Persistence — even if it is the whiny, likely undeserved, lunkheaded legal version of it — certainly pays off.

But you have to marvel at the bizarre karma going on, given that my favorite matching pair of digital ottomans, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, are poised to collect up to $300 million from the shares they got in a settlement with Facebook and its CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg over the founding of the social networking giant.

That’s right, folks, the rich do get richer, especially if they pursue their case well past the point of shame.

It’s not clear how many of the 1.2 million shares the Winklevii still have from the settlement they got in 2008, since they wrangled with their own lawyers over it, and the stock has also split.

But let’s assume the Olympic rowers kept a chunk, which will be worth a lot of gold-plated oars if Facebook reaches the upward of $80 billion valuation it is expected to in its upcoming initial public offering.

Facebook filed its long-expected IPO earlier this week.

And here’s a lovely tweet about the IPO from Cameron Winklevoss, who is looking very fetching on his Twitter page, even if it is perhaps about time to lose the rower meme image thing, given he’s on the closer side of 30 years old.

We r excited 4the #FacebookIPO + wish the company + all involved the very best,an amazing accomplishment! cc @tylerwinklevoss @DivyaNarendra

— Cameron Winklevoss (@winklevoss) February 2, 2012

He sent it to his twin brother, Tyler, and also to Divya Narendra, their other partner in the ill-fated ConnectU service.

Without going into all the well-gone-over deets (go see the Aaron Sorkin-penned movie and believe about 26 percent of it), ConnectU was the Harvard University dating site that Zuckerberg allegedly submarined in order to start Facebook.

Well, presumably water under bridge — unless you are talking about the perpetually disgruntled Winklevii.

At the time they finally dropped their seven-year fraud lawsuit this past summer, they then reopened to a different one then pending.

“The Social Network 2: The Overly Compensated Vii Strike Back,” anyone?

MORE ON THE FACEBOOK IPO:

• Facebook’s Ad Business Is a $3 Billion Mystery
• Viral Video: Farewell to the No-IPO Mark Zuckerberg
• Zuckerberg Is the Billion-Share Man: Who Owns What, Who Makes What in the Facebook IPO
• Zuckerberg Tells Investors, “We Don’t Build Services to Make Money”
• Mobile Highlighted as Key Risk Factor (and Opportunity) in Facebook Filing
• Stop All That Poking: Facebook Filing Temporarily Crashes SEC Web Site
• Zynga Accounted for 12 Percent of Facebook’s Revenue in 2011
• Facebook Has 845 Million Users
• On Its Eighth Birthday, Facebook Files to Raise $5 Billion in Massive IPO (Get Your S-1 Here!)
• Go the F**k Back to Sleep, Silicon Valley: Facebook IPO Likely to File Later Today at Earliest
• Dude, Where’s My Facebook IPO Filing? (Ashton’s on Hold!)
• The Quiet Man: Meet the Less-Known Face of the Facebook IPO, CFO David Ebersman
• Facebook Board Meeting Today for Final IPO Okays
• Facebook (Eye)PO: Tracking the Truth of the Biggest Deal of Web 2.0
• Viral Graphic: Visualizing the Facebook IPO
• Is Facebook IPO on Track for Late May?
• IPO Watch: Facebook Hiring Brunswick to Help With Comms for Expected Public Offering
• Complete Facebook coverage

Here’s proof of that in a pair of interviews Lesley Stahl of CBS’s “60 Minutes” did with him in 2008 and 2010. (I am in the clip, too, and my guessing on the timing of the current IPO pretty is spot-on — a prediction I had forgotten I made).

But the times they are a-changin’ — Facebook filed for its mega-IPO yesterday:

MORE ON THE FACEBOOK IPO:

• Facebook’s Ad Business Is a $3 Billion Mystery
• Viral Video: Farewell to the No-IPO Mark Zuckerberg
• Zuckerberg Is the Billion-Share Man: Who Owns What, Who Makes What in the Facebook IPO
• Zuckerberg Tells Investors, “We Don’t Build Services to Make Money”
• Mobile Highlighted as Key Risk Factor (and Opportunity) in Facebook Filing
• Stop All That Poking: Facebook Filing Temporarily Crashes SEC Web Site
• Zynga Accounted for 12 Percent of Facebook’s Revenue in 2011
• Facebook Has 845 Million Users
• On Its Eighth Birthday, Facebook Files to Raise $5 Billion in Massive IPO (Get Your S-1 Here!)
• Go the F**k Back to Sleep, Silicon Valley: Facebook IPO Likely to File Later Today at Earliest
• Dude, Where’s My Facebook IPO Filing? (Ashton’s on Hold!)
• The Quiet Man: Meet the Less-Known Face of the Facebook IPO, CFO David Ebersman
• Facebook Board Meeting Today for Final IPO Okays
• Facebook (Eye)PO: Tracking the Truth of the Biggest Deal of Web 2.0
• Viral Graphic: Visualizing the Facebook IPO
• Is Facebook IPO on Track for Late May?
• IPO Watch: Facebook Hiring Brunswick to Help With Comms for Expected Public Offering
• Complete Facebook coverage

Apparently, Facebook has a lot of friends.

Clickety-clicking ones, whose massive interest in the just-filed IPO of the Silicon Valley social networking giant seems to have temporarily crashed the Securities and Exchange Commission’s EDGAR Web site, where anyone can access regulatory documents on companies.

We’re calling the SEC for comment right now, but the site is still hanging, and sources said the reason is the Facebook initial public offering filing.

Update: It’s back up! Though slow. Still, go government!

Another Update: The SEC got back to us and in response to the question of whether this was related to a Facebook surge, spokesman John Nester said, “Greatly increased traffic that began shortly before 5 pm slowed the public website. We are bringing on additional capacity to handle the load.”

MORE ON THE FACEBOOK IPO:

• Facebook’s Ad Business Is a $3 Billion Mystery
• Viral Video: Farewell to the No-IPO Mark Zuckerberg
• Zuckerberg Is the Billion-Share Man: Who Owns What, Who Makes What in the Facebook IPO
• Zuckerberg Tells Investors, “We Don’t Build Services to Make Money”
• Mobile Highlighted as Key Risk Factor (and Opportunity) in Facebook Filing
• Stop All That Poking: Facebook Filing Temporarily Crashes SEC Web Site
• Zynga Accounted for 12 Percent of Facebook’s Revenue in 2011
• Facebook Has 845 Million Users
• On Its Eighth Birthday, Facebook Files to Raise $5 Billion in Massive IPO (Get Your S-1 Here!)
• Go the F**k Back to Sleep, Silicon Valley: Facebook IPO Likely to File Later Today at Earliest
• Dude, Where’s My Facebook IPO Filing? (Ashton’s on Hold!)
• The Quiet Man: Meet the Less-Known Face of the Facebook IPO, CFO David Ebersman
• Facebook Board Meeting Today for Final IPO Okays
• Facebook (Eye)PO: Tracking the Truth of the Biggest Deal of Web 2.0
• Viral Graphic: Visualizing the Facebook IPO
• Is Facebook IPO on Track for Late May?
• IPO Watch: Facebook Hiring Brunswick to Help With Comms for Expected Public Offering
• Complete Facebook coverage

Here are the major stats on Facebook’s IPO, which it just filed: 845 million monthly users and 483 million daily users; annual revenue of $3.7 billion; $1.8 billion in annual operating income and $1 billion net income.

And the raise in the initial public offering for now? It’s $5 billion. That could go up, of course; as yet, there is no valuation listed in the S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission for the social networking giant.

Let’s just say, it will be a lot.

And here are some uh-oh stats:

A full 12 percent of Facebook’s revenue in 2011 was linked to its relationship with online gaming giant Zynga.

And overall growth is slowing too.

Said Facebook’s filing:

“We believe that our rates of user and revenue growth will decline over time. For example, our annual revenue grew 154% from 2009 to 2010 and 88% from 2010 to 2011. Historically, our user growth has been a primary driver of growth in our revenue. Our user growth and revenue growth rates will inevitably slow as we achieve higher market penetration rates, as our revenue increases to higher levels, and as we experience increased competition.”

That is still en fuego, but will be noted by many.

In case you were visiting the outer rings of Jupiter and did not hear, you might want to know that Facebook filed for an initial public offering today. It is perhaps the most eagerly anticipated of financial events in Silicon Valley in many years.

The massive social networking site — which was launched in an undergraduate dorm room at Harvard University on the first Wednesday in February 2004, exactly eight years ago — is now a global phenomenon.

Its rocket ride to the top of the Internet and in Silicon Valley has been largely due to the aggressive innovation of one very unusual founder, CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Assembling an experienced team and pushing through a series of sometimes controversial products to link friends together online, the young entrepreneur has built a service that now is challenging even search giant Google.

Zuckerberg has been slow to take the company public, although the move was inevitable.

And now, of course, it is here.

More to come, as the ATD team parses the IPO filing, which is below (so join in!):

FacebookInc-20120201-S1-0

MORE ON THE FACEBOOK IPO:

• Facebook’s Ad Business Is a $3 Billion Mystery
• Viral Video: Farewell to the No-IPO Mark Zuckerberg
• Zuckerberg Is the Billion-Share Man: Who Owns What, Who Makes What in the Facebook IPO
• Zuckerberg Tells Investors, “We Don’t Build Services to Make Money”
• Mobile Highlighted as Key Risk Factor (and Opportunity) in Facebook Filing
• Stop All That Poking: Facebook Filing Temporarily Crashes SEC Web Site
• Zynga Accounted for 12 Percent of Facebook’s Revenue in 2011
• Facebook Has 845 Million Users
• On Its Eighth Birthday, Facebook Files to Raise $5 Billion in Massive IPO (Get Your S-1 Here!)
• Go the F**k Back to Sleep, Silicon Valley: Facebook IPO Likely to File Later Today at Earliest
• Dude, Where’s My Facebook IPO Filing? (Ashton’s on Hold!)
• The Quiet Man: Meet the Less-Known Face of the Facebook IPO, CFO David Ebersman
• Facebook Board Meeting Today for Final IPO Okays
• Facebook (Eye)PO: Tracking the Truth of the Biggest Deal of Web 2.0
• Viral Graphic: Visualizing the Facebook IPO
• Is Facebook IPO on Track for Late May?
• IPO Watch: Facebook Hiring Brunswick to Help With Comms for Expected Public Offering
• Complete Facebook coverage

Okay, okay, we get it: Morgan Stanley got the coveted left-hand lead position on Facebook’s blockbuster IPO filing. Goldman Sachs is there, too, but in the third-place, always-a-bridesmaid spo,t and is crying big salty tears about the injustice of it all.

It’s hard to feel badly for overpaid investment bankers, and focusing on them is kind of like endlessly discussing the lawyers who processed your mortgage, when the focus should be on the house you’re buying.

Does anyone except a few Richie Rich ZIP Codes in Manhattan care about this one deet of the initial public offering of the social networking giant?

Nope, but there is so little real news ahead of the IPO filing expected today that this is what we are chomping on this morning, as everyone awaits the big doc drop at the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Sources said it is likely to come this afternoon rather than this morning, though. And, perish the thought, all that dotting of I’s and crossing of T’s could delay it to tomorrow, even (unlikely, but mebbe!).

Sigh.

Tidbit: Facebook was actually founded the first Wednesday in February of 2004 in an undergraduate dorm room at Harvard University, like today but eight years later.

Thus, here’s a boring Facebook history timeline chart to look at:

Okay, that was really dull.

What up? The board met, the spinmeisters are at the ready and, most of all, Silicon Valley is stoked to make some more arrogant badillionaires.

Now, hopefully, we’ll get the real news about Facebook.

Namely, who’s getting the big dough in this much-anticipated Web 2.0 gambit? Co-founder and CEO and Hoodie Commander Mark Zuckerberg fer sure, but who else?

Plus all the juicy financials from Facebook, along with stats in usage, growth and just how much the company sticks it to its gaming serf — oops, partner — Zynga and others for the privilege of being on its all-powerful platform.

Me? I pay nada, like other Facebook users, for being able to show off pictures of my vacations and decline friendships from PR people I like, but still … well, you know.

Here is another Facebook financial chart that will not knock your socks off unless you are an accountant:

I am now so comatose waiting for the show to begin that I briefly began a liveblog of my activities this morning.

It went like this:

4:45 am PT: Done with AOL Q4 earnings, which were meh, but better meh than expected. AOL, if you recall, used to be Facebook and now is, um, not.

Note to Zuckerberg: Be nice to people on your way up, since you’ll meet them again on the way down.

4:46 am PT: I check the SEC site and get zip. Click, click, clickety-click over to find out the latest on Demi Moore and her fake-pot debacle.

Who knew there was synthetic cannabis and it is called K2 or Spice? Not me! According to Wikipedia: “It seems likely that synthetic cannabis can precipitate psychosis and in some cases it is prolonged.”

I decide to blame Ashton Kutcher and then wonder if he is an investor in Facebook via BFF-to-errant-celebrities-who-like-tech Ron Conway, also a Facebook investor.

Note to self: Call Ashton! That dude plays village idiots all the time, but I am not fooled by Mr. Pretty Face.

4:47 am PT: I consider email bombing Yahoo’s Jerry Yang, who is probably not so busy right now, and asking him what he thinks about the Demi Moore crisis and also Facebook’s IPO.

Remember when Yahoo was king of Silicon Valley and Yang posed in that purple VW on the cover of that magazine? Better still, remember when Yahoo was going to buy Facebook for just over $1 billion and then borked it?

Just sayin’, Mark — so, keep it reals!

4:48 am PT: I consider going out for doughnuts — and not because of any real weed need. I just would like me some glazed and sprinkled sugar treats right about now. Then, I could post the pictures of them on my Facebook page.

Sweet.

But you-know-who would file right when I left the house on the munchie run. Click, click, clickety-click over to the SEC site and I come up peanuts.

Time to check in on the Kardashians.

You get the idea — so, Facebook IPO, take me away!

MORE ON THE FACEBOOK IPO:

• Facebook’s Ad Business Is a $3 Billion Mystery
• Viral Video: Farewell to the No-IPO Mark Zuckerberg
• Zuckerberg Is the Billion-Share Man: Who Owns What, Who Makes What in the Facebook IPO
• Zuckerberg Tells Investors, “We Don’t Build Services to Make Money”
• Mobile Highlighted as Key Risk Factor (and Opportunity) in Facebook Filing
• Stop All That Poking: Facebook Filing Temporarily Crashes SEC Web Site
• Zynga Accounted for 12 Percent of Facebook’s Revenue in 2011
• Facebook Has 845 Million Users
• On Its Eighth Birthday, Facebook Files to Raise $5 Billion in Massive IPO (Get Your S-1 Here!)
• Go the F**k Back to Sleep, Silicon Valley: Facebook IPO Likely to File Later Today at Earliest
• Dude, Where’s My Facebook IPO Filing? (Ashton’s on Hold!)
• The Quiet Man: Meet the Less-Known Face of the Facebook IPO, CFO David Ebersman
• Facebook Board Meeting Today for Final IPO Okays
• Facebook (Eye)PO: Tracking the Truth of the Biggest Deal of Web 2.0
• Viral Graphic: Visualizing the Facebook IPO
• Is Facebook IPO on Track for Late May?
• IPO Watch: Facebook Hiring Brunswick to Help With Comms for Expected Public Offering
• Complete Facebook coverage

According to several sources close to the situation, the Facebook board has been meeting early this afternoon at its Silicon Valley HQ to give the go-ahead to a massive initial public offering.

Facebook is expected to file regulatory documents as early as tomorrow morning for what will certainly be one of the most-watched IPOs in tech in recent years.

Sources also noted the filing could happen after markets closed tomorrow, too.

While sources said the filing time could still change even later this week, that seems unlikely, especially given the furor over every detail — including entirely meaningless ones — about the much hyped Facebook offering.

But it’s finally here and will be much scrutinized.

As I previously reported, the offering is expected to be below an overblown valuation number of $100 billion that has been widely reported and the amount being raised is also less than the $10 billion being bandied about.

I would tell you those numbers if I knew, but the offering has been locked down tight by Facebook — much different than blabbier recent IPOs from Internet companies. (Heeelllloooo, Groupon!)

That’s because Facebook management has been determined to conduct an IPO with as little drama as possible and is seeking to minimize a bubble atmosphere around the event.

(I might start liveblogging the IPO countdown right now, just to ramp up the noise and send CNBC into a frenzy.)

The board of Facebook is chaired by co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who has been the most insistent about conducting the IPO with more deliberation and care.

One notable difference, for certain, has been Zuckerberg’s patience in growing the business before taking Facebook public. Still, it is important to remember that its history has actually been very short in time — the start-up was launched as thefacebook.com from his dorm room at Harvard University in early 2004.

If you are counting, that is only eight years ago.

MORE ON THE FACEBOOK IPO:

• Facebook’s Ad Business Is a $3 Billion Mystery
• Viral Video: Farewell to the No-IPO Mark Zuckerberg
• Zuckerberg Is the Billion-Share Man: Who Owns What, Who Makes What in the Facebook IPO
• Zuckerberg Tells Investors, “We Don’t Build Services to Make Money”
• Mobile Highlighted as Key Risk Factor (and Opportunity) in Facebook Filing
• Stop All That Poking: Facebook Filing Temporarily Crashes SEC Web Site
• Zynga Accounted for 12 Percent of Facebook’s Revenue in 2011
• Facebook Has 845 Million Users
• On Its Eighth Birthday, Facebook Files to Raise $5 Billion in Massive IPO (Get Your S-1 Here!)
• Go the F**k Back to Sleep, Silicon Valley: Facebook IPO Likely to File Later Today at Earliest
• Dude, Where’s My Facebook IPO Filing? (Ashton’s on Hold!)
• The Quiet Man: Meet the Less-Known Face of the Facebook IPO, CFO David Ebersman
• Facebook Board Meeting Today for Final IPO Okays
• Facebook (Eye)PO: Tracking the Truth of the Biggest Deal of Web 2.0
• Viral Graphic: Visualizing the Facebook IPO
• Is Facebook IPO on Track for Late May?
• IPO Watch: Facebook Hiring Brunswick to Help With Comms for Expected Public Offering
• Complete Facebook coverage

The list is dominated by energy-related and tech deals, with the leader of the pack, security software company AVG Technologies NV, scheduled to launch its IPO on Thursday.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

As AllThingsD.com wrote two weeks ago it would be — Facebook is close to filing its documents for a long-expected public offering that is on track take place in late May.

The Wall Street Journal said last week that the filing would come Wednesday, although sources said that timing could shift a day or even two later, as the social networking site readies the IPO prospectus it will file with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

But here’s one thing that’s clearly on its way for the much-anticipated Facebook IPO: There will be no lack of media hype, elaborate obfuscation by rivals and a plethora of inaccurate hoo-hah that is about to be unleashed upon the world, related to the financial transaction that is expected to be one of the biggest deals in tech in a while.

(I’d imagine that the crafty Google+ peeps are now hard at work on a list of trouble it could make for Facebook during its quiet period.)

In that spirit — via what I am calling the Facebook (Eye)PO Tracker — I’ll be shining some much-needed light on some of the hijinks if I can, going back to stories to see how close they were to reality.

Mine too!

To begin, let’s start with the many reports last week about the delay in the clearing of Facebook share trades on private markets that linked the action to the upcoming IPO.

Although I like conspiracies as much as anyone — not so. To begin, this has happened to Facebook previously, so it is not as unusual as had been reported. And, sources added, this time the temporary hold on private market trades waiting to be approved was simply due to a software upgrade at its law firm at Fenwick & West.

On deck for this week for later checking will be two stories now making the rounds: Facebook’s reported $100 billion valuation; its ticker symbol and market; and which big investment bank will get the coveted “lead left” underwriting spot in the IPO.

As to the first, which everyone and their mother is repeating, sources tell me that the number will be much lower that $100 billion figure being thrown around, as well as the raise that has been reported to be $10 billion. Think less.

Extra points to the Journal, which has hedged its bet with an impossible-to-be-wrong, covering-all-bases $75 billion to $100 billion guess, a range you can actually drive a truck through.

The ticker symbol and where Facebook lives — Nasdaq or the New York Stock Exchange — will be interesting too. The bulk of the reports indicate that it will be FB on the Nasdaq.

I was hoping it would be FACE, but that is already taken by Physicians Formula Holdings. Here’s a cute story on some ideas, including: SOCL (taken), GEEK (taken) and LIKE and FRND (not taken!).

As to the third, reports pretty much cast the banker selection as some sort of romantic soap opera. In one report by CNBC, Facebook is apparently angry at Morgan Stanley for leaking info about the IPO, and might bolt; in others, it’s Facebook pissed at Goldman Sachs, for screwing up a previous private investment placement.

We’ll see, but I’d expect Facebook to go where it gets the strongest retail coverage (Morgan Stanley). In any case, both banks will be well represented.

Tune in for more action — including how big Facebook’s business actually turns out to be, compared to what’s been speculated. With real numbers about to released, anybody’s guess will no longer be that.

Facebook could file papers for the IPO as early as this coming Wednesday, but that timing is still being discussed, said a person familiar with the matter. The company is currently looking at a valuation of $75 billion to $100 billion, this person said.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Early last year, his San Francisco company, which makes social games such as “FarmVille” that are played on Facebook, was on track for one of the hottest initial public offerings of 2011. But when Zynga finally went public last month, its stock price dropped 5% on the first day of trading and has since consistently traded below its $10 offering price.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

That task falls to Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, 27, who built Facebook out of his Harvard College dorm room in 2004, and Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, 42, a former Google Inc. executive.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

A main attraction: the bank’s top-ranked Internet analyst, Mark Mahaney.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

The price for the 100 million shares being sold values the San Francisco company at $7 billion. Including unexercised options and warrants, the value is $8.9 billion.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

At that price, the business-software company has a market value of roughly $688 million.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

The company filed documents with the Securities & Exchange Commission this morning, indicating that it intends to raise between $850 million and $1.15 billion in its public offering.

At the high end of the range, that would translate to roughly $150 million more than it had previously estimated it could raise.

The company is seeking to sell 100 million shares at $8.50 to $10 a share and will reserve 15 million additional shares for extra demand. It expects to trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker ZNGA.

Under the best circumstances, the company will be valued at nearly $7 billion based on 699.3 million shares outstanding. That falls below some of the rumored expectations that have been floating around over the past few weeks.

Still, at that value, it will come close to the public valuation of Electronic Arts, which hovers around $7.8 billion, but falls short of other game publishers, like Activision, which has a value of  $14 billion.

Zynga has made its riches off selling virtual goods in social games on Facebook. Some of its most recognizable titles include FarmVille, CityVille, Poker and Words With Friends.

Virtual goods often allow players to continue to play the game and level-up faster, such as an energy boost. They also can be decorative in nature, like an outfit for an avatar or seeds to plant on a farm. Of the roughly 230 million monthly active users, very few players ever bother making a purchase.

Since the beginning, the company has a very close relationship with Facebook, which has been contentious at times, especially since the platform started collecting a 30 percent tax on all virtual goods sold. More recently, the company has tried to expand to other platforms, including the launch of several games on mobile and Google+. It also has its own online game network in production.

The company’s IPO will be one of the largest tech offerings in recent memory.

In early November, Groupon raised $700 million including overallotments. It had originally sought to raise $750 million. Other recent tech IPOs include Angie’s List, Pandora and LinkedIn.

But some critics think Zynga is rushing its offering before a broad financial collapse. If it waited until reporting fourth-quarter results, it could paint a stronger growth story as it completes the busy holiday period.

The San Francisco company, which was founded in 2007, was named after Founder and CEO Mark Pincus’s dog named Zinga.

In 2010, Zynga recorded a profit of $27.9 million on revenues of $597.5 million. In the first nine months of 2011, it broke even on revenues of $828.9 million.

While its revenues continue to grow, the number of daily active users that play its games has fallen two quarters in a row and some critics question whether the company can keep up its aggressive growth.

In recent weeks, Pincus has come under harsh criticism for his heavy-handed leadership approach. But to his credit, he has overseen rapid growth, including the acquisition of dozens of smaller game studios. Today, his company has 2,500 employees.

At the mid-range of its expectations, Zynga will bring home proceeds of $889.4 million after selling shareholders take their winnings.

The primary purpose of the sale is to increase its visibility in the marketplace and create a market for its stock. Proceeds will go towards working capital, but also $83.6 million will be spent to satisfy tax withholding obligations related to stock of current and former employees. Additionally, it plans to use a portion of the proceeds for charitable causes through its Zynga.org initiative.

As part of the sale, the company will have three classes of shares. Class A stock will have one vote per share; Class B stock will have seven votes; and Class C will have 70 votes.

Pincus owns some Class B shares, and all of the company’s Class C shares. Following the offering, he will control 36.2 percent of the company’s voting power.

As Kara Swisher previously reported Pincus will not sell any shares in the offering.

No other executives have plans to sell stock, either. But a number of the company’s early investors will sell stock, including Institutional Venture Partners, Union Square Ventures, Foundry Venture Capital and Avalon Ventures. Other interesting names that made the list include Google, which will sell 1.7 million shares.

The company’s largest institutional holder, venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which owns 11 percent of the shares, will not sell any of its stock in the offering either.

The company provides social business software, which allows employees and customers to communicate through Jive’s software platform, similar to Facebook but for a business environment.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

According to sources close to the situation, neither CEO Mark Pincus nor one of its principal venture shareholders, Kleiner Perkins, will be selling any shares in its upcoming initial public offering.

While big investors often divest stock in IPOs, not all do. It is a carefully watched number by investors, who are always wary of insiders who unload a lot of shares in an offering.

But such activity by the fast-growing San Francisco online gaming company will be watched carefully since Pincus has recently been painted in a number of press reports as the greedy Mr. Potter of Silicon Valley.

Among the allegations is that he runs a poisonously tough culture that tracks its employees’ output and performance via elaborate data models that require extraordinary amounts of work, along with nefarious list-making of who’s naughty and who’s not.

That big-brother behavior has reportedly included taking away high-ranking jobs and the sweet stock options that go along with them from those execs found wanting.

While there is no doubt Pincus is a hard-charging personality, his defenders note that it’s due to a belief that life at Zynga is a meritocracy and that his practices are not any more heavy-handed than those at other firms.

Indeed, Pincus has a lot of competition in the tough-guy tech CEO category from longtime legends such as Microsoft’s Bill Gates, who set the gold standard for mean, as well as Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and now Google CEO Larry Page.

Pincus does not even rate in this pantheon, which is more typical of tech companies than anyone would care to admit or, to be fair, care to care about. With big benefits, vast wealth and much latitude, many in tech don’t mind the grueling work schedules.

After all, it’s not exactly ditch-digging, now is it?

In any case, sources said the coverage has hit Zynga staff hard, as well as Pincus, who has not responded due to the IPO’s quiet period. That’s in contrast to Groupon, the daily-deals site whose own rough process was rife with highly negative stories about the company’s prospects.

While those media accounts were more aimed at the business itself and less personal, Groupon CEO Andrew Mason vociferously defended the company in a controversial letter that was then leaked and published (to me and by me!).

Pincus will doubtlessly have a lot to say to investors who ask about the company’s culture and its possible negative impact on attrition, as some stories have charged.

His decision not to sell, sources said, was inspired by Zynga investor and close friend Reid Hoffman, who has sold very little of the stock of LinkedIn, where he serves as chairman.

The action all begins next week, according to multiple reports, when Zynga takes its show on the road in preparation for an IPO that is expected to value the company at $15 to $20 billion and will take place before the new year.

It will debut under the ZNGA ticker on the Nasdaq market.

While some have been worried about Zynga’s future growth, its past performance has been a lot stronger than other Internet offerings. In the first nine months of the year, the company posted $828.9 million in revenue, double the amount from a year ago, with net income of $30.7 million.

Pincus’s holding onto shares will be seen as a plus, of course, although he has sold a large amount of stock in Zynga’s history.

According to its S-1 filing:

“From our inception in October 2007 to date, Mr. Pincus, our Chief Executive Officer, Chief Product Officer and the Chairman of our Board of Directors, has purchased an aggregate of 149,197,328 shares of our common stock. To date, Mr. Pincus has sold an aggregate of 43,629,310 shares of our common stock at prices ranging from $0.42 to $13.96.”

Pincus now holds 91.4 million of Class B shares, 16 percent of the total, as well as 20.5 million of Class C shares, 38 percent of that group. Kleiner holds 65.2 million shares, or 11.2 percent, of Class B shares.

Other big Zynga owners, who might or might not sell at the IPO, include Institutional Venture Partners, Union Square Ventures, Foundry Venture Capital and Avalon Ventures.

Facebook is in internal discussions over the timing of its filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission for the IPO, and is considering filing dates as early as this year, these people said.

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On Wednesday shares of Groupon dropped below the $20-a-share price of the daily-deals company’s recent $805 million initial public offering.

Limiting the share float as part of their initial public offerings helped Groupon, LinkedIn and Pandora Media achieve bubbly valuations early on. But they have since seen their shares fall more than 30%-40% from their first day’s close.

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The company, which offers user-generated reviews of businesses through its website and mobile apps, is seeking to float its shares as a wave of similar social-media companies goes public.

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First off, let’s get this out of the way:

No, Groupon has no current plans to pull its IPO, nor has it considered it as yet, even though its delays — not uncommon — get copious negative press. Though it certainly might in the future.

Yes, the Chicago-based social buying service is still growing more strongly than most start-ups and is expected to become profitable on an operating basis within the next month.

No, the Groupon board has not discussed jacking its CEO and co-founder Andrew Mason — I get a tip email on this on a daily basis — but it will also not be hiring another COO to replace the second one it has lost in a year.

And, finally, yes sirree, many of the recent kerfuffles that Groupon has found itself in most certainly could have been better handled by Mason and that board, who have presided over one the rockier and more cloddish IPO rides in recent memory.

In fact, has there ever been a tech start-up that has attracted more negative attention from the media than Groupon?

Maybe Amazon back in the day when it was being called Amazon.bomb? Or perhaps the early years of Facebook, when questionable origins, executive shifts and constant privacy snafus created worry around the leadership of CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg?

But, as it has turned out, both have paled in comparison to the trials and tribulations of Groupon, which came out of nowhere like some kind of Internet comet and now is being widely pilloried as a flash in the pan.

Whether that’s fair criticism or not will be up to investors as the company continues its march to a public offering, which sources close to the company say will not be pulled unless the markets tank drastically.

That’s despite three amended S-1 regulatory filings by Groupon that corrected controversial accounting treatments that the company was using.

One, called Adjusted Consolidated Segment Operating Income, or ACSOI, was attacked because it left out key marketing expenses. While Groupon said it was an important metric to judge the performance of various cities as they were rolled out, the Securities and Exchange Commission and many others thought it caused more confusion than clarity.

The other financial term under scrutiny: The naming of gross billings, which is what Groupon pays out to merchants, as gross revenues. No longer, with the latest amendment to its S-1 filing; Groupon becomes instead a net revenue reporter for its daily deals business.

The change reduced reported revenue for 2010 from $713.4 million to $312.9 million.

Also added in were parts of the controversial letter CEO Andrew Mason sent to employees — defending all of Groupon’s financial practices and disclosures — presumably to reassure them in the wake of all the bad press.

While it displayed a lot of Mason’s signature humorous bravado, the move felt to me more like someone frustrated with being asked by current and potential employees if he were the Internet version of Bernie Madoff.

That’s ridonkulous, of course.

But the aggressive accounting, quick change from using those controversial financial metrics and chaotic breakneck growth that makes the company look like a house on fire certainly creates a picture of drama at a time when calm is probably the image they would like to portray.

Of course, losing two COOs — first, former Yahoo Rob Solomon after a year and then former Googler Margo Georgiadis after less than six months — in a row cannot help but increase the pressure. (And it cannot help Groupon’s image that Georgiadis went back to an even better job at the search giant.)

Sources said the company has no plans to hire another one, instead empowering Mason’s direct reports such as its CFO and others.

That said, while sources inside the company spin this as no big deal and can roll out plausible excuses for the COO departures — which mostly center around the execs being a “bad fit” — such movements always create worry.

In fact, this also happened to Facebook in its earliest days, when it seemed like an executive revolving door. That’s changed, of course, with the social networking giant looking like the digital Rock of Gibraltar in comparison.

A rock that has not been in any hurry to go public, which Groupon did perhaps too early in June — just about when all this bad news starting piling up, after more than a year of praise from the very same media.

I suppose, you live by it and you, well, get smacked upside the head by it.

But not damaged enough to pull the IPO, as yet, that is. One of the many reasons for sticking for now — such a move would result in yet another firestorm for Groupon.

Said one person I spoke to: “It would not matter what anyone said, no one would believe the company was anything but in trouble.”

And then, of course, the real trouble would start.

We’ll see what happens next, of course.

A decision by Beijing-based online retailer Jingdong Mall to shun the Hong Kong market, the most popular venue for Asian firms, may be a bet that Internet investors are savvier in the U.S. and may be more willing to give the company a heftier valuation. Asia has few large Internet stocks. The IPO, if it materializes, would be far larger than the listing of Google Inc., which holds the record for the largest U.S. Internet IPO at $1.9 billion in 2004, and of Internet-related offerings elsewhere in the world.

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The Chicago-based daily deals site isn’t cancelling its initial public offering, said this person, but is reassessing the timing for an IPO on a week by week basis. Groupon had originally been aiming to go public after Labor Day and to price its shares in mid-September, this person said, adding that the company had set up a roadshow next week to attract potential investors to the stock.

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Former and current employees of the Chinese joint venture, which operates the website Gaopeng.com, say more than 10 offices around China have been closed, including one in the northern city of Tangshan where an employee said he and his co-workers were locked out last Friday after their lunch break just after being notified of the shutdown.

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Jive has more or less been telegraphing its IPO intentions since it hired Tony Zingale as its CEO last year. Zingale is the former head of Mercury Interactive who engineered its $4.5 billion sale to Hewlett-Packard in 2006. Then in March it bulked up its board with a slate of directors who all have public company experience, among them Dave Dewalt, the former president of McAfee, and Google’s Sundar Pichai. Heck, Jive has even been acting like a public company, making the occasional acquisition — two in the last several months.

The way Bloomberg tells it, Jive is being valued at $1 billion and would offer a stake worth 10 to 20 percent in the company in the IPO. And research firm Gartner pegs its annual revenue at $70 million. It’s the leader in the social enterprise software field, which is all about making the workplace more collaborative by making office applications more social, a la Facebook, Twitter and the like. (In fact, one of Jive’s newest directors is Jonathan Heiliger, VP of technical operations at Facebook.)

There’s been a lot of action in this space of late, beginning with Salesforce.com’s launch of Chatter at the start of the year with a pair of TV ads during the Super Bowl. Other players have either been growing like crazy and raising boatloads of cash (example: Yammer) or have been acquired (example: Socialcast.)

(I caught up with Zingale for a quick chat at the D9 conference in June. See the video below.)

This deal would amount to another big win for Morgan, which has led the IPOs of LinkedIn and Pandora, among others. An IPO would probably bring a nice payout to Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins, which have plunked down $57 million in venture capital funding.

I called Jive to see if anyone there would comment and got zilch, but what do you expect from a company that’s going IPO? Not that I blame them. With investment bank lawyers skulking around every corner, everyone gets too nervous to so much as confirm the time of day. It made me think of the old Bee Gees hit “Jive Talkin’,” which I’ve shared with you — and hereby dedicate to the employees of Jive Software as they go through this process. No one at Jive is talking. Get it?