in October 2010 when co-founder Ev Williams stepped aside. He inherited a company closely associated with its founders even as it was still growing at a blistering pace.
As Costolo spoke Thursday, he was standing in the future headquarters of the San Francisco company. The company invited members of the media to get a first look at the space as part of a bigger product announcement.
Twitter plans to occupy three floors in an art deco building in one of the city's seedier neighborhoods. The city enacted a series of tax cuts earlier this year to entice Twitter to make the move, hoping
Advertisement
it would revitalize the area.
The space has been stripped down to its concrete bones inside in preparation for its big renovation. Indeed, many of the windows were smashed or missing, giving the space an arctic chill.
And yet, spending millions of dollars to fix up this space is just one of many signs of the company's confidence in its future. For all its impact, the company still has a relatively small number of employees: about 700. The new space will accommodate several thousand more.
"We're going to need those people to scale the company," Costolo said during a press conference.
Twitter continues to experience explosive growth, at times almost in spite of itself. Twitter can still be unreliable, and new users are frequently baffled about what to do when they first sign up.
The company knows that, and at the event Thursday announced a series of changes to its website and mobile-phone apps to make Twitter easier for non-techies to use it and find content they want. Costolo said the company is trying to think about how the next billion users will join the service by stripping away nonessential features.
In an interview after the announcement, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey described the new layout as "crisp, clean, simple."
"It just added clarity," Dorsey said. "We have a clearer sense of direction." While it doesn't completely solve the complexity problem, Dorsey added, "We're definitely getting there."
Making Twitter easier to use, though, is just one of its big challenges. While Costolo has run several startups, Twitter is already by far the largest company he has run and will get even larger as it hires thousands of employees in the coming years.
To that end, Costolo has been thinking about how to preserve Twitter's culture by trying to define its values clearly and hiring people with "passion and personality."
However, Costolo made it clear what those core values don't include: Making money. Perhaps the most frequently asked question about Twitter's future ("What's the business model?") is the one that seems to concern Costolo the least.
To be clear: Costolo understands that the company will have to generate revenue to support the size and impact he wants the company to have. But despite skepticism about the company's financial future, he refuses to make that his focus. For now, he's happy with the measured pace of early advertising products such as letting companies pay to promote tweets and accounts.
"We should think of revenue like oxygen," Costolo said. "It's necessary for life, but it's not the purpose of life. If we do the right things, the businesses are going to follow it."
Costolo said Twitter has enough money in the bank to sustain it for the foreseeable future. There is no sense of IPO-envy as companies like Zynga, LinkedIn, Groupon and Facebook graduate to the public markets.
"We can stay private and grow the business the way we want, as long as we want," Costolo said. "We never think about or talk about when we want to go public."
Twitter has already made a tremendous impact on culture and politics. But Costolo may be aiming for something even loftier: to transcend the profit-driven motivation that propels most companies.
As he puts it: "Twitter has the opportunity to be one of the great companies in the world."
Many talk about it, but few truly mean it. If Costolo fulfills that promise, that may be the biggest impact yet that he and Twitter can make.(mercurynews.com)
What is Twitter?
Almost six years after it stumbled into existence, that remains a surprisingly hard question to answer. And with hundreds of millions of users, with many of its social media peers lining up to go public, and with more than a billion dollars of private capital invested, you might think the pressure is building on Twitter to better define itself -- and, not incidentally, figure out a way to make more money.
But you'd be wrong. For the moment, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo makes it clear that the company known for instantaneous communication is going to take its own sweet time figuring out what it wants to become.
Running Twitter "doesn't come with a sense of pressure," Costolo said this week. "It feels like an opportunity I have to seize."
Costolo joined the company two years ago as chief operating officer, and took the CEO seat in October 2010 when co-founder Ev Williams stepped aside. He inherited a company closely associated with its founders even as it was still growing at a blistering pace.
As Costolo spoke Thursday, he was standing in the future headquarters of the San Francisco company. The company invited members of the media to get a first look at the space as part of a bigger product announcement.
Twitter plans to occupy three floors in an art deco building in one of the city's seedier neighborhoods. The city enacted a series of tax cuts earlier this year to entice Twitter to make the move, hoping
Advertisement
it would revitalize the area.
The space has been stripped down to its concrete bones inside in preparation for its big renovation. Indeed, many of the windows were smashed or missing, giving the space an arctic chill.
And yet, spending millions of dollars to fix up this space is just one of many signs of the company's confidence in its future. For all its impact, the company still has a relatively small number of employees: about 700. The new space will accommodate several thousand more.
"We're going to need those people to scale the company," Costolo said during a press conference.
Twitter continues to experience explosive growth, at times almost in spite of itself. Twitter can still be unreliable, and new users are frequently baffled about what to do when they first sign up.
The company knows that, and at the event Thursday announced a series of changes to its website and mobile-phone apps to make Twitter easier for non-techies to use it and find content they want. Costolo said the company is trying to think about how the next billion users will join the service by stripping away nonessential features.
In an interview after the announcement, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey described the new layout as "crisp, clean, simple."
"It just added clarity," Dorsey said. "We have a clearer sense of direction." While it doesn't completely solve the complexity problem, Dorsey added, "We're definitely getting there."
Making Twitter easier to use, though, is just one of its big challenges. While Costolo has run several startups, Twitter is already by far the largest company he has run and will get even larger as it hires thousands of employees in the coming years.
To that end, Costolo has been thinking about how to preserve Twitter's culture by trying to define its values clearly and hiring people with "passion and personality."
However, Costolo made it clear what those core values don't include: Making money. Perhaps the most frequently asked question about Twitter's future ("What's the business model?") is the one that seems to concern Costolo the least.
To be clear: Costolo understands that the company will have to generate revenue to support the size and impact he wants the company to have. But despite skepticism about the company's financial future, he refuses to make that his focus. For now, he's happy with the measured pace of early advertising products such as letting companies pay to promote tweets and accounts.
"We should think of revenue like oxygen," Costolo said. "It's necessary for life, but it's not the purpose of life. If we do the right things, the businesses are going to follow it."
Costolo said Twitter has enough money in the bank to sustain it for the foreseeable future. There is no sense of IPO-envy as companies like Zynga, LinkedIn, Groupon and Facebook graduate to the public markets.
"We can stay private and grow the business the way we want, as long as we want," Costolo said. "We never think about or talk about when we want to go public."
Twitter has already made a tremendous impact on culture and politics. But Costolo may be aiming for something even loftier: to transcend the profit-driven motivation that propels most companies.
As he puts it: "Twitter has the opportunity to be one of the great companies in the world."
Many talk about it, but few truly mean it. If Costolo fulfills that promise, that may be the biggest impact yet that he and Twitter can make.(mercurynews.com)
Rabu, 07 Desember 2011
The Web pioneer is in the midst of transforming 5,000 square feet of midtown Manhattan office space into a studio that will feature two sets, seven edit rooms, a state-of-the-art control room, and a green room, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
The facility is expected to be used as part of a pact announced in October with ABC News, in which the media giant's news division will distribute some of its content via Yahoo News. The news departments from each organization are working together on developing content for Yahoo as well as for ABC News sites.
Michael Manas, head of production supervision for Yahoo Studios New York, wouldn't reveal how much the company is spending on its Manhattan project, except to say "Just enough to win."
"This is showing Yahoo's commitment to premium video content," he said. "The studio will be a massive source of pride and enhance our ability to grow and innovate."
The news comes as the fate of Yahoo, one of the most storied companies of the Web's first phase, is in quite a state of flux. Reports of potential buyers have been rampant in recent months since a leaked memo from Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang indicated the company could be for sale.
Yang said at a conference in October that the company's board of directors was exploring a number of strategic options beyond selling the company, presumably selling off one or more of the company's three units: its core search and content business, as well as stakes in Yahoo Japan and Alibaba.
Despite its tepid stock price, high employee attrition rate, and sputtering product development efforts, Yahoo has been attracting a lot of attention from possible suitors, including venture capitalist Andreessen Horowitz, fellow dot-com wunderkind AOL, and even Microsoft, which pursued Yahoo vigorously a few years back, to no avail.(cnet.com)
The facility is expected to be used as part of a pact announced in October with ABC News, in which the media giant's news division will distribute some of its content via Yahoo News. The news departments from each organization are working together on developing content for Yahoo as well as for ABC News sites.
Michael Manas, head of production supervision for Yahoo Studios New York, wouldn't reveal how much the company is spending on its Manhattan project, except to say "Just enough to win."
"This is showing Yahoo's commitment to premium video content," he said. "The studio will be a massive source of pride and enhance our ability to grow and innovate."
The news comes as the fate of Yahoo, one of the most storied companies of the Web's first phase, is in quite a state of flux. Reports of potential buyers have been rampant in recent months since a leaked memo from Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang indicated the company could be for sale.
Yang said at a conference in October that the company's board of directors was exploring a number of strategic options beyond selling the company, presumably selling off one or more of the company's three units: its core search and content business, as well as stakes in Yahoo Japan and Alibaba.
Despite its tepid stock price, high employee attrition rate, and sputtering product development efforts, Yahoo has been attracting a lot of attention from possible suitors, including venture capitalist Andreessen Horowitz, fellow dot-com wunderkind AOL, and even Microsoft, which pursued Yahoo vigorously a few years back, to no avail.(cnet.com)
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