Kara Swisher

Recent Posts by Kara Swisher

Facebook Anti-Hype Aside, Most Consumer Tech Stocks Up Smartly for the Year

Much of the media that hyped Facebook’s public offering to the high heavens is now busy slapping it and its stock upside its social-networking head. (Riddle me this: Why did none of the breathless pre-IPO pricing stories at the time question said high share price or note there were worries, with some going as far as saying that the transaction had gone off “without a reported glitch so far”?)

Facebook shares are down 29 percent since its mid-May offering.

In any case, amid much anecdotal proof that start-up valuations might be starting to suffer from the Facebook effect, that has not been the case with already public tech companies.

Shares of most — although not all — have been up smartly since the beginning of the year, with some major laggards and some racing far ahead.

Here’s the breakdown so far, which is interesting to consider:

Internet content portal AOL is up almost 78 percent year to date, although it has risen only about 3 percent in the last month. The reason probably lies between its patent sale and better results — and the fact that it just could not fall more.

Search giant Google, on the other hand, is down more than 6 percent over the last month, and 12 percent since the beginning of the year. The reasons? Concerns over its last earnings report, concerns over a federal investigation, concerns over it getting jacked from Apple’s iPhone mapping. Everyone is very concerned, apparently.

Concerns not shared about business networking site LinkedIn, which is up close to 50 percent in that time frame. Still, perhaps due to some profit-taking and spillover worries about Facebook, it has seen its shares dropping 12 percent over the last four weeks.

Also sick with Facebook fever (and not the good kind) is gaming site Zynga, which is down 26 percent in the last month; its stock performance since the beginning of the year has been even worse, dropping by 41 percent.

That’s not as bad as Groupon, whose shares have declined 50 percent since January. Still, in what appears to be some stabilization, the stock of the daily deals site has risen close to 4.5 percent in the last 30 days.

Also getting a nice bounce after a period of decline are the shares of content maker Demand Media, which is up 6.5 percent for the month, and close to 36 percent for the year.

So, too, retailer Amazon, which is up 25 percent in the year to date, but down about 5 percent in the last month.

Microsoft is also off this month, down more than 7 percent, but the software giant’s year-to-date record is a strong rise of 11.3 percent.

The shares of auction company eBay are also up smartly, by 35 percent for the year, and only a half-percent for the month.

Typically strong Apple shares are up 41 percent since the beginning of the year, but only 5 percent in the last month.

That leaves Yahoo, whose shares have moved under 1 percent in the last month, and are down 5 percent for the year. Executive turmoil and worries about the Silicon Valley Internet company’s advertising business lead the investor ennui here.

In this case, at least, you can’t blame Facebook.

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There’s a lot of attention and PR around Marissa, but their product lineup just kind of blows.

— Om Malik on Bloomberg TV, talking about Yahoo, the September issue of Vogue Magazine, and our overdependence on Google