The number of unlimited data plans in the U.S. wireless industry has been gradually fading.

Now, Verizon Wireless plans to 86 the unlimited data plan it grandfathered in for its 3G customers, Fierce Wireless has reported, citing Verizon chief financial officer Fran Shammo, who revealed the carrier’s decision during a J.P. Morgan conference. The wireless titan migrated to a tiered data model last summer but honored the $30-per-month plan for customers already on the plan who wanted to keep it.

Shammo reportedly said all customers will have to move off the unlimited data plan as they migrate to 4G LTE. “Everyone will be on data share,” Fierce Wireless quoted Shammo as stating, referring to a new plan that Verizon is set to launch during the summer.

U.S. wireless carriers have been phasing out unlimited plans partly due to the immense pressures on their networks that raise their costs. Carriers have blamed traffic jams and spikes to a small percentage of customers who hog the networks.

ATT Chief Executive Randall Stephenson recently expressed his regret for offering unlimited data for Apple’s iPhone, noting that heavy data users paid relatively less than light users. ATT discontinued its unlimited plan a few years ago and switched to a tiered model.

“A lot of our 3G base is on unlimited,” Shammo said. “When they migrate off 3G they will have to go to data share. That is beneficial to us.”

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/VonSiteFeed/~3/0ZjHI1oRcNo/verizon-totally-eliminating-unlimited-data.aspx

Half of Americans think Facebook is a passing fad, according to the results of a new Associated Press-CNBC poll. And, in the run-up to the social network‘s initial public offering of stock, half of Americans also say the social network’s expected asking price is too high.

The company Mark Zuckerberg created as a Harvard student eight years ago is preparing for what looks to be the biggest Internet IPO ever. Expected later this week, Facebook’s Wall Street debut could value the company at $100 billion, making it worth more than Disney, Ford and Kraft Foods.

That’s testament to the impressive numbers Facebook has posted in its relatively brief history. More than 40 percent of American adults log in to the site —to share news, personal observations, photos and more— at least once a week. In all, some 900 million people around the world are users. Facebook’s revenue grew from $777 million in 2009 to $3.7 billion last year. And in the first quarter of 2012 it was more than $1 billion.

Just a third of those surveyed think the company’s expected value is appropriate, while 50 percent say it is too high. Those who invest in the stock market are more likely to see shares as overvalued, 58 percent said so. About 3 in 10 investors say the expected value of shares is fair. Facebook on Tuesday lifted the expected price for its shares to $34 to $38 apiece from $28 to $35 each.

But price worries won’t necessarily stop would-be investors. Half the people surveyed say they think Facebook is a good bet, while 31 percent do not. The rest aren’t sure. Americans who invest in stocks roughly agree, although investors who are more “active” — those who have changed their holdings in the past month —are more negative. Nearly 40 percent say Facebook would not be a good investment.

Young adults, a majority of whom log on to Facebook daily, are more willing to dance to their hoodie-wearing piper, 28-year-old CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Among Zuckerberg’s peers, adults under age 35, 59 percent say Facebook is a good bet. Compare that to the views of senior citizens: Only 39 percent age 65 and over say Facebook shares are a good investment. Nearly half of Gen X’ers (ages 35-44) say the company is a good bet, as do 55 percent of middle-aged people.

Those under 35 are the generation most interested in Facebook’s IPO because they’ve grown up immersed in the social network. They were the first users, logging in from their college dorm rooms. Later, Facebook expanded to allow high school-age and even younger students to sign up. It’s become an integral part of their lives, giving them a launching pad to spread the news of life’s major developments through posts and pictures.

Conversely, it’s the rare senior citizen on Facebook: Just 21 percent have an account. Half of baby boomers — the generation born in the years after World War II — have one. But most of the 56 percent of the country that’s on Facebook is young — two-thirds of Gen X’ers and a staggering 81 percent of people 18-35 use the social networking site.

Young people aren’t just connected. They are constantly tethered to smartphones, tablets and notebook computers. Even with the rise of alternative social networks like Twitter and Google Plus, 55 percent of Zuckerberg’s peers go on Facebook every day. A third log on several times a day. Despite the intensity of their use, a narrow majority of young adults predict Facebook’s appeal will fade down the road (51 percent), fewer think it will stick around as a service (44 percent).

The public overall is similarly divided on the company’s future. Just under half of adults (46 percent) predict a short timeline for Facebook, while 43 percent say it has staying power.

Young people are more aware of Zuckerberg and have more positive views of the CEO, who celebrated his 28th birthday on Monday. Overall, one in five Americans say they’ve never heard of him, 30 percent don’t have an opinion and 14 percent plain don’t like him. Only about a third have a good impression of the CEO, who has alienated some with Facebook’s ever-changing approach to user privacy.

But 46 percent of people under 35 like him. And a scant 4 percent of those younger adults say they’ve never heard of him.

The privacy issue is a stinger. Three of every five Facebook users say they have little or no faith that the company will protect their personal information. Only 13 percent trust Facebook to guard their data, and only 12 percent would feel safe making purchases through the site. Even Facebook’s most dedicated users are wary — half of those who use the site daily say they wouldn’t feel safe buying things on the network.

As for how Facebook makes most of its money —selling ads— 57 percent of users say they never click on them or on Facebook’s sponsored content. About another quarter say they rarely do.

Despite user discontent about privacy, Facebook and Zuckerberg have connected with many Americans. The survey suggests that his reputation and youth seem more like assets than liabilities. For those who have heard of the CEO, two-thirds are at least somewhat confident in his ability to run a large public company. Twenty-two percent doubt he can handle the leadership role. As for the social network he created, 51 percent of Americans clicked “Like.”

The Associated Press-CNBC Poll was conducted May 3-7, 2012 by GfK Roper Public Affairs and Corporate Communications. It involved landline and cell phone interviews with 1,004 adults nationwide and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.

___

Associated Press Deputy Director of Polling Jennifer Agiesta and News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius contributed this report.

___

Online:

http://www.ap-gfkpoll.com

http://facebook.cnbc.com

Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/poll-half-americans-call-facebook-fad-040615340--finance.html

NEW YORK (AP) — Already expected to be the largest-ever initial public offering for an Internet company, Facebook is making its IPO even bigger.

The world’s largest online social network on Tuesday increased the planned price range for its stock to $34 to $38 per share in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. That’s up from its previous range of $28 to $35. At the upper limit of $38, the sale would raise about $12.8 billion.

The move, which values Facebook as high as $104 billion, comes amid growing investor excitement about the offering. Analysts are comparing the frenzy surrounding Facebook‘s IPO to Google Inc.’s in 2004, though in sheer size the latter pales in comparison.

At the same time, half of Americans think the expected value for Facebook Inc. is too high, according to a new Associated Press-CNBC poll conducted before the company raised its expected stock price on Tuesday. Only a third of those surveyed said they think Facebook‘s expected value is appropriate.

Wall Street doesn’t share that sentiment.

“Demand is obscenely high,” said Scott Sweet the owner of advisory firm IPOBoutique about the offering. That said, he notes Facebook still has to be careful not to increase the price too much, so the stock still does well when it begins trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market, as expected, on Friday.

“This is a deal that literally must work, in that it is so high-profile,” he said. “It would really level the IPO market if Facebook flopped.”

As it stands, Facebook would be the fourth-largest U.S. IPO in history, edging out ATT Wireless, whose 2000 IPO raised $10.6 billion according to Renaissance Capital, an IPO investment advisory firm.

The AP-CNBC survey, meanwhile, found that of average Americans who invest in the stock market, 58 percent think Facebook‘s valuation is too high at around $100 billion. That’s larger than well-known companies such as Ford and Kraft but smaller than Google or Microsoft. About 3 in 10 investors called the expected value fair.

Price worries won’t necessarily stop would-be investors. Facebook raised the price range in response strong demand for its stock, and it’s possible that the stock could price even higher on Thursday.

The Menlo Park, Calif.-based company is offering 337 million shares in its IPO. Of those, 157 million shares aren’t coming from the company, but from existing stockholders, including the company’s earliest investors and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Even after the offering, Zuckerberg will remain Facebook’s single largest shareholder. And he will control the company through 57 percent of its voting stock. Based on the high end of the price range, he’ll get about $1.15 billion from the stock he is selling.

The IPO is is expected to raise more than 10 times as much as the $1.67 billion raised in Google eight years ago. At a value of $38 per share, the high end of Facebook’s expected range, Facebook would generate $6.84 billion on its shares. Existing stockholders would collectively make $5.98 billion.

Even at the higher price range, it’s going to be tough for the company’s fans and everyday investors to get in on the IPO. Most of the shares are expected to go to people with connections to the company or those who have large, active accounts with the big banks or brokerage firms directly involved in the stock sale.

Morgan Stanley leads the team of 33 underwriters selected for the Facebook offering, followed by JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs. The company will trade under the ticker symbol “FB.”

Analysts say there’s so much interest in Facebook’s stock that some underwriters are closing their books as early as Tuesday. This means they won’t be taking any more orders from potential buyers.

In its Tuesday filing, Facebook also adjusted the timetable for finishing its $1 billion acquisition of Instagram, saying it expects the deal to close sometime in 2012. Previously, it had said it expected to complete the deal in the second quarter.

Some analysts have speculated that the acquisition of the photo-sharing network would come under regulatory scrutiny. If the deal doesn’t close by Dec. 10, Facebook could have to pay Instagram a breakup fee of $200 million.

___

Associated Press Business Writers Tali Arbel and Bree Fowler contributed to this story.

Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/facebook-raises-ipo-price-offering-nears-103902725--finance.html

DISH Network Corp. has irked some media executives with a DVR capability that makes it easier for customers to avoid commercials.

Released last week, the “Auto Hop” capability for the Hopper HD DVR system lets users skip commercials for most recorded primetime HD programs shown on ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC when viewed the day after the show airs. The feature does not work on live broadcasts.

An NBC executive is not even remotely impressed with Auto Hop.

“I think this is an attack on our ecosystem,” The Los Angeles Times quoted NBC Broadcasting Chairman Ted Harbert as telling reporters.

Deadline Hollywood also quoted Harbert as saying Auto Hop is “an insult to our joint programming, and I’m against it.”

Peter Rice, chairman of entertainment for the Fox Networks Group, wondered why DISH would risk alienating its relationship with broadcast networks such as Fox and noted the network was still evaluating whether to consider legal action against the Auto Hop offering, The Times reported.

A DISH spokesman defended the company’s feature. “Viewers have been skipping commercials since the advent of the remote control,” Bob Toevs was quoted in the Times story. “We are simply making it easier.”

In a press release last week, a DISH executive called Auto Hop “a revolutionary development that no other company offers and it’s something that sets Hopper above the competition.”

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/VonSiteFeed/~3/m6KQKiwmAW0/nbc-fox-execs-slam-dish-over-commercial-free-dvr-feature.aspx

How much Olympics is too much Olympics? The BBC aims to find out at this year’s London 2012 games, by offering up “the most comprehensive coverage ever,” a list that includes 2,500 hours of coverage via the broadcaster’s site and up to 24 live HD streams. Live coverage will be offered up for every sport and each sport, athlete, venue and country will have its own page on the site. The BBC will also be providing a free mobile app, a mobile browser site and apps for connected TVs — 3D and Super Hi-Vision coverage is a bonus. Check out an explanatory video about the new video player after the break, as well as some scheduling information in the source link below. And maybe think about a training regiment to get ready to watch this summer’s games.

Article source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/15/the-bbcs-coverage-promises-to-make-you-sick-of-the-olympics-by/

Fourth-generation wireless services are expected to soon permeate Asian markets.

Analysys Mason predicts most smartphones in the Asia-Pacific region will be equipped with 4G connections by the end of 2016. Alexandra Rehak, head of telecoms research at Analysys Mason, said 62 percent of the region’s non-handset mobile broadband connections, such as USB modems and midscreen devices, will be powered by 4G by the end of 2016.

Operators have launched 4G services in such markets as Japan and South Korea, but Analysys Mason said spectrum constraints are holding up deployments in other markets like Taiwan.

For now, 3G is king and will account for 90 percent of mobile handset and broadband connections this year, according to Analysys Mason’s report, “The developed Asia-Pacific telecoms market: trends and forecasts 2011-2016.”

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/VonSiteFeed/~3/40hyiTHjJuE/4g-to-saturate-asian-markets.aspx

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Yahoo’s dysfunctional turnaround efforts have morphed into a Silicon Valley soap opera, one that has taken another strange twist with the Internet company’s ousting of CEO Scott Thompson just four months after his arrival.

Thompson’s hasty departure, amid a furor over an inaccurate resume, ushers in a new cast of characters led by interim CEO Ross Levinsohn and New York hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb. It was Loeb’s sleuthing skill that uncovered Thompson‘s misleading biography. With a 5.8 percent stake in the company, Loeb now gets even more leverage with three seats on Yahoo’s 11-member board of directors. He and the rest of Yahoo’s board will appoint one more “mutually agreeable” director, according to a Monday regulatory filing.

If Yahoo’s saga is to end happily, the company’s new leadership will have to develop a strategy to lure back Web surfers and advertisers who have been defecting to Internet rivals Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. At the same time, they will likely need to complete the complicated negotiations to sell part of the company’s prized stake in China Alibaba Group.

Those objectives ranked high on Thompson‘s priority list, too, but a ficitious college degree that appeared on his official biography ended his brief tenure.

Another factor may have contributed to Thompson‘s short stay. Citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter, The Wall Street Journal reported that Thompson, 54, had informed Yahoo’s board last week that he has been diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Even so, Thompson was still scrambling to save his job last week as he deflected responsibility for a bio that included a college degree in computer science that he never received. Thompson, in fact, graduated from Stonehill College, near Boston, in 1979 with a degree in accounting —not computer science.

Incensed at initially being denied a seat on Yahoo’s board, Loeb exposed the phantom degree earlier this month.

In a sign that he was forced out, Thompson left Yahoo without a severance package, according to documents filed Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission. He is also surrendering unvested stock awards valued at $16 million. Thompson will get to keep a $1.5 million cash bonus and restricted stock valued at $5.5 million that Yahoo paid him to compensate for benefits he gave up at his former job at PayPal, an online payment service owned by eBay Inc. Yahoo had been paying Thompson a $1 million annual salary, which could have been supplemented by a bonus of up to $2 million.

Analysts are divided on whether Yahoo is now in a better position to lift its long-slumping stock price and revive its revenue growth.

Macquarie Securities analyst Ben Schachter thought Yahoo was making its greatest progress in years under Thompson‘s aggressive leadership. Now, there’s a risk that Thompson‘s exit will waste four months of turnaround work — a setback that Schachter says Yahoo Inc. can’t afford at this critical juncture.

“What is really scary about all this is the Internet is the fastest moving industry in the world, so the time they are losing is very dangerous,” Macquarie said.

Other analysts believe Levinsohn is a better fit as Yahoo’s CEO than Thompson, who had spent the previous seven years immersed in processing digital payments at PayPal.

“Levinsohn is an extremely qualified executive, in our view, and will serve as a calming force amid the turmoil,” Stifel Nicolaus analyst Jordan Rohan wrote in a Monday email. “He has a visceral understanding of what it takes to succeed in the media business. We believe that under new leadership, Yahoo is more likely to re-emerge as a premier, highly profitable online media.”

It’s a sentiment shared by some investors. Yahoo’s stock added 31 cents, or 2 percent, to close Monday at $15.50.

Levinsohn’s name had been bandied about as a CEO candidate before the company hired Silicon Valley veteran Carol Bartz to fill that role in January 2009. Bartz subsequently hired Levinsohn as one of her top lieutenants in late 2010 and then his name came up as a potential successor to Bartz after Yahoo fired her eight months ago. Yahoo instead appointed its chief financial officer, Tim Morse, as interim CEO before settling on Thompson.

Levinsohn, 48, is best known for running the Internet operations of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. when that company bought MySpace, then the Internet’s top social network, for $580 million in 2005. Levinsohn then negotiated a lucrative advertising deal that made the MySpace deal look like a coup. But then Facebook emerged as the Internet’s social hub, and News Corp. wound up unloading MySpace for just $35 million last year, long after Levinsohn had left.

In previous jobs, Levinsohn also held top media positions at CBS Sportsline and Alta Vista, a once-popular search engine that was supplanted by Google.

As the head of Yahoo’s media and advertising services, Levinsohn had been striking more exclusive online video deals featuring well-known talents such as former CBS news anchor Katie Couric and actors Tom Hanks and Jeff Goldblum. Yahoo has also been gearing up to increase its coverage of the Summer Olympics and U.S. presidential election in the fall.

Levinsohn has publicly described Yahoo’s audience of more than 700 million users as an “untapped jewel” that should be able to attract more advertising than it has in recent years.

Yahoo’s annual revenue has fallen from a peak of $7.2 billion in 2008 to $5 billion last year. Advertisers aren’t spending as much money at Yahoo largely because they have been getting better returns at Internet search leader Google and at Facebook, where people have are spending more of their online time. In March, for instance, Web surfers in the U.S. spent an average of six-and-half hours on Facebook compared to four-and-three-quarters hours on Google services and three-and-half hours on Yahoo.

Despite the downturn in revenue, Yahoo has become more profitable by cutting costs under both Bartz and Thompson. After laying off 2,000 workers last month, Thompson had started to identify about 50 Yahoo services that he intended to close or sell. Levinsohn, who was working closely with Thompson, hasn’t indicated if he still intends get rid of all those services.

Although Levinsohn has been labeled as interim CEO, Yahoo’s board is probably hoping he performs well enough to be appointed the company’s permanent leader, said Gayle Mattson, an executive vice president for executive search firm DHR International.

“I am sure the board is auditioning him because to try to bring someone from outside the company right would be a total disaster,” Mattson said.

Levinsohn isn’t getting a raise with his expanded responsibilities, Yahoo said Monday. His salary as a Yahoo executive vice president in charge of media content and advertising remains at $700,000 salary with an annual bonus of up to $840,000. Yahoo gave Morse, a 25 percent raise that lifted his salary to $750,000 when he was named Yahoo’s interim CEO after Bartz’s ouster.

Loeb, who runs the Third Point LLC hedge fund, has muscled his way on to a Yahoo board that has undergone a radical makeover. All but three of the directors have been appointed since February. One of the recent appointees, former technology executive Alfred Amoroso, is the new chairman of the board, but Loeb “is clearly calling the shots right now,” Schachter said.

Loeb has gained investors’ respect with scathing public criticism that eventually pressured Yahoo to get rid of the remaining directors that sat on the board when the company committed perhaps its biggest blunder — a squandered opportunity to sell itself to Microsoft Corp. for $33 per share, or $47.5 billion, per share, four years ago. Yahoo’s stock price hasn’t traded above $20 since September 2008.

The breakdown in Microsoft negotiations triggered a shareholder mutiny that culminated in billionaire investor Carl Icahn and two of his allies being appointed to Yahoo’s board in 2008. Icahn resigned after just 15 months on the board.

Loeb is expected to play a more influential role in the boardroom than Icahn did, particularly in Yahoo’s on-again, off-again negotiations to sell part of its roughly 40 percent stake in Alibaba, one of the hottest companies in China’s rapidly growing Internet market. Yahoo had been discussing a complex deal with Alibaba that would have avoided incurring a large tax deal, but those talks unraveled shortly after Thompson’s hiring.

Thompson had renewed the Alibaba discussions and, last month, expressed some hope that a deal would get done this year.

Signaling Loeb’s key role in the Alibaba talks, Yahoo appointed him to the board’s strategic planning and transactions committee.

Selling part of the Alibaba stake would be welcomed by Loeb and other major shareholders because it would probably produce a multibillion-dollar windfall. As of March 31, Yahoo estimated its holdings in Alibaba were worth $14 billion. That indicates investors see little remaining value in the rest of Yahoo, which currently has a market value of $19 billion.

Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/yahoo-soap-opera-features-cast-leaders-225852309--finance.html

NEW YORK (AP) — Don’t let the hoodie and sneakers fool you. Mark Zuckerberg is no wet-behind-the-ears CEO.

Facebook‘s chief executive turns 28 on Monday, setting in motion the social network’s biggest week ever. The company is expected to start selling stock to the public for the first time and begin trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market on Friday. The IPO could value Facebook at nearly $100 billion, making it worth more than such iconic companies as Disney, Ford and Kraft Foods.

At 28, Zuckerberg is exactly half the age of the average SP 500 CEO, according to executive search firm Spencer Stuart. With eight years on the job, he’s logged more time as leader than the average CEO, whose tenure is a little more than seven years, according to Spencer Stuart. Even so, the pressures of running a public company will undoubtedly take some getting used to. Once Facebook begins selling stock, Zuckerberg will be expected to please a host of new stakeholders, including Wall Street investment firms, hedge funds and pension funds who will pressure him to keep the company growing.

Young as he may seem —especially in that hooded sweatshirt— Zuckerberg will be about the same age as Michael Dell and older than Steve Jobs when those two took their companies, Dell Inc. and Apple Inc., public. In his years as Facebook’s CEO he’s met world leaders, rode a bull in Vietnam while on vacation, started learning Mandarin Chinese and as a personal challenge, wore a tie for the better part of a year.

Facebook, of course, got its start in Zuckerberg‘s messy Harvard dorm room in early 2004. Known as Thefacebook.com back in those days, the site was created to help Harvard students — and later other college students — connect with one another online. The scrappy website later grew to include high-schoolers, then anyone else with an Internet connection. Today more than 900 million people log in at least once a month, making Facebook the world’s definitive social network.

All along, Zuckerberg has shown a maturity beyond his years. As the site grew rapidly and caught the eye of big media and rival Internet companies, Zuckerberg consistently rebuffed mouth-watering buyout offers, including from Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc.

“Simply put: we don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services,” wrote Zuckerberg in his letter to prospective shareholders. “And we think this is a good way to build something. These days I think more and more people want to use services from companies that believe in something beyond simply maximizing profits.”

People who’ve observed Zuckerberg closely say his age is an asset. His is the generation that grew up with social networking, with computers all around them and the Internet as something that’s always existed. Many of his employees are younger than him, as are a lot of the up-and-coming technology entrepreneurs with whom he competes.

“I don’t think you could build a company like this if you were an old guy like me,” says David Kirkpatrick, a 59-year-old author who chronicled the company’s early history in “The Facebook Effect”. Kirkpatrick, who is also founder of Techonomy, a media company that hosts conferences on the relationship between technology and economy and social progress, first met Zuckerberg six years ago. He says he was impressed with his vision, even then. “It’s the willingness to take risks, the willingness to abide by a very contemporary vision … I don’t think that he’s too young. I think most CEOs are too old.”

Zuckerberg, who lives in Palo Alto, Calif. with his girlfriend and a white Hungarian Puli dog named Beast, has matured as a leader with the help of experienced mentors. One of his closest advisors is Sheryl Sandberg, who he hired away from Google in 2008. Zuckerberg, known for sometimes-awkward public appearances, realized that the razor-sharp, people-savvy advertising executive complements his own shortcomings. Sandberg is Zuckerberg’s No. 2, the chief operating officer who oversees advertising and often serves as Facebook’s smiling, public face. Then there’s Donald Graham, the 66-year-old CEO and chairman of The Washington Post Co., who serves as a mentor to Zuckerberg and holds a seat on Facebook’s board of directors.

Rebecca Lieb, analyst at the Altimeter Group, says Zuckerberg has assembled a team of “truly exceptional lieutenants.” David Ebersman, Facebook’s chief financial officer, who hails from biotech firm Genentech, is another example. Zuckerberg hired him in 2009, saying that Ebersman’s previous job, helping to scale the finance organization of the fast-growing biotech company “will be important to Facebook.”

He was right. Facebook’s revenue grew from $777 million in 2009 to $3.7 billion last year. In the first quarter of 2012 it was more than $1 billion.

Obviously, Zuckerberg still has a lot to learn. As part of Facebook’s pre-IPO “roadshow” last week, Zuckerberg visited several venerable East Coast financial institutions wearing his signature hoodie. While Silicon Valley insiders defend his fashion choice, others saw it as a sign of immaturity. Was it, as some speculated, a sign of a rebellious 20-something acting out? For Michael Pachter, analyst at Wedbush Securities, Zuckerberg’s attitude and attire symbolizes “a level of aloofness to stakeholders.”

“He seems very customer focused and very employee focused. I am not sure he cares about anyone else… If he’s going to go public, he has to answer to shareholders,” Pachter says. “That’s why Google hired Eric Schmidt. That’s why Steve Jobs was ultimately forced out of Apple.”

Jobs, in fact, was another Silicon Valley luminary who had Zuckerberg’s ear. He was 25 in 1980 when Apple went public. He was ousted five years later after clashing with John Sculley, the former Pepsico executive Apple hired as chief executive. Jobs famously returned to lead Apple in 1997 and the company has thrived since.

Not much is known about the relationship Jobs and Zuckerberg shared, but Jobs reportedly told his biographer Walter Isaacson: “We talk about social networks in the plural, but I don’t see anybody other than Facebook out there. Just Facebook, They are dominating this. I admire Mark Zuckerberg . . . for not selling out, for wanting to make a company. I admire that a lot.”

When Jobs died last October, Zuckerberg wrote on his Facebook page, “Steve, thank you for being a mentor and a friend. Thanks for showing that what you build can change the world. I will miss you.”

Jon Burgstone, professor at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology at the University of California, Berkeley, believes that Zuckerberg will need to keep his perspective and continue developing.

“He has already become one of the world’s most famous people, and also the richest,” he says. “He walks into a room and you can feel people’s excitement and the rush to be near him. He’s already had time to learn how to deal with such fame and fortune, but now it’s advancing to an entirely new level. How will he handle it, emotionally and professionally?”

Lieb marvels at the life Zuckerberg has led so far. Imagine being in your 20s, a self-made billionaire, your life the subject of a Hollywood movie. “It’s a lifetime and the guy isn’t 30 yet,” says Lieb.

He’s made big mistakes, especially with regard to users’ privacy. One example is Beacon, Facebook’s misguided advertising product that broadcast user’s activities on outside websites without their consent. Still, he took steps to correct them. On blog posts about Facebook’s privacy blunders, he’s admitted the company has made mistakes. His 2007 post about Beacon showed his straightforward, methodical thinking:

” We’ve made a lot of mistakes building this feature, but we’ve made even more with how we’ve handled them. We simply did a bad job with this release, and I apologize for it. While I am disappointed with our mistakes, we appreciate all the feedback we have received from our users. I’d like to discuss what we have learned and how we have improved Beacon,” he wrote five years ago. Facebook shut down Beacon two years later.

Zuckerberg has done well for himself so far, but he’ll be pulled in many directions once Facebook is public.

“There is going to be a tremendous amount of scrutiny on this company,” Lieb says. “Who really is qualified” to carry such a weight?

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Follow Barbara Ortutay on Twitter at http://twitter.com/BarbaraOrtutay

Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/facebook-ceo-turns-28-ipo-could-100b-gift-192840074--finance.html

Knocked down by U.S. regulators in its failed $39 billion merger with T-Mobile USA but not defeated, ATT reportedly has eyed another wireless acquisition target.

Sources told Reuters ATT has had conversations to acquire Leap Wireless International, the owner of the Cricket prepaid brand. Reuters couldn’t confirm whether those talks are ongoing and representatives for both companies declined comment to the news agency.

Such a merger obviously would beef up ATT, already the second-largest mobile provider in America, although Leap is only a fraction of the size of T-Mobile USA with a modest base of 6.2 million customers.

The report emerged the same week sources told Bloomberg and Reuters that Deutsche Telekom has been discussing a merger of T-Mobile USA with another prepaid wireless carrier, MetroPCS Communications. T-Mobile USA has been struggling to hold onto its contract customers, who often are more lucrative for wireless carriers than prepaid subscribers.

Such a deal would be relatively small compared to the ATT/T-Mobile merger. Based on first-quarter figures, MetroPCS and T-Mobile serve a combined 42.9 million customers.

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/VonSiteFeed/~3/VZCFisET788/at-t-eying-cricket.aspx

What seems more futuristic: flying cars or self-driving cars? They both sound a bit like science fiction, but they’re both getting closer to becoming a reality. In the latest chapter of Google’s efforts to develop a car that uses video cameras, radar sensors and lasers to navigate through traffic, the state of Nevada just granted Google the world’s first license for a computer-controlled, driverless Toyota Prius. Meanwhile, this week we also checked in on the PAL-V (which stands for “Personal Air and Land Vehicle”), a two-seat hybrid car and gyroplane that runs on gas, biodiesel or bio-ethanol. In other transportation news, the Texas Central Railroad floated a plan to build a $10-billion bullet train that would run between Houston and Fort Worth, and Toyota officially unveiled its second-generation 2012 RAV4 EV, which features a Tesla powertrain.

We also saw green technology cropping up in unexpected places this week, like the $1-billion ghost town that will be built on virgin desert land in Lea County, New Mexico to test emerging green technologies. Construction on the ghost town is set to begin in late June. Milwaukee native Bryan Cera invented Glove One, a 3D-printed glove that doubles as a cell phone. And in Tokyo, participants heaved 100,000 LED lights into the Sumida River as part of the 2012 Tokyo Hotaru Festival. Although it certainly looked cool, that’s a lot of LED bulbs to literally dump in the river, and it raises some questions about e-waste. GE found a more practical use for LEDs, unveiling a new LED light bulb to replace the 100-watt incandescent.

It was a big week for big-name architects, beginning with Danish firm Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), which won yet another design competition, this one for a sports complex and park on the Ratinanniemi Peninsula in Tampere, Finland that will feature a large, wood-clad serpentine structure and a series of mixed-use buildings. We also interviewed the designers of New York City’s underground low-line park, and in South Korea Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill unveiled plans for Dancing Dragons — a pair of angular skyscrapers that will feature a breathable scale-like skin (like a dragon’s skin — get it?) through which air can actually circulate. Meanwhile a topsy-turvy upside-down house popped up in Austria and Cornell University announced that it has chosen Thom Mayne of Morphosis Architects to design the first of three net-zero energy CornellNYC Tech academic building on Roosevelt Island.

This week we also took a look at these attractive solar parasols from Ombrellone Solare, which harness the power of the sun to charge your mobile devices while shading you from its rays. We also considered the prospect of Japan replacing its nuclear power industry with geothermal, and we checked in on Mark Pearson, a British car mechanic who inexplicably spent 14 months constructing an Iron Man costume from 400 sheets of fiberglass-coated cardboard. “I don’t know why I did it, I guess it was just a moment of madness,” he said. Try 14 months of madness. And in one of our favorite green tech stories of the week, we looked at a team from the University of Leeds that used a type of bacterium which ‘eats’ iron to create a surface of magnets, possibly paving the way for the development of bio computers. Sound like science fiction? The future may be closer than you think.

Article source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/13/self-driving-cars-solar-parasols-cardboard-iron-man/