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

Remarking on sales of the 4S in Greater China, during the company’s recent first-quarter earnings call, CEO Tim Cook said demand for the device there has been staggering. “We felt we were betting bold, as I think many of you would have thought if you would have known what we were doing,” Cook said of the 4S rollout plan for the country. “But as it turns out, we didn’t bet high enough.”

That’s a rare admission of misjudgment from a company that doesn’t often make them. It’s also a comment that speaks to the massive size of the Chinese market, which remains largely untapped by Apple, thanks to its lone-carrier deal in the country.

Right now, Apple only has a deal with China Unicom, which gives it access to about 10 percent of China’s 150 million “high-end” mobile subscribers, according to Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty. If it were to a sign a similar deal with China Telecom, it would gain access to another 15 million. And if it at long last brought the iPhone to China Mobile, it would gain access to an additional 120 million.

That’s a massive addressable market, and one that Apple can ill afford to ignore. To do so would be to leave a lot of easy money on the table, according to Huberty. She figures that adding China Telecom as a carrier partner would create an additional two million to four million iPhone users in the near term. And adding China Mobile would create a much bigger multiple of that.

“We estimate China Unicom has 3 million iPhone users, implying a 20 percent penetration of its 15 million high-end subscriber base,” Huberty said. “The same penetration at China Mobile given its 120 million high-end subscribers would equate to 24 million iPhones, with 14 million switching from other feature phones or smartphones and 10 million existing iPhone users on the 2G network upgrading to the faster 4G network.”

Huberty expects the iPhone to arrive on China Telecom in the next few months. Its debut on China Mobile, however, will take a bit longer, and isn’t likely to occur until Apple introduces the iPhone 5, which is expected to be compatible with the carrier’s upcoming 4G network (TD-LTE).

So, 24 million to 26 million additional iPhone users, if Apple were to sign up both China Telecom and China Mobile. And that’s the base-case scenario. Huberty’s more bullish view of the situation lifts that number to 40 million, and predicts that a few years from now, Apple could sell 57 million iPhones per year in China alone. And that is truly a spectacular number.

After all, Apple sold 68.5 million iPhones worldwide in fiscal 2011.

According to multiple sources, the long-anticipated public offering of Facebook is now likely to come in the third week of May.

That means that the company must file its IPO documents within the next month, given that the review by the Securities and Exchange Commission usually takes about three to four months.

That’s if there are no issues, of course, such as a turbulent market or thornier-than-usual questions from regulators that require amending the filing.

Groupon, for example, filed for its IPO in early June, but did not go public until five months later in November.

The usual caveat on the late-May timing (even though I called 143 people on this one): This IPO planning could all change, in a New York minute, to another month.

In any case, the Facebook IPO is expected to be one of the largest Web offerings ever — with some reports saying the company will be raising $10 billion on a $100 billion valuation. (The valuation and raise, sources tell me, will be much lower.)

That amount is presumably to match its huge consumer growth and revenue explosion. Users now number 800 million — a figure that is likely to hit one billion this year. And revenue, which was reportedly close to $4 billion in 2011, is expected to be higher by another third in 2012.

Facebook will need such oomph if it is to impress investors, although the social networking site’s leadership is still warning that its focus is products over dollars.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal last week, for example, co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg hedged the point, even as he sang his same familiar strategic tune of the last few years.

“The thing to take away isn’t that we don’t care [about business]. People for years were asking me why aren’t we trying to make more money,” he said. “I would say I’m trying to build a business for the long term and it was clearly the right strategy.”

While admirably I’ll-row-my-way in tone, Zuckerberg needs a public offering heft more than ever, as Facebook’s battles with rivals — most especially Google — escalate.

Just last week, the monocratically-inclined search giant ham-handedly shoved its own social networking service, Google+, into its results, in a move that could severely disadvantage Facebook.

Thus, into the Wall Street breach, to get a giant pile of dough to fight back!

But, unlike Google’s more kookified 2004 IPO, sources said Facebook’s is probably going to hew to a more traditional offering script.

That is likely to include a hefty consortium of irksome investment bankers — think firms like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley on top of the filings, and a spate of smaller ones (Allen & Co.) below, and you have the approximately accurate idea.

And, while shot-caller-in-chief Zuckerberg will be the one key voice in the IPO, the man to watch has been and will be CFO David Ebersman.

The longtime Genentech exec, who came to Facebook in 2009, has been doing all the heavy lifting in preparation for the IPO, said sources, and will continue to do so.

Facebook declined to comment (but I would too, if I were them).

With a decent selection of handsets in the marketplace — including Nokia’s newly announced LTE device, the Lumia 900 — Windows Phone is poised for some respectable market-share gains, particularly if Microsoft promotes it as aggressively as some expect it to.

Indeed, Morgan Stanley expects shipments of Nokia’s new Windows Phones to hit 37 million units in 2012, and 64 million units in 2013.

Add to this Morgan Stanley’s estimates for HTC’s Windows Phone handsets, and you get shipments of 43 million this year and 74 million the next. And that’s just those two OEMs alone. There are a few others for which the research house doesn’t provide estimates. Samsung, for example.

Pretty good, considering Microsoft’s smartphone efforts to date, and Windows Phone’s youth. One could argue that it’s unrealistic to expect blowout sales from these first Windows Phone smartphones, particularly given the market power of their competition — the iPhone and a growing array of Android handsets. Microsoft was never going to just stroll into the smartphone market with a slick OS and convert legions of consumers who have been ignoring it for years.

And the company knows it.

“We’ve got a lot of room to go in selling Windows Phones,” CEO Steve Ballmer said during his remarks at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this week. “But I feel very much like the work we’re doing is really going to pay off.”

At one point today, the stock dipped as low as $7.97 a share before closing at $8 even.

At that price, it is $2 below it’s initial stock price of $10, and has lost at least 20 percent of its market value in less than a month.

But why?

The San Francisco social games company has launched at least two new games since going public, and over the past few days, no harsh analyst report has come out with a negative rating.

It appears the once high-flying Silicon Valley company — known for addictive games on Facebook like FarmVille and CityVille, and mobile games like Words With Friends — is having a hard time gaining the market’s confidence.

To be sure, there’s no clear answer for the price drop; and other tech companies that recently went public, such as Groupon or LinkedIn, have experienced their own fluctuations. But there is one theory making the rounds.

Analysts and other sources suspect Zynga’s stock has been propped up over the past month by the underwriters, who agreed to buy shares if the stock started to perform poorly. The stock purchases would have created steady demand for the stock and kept the price relatively stable.

Furthermore, the theory goes, the underwriters have since met their obligations for buying the stock, and therefore are are no longer buying as many shares.

Incidentally, on Friday, Morgan Stanley — one of Zynga’s underwriters — disclosed that it had purchased nearly 16 million shares in December.

But while the disclosure, filed with the with the Securities & Exchange Commission, adds fuel to the theory, it is unclear if those shares were purchased as part of the IPO, or if they were spread out throughout the month.

Zynga declined to comment, citing its quiet period.

Still, whatever the reason for the drop, Zynga’s shares are seeing less demand.

As recently as last week, the stock was trading at $9.45 a share, but since then, it has struggled to stay above $9. On Friday, it lost 12 cents; today, it lost 81 cents, or 9 percent.

But even if the underwriting theory is on the mark, it doesn’t explain the broader question of why Zynga’s stock price is falling. Shouldn’t there be other investors who are willing to buy up a piece of Zynga?

Unfortunately, it seems the market isn’t sure what to do with the stock, or how to value it.

A social games company fits somewhere between traditional game makers, like Electronic Arts and Activision; and an Internet stock, like Google or LinkedIn.

Zynga gives away its games for free, but still manages to be profitable from selling virtual goods, such as a tractor or more power-ups, that a small number of players elect to purchase inside the games.

It’s also heavily reliant upon Facebook, which could be another problem. Facebook, too, operates privately, and reveals only as much information about its business as it has to — at least until it files to go public, which could be later this year.

In all likelihood, many of these investor fears could be settled when Zynga reports its first period as a public company. No word on when that will be yet, but the fourth-quarter report should come as soon as this month, and no later than February.

Aneel Bhusri

Allen is said to have advised Workday on its recent funding round, which closed in October. As exclusively reported by AllThingsD at the time, Workday raised $85 million at an implied valuation of $2 billion. The Series F was led by T. Rowe Price, Morgan Stanley Investment Management, Janus and Bezos Expeditions, the personal investment entity of Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos. Bloomberg also says that Michael Dell’s personal investment vehicle, MSD ventures, was in on that funding round, which grew to $100 million since the closing.

Previous investors include Dave Duffield and Greylock Partners, who are in for $90 million across four rounds; and New Enterprise Associates, which joined a $75 million Series E round in 2009.

Apparently encouraged by the successful IPO of Jive Software earlier this month, and the performance of its shares, which are up nicely since the debut, Workday now appears poised go through with the IPO that CEO Aneel Bhusri (pictured) hinted in October would take place during the second half of 2012.

And there’s no question that Workday is in a hot space. SAP’s $3.4 billion acquisition of SuccessFactors last month, plus Salesforce.com’s deal for Rypple last week, attest to the urgency with which larger companies want to be in the HR software business.

Think about it: Every company — of any size — needs to keep track of its people, their salaries, performance-review information and so on. And why bother with software that runs on the local machines, when the cloud is so much more efficient?

Bhusri was a senior executive and co-chairman of PeopleSoft’s board, and was on hand for that company’s hostile takeover by Oracle. After losing that battle, he and co-founder Dave Duffield concluded that the next battlefield for enterprise software would be in the cloud.

Workday’s average customer has between 10,000 and 15,000 employees. Among its 250-odd customers, the biggest is Flextronics, the huge electronics manufacturing company, which has 200,000 employees. Others include Time Warner, Thomson Reuters, Chiquita Brands and, perhaps unsurprisingly, Salesforce.com. Workday has some two million employees in its system.

And while there’s no S-1 filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission to peruse yet, the IPO watch on Workday officially begins now.

Last week, the Facebook game company sold 100 million shares at $10 apiece to raise $1 billion.

On its first day of trading, the stock fell 5 percent, and its losses are even deeper today. In early morning trading, the stock was down nearly 8 percent, or 73 cents, to trade at $8.77 a share. UPDATE: The stock ended up falling 48 cents, or 5 percent, to close at $9.02 a share.

No anti-wither serum exists in the real world to revive a stock price the way virtual crops can be revitalized in FarmVille, one of the game-maker’s hit titles.

Zynga is not the only recent Internet darling to take a nosedive.

It took a while longer, but about a month after Groupon went public, its stock tumbled and was trading for less than half its first-day high of $30 a share. Groupon has since rebounded, but it is also trading lower today, at $22.47 a share.

Zynga has not see those wild fluctuations yet.

Still, the losses do add up — at least on paper. Both the company’s public valuation and some of its largest shareholders’ shares are quickly dwindling in value.

The company is now trading at a valuation of $6.1 billion, down from its IPO valuation of $10 billion. Other big game companies, like Electronic Arts, are now more valuable, albeit only slightly higher.

Investors like Morgan Stanley are seeing their stakes drift further and further underwater.

Earlier this year, Morgan Stanley, which was also one of the Zynga’s underwriters in its IPO, purchased 5.3 million shares at $14 apiece, for a total of $75 million. Four other investors, which were unnamed, also contributed to the round totaling $490 million, according to the document.

Morgan Stanley’s stake is now worth only $46.5 million.

The dip is also hurting Zynga founder and CEO Mark Pincus’s stake, which is now worth less than $1 billion, or roughly $982.5 million.

One thing the company can look forward to is its first-quarter earnings, which will come out early next year and should be bolstered by a strong fourth-quarter performance. In the quarter, Zynga launched new games, including CastleVille, on Facebook, as well as some standalone titles for iPhone; the fourth quarter is typically strong because players have a little more free time to play — and pay — during the holidays.

Earlier this month, RIM warned that third-quarter revenue would be lower than the $5.3 billion to $5.6 billion it had previously forecast. Worse, it said it no longer expects to meet its earnings target for the year. The reason? A $485 million writedown for discounting its BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, which isn’t selling well at all, and the continuing decline in demand for its smartphones.

RIM’s third-quarter earnings warning also included a caution about expectations for fourth-quarter phone sales. They might have to be lowered as well.

The company’s share price has been plumbing the lower depths ever since. Not that it hasn’t been doing that for a while now. RIM’s stock hit a fresh 52-week low of $15.48 on Tuesday. That’s down about 77 percent from its 2011 high of $69.86.

RIM’s stock is a falling knife. (And to think it was trading at $147.55 in June of 2008.)

And it’s not likely to hit bottom anytime soon, if RIM’s pre-earnings announcement is any indication. Remember, the company warned that it’s going to sell fewer BlackBerrys in the fourth quarter, which includes the Christmas shopping season. This after the August launch of five new BlackBerry 7 smartphones, one of the biggest global BlackBerry launches in the company’s history.

So expect some grim numbers Thursday. As Morgan Stanley analyst Ehud Gelblum wrote in a Tuesday note to clients, “We believe the situation at RIM continues to deteriorate with the stock supported solely by its book value, and cannot foresee a change without a material change to management tack as, at this point, the migration to [RIM's forthcoming BlackBerry 10 platform] sometime in mid-2012, might already be too late.”

Earlier this morning, Zynga announced it would price its stock between $8.50 and $10 a share when it goes public later this month.

That’s at the high end of the range that values the four-year-old company at as much as $7 billion. But that’s much lower than than what some investors paid as recently as February, according to documents filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission.

In fact, some of its investors are already underwater.

One of those investors is Morgan Stanley, which is also one of the company’s underwriters in its IPO. In February, 11 mutual funds associated with Morgan Stanley purchased 5.3 million shares at $14 apiece for a total of $75 million. Four other investors, which were unnamed, also contributed to the round totaling $490 million, according to the document.

At $14 a share, the company’s value in February totaled nearly $10 billion, or roughly 43 percent greater than today’s high-end of the range.

Zynga justified the higher stock price back in February, stating that the U.S. economy had improved and that the public markets were being receptive to Internet stocks, including generous valuations for privately held companies such as Facebook and Groupon.

Furthermore, in March, the company used that valuation as a guide to purchase shares back from five of its early investors and its CEO Mark Pincus at $13.96 a share.

While the market conditions have likely changed since then, it’s important to note that things are still in flux. If the company drums up enough demand for the 115 million shares being sold over the next two weeks, the price could move even higher.

As Kara Swisher previously reported, Pincus will not sell any shares in the offering, and no other executives at Zynga have plans to sell stock, either.

But a number of the company’s early investors will be cashing in. Institutional Venture Partners, Avalon Ventures and Foundry Venture Capital will sell 2.5 million shares apiece for up to $25 million each. Union Square Ventures will sell 2.2 million for roughly $22 million.  Google and Silver Lake Partners will also both sell 1.7 million shares for a proceed of $17 million each.

Google was originally not listed as an investor when Zynga filed documents with the SEC to go public, but it showed up in subsequent filings. Google, which was rumored to have invested as much as $100 million in Zynga, has an interest in social gaming because of its Google+ network. Following the offering, it will continue to own 21 million shares, or about 3.8 percent of the company.

One notable shareholder that won’t be selling shares is venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, an early investor in the company. Its partner Bing Gordon, who personally owns a 10.7 percent stake in the company, also does not plan to sell any shares.

According to Morgan Stanley’s new China PC Survey, 21 percent of consumers considering the purchase of a new PC would like it to be a Mac. That’s more than said the same of Lenovo, Asus, Acer, Sony, Samsung, Hewlett-Packard and Dell. It’s also significantly more than the Mac’s current market share in the country, which hovers around about 5 percent.

So great news for Apple, right? Sure, were it not for one caveat. Most Macs are well beyond the $600 average price Chinese consumers typically pay for a PC. And few survey respondents said they were willing to meet those prices.

“Apple’s share gains in the near term are likely limited to the 7% of respondents who are willing to pay over $1,100 for a PC,” said Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty. “In the long term, as Chinese consumers become more affluent, we believe Apple could see further share gains as it is the most desirable brand.”

And that does seem to be the trend here. Already the company’s growing retail presence in the region, along with a fast-developing brand preference for its products among higher-income consumers, is generating blockbuster sales and profits. As Apple CEO Tim Cook said earlier this year, “In my lifetime I’ve never seen a country with as many people rising into the middle class aspiring to buy products that Apple makes. It’s an area of enormous opportunity.”

Aneel Bhusri

Today, Workday will announce that it has just raised $85 million in new financing, bringing its total amount of capital raised to $250 million. Sources familiar with the terms of the deal tell me that the investments value Workday at $2 billion.

The funding round isn’t coming from traditional venture capital players, but from institutional investors who will want to be shareholders of Workday when it goes public in the second half of next year. The round, which is being described as a Series F, includes T. Rowe Price, Morgan Stanley Investment Management, Janus, and Bezos Expeditions, the personal investment entity of Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos.

I’m also told, by sources familiar with the deal, that William Danoff, the manager of Fidelity’s $80 billion Contrafund, the mutual fund giant’s largest stock-based fund, has participated in this funding round. This would be the Contrafund’s third recent investment in a privately held Internet company, the other two being Facebook and Zynga. In fact, it’s the same group of funds that took part in a huge round with social gaming force Zynga in February; in Groupon in January; and which earlier this year bought nearly three million shares of Facebook for $25 each.

Previous investors include Dave Duffield and Greylock Partners, who are in for $90 million across four rounds; and New Enterprise Associates, which joined a $75 million Series E round in 2009.

Why raise from institutionals and not VCs? “Because Workday is going to go public, and probably before the end of next year,” Bhusri told me. “Rather than do a round that adds an overhang to the existing capital structure, this is a group of investors who will likely buy more in the IPO,” he said. “In some ways, it’s an early debut of an IPO.”

And while there’s no S-1 filing from Workday to peruse just yet, Bhusri told me that Workday is growing plenty fast. Having disclosed $160 million in billings in 2010, Workday, he says, is on track to do twice that — or about $320 million in 2011 — and that it’s close to breaking even. So this round of capital is insurance. With the world economy so out of joint, if no logical window for an IPO emerges in 2012 — a reasonable worry — then Workday won’t be forced, should the need arise, to raise more capital in a difficult market.

So what is Workday, exactly? For the answer, you have to turn the clock back to 2004, when the software giant Oracle made its initial hostile bid to take over PeopleSoft. Bhusri was a senior executive and co-chairman of PeopleSoft’s board. After losing the battle to resist Oracle, he and co-founder Dave Duffield decided that the next battle for enterprise software would be in the cloud. Workday was born within months of their departure from PeopleSoft.

The plan, Bhusri says, was to create the next generation of PeopleSoft’s software, or the next generation of SAP’s Human Resources and Enterprise Resource planning software — essentially, software that businesses need to run day to day. But rather than deliver it in the traditional manner — run it on machines at the customer’s location — it’s all delivered via the cloud. “It’s as if you were going to start over with a clean sheet of paper and design this kind of software all over again,” Bhusri says.

And Workday’s customers aren’t exactly small players. Its average customer has between 10,000 and 15,000 employees. Among its 250-odd customers, the biggest is Flextronics, the huge electronics manufacturing company, which has 200,000 employees. Other customers include Time Warner, Thomson Reuters, Chiquita Brands, and perhaps unsurprisingly, Salesforce.com. There are some two million employees on the system. All that after only four years of actively selling the product.

And what Workday sells is a system that tends not to get replaced very often in large companies — perhaps once a decade. That gives the company an advantage when it asks for contract commitments that last three years; most cloud companies offer their services on a pay-as-you-go basis.

Workday’s targets are Bhusri’s old customers who bought PeopleSoft software to run their businesses one product generation back, and also those who run SAP software. So when a new customer signs on it’s usually one or the other being displaced. Other rivals include Lawson, Infor and, occasionally, the payroll giant ADP.

The typical new customer, Bhusri said, is using one of those other platforms and is ready to upgrade. “To upgrade to the newest version, they get a price quote that’s so high they start looking for a better way,” he says. “That’s when they find us.”

And Workday isn’t sitting still with HR software. Its next battle will be in financial planning software that companies rely on to handle money — accounting, expenses, procurement. Workday already has 50 customers running the financial stuff. Once they try Workday’s HR, they like what they see, making for an easy upsell. Others just swap out both the HR and financial parts in one go, Bhusri said. And the competitive targets are the same as well: Oracle and SAP. One wonders if they aren’t just a little worried.

A range of major players interested in acquiring all or a large piece of Yahoo have been prepping possible bids and have been in touch with the Internet giant’s board over the last several days.

While Yahoo has publicly said it was not for sale, according to numerous sources both inside and outside the company, it has been receptive to the interest and its Chairman Roy Bostock and Co-founder Jerry Yang have spoken to several.

Among the possible players: Silicon Valley venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, which is working with private equity firm Silver Lake, in a deal that also might include Russia’s DST Global and Yahoo’s Japanese partner Masa Son; former News Corp. exec Peter Chernin, who is partnered with Providence Equity Partners; and the possibility that Yahoo’s Chinese partner, Alibaba Group, might consider entering the fray in what could be a reverse merger of sorts.

Also being rung up by some of the parties: Microsoft — Yahoo’s advertising and search partner — which is being seen as a possibly moneybags in any deal.

The movement among these investors is against a backdrop of increasing pressure for Yahoo’s board, after it fired CEO Carol Bartz last week. In the wake of the dramatic move, shareholders have upped criticism of Bostock and the board and have been looking hard for alternatives.

Today, that included hedge fund investor Daniel Loeb of Third Point, which has a 5.1 percent stake in Yahoo. In a filing this morning, he said he might increase that amount, and described a testy hour-long phone call he had earlier this week with Bostock that ended abruptly with a hang-up from Yahoo.

Sources said Loeb called Bostock a “fool,” among other not-so-nice names, on the call and asked for Yang’s help in dumping him.

This comes as exactly no surprise, given his previously strong letter in which Loeb called for Bostock’s ouster.

Loeb has been calling out Bostock — who is also on the boards of Morgan Stanley and Delta Airlines — for a series of gaffes at Yahoo since he became chairman in 2008 (he’s been on the board since 2003).

Those have included: Yahoo’s bungled effort to stave off a takeover by Microsoft several years ago; the too-long enthusiasm for Bartz, who was hired in early 2009 and fired last week; sitting unusually still as competitors such as Facebook, Google and more have out-innovated and outgrown Yahoo; and, of course, the falling knife of a stock, which has dropped precipitously since Bostock has been in charge of the board.

As Loeb wrote in a letter he sent to the company last week:

“It is time that certain members of this Board were held accountable for its past failures and their individual roles. Accordingly, we insist that Mr. Bostock, who championed Ms. Bartz’s hiring and led the charge against the Microsoft deal, promptly resign from the Board.”

Loeb is likely to add to that later today at a high-profile investor conference in New York, where the colorful but tough-talking investor is sure to add more logs to the fire.

But it not only him. Other major shareholders of Yahoo are also in touch with possible outside buyers, seeking a change at the long-troubled company, after its shares have remained in the doldrums, its attrition rate of employees has spiked and its product pipeline has slowed to drip.

This has all been taking place — of course — during one of tech biggest and most innovative booms, in which Yahoo competitors have grown strongly.

Enter Marc Andreessen, the well-known entrepreneur who has transformed himself into one of Silicon Valley’s most powerful venture capitalists.

He and his partner Ben Horowitz recently pulled off another similar deal — with Silver Lake — to take control of a then-troubled Skype. They later flipped it to Microsoft for a large return.

Sources familiar with the situation said the pair have become increasingly intrigued by the situation at Yahoo and believe that its assets and brand are still strong, despite its management turmoil in recent years.

One problem is the huge cost of almost any kind of takeover and also the complexity, given much of Yahoo’s $18.5 billion valuation is due to its Asian assets.

The sale of those shares, as well as the selling off of some of Yahoo’s less core properties, makes for a very complicated situation for anyone.

Said one person looking at the company: “It is one of the more massive hairballs around.”

That is a common sentiment among many of those looking at Yahoo, which has hired Allen & Co. to manage the process.

Also of worry is a bid that would include too many players. Yahoo has long been plagued by indecisiveness on the part of its execs and, mostly, its board.

But one thing all the possible buyers of Yahoo, as well as an increasing number of its shareholders, agree on: The Yahoo board needs a major shake-up.

As Loeb wrote last week, which many I interviewed also echoed:

“This letter details our principled demands for sweeping changes in both the Board of Directors (the “Board”) and Company leadership, and outlines the hidden value of Yahoo, which has been severely damaged — but not irreparably — by poor management and governance.”

The Yahoo board will be meeting in Silicon Valley tomorrow to discuss a wide range of worrisome issues facing the troubled Internet giant.

Meanwhile, several sources said, even more private equity investors are weighing making major investments in the company, all pretty much aimed at ousting said directors.

So far, that has only been Third Point’s Daniel Loeb, whose massive hedge fund now owns 5.1 percent of Yahoo.

Loeb appears tomorrow at the high-profile Delivering Alpha investor conference in New York at 2 pm PT, where he is expected to take another swing at Yahoo’s board.

His next moves, sources said, could include buying up more shares to put the pressure on and also presenting his own alternate slate of directors, much as activist investor Carl Icahn did several years ago at Yahoo.

Translation: Forget AOL’s CrunchGate — this is big-boy corporate battling!

Add that to the pile on Yahoo’s board meeting agenda, along with some other critical issues that include: Outlining the criteria for any CEO candidate and a discussion of headhunting firms to hire; a review of strategic alternatives, including a presentation by its investment advisors, Allen & Co.; and how to stabilize the company and reassure its dusting-off-their-resumes employees.

Finding answers to these questions is going to be difficult enough, but the ever increasing pressure from outside investors is going to make it even harder.

Some definite tire-kickers reportedly looking at a bid include Providence Equity Partners, Silver Lake, Blackstone, Texas Pacific Group and even KKR.

While KKR has reportedly close ties with Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock, he is now the main target for pretty much everyone else.

That includes Loeb, as well as other major Yahoo shareholders.

That’s no surprise: Bostock, who is also on the boards of Morgan Stanley and Delta Airlines, has presided over a series of gaffes at Yahoo since he became chairman in 2008 (he’s been on the board since 2003).

Those have included: Yahoo’s bungled effort to stave off a takeover by Microsoft several years ago; the too-long enthusiasm for CEO Carol Bartz, who was hired in early 2009 and fired last week; sitting unusually still as competitors such as Facebook, Google and more have out-innovated and outgrown Yahoo; and, of course, the falling knife of a stock, which has dropped precipitously since Bostock has been in charge of the board.

As Loeb wrote in a letter he sent to the company:

“It is time that certain members of this Board were held accountable for its past failures and their individual roles. Accordingly, we insist that Mr. Bostock, who championed Ms. Bartz’s hiring and led the charge against the Microsoft deal, promptly resign from the Board.”

Said another source with knowledge of the situation: “Under Roy’s leadership, this weak and bumbling board took too long to fire a clearly failing CEO and now has no plan, except throwing up their hands and hoping someone comes along.”

Here is one certainty: Someone is going to come along and it is not going to be pretty.

Yahoo is preparing to hire investment bankers and other strategic advisory firms, said sources close to the Silicon Valley Internet giant, as it seeks to figure out what to do next at the company.

The board of Yahoo, which ousted its CEO Carol Bartz today in a unanimous decision, is exploring a range of possible strategies to turn around its moribund growth, including possible acquisitions, shedding units, bringing in new investment partners and even taking the company private or selling it.

A sale is the least likely of options, said sources close to the situation, but — given today’s news — Yahoo might attract a lot of attention from investors seeking to take advantage of the company’s powerful but troubled assets.

“It is all on the table,” said one source close to the company.

Independent board member David Kenny, president of Akamai, is heading the strategic options committee in charge of managing the process, sources said.

No adviser has been selected yet, but sources said Yahoo is likely to hire Allen & Co., which advises many tech and media firms. It is currently advising AOL, for example.

Other candidates would likely be the typical panoply of choices, including big investment banks like JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, and smaller boutique firms such as Qatalyst Group and Code Advisors.

Sources said whoever is hired will be charged first with doing an extensive review of the company that is more intensive than has been done before.

“There is a potential for enormous growth that the company has not been capitalizing on and should,” said another source. “The board needs to get this company on a trajectory for growth.”

Indeed, it does, as it has not under the leadership of Bartz. Revenue growth has stalled and product innovation has lagged.

The company will also be conducting a search for a CEO, which will be difficult because any new top exec will want to be part of such a companywide review.

Yahoo’s choice of an executive search firm has also not been determined, but is likely to be one of the big companies that specialize in the arena.

One thing is certain, said multiple sources: Yahoo will continue to focus itself as what it has previously called a “premier digital media company.”

What that means now, of course, will be determined in the months ahead.

Related posts

• As Yahoo Continues to Wobble, Investors (And Board) Eye Options
• Exclusive: Carol Bartz Out at Yahoo; CFO Tim Morse Named Interim CEO
• Carol Bartz’s Last F%*& You — Now Aimed at Yahoo Board
• Yahoo’s Statement on Bartz Ouster
• Wall Street Likes Bartz’s Firing — Yahoo Stock Spikes on News
• My Picks for Yahoo’s Next CEO — Maybe Snoop Dogg, Ya Digg?

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?

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110817/jive-software-said-to-hire-ipo-bankers-but-no-one-there-is-talking/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110714/groupon-retracts-wildly-profitable-statement-in-latest-sec-filing/ http://allthingsd.com/20110714/groupon-retracts-wildly-profitable-statement-in-latest-sec-filing/#comments Thu, 14 Jul 2011 22:58:30 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=98396 Groupon has updated its IPO filing to add in several new pieces of information, the most glaring of which is the retraction of statements one of its founders made to the press.

The updates come after the Securities and Exchange Commission reviewed the documents and made comments, according to sources.

The latest document will likely be looked at under a magnifying lens, given that the daily deals company faced a series of negative reports following the news on June 2 that it intended to raise roughly $750 million in an initial public offering.

The day after its IPO filing, Eric P. Lefkofsky, co-founder and executive chairman of the board, told Bloomberg in an interview that Groupon will be “wildly profitable,” referencing worries about losses unveiled in its financial statements and his past record of start-ups.

In today’s filing, Groupon backpedaled, explaining that, “You should not rely on a reported statement in a June 2011 news report by our co-founder and Executive Chairman in making your investment decision.”

It goes on to say that Lefkofsky did not agree to be interviewed and that Groupon representatives had requested that the statement not be published. “The reported statement does not accurately or completely reflect Mr. Lefkofsky’s views and should not be considered by prospective investors in isolation or at all.”

Along the same lines, Groupon CEO Andrew Mason’s letter to potential shareholders, which could be construed as overly positive, was moved from one of the first pages to page 32.

Besides that, the major update to the document includes a full list of the company’s underwriters. The newest addition is J.P. Morgan, which will be joining Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs as the lead investment banks.

Another 11 investment banks are also joining the process in supporting roles. The full list: Allen & Co., B of A, Merrill Lynch, Barclays Capital, Citi, Deutsche Bank Securities, William Blair & Co., Loop Capital Markets, RBC Capital Markets, Citadel Securities and the Williams Capital Group.

Also new to the filing was a breakdown of the company’s international business, which is actually larger in terms of revenues than in the U.S.

Revenue from its international and domestic operations was $346.8 million and $297.9 million, respectively, in the first quarter 2011. In addition, it said that its gross profit margins (which is the amount Groupon retains after paying a percentage to the merchant) are higher internationally.

It said that overall gross margins were 41.9 percent at the end of the first quarter, dropping from 45.2 percent in the year-ago period. The decrease was primarily due to an increase in national deals in North America, which resulted in lower margins for the purpose of acquiring new subscribers and establishing its brand.

[Photo: Asa Mathat | Clip art iStockphoto/Jules Kitano]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110714/groupon-retracts-wildly-profitable-statement-in-latest-sec-filing/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110705/dancing-queen-after-meeting-with-microsoft-last-week-yahoo-is-next-on-hulus-card/ http://allthingsd.com/20110705/dancing-queen-after-meeting-with-microsoft-last-week-yahoo-is-next-on-hulus-card/#comments Tue, 05 Jul 2011 19:05:02 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=94236

Here’s a handy helper for those following the fate of the Hulu premium online video service, whose noisy efforts to sell itself have gotten a lot of attention of late:

“In preliminary talks” = “hawking itself to one of a half dozen big moneybag tech companies who will visit with Hulu’s bankers and management to see its presentation at Morgan Stanley’s office in Century City in Los Angeles.”

Last Friday, for example, that meant a look-see for Microsoft execs, to show the software giant the story of how paying top dollar for the popular Hulu would be a great investment.

This week, sources said, Yahoo will get the expected gander at the books too, among the other companies targeted by Hulu as part of a sales process in its very early stages.

Among those companies on the short list, sources said, along with Microsoft and Yahoo are: Google, Verizon, AT&T and Amazon.

None of these should come as a surprise, since they all have a big interest in the digital distribution of content business.

Google is perhaps the most interesting and difficult of the group, due to both its massive YouTube unit and the even more massive interest by government regulators about its disturbing massiveness.

Amazon is the company that seems most suited as a Hulu buyer, since it already makes its business selling and distributing content. In addition, Hulu CEO Jason Kilar was a former exec — bringing a certain level of familiarity and presumably much less of the grumpy disgruntlement that he experienced with Hulu’s current media giant owners.

Microsoft seems like the longest shot and least enthusiastic, although it certainly could afford it.

As for Yahoo: Good lord, it needs something sexy to tell weary investors.

Not in the initial round, but other possible acquirers Hulu is targeting: Facebook, Netflix, Samsung and Liberty Media.

And definitely not among those kicking the tires: Disney, News Corp. and Comcast, the trio of partners who own Hulu, along with Providence Equity Partners.

The big question, of course, is whether media-focused Apple — a notorious buyer of almost nothing — would be interested in Hulu.

These blind dates with the best possible buyers will presumably give each insight into Hulu’s business and give Hulu information on what they are looking for.

Sources who have heard the pitch said Hulu is positioning itself as an inevitable competitor to cable, which seems an odd position to take, unless it can get regular access to the kind of top-drawer content that consumers want.

And that will be the most important issue for anyone buying Hulu: The time and terms of rights to the television and movie content on the site, which has been a critical part of its success.

Buyers I have interviewed said Hulu has to offer at least an 18-month license for its content and a pile of rights to hit shows to differentiate itself from competitors.

As Peter Kafka wrote, Hulu buyers would indeed get exclusive content, but with strings attached.

He also noted that the latest content licenses for Hulu’s owner/partners — Disney’s ABC and News Corp.’s Fox — have recently been completed, deals that will stay intact if Hulu is sold.

Unlike Netflix, which has had to pay top dollar for a small pile of premium content while deftly using a large archive of older content to attract subscribers, Hulu’s success has had a lot to do with more access to popular current shows offered by its media giant owners.

Those shows include TV hits such as “The Office” and “Glee.”

That access has become a point of contention with those owners, who have differed with Hulu management about what comes next for the mostly advertising-supported site, even though its slick product has been a clear hit with consumers.

Of course, some speculate that Hulu might not sell at all, just as it never went public as it had said it might do previously. In that case, it will be interesting to see what will become of Hulu once the music stops.

(And, if anyone would like to email me the Hulu presentation or notes on it, please do, so I can formulate a bid myself!)

But, until this deal churns slowly, leakily and loudly forward — let’s enjoy some apt Hulu content. As usual, the fun version of ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” by the kids from “Glee” was not available on the site.

Thus, I selected frequent “Glee” guest star Gwyneth Paltrow belting out Joan Jett’s “Do You Wanna Touch Me” on the show, as a good alternate metaphor for the sales process:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110705/dancing-queen-after-meeting-with-microsoft-last-week-yahoo-is-next-on-hulus-card/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110628/zynga-preparing-to-file-ipo/ http://allthingsd.com/20110628/zynga-preparing-to-file-ipo/#comments Tue, 28 Jun 2011 20:39:05 +0000 Anupreeta Das and Gina Chon http://allthingsd.com/?p=92325 Online social gaming company Zynga is preparing to file for an initial public offering as early as Wednesday and hopes to raise up to $2 billion, people familiar with the matter said.

The maker of the popular FarmVille and CityVille games has picked Morgan Stanley to lead the offering, they said. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is also a lead underwriter, and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Barclays Capital and Bank of America Merrill Lynch will play a role in the IPO, the people said.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110628/zynga-preparing-to-file-ipo/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110506/zynga-document-discloses-major-round-of-financing-in-the-works/ http://allthingsd.com/20110506/zynga-document-discloses-major-round-of-financing-in-the-works/#comments Sat, 07 May 2011 00:18:01 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://emoney.allthingsd.com/?p=5211 More evidence has surfaced that Zynga is close to completing a gigantic round of funding just shy of $500 million.

In February, Boomtown’s Kara Swisher reported that Zynga was raising $500 million, which would value the company at $10 billion.

Sources said the round included big institutional investors, such as Morgan Stanley, T. Rowe Price, Fidelity Investments and a smaller amount from existing venture investor Kleiner Perkins.

Today, Inside Social Games reports that the San Francisco-based games company, known for social games like Mafia Wars and Zynga Poker, filed a document with the State of California on April 14, showing that it has sold $490 million in Series C preferred Stock.

Occasionally, these documents are not a fair representation of the situation because they show intent rather than the completion of the round. They can also be out of date. A Zynga spokeswoman declined to comment.

Here’s the document from Inside Social Games:

Zynga April 2011

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110506/zynga-document-discloses-major-round-of-financing-in-the-works/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110422/will-yahoo-be-in-play-again-heres-a-few-scenarios-that-could-be-more-than-just-scenarios/ http://allthingsd.com/20110422/will-yahoo-be-in-play-again-heres-a-few-scenarios-that-could-be-more-than-just-scenarios/#comments Fri, 22 Apr 2011 17:58:51 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=42995

One of the results of Yahoo’s weak earnings report earlier this week has been the renewal of chatter about possible changes in its leadership and even ownership.

And continued investor discomfort with its troubled stock price–Yahoo shares are down 7.25 percent year over year and an astonishing 49 percent on a five-year basis–and the level of renewed grumbling by major institutional shareholders is causing some key players to go back to their PowerPoints to reevaluate various options.

(By way of contrast, Google is down about 4.5 percent year over year–largely due to last week’s earnings release with higher than expected expenses–but still up more than 20 percent for the five years.)

As many might recall, last year Yahoo was under scrutiny by a number of interested parties–from big media companies to other digital players to private equity firms–considering a number of takeover scenarios.

Most of them were just talk and no action resulted, but that did not mean that interest went away.

The truth is, they are still out there and ruminating–this time with what sources describe as a much more amenable Yahoo board, with several of its key members willing to entertain any legitimate offers or ideas to improve the Silicon Valley search giant’s prospects.

In the last go-round, by contrast, Yahoo’s top execs–including CEO Carol Bartz–denied any interest in the swirl of rumors related to a variety of ideas.

That’s definitely changed–at least at the board level–so here are three very credible scenarios of what could happen:

Peetie, Peetie, Yahoo-Sweetie

Late last year, BoomTown wrote a post about the interest that former News Corp. COO and President Peter Chernin–who now owns his own entertainment production company–had in the situation at Yahoo.

As I wrote in November:

But multiple sources from a variety of sides said that Chernin, a well-liked and deeply experienced media and entertainment exec, has been contacted by a number of private equity firms and other investors about his interest in becoming involved should any of the various and sundry scenarios around the Internet giant pan out.

And Chernin, many sources said, has expressed a definite interest in the situation, perhaps because he was deeply involved in a previous deal when running News Corp.

At the time, it involved combining the media giant’s Myspace social networking site with Yahoo and also Microsoft’s portal MSN and creating a new company, code-named “TrafficCo.”

Indeed, that interest remains for Chernin, who has also been an increasingly active investor, including in the digital sector. He is an angel funder of the hot social media app start-up Flipboard, and also just joined the board of the popular Pandora music service.

The most likely possible scenarios have him joining with deep-pocketed partners, including Providence Equity Partners and, yes, Microsoft, as well as investment banks or advisory firms, such as Morgan Stanley and Code Advisors.

The approach being considered–which would only be done in a friendly way, with the cooperation of Yahoo’s board–would center on making a large enough investment in its shares, allowing the group to take control of the management and the board, putting Chernin in as chairman and maybe CEO (or with a new CEO–see next section).

If Microsoft were involved–and Chernin has strong ties there–such a scenario might include folding all its online properties into Yahoo and renegotiating its rocky search partnership, too.

This is an idea that intrigues a lot of people–including current Yahoo board chairman Roy Bostock, co-founder Jerry Yang and other board members–who have indicated recently to several investors and dealmakers a willingness to listen to credible player such as Chernin.

But, in this scenario, it would be up to Chernin and his partners to make a prosposal, said sources, and he might decide that the complexity of getting the power to make big changes at Yahoo is too big to tackle.

In addition, Chernin remains a successful Hollywood player, with several major television and movie projects in the works, as well as big investment possibilities in Asia.

“Does he want the headache of Yahoo at this point in his career?” asked one person, among many Chernin has talked to recently about becoming involved in the company. “Would you?”

Maybe so, if it would provide a big financial windfall. Many think an exec with a reputation like Chernin’s could easily begin to move Yahoo’s moribund stock upward quickly.

ABC (Anybody But Carol)

Here’s one truth: Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz does not get proper credit for a number of moves she has made since coming to the company two years ago, including cleaning up the messy corporate structure, de-complexifying garbled systems, cutting costs and bringing its far-flung operations into line.

Yahoo’s stock is certainly doing better than when she arrived in early January of 2009, when it was in the $12 range compared to its current $16 price point.

But here’s another: That stock price now includes more than $10 in solid assets–cash and Yahoo’s much more valuable stakes in China’s Alibaba Group and Yahoo! Japan–leaving very little true share appreciation.

And here are more truths: Bartz’s inability to get revenues growing, innovations flowing, promising start-ups acquired and–most importantly–to stop the continual exodus of talent out the door of Yahoo has made her tenure shakier than ever.

Add to that making its relationships with Asian partners more tense, almost no traction in key mobile, video and social arenas, a record of loud public declarations that have fallen flat and serious troubles in Yahoo’s search and online partnership with Microsoft–a deal Bartz struck and is charged with managing–recently highlighted in Yahoo’s earnings earlier this week.

As shareholder activist Eric Jackson, who has long agitated for change at Yahoo, wrote this week in a post:

“The truth is that investors are fed up with Bartz. Their enmity towards Bartz is palpable when you talk to them. Bartz talked a big game coming into the job and she hasn’t delivered. It’s that simple.”

Well, not that simple and maybe not fair, but it’s also clear that no one thinks Bartz will be re-upped when her contract is up in 18 months.

Thus, it’s no surprise that ideas of other possible leaders of Yahoo are being contemplated now.

Here’s the short list I have made of my choices: Akamai President and Yahoo board member David Kenny; former Microsoft exec and current Juniper Networks CEO Kevin Johnson; former AOL CEO and current News Corp. digital head Jon Miller; and Nikesh Arora, current Chief Business Officer and sales head at Google.

There are plenty more to pick from, of course, and any could be installed in conjunction with an effort such as Chernin’s.

AOL Under the Hoop

No good Yahoo scenario plotting can be contemplated without including AOL and its flashy CEO Tim Armstrong.

Armstrong has made no secret of wanting to get ahold of Yahoo properties to apply the strategy he has been trying at AOL to get it moving again.

Which is: To become the premiere digital media company.

Which is actually Yahoo’s new motto–although arguably, in word and deed, Armstrong has been much more active in pushing the concept and narrative.

That includes his incessant acquisitions of all kinds of online media properties, including the big fish–the $315 million purchase of the Huffington Post and the coronation of its even-flashier co-founder Arianna Huffington as content chief.

Armstrong has certainly not been averse to the idea of a Yahoo-AOL hookup with him at the top, and has been actively talking to anyone interested in such a deal.

And things could get a lot more interesting if AOL linked with a bigger strategic partner, such as News Corp. or Disney or even Google, Armstrong’s former stomping grounds.

Still, wishing does not make it so, especially with a much smaller and weaker set of assets than Yahoo and a still poor record on goosing its advertising sales.

AOL’s stock is down 30 percent year over year, as investors still worry about Armstrong’s ability to turn the company around, which kind of puts him in the same situation as Bartz.

“AOL is waiting under the hoop for whatever happens, which is a good place to be,” said one person close to the situation. “Why not?”

Why not, indeed–so, let the games begin.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110422/will-yahoo-be-in-play-again-heres-a-few-scenarios-that-could-be-more-than-just-scenarios/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20110415/yelp-searching-for-new-cfo-in-run-up-to-ipo/ http://allthingsd.com/20110415/yelp-searching-for-new-cfo-in-run-up-to-ipo/#comments Fri, 15 Apr 2011 17:28:50 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://emoney.allthingsd.com/?p=4529 Yelp is on the hunt for a new head of finance as it prepares to take the company public.

The company has not yet hired bankers or determined a timeline for a potential IPO, but some of the groundwork is starting to be laid, said Vince Sollitto, the company’s VP of corporate communications.

Sollitto said Yelp’s current CFO, Vlado Herman, who has a young family and a long commute to the company’s San Francisco headquarters, suggested the change. He will stay on board until a replacement is found.

Herman’s departure will give the company the opportunity to hire someone with expertise in the public markets.

In a fairly public move, Yelp walked away from about a half a billion dollar offer from Google in 2009.

The company’s revenues are widely considered to be around $50 million last year, and are projected to double this year.

Sollitto declined to confirm the numbers, but said the company’s growth accelerated in the first quarter of 2011, and the the local reviews site is now attracting 50 million unique visitors a month and counts 17 million reviews.

Yelp is now available in eight countries, and relies primarily on local search advertising. Increasingly, as its audience grows, it is also seeing opportunities in display advertising, and it was able to enter the daily deals space easily by leveraging its sales staff of 350.

Today, it is offering daily deals in 10 U.S. markets.

In that space, Groupon is the most prominent player currently considering an IPO. Groupon is on track to pick Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley as its two lead underwriters, reports the WSJ. The IPO is expected to value the Chicago company between $15 billion and $20 billion, according to people familiar with the deal.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110415/yelp-searching-for-new-cfo-in-run-up-to-ipo/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20110330/iphone-china-opportunity/ http://allthingsd.com/20110330/iphone-china-opportunity/#comments Wed, 30 Mar 2011 10:15:46 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=59446 Don’t underestimate Apple’s growth story in China, especially when it comes to the iPhone. Because according to Morgan Stanley’s latest AlphaWise survey of China’s handset market, demand for smartphones there is taking off and Apple is in a perfect position to reap the benefits.

Of the 2,029 Chinese mobile phone users the research house interviewed, 87 percent said the next phone they purchase will be a 3G device, and 30 percent of those said they expected that device to be an iPhone, even at its current price, which some feel is high. When price was removed as a consideration, the number rose to 53 percent.

Which is interesting, because not all vendors enjoyed such a spike with that factor eliminated. Research in Motion, for example, claimed the second-largest increase, with a jump to five percent from three percent. Meanwhile a number of vendors included in the survey all saw their share decline. Without price to consider, 20 percent of respondents said they’d opt for a Nokia handset, down from the 25 percent that said they’d do so when price was a consideration. Same thing with HTC. Told to consider price, seven percent of respondents said they’d prefer an HTC device. Told not to consider it, their number dwindled to five percent. Samsung too, lost a percentage point in the price-is-no-object scenario, slipping to four percent from five percent.

And with Apple’s 23 percent increase, it’s pretty clear where all that lost market share ended up. If price weren’t a consideration, or if carrier subsidies or price reductions made it less of one, the iPhone might claim a significant lead in the Chinese market. Because according to Morgan Stanley, if the iPhone comes down in price, demand for it in China increases even if rival devices match the drop in price.

Perhaps it’s time for that much-disputed iPhone nano after all.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110330/iphone-china-opportunity/feed/ 6 http://allthingsd.com/20110303/demand-media-buys-coveritlive-blog-tool/ http://allthingsd.com/20110303/demand-media-buys-coveritlive-blog-tool/#comments Thu, 03 Mar 2011 18:23:22 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=30389 Here’s Demand Media’s first acquisition since it went public earlier this year: The Web content-maker has purchased CoveritLive, a live Web-blogging tool it had already backed in 2009. You can read Demand CEO Richard Rosenblatt’s rationale for the deal on Twitter; if you want to hear more from the company, particularly about its relationship with Google, tune in to its presentation at Morgan Stanley’s tech/media conference this afternoon.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110303/demand-media-buys-coveritlive-blog-tool/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110217/zynga-raises-500-million-at-10-billion-valuation/ http://allthingsd.com/20110217/zynga-raises-500-million-at-10-billion-valuation/#comments Fri, 18 Feb 2011 03:02:37 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=40882 The fast-growing social gaming company Zynga is close to completing a funding round of $500 million, valuing the company at $10 billion, said multiple sources.

The round includes big institutional investors Morgan Stanley, T. Rowe Price, Fidelity Investments, as well as a token investment from existing venture investor Kleiner Perkins, in order to establish the huge valuation.

The big funding is essentially a precursor to an initial public offering.

Zynga has already raised more than $500 million from a panoply of Silicon Valley VCs such as Kleiner and Andreessen Horowitz, as well as Russia’s DST Global.

Their interest has been in Zynga’s explosive growth in social gaming, with such hits as FarmVille, CityVille and Mafia Wars.

The company grew virally, initially due to its close relationship with social networking giant Facebook.

Since then, it has tried to find other ways to distribute its games, although it still depends largely on Facebook’s audience.

While some worry about Zynga’s reliance on Facebook, as well as its sharing some of its revenue, sources said the company’s sales of virtual goods and advertising is closing in on $1 billion and more annually.

The massive valuation for the San Francisco-based Zynga comes after similar rounds by large Wall Street players in social media hotshots.

Facebook raised $1.5 billion from Goldman Sachs and others and social buying site Groupon raised close to $1 billion from T. Rowe Price, Fidelity and others.

The New York Times reported tonight the round was $250 million and named T. Rowe Price and Fidelity as possible investors. Earlier this week, The Wall Street Journal also had the round at $250 million.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110217/zynga-raises-500-million-at-10-billion-valuation/feed/ 8 http://allthingsd.com/20110216/hed-tk/ http://allthingsd.com/20110216/hed-tk/#comments Wed, 16 Feb 2011 11:33:04 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=57880 Ironic, isn’t it, that Hewlett-Packard touts wireless printing as one of the TouchPad’s big selling points, when the tablet form-factor to some extent obviates the need to print.

By providing us with an easy, intuitive way of viewing and editing documents, tablets are reducing printing demand in the consumer and enterprise markets. And by increasing demand for e-books and digital magazines and newspapers, they’re doing the same thing in the commercial printing market as well. In fact, Morgan Stanley expects a decline of up to two percent in printer supplies revenue in 2011 and a two percent to five percent decline in 2012.

“CIOs in the enterprise space already expect to cut spending on printer supplies in 2011,” the research outfit said in a vast new report on the tablet market. “As the installed base of tablets–a digital document viewer that reduces the need to print both standard black and white documents and expensive color presentations–grows, we expect printed page volumes to shrink. What?’s more, 90% of iPad users already believe they would print less with access to work documents on their tablets.”

Given that, it’s no wonder HP is putting so much effort into the TouchPad. If tablets are reducing printing demand across all market strata, its printing business is clearly going to take a hit. What better way to ease that blow than to sell a tablet of its own?

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