The Week: Most Recent the-digital-age

Four ways Apple has changed under Tim Cook

The Week — Fri, 25 May 2012 13:06:00 -0400

A new Fortune cover story takes a look at current Apple CEO Tim Cook, who isn't, as many have pointed out, his predecessor Steve Jobs. When the two execs' careers overlapped, many viewed the level-headed operations chief Cook as the calm yin to the Jobs' famously brash yang. Yet, when Cook took over after Jobs' 2011 death, some worried that his cool approach wouldn't be enough to maintain Apple's momentum. How is Cook's leadership style changing the world's most valuable company? Here, four ways Apple is already different, for better or worse:

1. Cook is willing to release less-than-perfect product...

The New Yorker story that's being published one tweet a time

The Week — Fri, 25 May 2012 12:41:00 -0400

Last year, Jennifer Egan, a novelist and short story writer, won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction for her book A Visit From the Goon Squad. Now, Egan, whose work has appeared in a number of illustrious publications including Harper's and The New York Times, is publishing an original short story that she wrote for The New Yorker — on Twitter. The magazine will release the 8,500 words of "Black Box" one tweet at a time, on its @NYerFiction feed. How will this work? Is it a terrible idea? Here, a brief guide:

How will the story-tweeting work?
The New Yorker began publishing...

6 photos that Facebook controversially banned

The Week — Fri, 25 May 2012 11:11:00 -0400

Facebook has famously earned the disdain of privacy advocates for encouraging massive oversharing by its more than 900 million users. But there are some photos even Facebook won't let you share — and, of course, the site has gotten blowback for that, too. The latest picture it's censored depicts a topless woman, but not erotically: A British woman, celebrating her cancer-vanquishing mastectomy, posted a shot of her breastless self only to see it promptly removed. Here's that story, and the tales of five other photographs that prudish Facebook deleted — and sometimes restored, after...

Did the Facebook debacle destroy the IPO market?

The Week — Thu, 24 May 2012 07:34:00 -0400

Facebook continues to reel from its botched IPO, which has already prompted shareholder lawsuits and a public outcry over alleged backroom dealing between the social network and Wall Street. The company's stock price on Wednesday closed at $32, 16 percent below its opening price of $38, and investors are complaining that Facebook hasn't come even close to matching the breathless hype that accompanied its debut. The controversy has also awakened broader concerns that other companies, wary of repeating Facebook's mistakes, will become more reluctant to publicly trade their shares. Did Facebook's...

Facebook's botched IPO: Winners and losers

The Week — Wed, 23 May 2012 15:34:00 -0400

Facebook's rocky debut on the stock market has taken another turn for the worse. Shareholders have filed lawsuits against the company and the banks handling its IPO, claiming that Facebook and its partners duped prospective investors. The suits cite a Reuters story reporting that Morgan Stanley, the chief underwriter of the IPO, lowered its forecast for Facebook's revenues just before the IPO and shared that information with only a handful of its big-time clients. Government regulators are also investigating Morgan Stanley on suspicions of foul play. Meanwhile, Facebook shares remain ...

Who's to blame for Facebook's stock debacle?

The Week — Tue, 22 May 2012 17:55:00 -0400

Facebook stock has been sliding nonstop since Friday, when, to much fanfare, it debuted on the Nasdaq at $38 a share and sold a hefty $16 billion worth of stock. The share price hovered around $38 on Friday, but closed at just over $31 on Tuesday, an 18 percent plunge. With 900 million users, Facebook is the biggest social network in the world, and many had expected the stock to pop as soon as the shares hit the market. So what went wrong? Here, five possible culprits for Facebook's abysmal performance:

1. Morgan Stanley
The investment bank was in charge of Facebook's IPO, and it's being criticized...

Facebook's underwhelming IPO: Proof the stock was overhyped?

The Week — Mon, 21 May 2012 18:12:00 -0400

To much fanfare, Facebook began selling shares on the Nasdaq stock exchange last week, capping an improbable journey from Mark Zuckerberg's Harvard dorm room to global tech supremacy. However, while the company sold an enormous $16 billion worth of shares, its stock price climbed a puny 23 cents over the course of the trading day, closing at $38.23 a share. And on Monday, the stock plunged by more than 10 percent, ending at $34.26. Is Facebook's troubled debut evidence that the company was overhyped?

Yes. Ordinary investors got suckered: Many people had expected Facebook's stock to pop on the...

So.cl: A guide to Microsoft's confusing new social network

The Week — Mon, 21 May 2012 18:00:00 -0400

In the aftermath of Facebook's IPO, Microsoft quietly launched its own experimental social network called "So.cl" (which it insists is pronounced "social," defying phonetic reason) over the weekend. The software giant calls it an "experiment in open search," and intends the service to supplement existing social networks rather than replace them. What does that even mean? Here, a brief guide to the confusing new kid on the block:

What is So.cl supposed to be?
The service, which combines elements from more established sites like Google+ and Pinterest, is being positioned by Microsoft as a search...

Mark Zuckerberg's surprise wedding: Why now?

The Week — Mon, 21 May 2012 09:10:00 -0400

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg had quite the momentous week. He turned 28 last Monday, the same day longtime girlfriend Priscilla Chan graduated from medical school at the University of California, San Francisco. The rest of the week he was gearing up one of the most-anticipated IPOs ever, which on Friday turned Zuckerberg's theoretical Facebook billions into real money — about $19 billion — officially making him one of the world's wealthiest people. And somehow, amid all of this activity, he and Chan managed to secretly plan their wedding, so that when 100 or so guests showed...

Facebook's historic IPO: By the numbers

The Week — Fri, 18 May 2012 12:09:00 -0400

After pricing its initial public offering at $38 per share, Facebook stock hit the market at $42 a pop Friday morning, vaulting the social network to a valuation of well over $100 billion, and positioning Facebook to raise some $16 billion, making it one of the largest IPOs in U.S. history. Company founder Mark Zuckerberg, dressed in a half-zipped hoodie, remotely rang Nasdaq's opening bell from Facebook's California office at 9:30 a.m. EST, following an all-night company party to celebrate the occasion. "It's official," says Mike Isaac at All Things D, "$FB has arrived." Here, a look at Facebook...

The rumored 4-inch iPhone screen: Is bigger better?

The Week — Thu, 17 May 2012 17:54:00 -0400

Steve Jobs famously ordained that the iPhone's current 3.5-inch touchscreen was the perfect size for consumers, and Apple had been reluctant to veer from its celebrated founder's vision since the smartphone's unveiling in 2007. But now, The Wall Street Journal reports that Asian factories where the phone is manufactured have started placing orders for a new 4-inch display, and will soon begin production for a fall launch. (Reuters confirmed the report.) Androids, especially those in Samsung's Galaxy line, continue to push phones with screens four inches and larger, and sales seem...

6 signs investors are paying too much for Facebook

The Week — Thu, 17 May 2012 15:54:00 -0400

In the most breathlessly obsessed-over IPO in recent memory, Facebook is expected to begin selling shares at $38 a pop on Friday, which would raise $18.4 billion for its pre-IPO investors and value the company at about $104 billion. That would make Facebook more valuable than Disney and McDonald's, and turn its IPO into the second-largest in U.S. history (after Visa's in 2008). Some investors say the company, with 900 million users and counting, is worth every penny. Dissenters argue that Facebook could be among the tech industry's biggest stock bubbles ever. Here, six signs that Facebook...

Is Groupon primed for a comeback?

The Week — Wed, 16 May 2012 18:15:00 -0400

Groupon reported this week that its revenue jumped by 89 percent since last year, a better-than-expected result that surprised investors and sent the daily-deals site's share price climbing by 16 percent. Groupon's stock had been declining ever since it launched its IPO in November, as investors soured on the company's poor earnings results and shady accounting corrections. Groupon was subsequently held up as the poster child for a burgeoning tech bubble, as over-exuberant investors had valued the company at close to $18 billion on its IPO — a figure that soon fell as low as $6...

GM yanks its Facebook ads: Will it hurt the social network's IPO?

The Week — Wed, 16 May 2012 12:05:00 -0400

General Motors announced this week that it will no longer pay Facebook to advertise on the social network, an embarrassing setback for Mark Zuckerberg and Co. in the run-up to their fanatically hyped IPO on Friday. GM says paid ads on Facebook, which constitute the bulk of the social network's revenue, "have little impact on consumers' car purchases," says The Wall Street Journal. The paid ads cost GM $10 million a year (it spends another $30 million creating ads and content for its own Facebook pages), which is a drop in the bucket compared to Facebook's revenue of $3.7 billion in 2011...

Journey of Jesus: The world's first Christ-centric video game?

The Week — Wed, 16 May 2012 10:17:00 -0400

The video: Whether by accident or design, Tuesday saw the release of two sharply polarized video games: Diablo III, the third installment of the blockbuster devil-themed franchise, and Journey of Jesus: The Calling, which developer Lightside Games calls "the first-ever video game based on Jesus." Lightside's Christ-centric followup to its modestly popular Facebook game, Journey of Moses, promises to let Facebook users relive the Gospel stories in a historically accurate virtual Holy Land, watching Jesus heal the sick, for instance, while using real money to collect (and trade) millennia-old items...

Apple's next MacBook Pro: 4 rumors

The Week — Tue, 15 May 2012 11:46:00 -0400

If you're thinking about buying a new Mac, you might want to hold off. Apple is reportedly giving its MacBook Pro line of performance notebooks the most drastic makeover it has had in years, according to sources cited on two prominent Apple blogs. The Cupertino-based company will supposedly unveil the new hardware at the Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC), set to take place June 11-15. But at least one analyst says the new laptops may be unveiled even sooner. "I don't see them waiting for WWDC," Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research, tells Computerworld. "As soon as...