Bankers Got Too Aggress...

The underwriters of Facebook’s $16 billion debut on NASDAQ fought to the finish to keep the company’s shares above last night’s final price of $38 a share. Shares closed at $38.23 today . Sources tell us that the syndicate of banks underwriting the deal have been putting in buy orders to keep its price afloat. It’s not necessarily a bad outcome for Facebook as the company didn’t leave any money on the table, but bankers are sure to be unhappy. Plus, the company’s tepid premiere is killing the performance of tech stocks across the board. Basically, what we hear is that the underwriters including Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, just got too aggressive in the final days before the IPO about pricing. Earlier this month, the company was slated to open at a $28 to 35 price range, but that range was pushed up to $34 to 38 a share. Then Facebook priced at the very high end at $38 last night. “The only thing keeping it at $38 are support mechanisms,” a source tells us. “There just wasn’t the institutional investor demand that people thought there would be.” They added that about 20 percent of buying orders seem to be coming from retail investors (e.g. regular people), which is “unprecedented.” Because prices are being held up to avoid a negative finish, shares might dip lower into early next week. Already, we’re seeing the impact on other stocks across the board. Zynga is down 13.4 percent to $7.16. LinkedIn is down 5.9 percent to $99.02. “They’re all in the shitter because now they look expensive since Facebook didn’t go anywhere,” we’re told. From Facebook’s perspective, the company shouldn’t care. The company and its early shareholders raised $16 billion at the very best price they could, leaving no money on the table for the underwriters’ wealthy clients to scoop up and sell for a quick profit. Indeed, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has warned investors from the very beginning that Facebook was originally not meant to be a company. He even said today before the market opened, “Going public is an important milestone in our history. But here’s the thing: our mission isn’t to be a public company. Our mission is to make the world more open and connected.”

Affiliate Brain Drain

This year has not been a particularly easy one for certain segments of the performance marketing space. It is the banking crisis plus the auto crisis all rolled into one - the storied companies and iconic brands facing iconic...

Google Wins $35 Million...

Google and its partner Onix Networking just won a $35 million contract to run the U.S. Department of the Interior ‘s new cloud-based email and collaboration system. This wasn’t always a sure bet for Google. In 2010, the Department of the Interior awarded Microsoft a $59.3 million contract to run its email and collaboration system. Google and its Ohio-based partner Onix Networking quickly filed a suit to block this contract. In Google’s view, the Interior Department’s procurement process unfairly favored Microsoft and never gave it a fair chance. Google finally withdrew its lawsuit last September after the Department scrapped its plans to use Microsoft’s solution because its original decision was “now stale in light of new developments in technology and entrants into the market.” The arguments between Google and Microsoft got rather heated at one point last summer. Microsoft even alleged that Google falsely advertised that its solution was certified by the General Services Administration for use in government agencies. Once completed, the Department of the Interior will become the second major U.S. government agency to switch to Google’s cloud. The first agency to make the switch was the General Services Administration. A number of state governments also made the switch to Google’s solution recently . This being a government contract, things are obviously not as easy as just moving all the existing mailboxes over to the new system. Instead, this contract gives Google and its partner the right to “demonstrate they can meet the Department’s objectives for an integrated suite of tools and services, information assurance and regulatory compliance.” Once that is done – hopefully by the end of December 2012 – the actual migration will start. In total, this process will involve the migration of over 90,000 mailboxes away from the Department’s aging systems to Google Apps for Government . Microsoft, of course, was not too happy with this decision and has issued the following statement: Microsoft has a positive, longstanding relationship with the Department of Interior and we are working on a number of enterprise-wide initiatives with the agency. Although we are disappointed by this award, we will engage with our partners and DOI to review and understand the reasons for this decision. Microsoft remains committed to providing our customers with the cloud services that have the performance, security, privacy and other capabilities they expect and deserve.

iCloud Now Has 125 Mill...

Well, that was fast. Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer just announced on Apple’s Q2 2012 earnings call that the company’s iCloud service has attracted 125 million users in the roughly six months since the service launched. It seems like just yesterday that Oppenheimer revealed that the service had 85 million users , and the service’s subscriber base continues to grow at a seemingly steady pace. As The Next Web notes, Apple CEO Tim Cook also revealed just two months ago that the service had hit 100 million users — that breaks down to an average of over 13 million new iCloud users since January. That growth probably has something to do with the scores of Apple devices that the company has sold between January and now. Apple reports that they’ve sold a total of 35.1 million iPhones and just shy of 12 million iPads, and while those numbers are down thanks to the downright ridiculousness of their performance in Q1, it’s still indicative of a hell of a quarter. Sadly, Oppenheimer made no mention of how many of those millions of iCloud users are actually paying customers, as opposed to people simply taking advantage of the free 5GB of storage at their disposal. Still, Apple will find no shortage of competition in the cloud going forward — incumbents like SkyDrive and Dropbox aside, Google’s own newly-revealed Drive service may give iCloud a run for its money down the line. Though Google Drive hasn’t yet found a foothold in iOS (they have currently have clients ready for Windows, OS X, and Android), Google’s clout and ties with manufacturers may make theirs the mobile cloud suite to beat.

Microsoft Touts $479M O...

Overall, the results that Microsoft shared yesterday from their 3rd quarter efforts were good. Overall, revenues were up 6% to over $17 billion and net income was just over $5 billion. All in all, pretty darn good. It appears that in order to fund the company’s efforts in the online world moving forward this performance will need to continue. You see, the online unit lost $479 million in the quarter. But hey, that sure beats the fact that last year’s Q3 results netted a $779 million loss so this quarter is really a good thing. Check out this slide from the Microsoft announcement. I understand that you have to try to make things sound good even when they aren’t quite that way. But Microsoft consistently produces quarterly losses in their online efforts that are measured in large percentages of $1 billion. That can’t go on in perpetuity can it? Let’s face it. Microsoft really wants to be in the online space but they are rarely mentioned in a positive light. In fact, they have to count on Google to seriously stub a toe to make true inroads as a search competitor. The degree to which Google needs to screw up in order for Bing to be a truly viable alternative search engine is quite high. It’s not impossible that something like that couldn’t happen but the reality is that it is pretty unlikely. And my final question. If the Online Services Division reported $707 million in revenues for the quarter and STILL lost almost a half a billion dollars, where in the heck does all of that go? Anyone from Microsoft want to fill us in? Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!