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Tuesday 31 August 2010
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facebook studies paper
Comparative Economics
Mary Eng
August 2010
Facebook Venture Capital
Introduction
The purpose of this paper is to uncover the complexity of venture capital acquisition for Internet technology start-ups, with a specific look at Facebook as an example of a venture capital success story. In the paper, I would like to expose the complexity of factors which would affect the risk analysis of potential investors. It is necessary to distinguish between types of investors, angel or VC based, as well as to establish a chronology of investments. I would also like to draw forth the increasing atmosphere of transparency in which investments occur, especially as the technology sector is so profoundly focused on self-documentation and commentary. The impact of that transparency has larger ramifications for the corporate social responsibility image-making as well as the seduction of future investments.
For the task of tracing the investments I have relied heavily on Crunchbase, a hyperlinkable database chronicling the history and sourcing for all capital investments. Crunchbase is produced by the Techcrunch blog, which offers up to the minute analysis of all aspects of technology sector development. As the hesitant angel investor or venture capitalist weighs the risks of investment, it is important to make mention of the factors which influence their willingness to invest. With that in mind, legal vulnerabilities as well as public relations issues are important aspects of a company’s net worth to asses. Governmental interest also plays a key part of the firm’s success, in addition to the viability of their innovative business plan or charismatic marketing buzz. It is also important to evaluate how the company performs in relation to its peers, and in this sense looking at Facebook as a part of a larger social networking revolution, will help us understand its leadership in guiding the trends, as well as the ingenuity of investors who have propulsed it to a main stage.
Facebook is an interesting example of a company which has grown over a few years due to unprecedented venture capital investment, despite operationally not turning a profit until September 2009. As Facebook has pushed the limits of many norms, they have both challenged the old guard and rewritten the rules, shaping a new system of technology sector growth and changing the ways people and businesses communicate. Indeed Facebook has become a part of a larger marketing revolution which demands attention to social networking presence as well as brand strategy innovations within the Facebook community. Monetization strategies are an essential part of technology sector growth. For a technology sector company, the economic climate can be made more or less favorable with the assistance of government intervention. In Facebook’s case, their primary investors benefit greatly from the National Venture Capital Association’s constant advocacy. They are a lobby group which specifically advocates for technology sector venture capitalist, seeking Federal Communications Commission and Federal Trade Commission favor, as well as lobbying for favorable legislation which affects the viability of future growth. Aspects of this include everything from weakened anti-trust standards to liberal immigration visa norms which encourage foreign investment and the immigration of a highly skilled international talent pool.
From Angel Investment to Venture Capital
Venture capital is an essential part of the growth of creative and technological sectors. A venture capitalist distributes the risk across a wide portfolio of companies, whereas an angel investor puts a private amount of money into one particular worthy company. A look at the venture capital and other capital sources for the Facebook company will provide an interesting subject for investigation. As Facebook, inc. has topped the social networking gamut in popularity, it’s innovation and company strategy has relevance for many industries who either rely on Facebook for marketing or use it as a part of an integrative Internet strategy. While the average Facebook user may have no concern for the financial underpinnings of the technology phenomenon, a look at the financing structure and company history may have a broader relevance for understanding the motivations behind various finance groups and investors.
In this paper I plan to explore the relevance of the National Venture Capital Association, a lobby and trade group, the Accel venture capital infusion, and more recent capital assets as provided by Elevation partners. Techcrunch, the leading technology blog, has a whole page devoted to Facebook. Their very excellent Crunchbase provides a tracible link to investor time lines and profiles of start-ups of all sizes and the investment history of individual angel investors and the investors in venture capital firms. It is possible through hyperlink to understand a graph of investment in a chronological schema, or a branching network.
Facebook as an entity has a story which is a common myth known to many. There are numerous websites detailing the many issues which beset the industry behemoth.
It is necessary to distinguish the difference between angel investors and venture capital investing. Angel investors have a solid amount of funds they want to bestow upon a promising firm. venture capitalists pool their funds in a venture capital network, which distributes the risk of their investment across many firms.
The venture capitalist sees the risk in the technology start-up as a worthy risk. Many technology entrepreneurs who sell their successful start-ups immediately pour their financial capital into new ventures. Noteworthy among those are Paypal’s Peter Theil a Facebook angel investor, who now sits at the head of Clarium Capital. The atmosphere of high risk is mitigated by the actual enjoyment of the flourishing of new technology trends. Upon selling Paypal, Theil poured his wealth into other start-ups, a pattern which can be seen widely in the technology sector.
Accel and Everybody Else
Accel was one of the first firms to see the potential in Facebook and put major investments towards its growth. Its investments are 12M. It is important to note that Facebook did not come out of the red until September 2009. A look at Accel’ investment portfolio will reveal numerous lesser known companies in the technology sector. Successive rounds of investment are grouped in tiers pertaining to chronology of investments. Notable are The Founders Fund, Greylock capital, and Meritech Capital Partners which as the series B. investors contributed 27M as a group. It is very important to note that Peter Theill and Reid Hoffman’s original angel investment of 500M collectively outpaces all of the other venture capital infusions. Microsoft’s hefty 250M series C investment came in 2007, after talk of the sale of Facebook. Facebook became famous as it turned down aquisition by Yahoo, a defiant move which inspired future investment.
credit: Crunchbase
Monetization Strategies
The Financial Times in April 2010 profiled the Facebook corporate strategy to reach out for advertising links with a new program the “like” feature in which users can express themselves via “liking” various brands. Programs like this which seek to divert attention to demi-adverts seek to monetize Facebook, an ultimate duty for the venture capital investors. The digital gift economy or the Facebook dollars are other such schemes towards infusing the dreamy start-up with a measure of profitability. The schemes involving strategic ad revenue, data mining, digital gift schemes, and Facebook cash have yet to prove themselves in terms of long-term viability, and some are indeed subject to litigation regarding fraudulent overcharging (as with digital gifts which demand credit card data which then bill on automatic basis high figure sums).
An indirect monetization strategy involves the way Facebook has placed itself as the irreplacible digital billboard for other corporate marketing strategies. In that sense, Facebook has a guaranteed client base from which to later extract cash. Fully exploring corporate “taxation” or enhanced feature modules will play out in the future. As compnies like Twitter were whispered to toy with charging for a deluxe service, or as Craigslist charges emloyers seeking laborers, there may be future ways of extracting income from the easy corporate Facebook captives.
Boom, Bust, And Government Stabilization
The early 2000’s brought infusions of cash into the Silicon Valley landscape. Many ventures were fiscally disastrous. A look at venture capital climates will still find that the cash infusion made possible in the United States exceeds many other economic climates. Paul Carr’s spoof of a book, Bringing Nothing to the Party, details the struggles of an aspiring technology start up’s quest for venture capital. The company, a social networking site for hip young Londoners, faces immanent financial peril. Carr’s portrait of the London venture capital scene pits the fledgling technology scene as far inferior to the stateside technology riches. Another approach to measuring the atmosphere for technology start-ups are the amount of governmental participation in fostering growth. In Finland for instance, the government when faced with depopulation and a bleakly performing agrarian economy, infused cash into the technology sectors and subsidized advanced technology degress and education which helped the young Nokia ascend the charts in the pre-smart phone cell phone revolution. And while capital investments may be exceptional in the United States, whether or not a host of political factors are entirely hospitable is debatable.
everything from labor costs to investment visa availability pertain to the flourishing of technology start-ups. venture capitalists must consider these factors as well as possible legal threats which will undermine their business.
Market Leaders: Shaping the Industry
What makes Facebook such an interesting company to follow, is that not only have they anticipated cultural trends but they have shaped them, and they have quickly adapted as new technologies shaped the zeitgeist. The Twitterification of their interface rapidly followed the Twitter ascendancy, which in a sense showed a loyalty and duty to their investors, to keep the company at the cutting edge for as long as possible. In a digital marketplace, aesthetics and trendiness rule the day. If an interface becomes stale, boring, or aesthetically out of fashion, it ceases to be relevant, and will decline, as we have seen with Myspace.
The recent “Google Me” media buzz has alerted the technology community that there may be a very immenant demise of the Facebook, even with its 500 million strong. The company seeks to return the venture capital investment as it serves as a model for sociological transitions and adapts to a host of factors including the viability of ad revenue, the crunchability of statistics for ad revenue microcash, the sale of raw data, and or government support or subsidy, and decline in trendiness.
Accel, as one of the most premier investment companies involved in technology growth, has a close relationship with the National Venture Capital Association which rewarded Jim Swartz with a Lifetime achievment award. The National Venture Capital Association has shared several figures from the Accel group, and holds their interest and future at heart as it represents over 400 similarly situated firms. The National Venture Capital Association lobbies the United States Congress for more easily available investment Visas, which promote tech start up growth. The seek to influence the Federal Communications Commission regulations for the benefit of their firms and increase braodband strength for the increased viability of social networking platforms.
The most pre-eminent VC concerns will thusly benefit from a close relationship with lobby groups and political affiliations which benefit their prosperity.
Privacy and Surveillance Concerns
When following the trail of Facebook capital investment, it is important to ask whether any of the investment firms have any particular political or other aims. Do they see Facebook as a valuable tool for civic surveillance? Or are they affiliated with groups that do? As Facebook hosts a panoply viewpoints, no one viewpoint predominates, but certain overarching norms prevail: namely, recession of privacy norms, increasing levels of participatory surveillance, increasing mythologizing of the cult of identity. In late 2009, the Electronics Frontiers Foundation sued the United States Department of Justice, Department of Defense, and Central Intelligence Agency for failing to disclose as per the Freedom of Information Act, the level of their utilization of social networking for surveillance or other purposes. Might it be possible to show that the state has a direct interest in supporting the growth of the social networking phenomenon?
The company In-Q-Tel is a venture capital firm directly and officially and openly linked to the development of technologies useful for the Central Intelligence Agency. They were implicated by the Electronic Frontiers Foundation in the 2006 surveillance via telephone’s in the case Electronic Frontiers Foundation v. ATT. In-Q-tel’s capital investment is geared towards the development of advanced technologies such as speech recognition, in addition to Skype surveillance and phone call surveillance. The latest notice on their Crunchbase profile shows their investment in an aggregation service which allows corporate interests to watch and compute the success of their social network advertising penetration. The social media monitoring software in a sense becomes a derivative industry which crunches a much larger data base, of which Facebook is only a part. In that sense, Facebook becomes an inextricable part of state interest, and this is obvious via simple Internet searching, even despite the Electronic Frontiers Foundation’s inability to use the FOIA to obtain more specifics. Indeed, the CIA uses Facebook to recruit new employees. That much we know.
Facebook as Premium Advertising Real Estate
Bono Rockstar is a primary investor in the Elevation Partners firm which provided a substantial infusion to Facebook in June 2010. According to British technology mag The Register, the 120M venture capital infusion gives Elevation a mere .05% ownership in Facebook. What motivation would the Bono empire have in Facebook? Facebook serves a high level of traffic. For some users, the rest of the Internet does not exist. Potential Ad revenue schemes, and a stadium full of adherents might be more suseptible to the Bono humanitarian agenda. In a certain sense we could easily hypothesize that Bono’s Facebook share is geared towards advancing his larger philosophical agenda. It is also interesting to note that Silicon Valley magazines ridicule Elevation Partners investment strategies. Perhaps it is their lateness in the game. Indeed, the Elevation investment in June 2010 comes sharply on the heels of the Facebook v. Google Me debate, in which the eclipse of Facebook is forecast. Are future investments likely to be ridiculed out of jeolosy in the technology community? Or is there a real concern that Facebook, like its predecessors will quickly fade? This is a very important risk factor which a venture capital firm must asses.
Profitability and Legal Risk Management
The Facebook venture capital investigation might also beg the question, why invest in a company that has not yet turned a profit? Risk management is a company’s duty to its investors. The most significant predictable risk monetarily is legal assault, especially in the technology sector, which is beset with patent, copyright, programming, software, and other intellectual property law issues.
What can other start-ups gain from this finance model? How can new companies compete for venture capital investment or the honors bestowed by angel investors? How can technology start-ups protect their capital investment from crippling litigation? Many a firm finds itself in protracted litigation, which can either slow, or sometimes halt growth altogether. Indeed Facebook is currently being sued by a software programming contractor who alleges he found a contract entitling him to 85% of Facebook. As Richard Susskind details in the book The End of Lawyers the future of many technology companies will involve engaging legal services on a per anum basis, rather than after costly litigation has ensued. And then the law firms will conduct extensive review of all accounts and potential intellectual property vulnerabilities prior to litigation, so as to head off unnecessary squabbles and be prepared for any legal assault. Susskind points out that the emerging technological sector has a new kind of need for legal services, and the legal industry is adapting to suit their needs. A company which is financed by the good graces of angel investment and venture capital does not need to involve the company in unecessary protracted litigation. So indirectly the comprehensive management of a company must involve a legal risk analysis and the engagement of appropriate preventative legal services. Mark Howitson, a Silicon Valley attorney has represented Facebook as deputy general legal counsel since 2007.
Contextualizing Facebook
Contextualizing Facebook as a viable investment risk involves using an entirely new way of assessing information. As a digital product it has created value out of ether, or nothingness, or rather out of component computer parts and broadband and Internet service provider services and human participation. The economics of Facebook, and all tech companies, exist in a new realm which must recognize the intangible value of cognitive activity, as well as the other potential values in crowd sourcing, advertising potential, data mining, surveillance, forensic investigation, and social cohesion. A general survey of Facebook and cyberlaw questions, which often involve the confluence of sociological issues, investment, government involvement, and citizen participation can be found at the Center for Internet ans Society, hosted by Stanford University’s cyberlaw domain. The Berkman Center at Harvard is the east coast cyberlaw counterpart and hosts conferences joining the worlds of programmers, the developers of the DARPA net, the future of Internet micro-cash, crowd sourcing, and other exciting trends in Internet as they take place across an economic and regulatory landscape.
Remarkably, unexpected consequences of the Facebook cultural revolution have turned Facebook into a digital courtroom to a certain extent. It is important to note that the state has a vested interest in keeping the Facebook digital realm in order. Australia has ruled Facebook to be an adequate way to serve summons for a lawsuit notification. Numerous instances of law enforcement using Facebook to establish identity or whereabouts of suspects are known. In a certain sense, government could not live without Facebook, or some equivalent. Online predators are seduced through various Internet media channels, of which Facebook, is but one.
In-Q-tel, which is the CIA’s venture capital group is invested in new technologies such as Visible Technologies and Recordedfuture.com which aggregate Facebook statistics in a broader social networking context.
Conclusion
Facebook as a company, has a history which will not ever be replicated. Facebook’s investment history shows a high level of trust in the innovation and promise of a new idea. A look each level of cash infusion reveals a high level of investor interest, which might be the envy of any new start-up. A vigilant attention to publicity and media review, as well as legal vulnerabilities, provide a sense of security for the venture capitalist’s initial investment. Tech companies of the future will look at the Facebook model and strive to imitate its successes, while perhaps steering clear of its many PR nightmares and privacy breeches and IP controversies. The company of the future will follow the investment trail of Facebook and other tech wunderkind to gauge a pattern for sustained growth and investment. They will look for hospitble environment in which to flourish which involves government regulations favorable to start-ups and the tech sector. Facebook in this sense will become a pivotal story of Venture Capital wealth putting into motion a great idea which shapes many derivative companies, and revolutionizes the face of marketing. In that sense, a look at Facebook will benefit any who seek a similar pattern of growth, or an understanding of the legal, advertising, or e-commerce effects which emerge from this social networking revolution.
Mary Eng
August 2010
Facebook Venture Capital
Introduction
The purpose of this paper is to uncover the complexity of venture capital acquisition for Internet technology start-ups, with a specific look at Facebook as an example of a venture capital success story. In the paper, I would like to expose the complexity of factors which would affect the risk analysis of potential investors. It is necessary to distinguish between types of investors, angel or VC based, as well as to establish a chronology of investments. I would also like to draw forth the increasing atmosphere of transparency in which investments occur, especially as the technology sector is so profoundly focused on self-documentation and commentary. The impact of that transparency has larger ramifications for the corporate social responsibility image-making as well as the seduction of future investments.
For the task of tracing the investments I have relied heavily on Crunchbase, a hyperlinkable database chronicling the history and sourcing for all capital investments. Crunchbase is produced by the Techcrunch blog, which offers up to the minute analysis of all aspects of technology sector development. As the hesitant angel investor or venture capitalist weighs the risks of investment, it is important to make mention of the factors which influence their willingness to invest. With that in mind, legal vulnerabilities as well as public relations issues are important aspects of a company’s net worth to asses. Governmental interest also plays a key part of the firm’s success, in addition to the viability of their innovative business plan or charismatic marketing buzz. It is also important to evaluate how the company performs in relation to its peers, and in this sense looking at Facebook as a part of a larger social networking revolution, will help us understand its leadership in guiding the trends, as well as the ingenuity of investors who have propulsed it to a main stage.
Facebook is an interesting example of a company which has grown over a few years due to unprecedented venture capital investment, despite operationally not turning a profit until September 2009. As Facebook has pushed the limits of many norms, they have both challenged the old guard and rewritten the rules, shaping a new system of technology sector growth and changing the ways people and businesses communicate. Indeed Facebook has become a part of a larger marketing revolution which demands attention to social networking presence as well as brand strategy innovations within the Facebook community. Monetization strategies are an essential part of technology sector growth. For a technology sector company, the economic climate can be made more or less favorable with the assistance of government intervention. In Facebook’s case, their primary investors benefit greatly from the National Venture Capital Association’s constant advocacy. They are a lobby group which specifically advocates for technology sector venture capitalist, seeking Federal Communications Commission and Federal Trade Commission favor, as well as lobbying for favorable legislation which affects the viability of future growth. Aspects of this include everything from weakened anti-trust standards to liberal immigration visa norms which encourage foreign investment and the immigration of a highly skilled international talent pool.
From Angel Investment to Venture Capital
Venture capital is an essential part of the growth of creative and technological sectors. A venture capitalist distributes the risk across a wide portfolio of companies, whereas an angel investor puts a private amount of money into one particular worthy company. A look at the venture capital and other capital sources for the Facebook company will provide an interesting subject for investigation. As Facebook, inc. has topped the social networking gamut in popularity, it’s innovation and company strategy has relevance for many industries who either rely on Facebook for marketing or use it as a part of an integrative Internet strategy. While the average Facebook user may have no concern for the financial underpinnings of the technology phenomenon, a look at the financing structure and company history may have a broader relevance for understanding the motivations behind various finance groups and investors.
In this paper I plan to explore the relevance of the National Venture Capital Association, a lobby and trade group, the Accel venture capital infusion, and more recent capital assets as provided by Elevation partners. Techcrunch, the leading technology blog, has a whole page devoted to Facebook. Their very excellent Crunchbase provides a tracible link to investor time lines and profiles of start-ups of all sizes and the investment history of individual angel investors and the investors in venture capital firms. It is possible through hyperlink to understand a graph of investment in a chronological schema, or a branching network.
Facebook as an entity has a story which is a common myth known to many. There are numerous websites detailing the many issues which beset the industry behemoth.
It is necessary to distinguish the difference between angel investors and venture capital investing. Angel investors have a solid amount of funds they want to bestow upon a promising firm. venture capitalists pool their funds in a venture capital network, which distributes the risk of their investment across many firms.
The venture capitalist sees the risk in the technology start-up as a worthy risk. Many technology entrepreneurs who sell their successful start-ups immediately pour their financial capital into new ventures. Noteworthy among those are Paypal’s Peter Theil a Facebook angel investor, who now sits at the head of Clarium Capital. The atmosphere of high risk is mitigated by the actual enjoyment of the flourishing of new technology trends. Upon selling Paypal, Theil poured his wealth into other start-ups, a pattern which can be seen widely in the technology sector.
Accel and Everybody Else
Accel was one of the first firms to see the potential in Facebook and put major investments towards its growth. Its investments are 12M. It is important to note that Facebook did not come out of the red until September 2009. A look at Accel’ investment portfolio will reveal numerous lesser known companies in the technology sector. Successive rounds of investment are grouped in tiers pertaining to chronology of investments. Notable are The Founders Fund, Greylock capital, and Meritech Capital Partners which as the series B. investors contributed 27M as a group. It is very important to note that Peter Theill and Reid Hoffman’s original angel investment of 500M collectively outpaces all of the other venture capital infusions. Microsoft’s hefty 250M series C investment came in 2007, after talk of the sale of Facebook. Facebook became famous as it turned down aquisition by Yahoo, a defiant move which inspired future investment.
| Total | $836M |
| Angel, 9/04 9 Peter Thiel Reid Hoffman | $500k |
| Series A, 5/05 10 Accel Partners | $12.7M |
| Series B, 4/06 11 Greylock Partners Meritech Capital Partners The Founders Fund | $27.5M |
| Series C, 10/07 12 Microsoft | $240M |
| Series C, 11/07 13 Li Ka-shing | $60M |
| Series C, 1/08 14 European Founders Fund | $15M |
| Series C, 3/08 15 Li Ka-shing | $60M |
| Debt, 5/08 16 TriplePoint Capital | $100M |
| Series D, 5/09 17 Digital Sky Technologies | $200M |
| Unattributed, 6/10 18 Elevation Partners | $120M |
credit: Crunchbase
Monetization Strategies
The Financial Times in April 2010 profiled the Facebook corporate strategy to reach out for advertising links with a new program the “like” feature in which users can express themselves via “liking” various brands. Programs like this which seek to divert attention to demi-adverts seek to monetize Facebook, an ultimate duty for the venture capital investors. The digital gift economy or the Facebook dollars are other such schemes towards infusing the dreamy start-up with a measure of profitability. The schemes involving strategic ad revenue, data mining, digital gift schemes, and Facebook cash have yet to prove themselves in terms of long-term viability, and some are indeed subject to litigation regarding fraudulent overcharging (as with digital gifts which demand credit card data which then bill on automatic basis high figure sums).
An indirect monetization strategy involves the way Facebook has placed itself as the irreplacible digital billboard for other corporate marketing strategies. In that sense, Facebook has a guaranteed client base from which to later extract cash. Fully exploring corporate “taxation” or enhanced feature modules will play out in the future. As compnies like Twitter were whispered to toy with charging for a deluxe service, or as Craigslist charges emloyers seeking laborers, there may be future ways of extracting income from the easy corporate Facebook captives.
Boom, Bust, And Government Stabilization
The early 2000’s brought infusions of cash into the Silicon Valley landscape. Many ventures were fiscally disastrous. A look at venture capital climates will still find that the cash infusion made possible in the United States exceeds many other economic climates. Paul Carr’s spoof of a book, Bringing Nothing to the Party, details the struggles of an aspiring technology start up’s quest for venture capital. The company, a social networking site for hip young Londoners, faces immanent financial peril. Carr’s portrait of the London venture capital scene pits the fledgling technology scene as far inferior to the stateside technology riches. Another approach to measuring the atmosphere for technology start-ups are the amount of governmental participation in fostering growth. In Finland for instance, the government when faced with depopulation and a bleakly performing agrarian economy, infused cash into the technology sectors and subsidized advanced technology degress and education which helped the young Nokia ascend the charts in the pre-smart phone cell phone revolution. And while capital investments may be exceptional in the United States, whether or not a host of political factors are entirely hospitable is debatable.
everything from labor costs to investment visa availability pertain to the flourishing of technology start-ups. venture capitalists must consider these factors as well as possible legal threats which will undermine their business.
Market Leaders: Shaping the Industry
What makes Facebook such an interesting company to follow, is that not only have they anticipated cultural trends but they have shaped them, and they have quickly adapted as new technologies shaped the zeitgeist. The Twitterification of their interface rapidly followed the Twitter ascendancy, which in a sense showed a loyalty and duty to their investors, to keep the company at the cutting edge for as long as possible. In a digital marketplace, aesthetics and trendiness rule the day. If an interface becomes stale, boring, or aesthetically out of fashion, it ceases to be relevant, and will decline, as we have seen with Myspace.
The recent “Google Me” media buzz has alerted the technology community that there may be a very immenant demise of the Facebook, even with its 500 million strong. The company seeks to return the venture capital investment as it serves as a model for sociological transitions and adapts to a host of factors including the viability of ad revenue, the crunchability of statistics for ad revenue microcash, the sale of raw data, and or government support or subsidy, and decline in trendiness.
Accel, as one of the most premier investment companies involved in technology growth, has a close relationship with the National Venture Capital Association which rewarded Jim Swartz with a Lifetime achievment award. The National Venture Capital Association has shared several figures from the Accel group, and holds their interest and future at heart as it represents over 400 similarly situated firms. The National Venture Capital Association lobbies the United States Congress for more easily available investment Visas, which promote tech start up growth. The seek to influence the Federal Communications Commission regulations for the benefit of their firms and increase braodband strength for the increased viability of social networking platforms.
The most pre-eminent VC concerns will thusly benefit from a close relationship with lobby groups and political affiliations which benefit their prosperity.
Privacy and Surveillance Concerns
When following the trail of Facebook capital investment, it is important to ask whether any of the investment firms have any particular political or other aims. Do they see Facebook as a valuable tool for civic surveillance? Or are they affiliated with groups that do? As Facebook hosts a panoply viewpoints, no one viewpoint predominates, but certain overarching norms prevail: namely, recession of privacy norms, increasing levels of participatory surveillance, increasing mythologizing of the cult of identity. In late 2009, the Electronics Frontiers Foundation sued the United States Department of Justice, Department of Defense, and Central Intelligence Agency for failing to disclose as per the Freedom of Information Act, the level of their utilization of social networking for surveillance or other purposes. Might it be possible to show that the state has a direct interest in supporting the growth of the social networking phenomenon?
The company In-Q-Tel is a venture capital firm directly and officially and openly linked to the development of technologies useful for the Central Intelligence Agency. They were implicated by the Electronic Frontiers Foundation in the 2006 surveillance via telephone’s in the case Electronic Frontiers Foundation v. ATT. In-Q-tel’s capital investment is geared towards the development of advanced technologies such as speech recognition, in addition to Skype surveillance and phone call surveillance. The latest notice on their Crunchbase profile shows their investment in an aggregation service which allows corporate interests to watch and compute the success of their social network advertising penetration. The social media monitoring software in a sense becomes a derivative industry which crunches a much larger data base, of which Facebook is only a part. In that sense, Facebook becomes an inextricable part of state interest, and this is obvious via simple Internet searching, even despite the Electronic Frontiers Foundation’s inability to use the FOIA to obtain more specifics. Indeed, the CIA uses Facebook to recruit new employees. That much we know.
Facebook as Premium Advertising Real Estate
Bono Rockstar is a primary investor in the Elevation Partners firm which provided a substantial infusion to Facebook in June 2010. According to British technology mag The Register, the 120M venture capital infusion gives Elevation a mere .05% ownership in Facebook. What motivation would the Bono empire have in Facebook? Facebook serves a high level of traffic. For some users, the rest of the Internet does not exist. Potential Ad revenue schemes, and a stadium full of adherents might be more suseptible to the Bono humanitarian agenda. In a certain sense we could easily hypothesize that Bono’s Facebook share is geared towards advancing his larger philosophical agenda. It is also interesting to note that Silicon Valley magazines ridicule Elevation Partners investment strategies. Perhaps it is their lateness in the game. Indeed, the Elevation investment in June 2010 comes sharply on the heels of the Facebook v. Google Me debate, in which the eclipse of Facebook is forecast. Are future investments likely to be ridiculed out of jeolosy in the technology community? Or is there a real concern that Facebook, like its predecessors will quickly fade? This is a very important risk factor which a venture capital firm must asses.
Profitability and Legal Risk Management
The Facebook venture capital investigation might also beg the question, why invest in a company that has not yet turned a profit? Risk management is a company’s duty to its investors. The most significant predictable risk monetarily is legal assault, especially in the technology sector, which is beset with patent, copyright, programming, software, and other intellectual property law issues.
What can other start-ups gain from this finance model? How can new companies compete for venture capital investment or the honors bestowed by angel investors? How can technology start-ups protect their capital investment from crippling litigation? Many a firm finds itself in protracted litigation, which can either slow, or sometimes halt growth altogether. Indeed Facebook is currently being sued by a software programming contractor who alleges he found a contract entitling him to 85% of Facebook. As Richard Susskind details in the book The End of Lawyers the future of many technology companies will involve engaging legal services on a per anum basis, rather than after costly litigation has ensued. And then the law firms will conduct extensive review of all accounts and potential intellectual property vulnerabilities prior to litigation, so as to head off unnecessary squabbles and be prepared for any legal assault. Susskind points out that the emerging technological sector has a new kind of need for legal services, and the legal industry is adapting to suit their needs. A company which is financed by the good graces of angel investment and venture capital does not need to involve the company in unecessary protracted litigation. So indirectly the comprehensive management of a company must involve a legal risk analysis and the engagement of appropriate preventative legal services. Mark Howitson, a Silicon Valley attorney has represented Facebook as deputy general legal counsel since 2007.
Contextualizing Facebook
Contextualizing Facebook as a viable investment risk involves using an entirely new way of assessing information. As a digital product it has created value out of ether, or nothingness, or rather out of component computer parts and broadband and Internet service provider services and human participation. The economics of Facebook, and all tech companies, exist in a new realm which must recognize the intangible value of cognitive activity, as well as the other potential values in crowd sourcing, advertising potential, data mining, surveillance, forensic investigation, and social cohesion. A general survey of Facebook and cyberlaw questions, which often involve the confluence of sociological issues, investment, government involvement, and citizen participation can be found at the Center for Internet ans Society, hosted by Stanford University’s cyberlaw domain. The Berkman Center at Harvard is the east coast cyberlaw counterpart and hosts conferences joining the worlds of programmers, the developers of the DARPA net, the future of Internet micro-cash, crowd sourcing, and other exciting trends in Internet as they take place across an economic and regulatory landscape.
Remarkably, unexpected consequences of the Facebook cultural revolution have turned Facebook into a digital courtroom to a certain extent. It is important to note that the state has a vested interest in keeping the Facebook digital realm in order. Australia has ruled Facebook to be an adequate way to serve summons for a lawsuit notification. Numerous instances of law enforcement using Facebook to establish identity or whereabouts of suspects are known. In a certain sense, government could not live without Facebook, or some equivalent. Online predators are seduced through various Internet media channels, of which Facebook, is but one.
In-Q-tel, which is the CIA’s venture capital group is invested in new technologies such as Visible Technologies and Recordedfuture.com which aggregate Facebook statistics in a broader social networking context.
Conclusion
Facebook as a company, has a history which will not ever be replicated. Facebook’s investment history shows a high level of trust in the innovation and promise of a new idea. A look each level of cash infusion reveals a high level of investor interest, which might be the envy of any new start-up. A vigilant attention to publicity and media review, as well as legal vulnerabilities, provide a sense of security for the venture capitalist’s initial investment. Tech companies of the future will look at the Facebook model and strive to imitate its successes, while perhaps steering clear of its many PR nightmares and privacy breeches and IP controversies. The company of the future will follow the investment trail of Facebook and other tech wunderkind to gauge a pattern for sustained growth and investment. They will look for hospitble environment in which to flourish which involves government regulations favorable to start-ups and the tech sector. Facebook in this sense will become a pivotal story of Venture Capital wealth putting into motion a great idea which shapes many derivative companies, and revolutionizes the face of marketing. In that sense, a look at Facebook will benefit any who seek a similar pattern of growth, or an understanding of the legal, advertising, or e-commerce effects which emerge from this social networking revolution.
Tuesday 10 August 2010
important links
http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-deputy-gc-we-dont-want-to-deal-with-these-annoying-law-enforcement-requests-2010-2
http://techcrunch.com/2010/01/13/visible-technologies-raises-a-whopping-22-million-for-social-media-monitoring-software/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Venture-Capital-Update/193544634935
http://politics.usnews.com/news/national/articles/2009/02/05/the-cia-and-nsa-want-you-to-be-their-friend-on-facebook.html
http://techcrunch.com/2010/01/13/visible-technologies-raises-a-whopping-22-million-for-social-media-monitoring-software/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Venture-Capital-Update/193544634935
http://politics.usnews.com/news/national/articles/2009/02/05/the-cia-and-nsa-want-you-to-be-their-friend-on-facebook.html
Monday 9 August 2010
econ paper in VC myth of FB
(this is a rough draft i am working on this afternoon for volhart vincentz's comp econ class open project. i want to work on a visual aid graph that configures the VC trail for a more pictoral analysis.)
Venture capital is an essential part of th growth of creative and technical sectors. A look at the venture capital and other capital sources for the facebook company will provide an interesting subject for investigation. As facebook, inc. has topped the social networking gamut in popularity, it’s innovation and company strategy has relevance for many industries who either rely on facebook fro marketing or use it as a part of an integrative internet strategy. While the average facebook user may have no concern for the financial underpinnings of the tech phenomenon, a look at the financing structure and company history may have a broader relevance for understanding the motivations behind various finance groups and investors.
In this paper I plan to explore the relevance of the National Venture Capital Association, a lobby and trade group, the accel venture capital infusion, and more recent capital assets as provided by elevation partners. Techcrunch, the leading technology blog, has a whole page devoted to facebook. Their very excellent crunchbase provides a tracebale link to investor time lines and profiles of start-ups of all sizes and the investment history of individual angel investors and the investors in venture capital firms. It is possible through hyperlink to understand a graph of investment in a chronological schema, or a branching network.
other amazing sources of tech info are
The Financial Times in April 2010 profiled the corporate strategy to reach out for advertising links with a new program the “like” feature in which users can express themselves via “liking” various brands. Programs like this which seek to divert attention to demi-adverts seek to monetize Facebook, an ultimate duty for the VC investors. The digital gift economy or the facebook dollars are other such schemes towards infusing the dreamy start-up with a measure of profitability.
Facebook as an entity has a story which is a common myth known to many. There are numerous websites detailing the many issues which beset the industry behemoth.
It is necessary to distinguish the difference between angel investors and venture capital investing. Angel investors have a solid amount of funds they want to bestow upon a promising firm. Venture capitalists pool their funds in a venture capital network, which distributes the risk of their investment across many firms.
The venture capitalist sees the risk in the tech start-up as a worthy risk. Many tech entrepreneurs who sell their successful start-ups immediately pour their financial capital into new ventures. Noteworthy among those are Paypal’s Peter Theil a Facebook angel investor, who now sits at the hed of Clarium Capital. The atmosphere of high risk is mitigated by the actual enjoyment of the flourishing of new technological trends. The structure of tech investment
Accel was one of the first most significant firms to see the potential in Facebook and put major investments towarss its growth. It is important to note that Facebook did not come out of the red until September 2009. A look at Accel’ investment portfolio will reveal numerous lesser known companies in the tech sector.
The early 2000’s brought infusions of cash into the Silicon Valley landscape. Many ventures were fiscally disastrous. A look at venture capital climates will still find that the cash infusion made possible in the United States exceeds many other economic climates. Paul Carr’s spoof of a book, Bringing Nothing to the Party, details the struggles of an aspiring tech start up’s quest for venture capital. The company, a social networking site for hip young Londoners, faces immanent financial peril. Carr’s portrait of the London VC scene pits the fledgling tech scene as far inferior to the stateside tech riches. Another approach to measuring the atmosphere for tech start-ups are the amount of governmental participation in fostering growth. In Finland for instance, the government when faced with depopulation and a bleakly performing agrarian economy, infused cash into the tech sectors and subsidized advanced tech degress and education which helped the young Nokia ascend the charts in the pre-smart phone cell phone revolution. And while capital investments may be exceptional in the United States, whether or not a host of political factors are entirely hospitable is debatable.
everything from labor costs to investment visa availability pertain to the flourishing of tech start-ups. Venture capitalists must consider these factors as well as possible legal threats which will undermine their business.
What makes Facebook such an interesting company to follow, is that not only have they anticipated cultural trends but they have shaped them, and they have quickly adapted as new technologies shaped the zeitgeist. The Twitterification of their interface rapidly followed the Twitter ascendancy, which in a sense showed a loyalty and duty to their investors, to keep the company at the cutting edge for as long as possible.
The recent “Google Me” medfia buzz has alerted the tech community that there may be a very imminant demise of the Facebook, even with its 500 milion strong. The company seeks to return the VC investment as it serves as a model for sociological transitions and adapts to a host of factors including the viability of ad revenue, the crunchability of statistics for ad revenue microcash, the sale of raw data, and or government support or subsidy, and decline in trendiness.
Accel, as one of the most premier investment companies involved in tech growth, has a close relationship with the NVCA which rewarded Jim Swartz with a Lifetime achievment award. The NVCA has shared several figures from the Accel group, and holds their interest and future at heart as it represents over 400 similarly situated firms. The NVCA lobbies the US Congress for more easily available investment Visas. The seek to influence the Federal Communications COmmission regulations for the benefit of their frims.
When following the trail of Facebook capital investment, it is important to ask whether any of the investment firms have any particular political or other aims. Do they see Facebook as a valuable tool for civic surveillance. As Facebook hosts a panoply viewpoints, no one viewpoint predominates, but certain overarching norms prevail: namely, recession of privacy norms, increasing levels of participatory surveillance, increasing mythologizing of the cult of identity.
In February 2010, the Electronics Frontiers Foundation sued the United States federal government for failing to disclose the level of their utilization of social networking for surveillance or other purposes. Might it be possible to show that the state has a direct interest in supporting the growth of the social networking phenomenon?
The company In-Q-Tel is a venture capital firm directly and officially and openly linked to the development of technologies useful for the Central Intelligence Agency. A lot of their capital investment is geared towards the development of advanced technologies such as speech recognition. The latest notice on their Crunchbase profile shows their investment in an aggregation service which allows corporate interests to watch and compute the success of their social network advertising penetration.
http://techcrunch.com/2010/01/13/visible-technologies-raises-a-whopping-22-million-for-social-media-monitoring-software/
The social media monitoring software in a sense becomes a derivative industry which crunches a much larger data base, of which Facebook is only a part.
Bono Rockstar is a primary investor in the Elevation Partners firm which provided a substantial infusion to Facebook in June 2010. According to British tech mag The Register, the 120M venture capital infusion gives Elevation a mere .05% ownership in Facebook. What motivation would the Bono empire have in facebook? Facebook serves a high level of traffic. For some users, the rest of the internet does not exist. Potential Ad revenue schemes, and a stadium full of adherents might be more suseptible to the Bono humanitarian agenda. In a certain sense we could easily hypothesize that Bono’s Facebook share is geared towards advancing his larger philosophical agenda.
The Facebook venture capital investigation might also beg the question, why invest in a company that has not yet turned a profit?
What can other start-ups gain from this finance model? How can new companies compete for Venture Capital investment or the horors bestowed by angel investors? How can tech start-ups protect their capital investment from crippling litigation? Many a firm finds itself in protracted litigation, which can either slow, or sometimes halt growth altogether. Indeed Facebook is currently being sued by a software programming contractor who alleges he found a contract entitling him to 85% of Facebook. As Richard Susskind details in the book The End of Lawyers the future of many tech companies will involve engaging legal services on a per anum basis, rather than after costly litigation has ensued. And then the law firms will conduct extensive review of all accounts and potential intellectual property vulnerabilities prior to litigation, so as to head off unnecessary squabbles and be prepared for any legal assault. Susskind points out that the emerging technological sector has a new kind of need for legal services, and the legal industry is adapting to suit their needs. A company which is financed by the good graces of angel investment and VC does not need to involve the company in unecessary protracted litigation. So indirectly the comprehensive management of a company must involve a legal risk analysis and the engagement of appropriate preventative legal services. Mark Howitson, a Silicon Valley attorney has represented facebook as deputy general legal counsel since 2007.
A general survey of Facebook and cyberlaw questions, which often involve the confluence of sociological issues, investment, government involvement, and citizen participation can be found at the Center for Internet ans Society, hosted by Stanford University’s cyberlaw domain. The Berkman Center at Harvard is the east coast cyberlaw counterpart and hosts conferences joining the worlds of programmers, the developers of the DARPA net, the future of internet micro-cash, crowd sourcing, and other exciting trends in Internet as they take place across an economic and regulatory landscape.
Remarkably, unexpected consequences of the Facebook cultural revolution have turned facebook into a digital courtroom to a certain extent. Australia has ruled Facebook to be an adequate way to serve summons for a lawsuit notification. Numerous instances of law enforcement using facebook to establish identity or whereabouts of suspects are known. In a certain sense, government could not live without Facebook, or some equivalent. Online predators are seduced through various internet media channels, of which Facebook, is but one.
In this paper I plan to explore the relevance of the National Venture Capital Association, a lobby and trade group, the accel venture capital infusion, and more recent capital assets as provided by elevation partners. Techcrunch, the leading technology blog, has a whole page devoted to facebook. Their very excellent crunchbase provides a tracebale link to investor time lines and profiles of start-ups of all sizes and the investment history of individual angel investors and the investors in venture capital firms. It is possible through hyperlink to understand a graph of investment in a chronological schema, or a branching network.
other amazing sources of tech info are
The Financial Times in April 2010 profiled the corporate strategy to reach out for advertising links with a new program the “like” feature in which users can express themselves via “liking” various brands. Programs like this which seek to divert attention to demi-adverts seek to monetize Facebook, an ultimate duty for the VC investors. The digital gift economy or the facebook dollars are other such schemes towards infusing the dreamy start-up with a measure of profitability.
Facebook as an entity has a story which is a common myth known to many. There are numerous websites detailing the many issues which beset the industry behemoth.
It is necessary to distinguish the difference between angel investors and venture capital investing. Angel investors have a solid amount of funds they want to bestow upon a promising firm. Venture capitalists pool their funds in a venture capital network, which distributes the risk of their investment across many firms.
The venture capitalist sees the risk in the tech start-up as a worthy risk. Many tech entrepreneurs who sell their successful start-ups immediately pour their financial capital into new ventures. Noteworthy among those are Paypal’s Peter Theil a Facebook angel investor, who now sits at the hed of Clarium Capital. The atmosphere of high risk is mitigated by the actual enjoyment of the flourishing of new technological trends. The structure of tech investment
Accel was one of the first most significant firms to see the potential in Facebook and put major investments towarss its growth. It is important to note that Facebook did not come out of the red until September 2009. A look at Accel’ investment portfolio will reveal numerous lesser known companies in the tech sector.
The early 2000’s brought infusions of cash into the Silicon Valley landscape. Many ventures were fiscally disastrous. A look at venture capital climates will still find that the cash infusion made possible in the United States exceeds many other economic climates. Paul Carr’s spoof of a book, Bringing Nothing to the Party, details the struggles of an aspiring tech start up’s quest for venture capital. The company, a social networking site for hip young Londoners, faces immanent financial peril. Carr’s portrait of the London VC scene pits the fledgling tech scene as far inferior to the stateside tech riches. Another approach to measuring the atmosphere for tech start-ups are the amount of governmental participation in fostering growth. In Finland for instance, the government when faced with depopulation and a bleakly performing agrarian economy, infused cash into the tech sectors and subsidized advanced tech degress and education which helped the young Nokia ascend the charts in the pre-smart phone cell phone revolution. And while capital investments may be exceptional in the United States, whether or not a host of political factors are entirely hospitable is debatable.
everything from labor costs to investment visa availability pertain to the flourishing of tech start-ups. Venture capitalists must consider these factors as well as possible legal threats which will undermine their business.
What makes Facebook such an interesting company to follow, is that not only have they anticipated cultural trends but they have shaped them, and they have quickly adapted as new technologies shaped the zeitgeist. The Twitterification of their interface rapidly followed the Twitter ascendancy, which in a sense showed a loyalty and duty to their investors, to keep the company at the cutting edge for as long as possible.
The recent “Google Me” medfia buzz has alerted the tech community that there may be a very imminant demise of the Facebook, even with its 500 milion strong. The company seeks to return the VC investment as it serves as a model for sociological transitions and adapts to a host of factors including the viability of ad revenue, the crunchability of statistics for ad revenue microcash, the sale of raw data, and or government support or subsidy, and decline in trendiness.
Accel, as one of the most premier investment companies involved in tech growth, has a close relationship with the NVCA which rewarded Jim Swartz with a Lifetime achievment award. The NVCA has shared several figures from the Accel group, and holds their interest and future at heart as it represents over 400 similarly situated firms. The NVCA lobbies the US Congress for more easily available investment Visas. The seek to influence the Federal Communications COmmission regulations for the benefit of their frims.
When following the trail of Facebook capital investment, it is important to ask whether any of the investment firms have any particular political or other aims. Do they see Facebook as a valuable tool for civic surveillance. As Facebook hosts a panoply viewpoints, no one viewpoint predominates, but certain overarching norms prevail: namely, recession of privacy norms, increasing levels of participatory surveillance, increasing mythologizing of the cult of identity.
In February 2010, the Electronics Frontiers Foundation sued the United States federal government for failing to disclose the level of their utilization of social networking for surveillance or other purposes. Might it be possible to show that the state has a direct interest in supporting the growth of the social networking phenomenon?
The company In-Q-Tel is a venture capital firm directly and officially and openly linked to the development of technologies useful for the Central Intelligence Agency. A lot of their capital investment is geared towards the development of advanced technologies such as speech recognition. The latest notice on their Crunchbase profile shows their investment in an aggregation service which allows corporate interests to watch and compute the success of their social network advertising penetration.
http://techcrunch.com/2010/01/13/visible-technologies-raises-a-whopping-22-million-for-social-media-monitoring-software/
The social media monitoring software in a sense becomes a derivative industry which crunches a much larger data base, of which Facebook is only a part.
Bono Rockstar is a primary investor in the Elevation Partners firm which provided a substantial infusion to Facebook in June 2010. According to British tech mag The Register, the 120M venture capital infusion gives Elevation a mere .05% ownership in Facebook. What motivation would the Bono empire have in facebook? Facebook serves a high level of traffic. For some users, the rest of the internet does not exist. Potential Ad revenue schemes, and a stadium full of adherents might be more suseptible to the Bono humanitarian agenda. In a certain sense we could easily hypothesize that Bono’s Facebook share is geared towards advancing his larger philosophical agenda.
The Facebook venture capital investigation might also beg the question, why invest in a company that has not yet turned a profit?
What can other start-ups gain from this finance model? How can new companies compete for Venture Capital investment or the horors bestowed by angel investors? How can tech start-ups protect their capital investment from crippling litigation? Many a firm finds itself in protracted litigation, which can either slow, or sometimes halt growth altogether. Indeed Facebook is currently being sued by a software programming contractor who alleges he found a contract entitling him to 85% of Facebook. As Richard Susskind details in the book The End of Lawyers the future of many tech companies will involve engaging legal services on a per anum basis, rather than after costly litigation has ensued. And then the law firms will conduct extensive review of all accounts and potential intellectual property vulnerabilities prior to litigation, so as to head off unnecessary squabbles and be prepared for any legal assault. Susskind points out that the emerging technological sector has a new kind of need for legal services, and the legal industry is adapting to suit their needs. A company which is financed by the good graces of angel investment and VC does not need to involve the company in unecessary protracted litigation. So indirectly the comprehensive management of a company must involve a legal risk analysis and the engagement of appropriate preventative legal services. Mark Howitson, a Silicon Valley attorney has represented facebook as deputy general legal counsel since 2007.
A general survey of Facebook and cyberlaw questions, which often involve the confluence of sociological issues, investment, government involvement, and citizen participation can be found at the Center for Internet ans Society, hosted by Stanford University’s cyberlaw domain. The Berkman Center at Harvard is the east coast cyberlaw counterpart and hosts conferences joining the worlds of programmers, the developers of the DARPA net, the future of internet micro-cash, crowd sourcing, and other exciting trends in Internet as they take place across an economic and regulatory landscape.
Remarkably, unexpected consequences of the Facebook cultural revolution have turned facebook into a digital courtroom to a certain extent. Australia has ruled Facebook to be an adequate way to serve summons for a lawsuit notification. Numerous instances of law enforcement using facebook to establish identity or whereabouts of suspects are known. In a certain sense, government could not live without Facebook, or some equivalent. Online predators are seduced through various internet media channels, of which Facebook, is but one.
Wednesday 4 August 2010
surrealism: facebook as deep frier: acrylamide deluxe via barthes patriotism and beefsteak national identity
do not commit the sin of denying any knowledge of the facebook.
next time i am asked i plan to try to pull off the straight-faced "what's facebook?" as though they had asked me about lotus root or agar agar or infrasonics or square-dancing.
facebook heretic!
facebook as the only affluence, the desperation on your arm, a sanitization of the inner match.com---
http://www.scribd.com/doc/186128/Manifesto-of-Surrealism-Andre-Breton
uniformal acts of surrealism occurring on facebook daily in identity politics---existence---etc.
nihilists can't facebook---bc identiy is obviously an illusion
kafka
cachexia
facebook that
tentacular oppression
write in the thrall of the impossible real
or as mark holladay recounted you are barthes
pomme fritte
dipped into the hot oil of facebook
fried into a crispy carcinogenic fake entity
agent
fictitious as you were before you began
muses
dead
and still born
a cold derivative afterlife
or then
we might call facebook american as . . .
fried vegans . . .
Associé communément aux frites, le bifteck leur transmet son lustre national : la frite est nostalgique et patriote comme le bifteck. Match nous a appris qu’après l’armistice indochinois, « le général de Castries pour son premier repas demanda des pommes de terre frites ». Et le Président des Anciens Combattants d’Indochine, commentant plus tard cette information, ajoutait : « On n’a pas toujours compris le geste du général de Castries demandant pour son premier repas des Pommes de terre frites. » Ce que l’on nous demandait de comprendre, c’est que l’appel du Général n’était certes pas un vulgaire réflexe matérialiste, mais un épisode rituel d’appropriation de l’ethnie française retrouvée. Le Général connaissait bien notre symbolique nationale, il savait que la frite est le signe alimentaire de la « francité ».
next time i am asked i plan to try to pull off the straight-faced "what's facebook?" as though they had asked me about lotus root or agar agar or infrasonics or square-dancing.
facebook heretic!
facebook as the only affluence, the desperation on your arm, a sanitization of the inner match.com---
http://www.scribd.com/doc/186128/Manifesto-of-Surrealism-Andre-Breton
uniformal acts of surrealism occurring on facebook daily in identity politics---existence---etc.
nihilists can't facebook---bc identiy is obviously an illusion
kafka
cachexia
facebook that
tentacular oppression
write in the thrall of the impossible real
or as mark holladay recounted you are barthes
pomme fritte
dipped into the hot oil of facebook
fried into a crispy carcinogenic fake entity
agent
fictitious as you were before you began
muses
dead
and still born
a cold derivative afterlife
or then
we might call facebook american as . . .
fried vegans . . .
Associé communément aux frites, le bifteck leur transmet son lustre national : la frite est nostalgique et patriote comme le bifteck. Match nous a appris qu’après l’armistice indochinois, « le général de Castries pour son premier repas demanda des pommes de terre frites ». Et le Président des Anciens Combattants d’Indochine, commentant plus tard cette information, ajoutait : « On n’a pas toujours compris le geste du général de Castries demandant pour son premier repas des Pommes de terre frites. » Ce que l’on nous demandait de comprendre, c’est que l’appel du Général n’était certes pas un vulgaire réflexe matérialiste, mais un épisode rituel d’appropriation de l’ethnie française retrouvée. Le Général connaissait bien notre symbolique nationale, il savait que la frite est le signe alimentaire de la « francité ».
vomit+facebook-facebooker=i still feel violated (facebook bulimia)
by facebook.
plus in the real world, i mean comparative economics project land---->
hours of research later---feel degraded by chasing finance trails through the internet like a cat after string---and facebook is such a funny subject-----to turn a blog into a school project is a new way---rather than the school project into the blog
main discoveries today---numerous---brain overzealously made a 34 page power point
http://www.scribd.com/doc/35305847/Venture-Capital
---which needs edits and major clean up----and getting really into
rapnews via peter sunde's brokep blog.
almost joining up on flattr----as i am such a prolific blogger might i not make a little microcash---looking for the article about the start up that encourages the data agent to monetize the data rather than puking it all up onto facebook for free.
also found this amazing hacker who has all the facebookers data on a torrent.
wayyyyyy funny! compute that
no it is only 100 million. so 1 out of 5 of you lame FBERS
now
there is also an okay blog called facebookislame
and theree is a facebookinfo.com i think---
as far as facebookology runs---i am thrilled to have had my primary email hacked by some french spammers, as i really rather spam my friends with .fr domains more than anything for that j ne sais qua in my afterlife as a spambot. the spambot has already put me in touch with long lost friends, and harassed old bosses for me.
except it wasn't me.
and then
i am still in relative horror at the heinous acts of facebook grafitti happening in community college los angeles city college style land where the associated students union goofball senator save the earth scott clapson hater style and anthropology club president are taking time out of their facebook schedule to facebook slur me and spawn pornographic comments to punish me for fighting for minorities and disability-educational access and full implementation of civil rights act in education.
so basically i am getting sexually harassed and or denigrated on facebook bc i stood up for people harassed by the system at this majorly unfortuanate excuse for a school in the cesspit of LA.
http://thereallacc.blogspot.com/2010/08/anthropology-club-president-reaches-out.html
now i know what my friend meant when she said she would not go there. it is majorly the land of do grafitti on the toilet with your razor blade after you do your meth. and so facebook is definitely one step up from grafitti on the toilet seat. but they keep it pretty much in the lower chakra.
i am really over the major bad buzz my fake friend gave me via his fake friends.
he was like
I just thought you should know.
it's over.
i can't babysit facebook anymore.
and really i actually chartered this facebookaloola bogus bloghead to get him off the smack. bc within days of his descent upon my nihilist minimalism he proceeded to FACEBOOK me out with all his crush crush crush.
like i do not care about her half nackt pictures
and then it turns out that she
is among my hateclub hater people on the facebook of the past community college drama scene which is still haunted by my terrifying spectre presence.
and i get the feeling nobody read the surrealist manifesto.
if i could do one thing for these lame facebook hater semi-literate type people, i would drop a case of surrealist manifestos all over their stupid campus so their potty mouthed professors could get a little edumucation in their TV sized brains.
and then maybe they could facebook it up to re-cool the bad vibes.
plus in the real world, i mean comparative economics project land---->
hours of research later---feel degraded by chasing finance trails through the internet like a cat after string---and facebook is such a funny subject-----to turn a blog into a school project is a new way---rather than the school project into the blog
main discoveries today---numerous---brain overzealously made a 34 page power point
http://www.scribd.com/doc/35305847/Venture-Capital
---which needs edits and major clean up----and getting really into
rapnews via peter sunde's brokep blog.
almost joining up on flattr----as i am such a prolific blogger might i not make a little microcash---looking for the article about the start up that encourages the data agent to monetize the data rather than puking it all up onto facebook for free.
also found this amazing hacker who has all the facebookers data on a torrent.
wayyyyyy funny! compute that
no it is only 100 million. so 1 out of 5 of you lame FBERS
now
there is also an okay blog called facebookislame
and theree is a facebookinfo.com i think---
as far as facebookology runs---i am thrilled to have had my primary email hacked by some french spammers, as i really rather spam my friends with .fr domains more than anything for that j ne sais qua in my afterlife as a spambot. the spambot has already put me in touch with long lost friends, and harassed old bosses for me.
except it wasn't me.
and then
i am still in relative horror at the heinous acts of facebook grafitti happening in community college los angeles city college style land where the associated students union goofball senator save the earth scott clapson hater style and anthropology club president are taking time out of their facebook schedule to facebook slur me and spawn pornographic comments to punish me for fighting for minorities and disability-educational access and full implementation of civil rights act in education.
so basically i am getting sexually harassed and or denigrated on facebook bc i stood up for people harassed by the system at this majorly unfortuanate excuse for a school in the cesspit of LA.
http://thereallacc.blogspot.com/2010/08/anthropology-club-president-reaches-out.html
now i know what my friend meant when she said she would not go there. it is majorly the land of do grafitti on the toilet with your razor blade after you do your meth. and so facebook is definitely one step up from grafitti on the toilet seat. but they keep it pretty much in the lower chakra.
i am really over the major bad buzz my fake friend gave me via his fake friends.
he was like
I just thought you should know.
it's over.
i can't babysit facebook anymore.
and really i actually chartered this facebookaloola bogus bloghead to get him off the smack. bc within days of his descent upon my nihilist minimalism he proceeded to FACEBOOK me out with all his crush crush crush.
like i do not care about her half nackt pictures
and then it turns out that she
is among my hateclub hater people on the facebook of the past community college drama scene which is still haunted by my terrifying spectre presence.
and i get the feeling nobody read the surrealist manifesto.
if i could do one thing for these lame facebook hater semi-literate type people, i would drop a case of surrealist manifestos all over their stupid campus so their potty mouthed professors could get a little edumucation in their TV sized brains.
and then maybe they could facebook it up to re-cool the bad vibes.
Monday 2 August 2010
going on flattr soon---> more notes for facebook VC EFF presentation
http://cryptogon.com/?p=13749
The third board member of Facebook is Jim Breyer. He is a partner in the venture capital firm Accel Partners, who put $12.7m into Facebook in April 2005. On the board of such US giants as Wal-Mart and Marvel Entertainment, he is also a former chairman of the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA). Now these are the people who are really making things happen in America, because they invest in the new young talent, the Zuckerbergs and the like. Facebook’s most recent round of funding was led by a company called Greylock Venture Capital, who put in the sum of $27.5m. One of Greylock’s senior partners is called Howard Cox, another former chairman of the NVCA, who is also on the board of In-Q-Tel. What’s In-Q-Tel? Well, believe it or not (and check out their website), this is the venture-capital wing of the CIA. After 9/11, the US intelligence community became so excited by the possibilities of new technology and the innovations being made in the private sector, that in 1999 they set up their own venture capital fund, In-Q-Tel, which “identifies and partners with companies developing cutting-edge technologies to help deliver these solutions to the Central Intelligence Agency and the broader US Intelligence Community (IC) to further their missions”.
contrast
http://www.kistefos.no/
http://www.nettwerk.com/blog/terry/polyphonic-its-game-changer
financing and information controversy with the pirate bay
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirate_Bay
security issues
funny!
Facebook
[edit]
The third board member of Facebook is Jim Breyer. He is a partner in the venture capital firm Accel Partners, who put $12.7m into Facebook in April 2005. On the board of such US giants as Wal-Mart and Marvel Entertainment, he is also a former chairman of the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA). Now these are the people who are really making things happen in America, because they invest in the new young talent, the Zuckerbergs and the like. Facebook’s most recent round of funding was led by a company called Greylock Venture Capital, who put in the sum of $27.5m. One of Greylock’s senior partners is called Howard Cox, another former chairman of the NVCA, who is also on the board of In-Q-Tel. What’s In-Q-Tel? Well, believe it or not (and check out their website), this is the venture-capital wing of the CIA. After 9/11, the US intelligence community became so excited by the possibilities of new technology and the innovations being made in the private sector, that in 1999 they set up their own venture capital fund, In-Q-Tel, which “identifies and partners with companies developing cutting-edge technologies to help deliver these solutions to the Central Intelligence Agency and the broader US Intelligence Community (IC) to further their missions”.
contrast
http://www.kistefos.no/
http://www.nettwerk.com/blog/terry/polyphonic-its-game-changer
financing and information controversy with the pirate bay
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirate_Bay
security issues
funny!
After The Pirate Bay introduced a feature in March 2009 to easily share links to torrents on the popular social networking site Facebook, Wired found in May that Facebook had started blocking the links. On further inspection, they discovered that all messages containing links to The Pirate Bay in both public and in private messages, regardless of content, were being blocked. Electronic Frontier Foundation lawyers commented that Facebook might be working against the US Electronic Communications Privacy Act by intercepting user messages, but Facebook chief privacy officer Chris Kelly said that they have the right to use blocks on links where there is a "demonstrated disregard for intellectual property rights," following users' agreement on their terms of service. Links to other similar sites have not been blocked.
[edit]
new material----
EFF
http://cryptogon.com/?p=13749
nvca on facebook
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=108417103351
history of american invest
authority FB v. wiki
http://www.nvca.org/
structure payments types international norms
carr book
EFF
http://cryptogon.com/?p=13749
nvca on facebook
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=108417103351
history of american invest
authority FB v. wiki
http://www.nvca.org/
structure payments types international norms
carr book
economics of eau d'facebook
inspired by nettwerk's polyphonic rubric
facebook presentation for economics class
as a zeitgeist is shaped by adherence and participation
i think study of facebook as a passing business phenomenon
or a transitional stage of capitalism
or as tech evolution
or as a sociological normalizer---
gets an amzing amt of attention by berkman center
elevation---bono--
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2010/03/22/daily54.html
humanitarian press model---
moment at which myspace became a ghost town.
rev models come and go---litigational underbelly---bottom feeders fr legitimately wrongerd coders business partners-----
ERISA effect
nvca as trade group
demise of music industry standards---banners---ad rev models---massive publicity channel---under the atlantic
accel---nvca--narus--inqtel connections
thiel
history of darpa chain
precursors
who would want to know
australia---norm for facebook to serve summons---
cyberdef
myspace suicide
risks---payouts---litigation prevention strategies to protect investors---
richard susskind the end of lawyers speaks of preventative legal per annum with comapny investigation overhauls at outset rather than post-litigation
differing norms over privacy issues----
original facing code suits and IP and privacy blocks---as standards mutate
what might have been a risky venture then goes gold---but stands to be eclipsed by the google me facebook killer acc to the massive google agitprop.
Q:
what is the futur of venture capital sourcing?
will there be new models---for instance p2p seed funding?
how diff fm going public?
what are revenue protection models?
diversification v. specialization
facebook as mass phenomenon dying to not be outmoded as new waves of innovation ecclipse it
twitter
videoconference and blogging
how restrictive privacy controls and tyrannical IP policy defeat investor trust
and or egregiously rude stmts by the zucker
hosting neonazis and other such ugliness.
litigation
VC
kistefos for bambuser
flattr model
peter sunde
ISP TPB investors
arts grants
indexing and surveillance
participatory surveillance
EFF
data mining
product placement accounts and features "like" feature
advertisement rev.
assumption: consumer will have a slow plateau of disgust and remain despite the battery
operationally in the red until 2009
profitability gauged by how much time looking at ads---or blockability
incentivization for data cough up: connectivity
disincentive: stalking, annoyance, format, ads, spam
commodification of personal stats as profitability strategy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venture_capital
microsoft
IPRED
tech control
IMF anti-copyright mafia---anakata
facebook as the collegiate
when should investors cut and run . . . how safe are the investments---how linkable to tax generated surveillance budgets? cushion
facebook presentation for economics class
as a zeitgeist is shaped by adherence and participation
i think study of facebook as a passing business phenomenon
or a transitional stage of capitalism
or as tech evolution
or as a sociological normalizer---
gets an amzing amt of attention by berkman center
elevation---bono--
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2010/03/22/daily54.html
humanitarian press model---
moment at which myspace became a ghost town.
rev models come and go---litigational underbelly---bottom feeders fr legitimately wrongerd coders business partners-----
ERISA effect
nvca as trade group
wiki VC:
In 1973, with the number of new venture capital firms increasing, leading venture capitalists formed the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA). The NVCA was to serve as the industry trade group for the venture capital industry.[10] Venture capital firms suffered a temporary downturn in 1974, when the stock market crashed and investors were naturally wary of this new kind of investment fund.
It was not until 1978 that venture capital experienced its first major fundraising year, as the industry raised approximately $750 million. With the passage of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) in 1974, corporate pension funds were prohibited from holding certain risky investments including many investments in privately heldcompanies. In 1978, the US Labor Department relaxed certain of the ERISA restrictions, under the "prudent man rule,"[11] thus allowing corporate pension funds to invest in the asset class and providing a major source of capital available to venture capitalistsdemise of music industry standards---banners---ad rev models---massive publicity channel---under the atlantic
accel---nvca--narus--inqtel connections
thiel
history of darpa chain
precursors
who would want to know
australia---norm for facebook to serve summons---
cyberdef
myspace suicide
risks---payouts---litigation prevention strategies to protect investors---
richard susskind the end of lawyers speaks of preventative legal per annum with comapny investigation overhauls at outset rather than post-litigation
differing norms over privacy issues----
original facing code suits and IP and privacy blocks---as standards mutate
what might have been a risky venture then goes gold---but stands to be eclipsed by the google me facebook killer acc to the massive google agitprop.
Q:
what is the futur of venture capital sourcing?
will there be new models---for instance p2p seed funding?
how diff fm going public?
what are revenue protection models?
diversification v. specialization
facebook as mass phenomenon dying to not be outmoded as new waves of innovation ecclipse it
videoconference and blogging
how restrictive privacy controls and tyrannical IP policy defeat investor trust
and or egregiously rude stmts by the zucker
hosting neonazis and other such ugliness.
litigation
VC
kistefos for bambuser
flattr model
peter sunde
ISP TPB investors
arts grants
indexing and surveillance
participatory surveillance
EFF
data mining
product placement accounts and features "like" feature
advertisement rev.
assumption: consumer will have a slow plateau of disgust and remain despite the battery
operationally in the red until 2009
profitability gauged by how much time looking at ads---or blockability
incentivization for data cough up: connectivity
disincentive: stalking, annoyance, format, ads, spam
commodification of personal stats as profitability strategy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venture_capital
microsoft
IPRED
tech control
IMF anti-copyright mafia---anakata
facebook as the collegiate
when should investors cut and run . . . how safe are the investments---how linkable to tax generated surveillance budgets? cushion
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