In January, private company stock marketplace SecondMarket published data on private company stock sales that they helped complete in 2009. And February’s report showed the transactions that took place in January, which showed a strong demand for consumer products and services startups. The majority of transactions in January were sales of Facebook stock. SecondMarket just released its February report, which you can download here.
Transactions more tripled in February, from $13 million in sales to $43.8 million in sales last month. A full 48% of the transactions were sales of Facebook stock, compared to 38% in January. And last month, we reported that sales are being completed for as high as $40 per share (or a $17.6 billion valuation). But we learned this week that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is in no rush to take the company public. LinkedIn took 18% of the transactions, and sales of both Twitter and Zynga stock were each 15% of the total. LifeLock rounded the group out with 4% of the total.
Earlier this year, Google landed a “landmark” deal with Global Cricket Ventures, the licensing partner to the Indian Premier League (IPL), which would give them the so rights to live stream cricket matches from the IPL on YouTube. This is a huge deal because the streaming of the 2010 IPL season (which starts on Friday and lasts for 45 days) is the first time a large-scale global sporting event will be streamed; with the reach expected to be at least a half-a-billion viewers. Now of of India’s largest gaming companies, Indiagames, has bought the official gaming rights to the IPL tournament to deliver games around the Indian cricket tournament.
Indiagames will be launching a series of web and mobile apps throughout the next 45 days. The first app, called IPL Indiagames T20 Fever, is an online game that uses Facebook Connect to allow users to create cricket teams consisting of both Facebook friends and IPL professional cricketers. The game will also include micro-transaction support, allowing users to users to virtually buy IPL players to improve their chances of becoming the IPL Champion.
Regular readers will know my love for all things location. In particular, these check-in location-based services fascinate me, mainly because I see them as a bridge between social networks as we’ve known it, and actual social interaction in the real world. Foursquare has been my app of choice over the past year (it launched almost exactly a year ago at SXSW). But the latest version of Gowalla has me thinking about switching sides. At the very least, I’ll be using both at all times now.
Gowalla version 2.0 for the iPhone just hit the App Store today. With it, you’ll notice a few different things. First and foremost, the overall look has been updated from a sort of Army green, to a more subtle light green that is much easier on the eyes. More significantly, the toolbar has been reworked so that now social activity is front and center when you load the app, while your own activity is the last tab. Both of these changes are things I’ve complained about since day one with Gowalla, so they’re certainly welcome. But that’s not why I’m excited for the app. I’m excited because it takes the idea of the check-in and extends it.
Today during a panel on disruptive game platforms at GDC’s GamesBeat, a panel of gaming execs took the stage to talk about the current situation in gaming. The standout speaker so far has been hi5 President and CTO Alex St. John, who has not pulled any punches in his criticisms of Facebook and other companies. Moments ago, he just attacked Zynga, calling its games mediocre and saying that its success stemmed from spamming users.
Here’s what he said (paraphrased): “Zynga makes mediocre games. What Zynga discovered is that Facebook had left an opening for spam. They acquired a lot of audience from a security loophole that Facebook has since closed. And they aren’t social. Their only social game is Poker — it’s the only one that you can chat in. All subsquent games are turn based and spread over days.”
Yesterday brought news that Facebook is planning to launch its location offering at its f8 conference in the end of April. In first reporting the news, the New York Times noted that “the company was not trying to beat the smaller location-based social networks, such as Loopt, Foursquare and Gowalla.” From what we’re hearing, that’s true — because they could be using some of those services to federate check-ins.
How do we know? Because it appears that a Facebook employee has been showing the app around to friends. One person who has seen it notes that the icon for the location feature has a pushpin on a map. This was apparently a beta version of an app, but the functionality, if Facebook chooses to go with it, would likely be built into the massively popular Facebook iPhone app.
Two years ago customer support startup Get Satisfaction turned its ear to Twitter to help its clients monitor Twitter for mentions of brands. Get Satisfaction makes a network of customer support forums where customers can post their own questions, ideas, problems, or conversations about a product. Companies can also claim their board and put their own employees on to moderate the boards. Tapping into the conversations taking place Twitter and other social media sites is now integral to brands and customer support, as we’ve recently seen with Southwest Airlines. Get Satisfaction is extending its social media coverage today by rolling out the ability to add a support tab to Facebook Fan pages.
As companies turn to Facebook Fan Pages to connect with customers, consumers are increasingly voicing their issues with a particular product or brand on the brand’s Facebook page. But often these complaints or opinions can get lost in the stream. That’s where Get Satisfaction comes in. The startup now allows brands to create a tab on their fan pages, which can be a portal for consumers to express their opinions, complaints or issues with the brand or product. 
With SXSW starting Friday in Austin, Texas, every location-based service out there is right now finalizing updates that they hope will be the one that gets them used more than all the others. Loopt, is betting on events integration.
The latest version of the app, due to hit the App Store tomorrow will feature a new Pulse tab. Here you’ll find events populated from a ton of sources including the live music tracker SonicLiving (SXSW is first and foremost a music event, after all) and most notably, Facebook. This pre-population is important, because it means the events will already be in the system so users won’t have to do anything other than share it with friends, or check-in if they’re going. The feature also uses you current location to show which events are happening around you at any given moment that a lot of people are at.
Facebook is finally going to enter the location game at this April’s f8 conference, according to a report this morning on the NYT’s Bits blog. And they’re looking to take Google head on.
We’ve been hearing rumors about Facebook’s location features for a long time, but the buzz has picked up in the last few months. Those rumors got legs in October, when we noticed that the site had added language explicitly talking about location features to its rewritten privacy policy.
The question now is exactly what this location sharing will look like. I’ve heard that Facebook has tested simply attaching location data to user status updates, similar to the way Twitter does it. 
Every place and object in the world has a secret past: who lived there, who passed by, who touched it. The secret lives of objects are filled with such details. If only you could make them talk. But what if you could give any physical object a story simply by sticking a barcode on it and appending a message to that barcode? The message could be a photo, a text message, a video, or a voice note. All anyone would need to unlock the message is a phone with a special barcode scanning app. Stickybits is that app.
Every place and object in the world has a secret past: who lived there, who passed by, who touched it. The secret lives of objects are filled with such details. If only you could make them talk. But what if you could give any physical object a story simply by sticking a barcode on it and appending a message to that barcode? The message could be a photo, a text message, a video, or a voice note. All anyone would need to unlock the message is a phone with a special barcode scanning app. Stickybits is that app.