Today, not that much has changed.

After debuting close to $40 and cratering to just under $18 in August, the stock has somewhat stabilized in the $25 region, down 30 percent from its opening-day high. And along the way, the story emerged of how Facebook tried to hide some of the mobile risk inherent in its business and how the company panicked and botched its IPO by using vague positive language in its public prospectus and, apparently, specific negative information about slowing revenue growth to institutional investors privately.

Not to mention the $100 million paid to banks to stabilize the stock — on top of $176 million in IPO fees — for efforts that ultimately failed. And technical glitches that cost the NASDAQ $62 million in compensatory fees.

All of which negatively affected the overall IPO market.

That all said, however, Facebook has seemingly nicely recovered from the disaster — at least from a business fundamentals perspective. Revenue growth was strong in its latest quarterly earnings release, with the company booking $1.46 billion in revenue for Q1 2013, compared to about $1 billion a year ago. More importantly, mobile was significantly up, accounting for 30 percent of ad revenues, and Facebook singlehandedly accounted for 6.5 percent of all online ad dollars spent in the U.S.

Not exactly Google numbers, but pretty good nevertheless.

And the company has massively beefed up its advertising options. It’s now posting retargeted ads right in the news feed, once sacrosanct territory. And in a move aimed directly at advertising giant Google, Facebook has launched a self-serve tool that allows advertisers to target its users based on what they actually buy and want to buy offline … which is a significant move to targeting the intent graph that Google hits so well by virtue of being a search engine, but Facebook has often missed since its visitors are on the site to meet and greet people. In addition, as soon as July, Facebook will be rolling out 15-second video ads in the news feed, a product that it will be charging major brands millions of dollars for.

All of which is having an effect.

The consensus recommendation for Facebook is currently a buy, with a price target of $34. Most analysts are in the Strong Buy category, with few or none in the dreaded Underperform or Sell slots. And in the past four weeks, analysts have revised their earnings estimates upward by a factor of 6 to 1.

So there’s a lot of positive in Facebook’s future, and there’s a ton of potential. But it’s still challenging when analysts compare Facebook stock with other internet high-fliers like LinkedIn or Yelp, which rose 148 percent and 48 percent in their first years, respectively.

But at least it’s better than Groupon and Zynga, both down around 75-80 percent.

And, I would argue, while there are a ton of challenges and many very significant competitors — primarily Google — the future for Facebook is bright.

Even if the public start was a stubbed toe.

Trading started at $9.25 and by midday surpassed $12 and expectations. Yesterday, SolarCity lowered the price of its IPO to $8, down from the $13-$15 range set in November, raising $92 million. Initially, it hoped to surpass $200 million in its IPO. 

The stock, however, took off. This is partly attributable to SolarCity chairman Elon Musk, along with fellow board member Draper Fisher Jurveston, indicating their intent to buy a significant portion of the shares.

Tech IPOs have had mixed results this year. Consumer tech companies like Facebook and Yelp saw their stock go down after their IPOs, while enterprise companies such as Palo Alto Networks and Workday fared well in the public market. But U.S. green tech companies have had a rough year in 2012. The Bloomberg Global Large Solar Index (BISOLAR) of 17 companies declined 36 percent in 2012 as a global oversupply pushed down prices for solar panels by 28 percent.

SolarCity, on the other hand, benefits from cheaper solar panels because it is a financier and leaser, rather than manufacturer. Current clients include Stanford University, Walmart, Ebay, the U.S. Armed Forces, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and Intel.

Shares debuted on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol SCTY. Underwriters for the deal include Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, Needham & Company, and Roth Capital Partners.

Prior to the IPO, SolarCity raised a whopping $455 million in venture capital.

You can expect to see another security company on the market tomorrow. Cloud security company Qualys will debut on the NASDAQ Friday under the ticket symbol QLYS.

The company plans to sell 7,575,000 common stock shares and settled on a round $12 per share, right in middle of its range. Earlier in September, Qualys said it would price between $11 and $13. If Qualys sells all of its shares, it will raise $90,900,000.

The underwriters are the usual suspects, including J.P. Morgan, Credit Suisse, and a number of others.

Qualys has been around since the dot-com days in 1999. The company’s technology is really coming to light now, however, as cloud security becomes a buzzword in everyone’s mouths. Its technology helps enterprises protect mobile devices that employees may use and the applications they want such as Facebook and Dropbox, as well as handling any “compliance” or regulatory issues. For instance, IT departments can input their company policies into Qualys to ensure employees are following those policies when using their phones and apps.

The company is based in Redwood City, Calif., headed up by chief executive Philippe Courtot (pictured above). Courtot is fairly involved in the security community as a whole, being a repeat speaker at conferences such as Black Hat and RSA. He also leads the Trustworthy Internet Movement, an organization that hopes to bring the brightest minds (and some deep pockets) from around the security industry to basically “fix the Internet.”

In 2011, Qualys brought in $76.2 million in revenue. The company has over 5,700 customers in 100 countries. Qualys joins Palo Alto Networks (PANW), which went public on July 20, 2012, as one of the latest security company IPOs.

Image via Qualys

Source: Google Finance

Apple shares from 2000 to today

CNet credits Apple for NASDAQ’s rise, among other companies, which makes a lot of sense. Apple has gone from a market capitalization of under $25 billion to a massive and world-leading $638 billion value.

But it’s not only Apple that is killing it, especially this year.

This week Fortune released its list of top 100 fastest-growing companies, and a plenty of tech exposure is in the list. Apple is there — which is frankly amazing, because it’s easier to move the dial on huge growth with a small company than with a multi-billion-dollar giant — but so is Baidu, the massive Chinese search engine.

NetApp, VMware, Rackspace, and Netgear are other well-known tech companies on the list. 3D printing company 3D systems is also there, with many other smaller tech companies. In fact, counting those small companies, at least 25 of the top 100 fastest growing companies in America are technology companies.

And technology, as a business sector, is growing the second-fastest of any industry, with almost 31 percent growth in the past 12 months.

Source: Fortune

Growth of the technology industry this past year

By contrast, the energy sector is only up 6.56 percent, education is down 3.65 percent, and mining is tanking at -30 percent.

Google is trending up, too, as CNet mentioned, with a stock price that just recently topped the $700 mark for the first time since 2007. Search revenue is strong — growing 21 percent this past quarter — and Android continues to tear up the mobile charts, with all the implications that has for future monetization possibilities.

The only downer, perhaps, is Facebook, with stock that has been hammered hard and is now at about $19, close to 50 percent down from its IPO. But that story is still in the first chapter.

A rising tide floats all boats, perhaps, and Apple — with other tech company’s assistance – is helping the index soar.

photo credit: Marc Ben Fatma – visit Benymarc.com and like my FB via photo pin cc

Firewall security company Palo Alto Networks priced the shares for its initial public offering today, setting the range at $34 to $37 a share.

Palo Alto filed to go public in April this year, with expectations of raising $175 million in the offering. That is now bumped up to $263,810,000 if its shares sell at the maximum $37 per share price, according to its amended filing. The company will sell 6.2 million shares, around 1.5 of which will come from existing stock holders. Forbes notes that two of its investors — Greylock Partners and Sequoia Capital — will hold onto their stakes.

The New York Stock Exchange will host the stock under the ticker symbol PANW.

The company provides a unique firewall that caters to the idea of “bringing your own device,” or BYOD. That is, as IT departments become more fearful of people using personal technology in the workplace, they will use solutions such as firewalls to block certain services such as Dropbox and Facebook. Some of these services, however, can add to the productivity of an employees, and business recognize this. Thus Palo Alto Networks came up with a firewall that is able to block specific parts of an application, as determined by the IT manager.

So your company can allow access to Facebook’s status sharing feature to promote content but can block the chatting feature if they think it’s too distracting. They can also block things like attachments in e-mails or photo-sharing in order to keep proprietary information secret.

In 2011, Palo Alto Networks made $118.6 million in revenue, 143 percent higher than revenue for 2010.

Wall on fire image via Shutterstock

The Nasdaq plans to give $40 million to the Facebook investors who lost money when the stock exchange suffered a technical malfunction on May 18, delaying the social network’s IPO.

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Nasdaq had made its first steps toward offering this kind of reimbursement. The stock exchange is submitting today’s plan to the Securities and Exchange Commission, which will make a decision on whether or not the plan is reasonable. The $40 million will be made up of its own Facebook IPO profit of $10.7 million, $3 million regularly held for these types of situations, and trading discounts.

Facebook went public on May 18, but the opening was delayed by a half hour when Nasdaq’s computer systems had difficulties. Because of this delay, investors who had submitted trades at the assumed opening were left waiting for hours to know if their trades had been successful. Overall, investors are claiming $100 million in loss. It’s rumored the social networks is now considering a switch from the Nasdaq to the New York Stock Exchange.

According to the Dow Jones Newswire, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority will be looking at all of the loss-claims, but will let the Nasdaq decide who will receive a portion of the $40 million. The exchange is currently interested in those who made trades at $42 that were delayed and didn’t sell at that price.

Facebook’s stock has taken a beating since its delayed IPO, though the Nasdaq is far from the only problem. The social network is also being sued by investors for not telling potential investors that some of the underwriters “reduced their second quarter and full year 2012 performance estimates.”

via Dow Jones Newswire; image via Facebook’s IPO livestream

Post updated at the end of Tuesday’s trading with final numbers.

Facebook’s stock price on the Nasdaq exchange dropped about 9.6 percent in regular trading Tuesday, a steep decline from its original IPO price of $38 a share.

The massive social network debuted on the market 11 days ago and since then, the stock has sunk on news that Facebook botched the IPO process, misled mom-and-pop investors, and is fighting perceptions that the stock is overvalued in light of diminished growth prospects.

Today, options trading began so investors can place different kinds of bets on the stock. The Wall Street Journal reports that some investors have placed options bets that Facebook would “jump to $65 a share by January 2014, while others betting on a slump to $16 a share by December.”

Facebook’s stock opened the day at $31.69 and closed at $28.84, which amounts to about to a 9.62 percent drop. At one point, the stock dropped more than 10 percent.

Take a look at the chart below to see Facebook’s big dip today.

Mark Zuckerberg photo: Jim Merithew/Wired

By now you know that Facebook’s stock didn’t pop in its first day of trading, closing the day at $38.06. Reports emerged yesterday that trading didn’t begin until 11:30 EDT because of computer glitches on the NASDAQ. Investors were left waiting for computer confirmation on their orders and the price they paid for the stock. The NASDAQ’s automated system relies completely on computers that are supposed to be faster and more efficient than human traders.

On the New York Stock Exchange computers run the show as well, but human traders work as a backup. If the computers slow down or crash, real people keep the trading going and can tell you immediately the status of your order and the price of your stock.

Keith Bliss from Cuttone & Co. explained the human trading system on the NYSE in an interview with Bloomberg:

“There is no redundancy inside their (the NASDAQ) market so they’re solely dependent on the computers being able to handle…what’s happening not only inside of the market, but also inside an IPO. Down here on the New York Stock Exchange, we have redundant systems and the redundant systems are the human-based traders who can have an open outcry auction market. If the systems go down, we can get the stock open and get orders into the market, they can execute them and can give you a report immediately.”

In Silicon Valley, we keep hearing that computers are getting closer to replacing humans as processors get more powerful. Researchers are continuing to work towards the singularity, in which we create computers that are smarter than humans (and probably more powerful too — cue a robot uprising).

While it will be decades, if not hundreds of years, before a computer has even close to processing power of the human brain, leaders in the industry are praising computers as faster and smarter than human beings. It’s ironic then that the largest tech IPO in U.S. history may have been hurt by computer-based system.

Do you think if Facebook had chosen the New York Stock Exchange for its IPO that it would have done better? Answer the poll and sound off in the comments.

In addition to being one of the largest initial public offerings ever, Facebook’s IPO drew so much interest that the system couldn’t keep up with demand.

Facebook expected to make its public debut at 8 a.m. PT this morning, but trading took an extra half-hour to get underway. While details weren’t provided, Bloomberg was able to confirm that NASDAQ was experiencing a delay.

The Wall Street Journal reported that traders were unable to confirm changes or cancellations made to Facebook orders as early as 4:30 a.m. PT. Once trading did begin, traders were unable to get a confirmation on if they got the stock at the intended price. These glitches ended up putting the social network giant’s stock price into a slump, which caused a sinking reaction among other tech stocks.

It’s possible the glitches were due to the extremely large volume of trades — over 460 million shares traded (with nearly half of those happening within the first two hours). NASDAQ was unavailable for comment about the glitches at the time of publication.

So lets recap: Facebook’s IPO was one of the largest ever, generated so much activity the system couldn’t keep up, and caused other industry stocks to mimic its behavior. However, all that demand didn’t translate to a great first day for the stock, which closed at $38.06, down $4 from where it opened.

But the company’s largest stakeholder and chief executive showing up to the bell ringing in a hoodie rather than stuffy business attire? That was no big deal. (To test this theory, Twitter’s largest shareholders should wear Jedi robes and plastic light sabers when it goes public.)

Photo via NASDAQ live feed video

Apple is already much more valuable than rival tech company Google by market cap, but for the first time, it surpassed Google’s share price today, closing at $633.68 a share to Google’s $632.32.

Apple’s ascent over Google in share price represents a psychological victory more than anything, since Apple is actually worth three times as much as Google. No doubt Steve Jobs would be pleased considering that he despised Google for taking ideas from iOS and incorporating them into Android. Jobs told biographer Walter Isaacson that Android was a “stolen product.”

After Jobs passed away last October, Apple’s shares fell and then steadily began to rise. In mid-February, its shares broke $500 for the first time. And then in mid-March, the company surpassed $600 for the first time.

Google has also fluctuated much in the past several months. Last June, it saw a low around $473 a share and then began to rise quickly above that. In January, the stock hit a high around $670.

In terms of share price battles, Google and Apple might want to start bracing themselves for upcoming Nasdaq entrant Facebook. Facebook won’t get to those kinds of numbers with its IPO, but give the social media giant a year and we’ll see what happens.

Take a look at the chart below to see how Google and Apple have grown (and shrunk) over the past year:

Apple coins photo: Vitaliy Krasovskiy/Shutterstock

In preparation for its upcoming IPO, Facebook has chosen to list its shares on the Nasdaq stock exchange under the symbol “FB,” according to the New York Times.

Facebook will join many other high-profile tech companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon on the Nasdaq rather then the New York Stock Exchange, which successfully courted LinkedIn, Yelp, and Pandora in the past year. While fees would be similar on Nasdaq and NYSE, Facebook likely wanted to be listed on the exchange that is best-known for technology companies.

Many analysts are predicting Facebook will price its shares some time between May and August. In the run up to the company’s IPO, which will likely be one of the biggest ever, Facebook has been filing all sorts of paperwork, including a new S-1 that accounts for Yahoo’s patent lawsuit and personal docs concerning Mark Zuckerberg.

For a moment this morning, each share of Apple stock was worth as much as a new 32GB third-generation iPad. Apple shares broke the $600 mark for the first time ever Thursday morning, hitting $600.01 before falling back a bit in morning trading.

The milestone price leap was propelled by excitement for tomorrow’s new iPad launch and the first round of glowing iPad reviews that hit the Internet this morning. Other factors include the company’s push to expand overseas, particularity into giant markets China and Brazil, and anticipation for the year’s remaining product launches.

Just over one month ago on February 13, Apple shares broke $500 for the first time ever. Apple is still holding onto its title as most valuable company, putting space between it and second place Exxon. At $600 a share, Apple’s market cap would be $550 billion.

Analysts seem certain the rise will continue. This morning Piper Jaffray raised it’s target for the stock to $718 and on Tuesday Perter Misek at Jeffries raised his target to $699.

Zynga’s stock closed on Friday at $9.50 a share, down 50 cents from its IPO price of $10 a share. The weak performance came after a strange combination of hype and criticism for the gaming company, which raised $1 billion at an $8.9 billion valuation with options included.

At the end of trading Monday, Zynga’s share price closed at $9.05. The stock hit a low in mid-day trading at $8.75 a share. In added context, the entire Nasdaq exchange ended the day in red with a loss of 32 points, or down 1.26 percent from Friday’s close.

PrivCo, a private market research firm headed by Sam Hamadeh, told us at the end of last week that Zynga made several missteps with its IPO that will likely continue to dog the stock. PrivCo’s chief complaint was that the percentage of shares offered by Zynga in its IPO was not restricted to less than 10 percent as LinkedIn and Groupon’s were for their IPOs. PrivCo also felt that Zynga’s long-term commitment to Facebook, which saps 30 percent of Zynga’s revenues on virtual goods, is another flaw in the Zynga business model.

Another Zynga critic is Michael Pachter, an analyst with Wedbush Securities. He told VentureBeat: ”I truly think that the underwriters did a poor job of placing the issue with long-term investors. The volume traded was over 100 million shares, telling me that a substantial percentage of the buyers were in there to flip the stock rather than to invest. There were likely 20 percent or more of the shares placed with these guys, who took a quick profit at the open and left even weaker traders holding the stock as it went down. The guys who bought after the market opened panicked, and the stock took a long while to stabilize.”

Among the things that will help stabilize the stock include better research, Pachter said.

“You only thought [Zynga] was worth $10 because Morgan Stanley told you so,” Pachter said. “If they priced the deal at $9 and placed all of it with mutual funds, it likely would have traded up to $9.50 or higher, and your question to me would have been different.”

This post was updated with final numbers at the end of trading on Monday.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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[Update: at 12:10 pm Eastern time, Zynga's stock has fallen to $9.88 a share]

Raising at least $1 billion, Zynga’s debut on the stock market is the biggest tech IPO in the U.S. since Google went public in 2004 and the biggest IPO in the history of the game industry. Trading under the symbol ZNGA, the stock rose to $11.22 a share at 11:49 am and has risen as high as $11.50 so far today.

Zynga had estimated its price would be about $8.50 to $10 a share in its pre-IPO roadshow, but it priced the stock at the high end of that range, valuing the company, including options, at $8.9 billion. Online game company Nexon, by contrast, which IPO’d two days ago, raised $1.2 billion on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and saw its stock fall in the first couple of days of trading.

Zynga is offering around 14 percent of its common stock, or about 100 million shares. Underwriters have the option to buy 15 million more shares to cover over-allotments, which means Zynga could raise as much as $1.15 billion. Back in July, when Zynga filed, rumors were that Zynga’s value would be $15 billion to $20 billion, and in August, a third-party estimate put Zynga’s value at $14.1 billion. But now the public market is the ultimate test for Zynga and its vision to make everybody into a social gamer, as chronicled in our extensive story on the history of Zynga.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Zynga’s opening trades for its offering of $1 billion at $10 a share are about to begin. The overall stock market is trading up this morning, so the company picked a good day.

Pincus rang the opening bell along with board member Bing Gordon and Pincus’s wife, Alison Pincus. Watching them was a horde of employees at the company’s headquarters in San Francisco.

“We thought about the logistics of taking you to New York,” Pincus said. “So we brought the Nasdaq here.”

He added, “With our ipo, we are accelerating this mission of connecting the world through games. There is a lot of energy around our company. And what we need to do is focus that back on our mission and get regrounded in our mission of making games we love to play.”

Zynga is the biggest IPO in gaming history and the biggest tech IPO since Google went public in 2004. The social game company has 230 million monthly active users.

The experience of creating Zynga “renewed my faith in the power of venture capitalists,” he said. “Bing Gordon and John Doerr are here today, and they have been an inspiration to this whole company.

Other social game companies are glad to see Zynga finally going public after first filing for the IPO in July. As we chronicled in our extensive history of the company, Zynga has come a long way since chief executive Mark Pincus founded the company in 2007. His tale is sure to inspire other entrepreneurs.

The company reported net income of $12.5 million in the third quarter ended Sept. 30, down 54 percent from $27 million a year ago, according to an updated S1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The performance isn’t stellar, but it’s not so bad as to suggest Zynga’s planned initial public offering is in trouble.

Revenue was $307 million in the quarter, up 80 percent from $170.6 million a year ago. In other words, Zynga is working harder for the profits it gets by generating a lot more revenue compared to the past.

In the second quarter, Zynga reported only $1.4 million in profits on $280 million in revenue, so the third quarter report is an improvement on a quarter-to-quarter basis.

Arvind Bhatia, an analyst at Sterne Agee, published a report on Tuesday initiating coverage of Zynga with an “underperform” rating that put Zynga’s price at about $7 a share.

That price is equivalent to about 11 times 2012 estimated EBITDA (earnings before income tax, depreciation and amortization). That gives Zynga a 30 percent price premium relative to its peer group, meaning it is viewed as one of the leaders of its pack.

A similar social gaming company, Nexon, went public on the Tokyo Stock Exchange on Wednesday, with a pre-trading market capitalization of $7 billion, although it closed the day down about 3 percent off its IPO price. The Asian online gaming giant raised $1.2 billion and made net income of $260.1 million, up 14 percent, on revenue of $853.5 million, up 26.5 percent, for the nine months ended Sept. 30.

BTIG also wrote a report on Zynga on Wednesday morning that said investors should participate in the Zynga IPO within the $8.50 to $10 a share price range. The research firm’s analysts Richard Greenfield and Brandon Ross wrote that they believe Zynga’s social games are a cure for boredom, much like TV, and can be played anywhere. They said that Zynga is a “media company” focused on taking a greater share of your time and money spent on entertainment. They said Zynga’s growth will be driven by launches across more game platforms, with a powerful network effect. They see continued growth of social networking beyond 1 billion users, with both Zynga and Facebook benefiting.

Pincus said, “We founded this company on a few premises. That there should be free games for everyone in the world to play. And you guys, our shareholders and employees, should be able to lead and share in the success of the company. I’m proud we did that.”

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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According to Yipit:

From its launch in May through September 30th, Now generated only $2.6 million of total gross billings. Given the lower commission rates from Now! deals (15%-20% compared to 40%-50% for regular Groupon deals), this means that Now! has generated less than $1 million of net revenue in the five months since its launch, representing less than 0.5% of North American net revenue for the period.

Groupon Now has been highly touted  to investors, as the company prepares for its initial public offering on Nov. 4. With the massive scale of the Groupon brand, Groupon Now was supposed to be a technology that would be very difficult to copy by competitors like Living Social. As opposed to receiving a daily email, Groupon Now lets users take advantage of discounted products when they are nearby, in real-time, similar to Scoutmob, another location-based deals app, and daily email.

While smartphone users have made the Groupon app one of the most successful ever from the iTunes store, this has not translated into increased sales for Groupon.

For many merchants, running promotions through Groupon Now isn’t a good deal, either.

“You are better off leaving a table empty than running a Groupon Now! for most restaurants,” says Rocky Agrawal, principal analyst at reDesign. Often Groupon Now appeals to the types of customers who are already regulars at the establishments running the deals, which defeats the purpose.

David Sinsky of Yipit writes that part of the failure of Groupon Now may be attributed to its nature as a “pull” product, where users must choose to use it. The company has even offered users a $10 credit towards a purchase to use the mobile app, which has done little to lift its fortunes.

At issue is Groupon’s claim to be a technology company, which would justify its wild valuations, but it is in fact just a highly people-intensive sales and marketing operation.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg likes to boast that his company has one employee for every 1 million users, while Groupon has 10,000 employees, only five percent of whom are engineers. According to the S-1 Groupon filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company has 547 technical employees out of a staff of more than 10,000. This makes engineering the second smallest team in the entire organization.

[Image Credit: Arena Creative/ShutterStock]

The NYSE has dueled with the NASDAQ stock market to attract high-profile tech IPOs, but it’s traditionally been a losing battle as the NASDAQ stock market regularly plays host to the largest tech companies in the world like Google and Apple. Zynga is easily the largest IPO planned this year, with the company already profitable.

But recent high-profile tech IPOs indicate that the NYSE is getting a foothold with tech companies. The NYSE nabbed Chinese social networking site Renren last month. Pandora, an online radio station and another high-profile tech IPO this year, also said it would list its shares on the NYSE. Business social network LinkedIn also listed on the NYSE and had one of the most successful IPOs this year so far.

Zynga’s filing also added new information that shows its top three games on Facebook have traditionally accounted for a majority of its revenue. The top three existing games for the company accounted for 93 percent, 83 percent, 78 percent and 59 percent of the company’s online game revenue in 2008, 2009, 2010 and for the six months ended June 30, 2011, respectively. Right now that’s FarmVille, CityVille and FrontierVille, which bring in $76.6 million, $46.6 million and $70.5 million respectively.

Zynga has built its social games business on Facebook, and it currently has more than 250 million monthly active users, according to AppData.

The company on Tuesday unveiled 10 new games as well as “Zynga Direct,” an initiative that includes distribution methods for its games outside of Facebook. Project Z, the first part of that initiative, is a separate website that uses Facebook connect to send players directly to Zynga games without having to go through Facebook’s main website.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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But HP, the world’s large computer maker, saw a jump in its share price after an unconfirmed report from Bloomberg that it will spin off its PC business and could announce the move as early as today.

At midday Thursday, the Nasdaq exchange was down 4.3 percent while the S&P 500 was off 4 percent. Big technology stock falloffs included NetApp, which was trading down more than 18 percent after a surprisingly weak quarterly earnings report. The company’s outgoing chief financial officer cited a “dramatic slowdown” in July sales. The news hit other data storage companies, including NetApp’s biggest rival, EMC Corp, which was down more than 9 percent. Dell was off 5 percent.

HP, which is set to report earnings later this afternoon, was down for most of early trading but then shot up after a Bloomberg report said the company might spin off its PC business and might acquire UK business software and search company Autonomy for $10 billion, citing unnamed sources. (By the way, Autonomy first launched at DEMO, the conference VentureBeat coproduces, in 1996.) HP then gave up some of its gains and is trading slightly higher than opening — but fluctuating.

The biggest tech companies were taking the hits better than the overall market. At mid-day, Apple was only down 2.9 percent, Google was down 3.7 percent, and Microsoft was down only 0.8 percent.

Overall, the market is reacting to a number of a negative economic reports, likely reinforcing concerns about consumer and business spending on technology. The news included rising Americans jobless benefit claims, rising consumer prices (0.5% in July), and a slow down in home sales — as well as debt and other economic concerns internationally.

Are you concerned about tech stocks? Which companies do you see as the best bets to survive the turmoil?

Cisco shares rose nearly 16 percent today after the company reported fiscal fourth-quarter results that were slightly higher than analyst estimates. The company reported profits of $1.2 billion compared to $1.9 billion in the last fiscal fourth quarter a year ago. Cisco also said it expects revenue to rise up to 4 percent year-over-year in the current quarter.

In mid-July, Cisco announced it was axing 6,500 jobs in a massive restructuring plan, which led many analysts to believe the company was facing tough times ahead. The cuts cost the company a one-time charge of $1.3 billion, of which $750 million was recognized during this quarter’s statements.

“Cisco is executing well through its steep cost-cutting initiatives, which include headcount reductions, product design improvements, and R&D consolidation,” Daniel Morgan, portfolio manager with Synovus Securities, told VentureBeat via e-mail. “While not completely out of the woods, investors’ focus should slowly shift to the top line. Cisco’s turnaround is not a one quarter event, especially given the size of Cisco and the darkening macro economic environment. However, based on the ‘Street’s’ concern about the impact of a slowing economy and profit growth in the coming two to four quarters, the Cisco report gives some relief.”

Other technology and enterprise stocks benefited from Cisco’s good news today, including Microsoft (up 4.1 percent), Apple (up 2.7 percent), Google (up 2.4 percent) and IBM (up 2.3 percent). The stock market has been  fluctuating wildly since Monday, when it spiraled downward on news that Standard & Poor’s had downgraded the United States’ debt rating to AA+.

What do you think about the market roller coaster? Are tech stocks the place to be?

When the stock market opening bell tolls on Monday, much of the technology industry will be paying attention. This weekend has seen some dramatic events that could swing the stock market in wild directions in the coming days and weeks.

As we noted on Friday, the stock market is in a bloodbath, with the tech-loaded Nasdaq Composite Index falling more than 9 percent during the week. Since it fell through a threshold level, analysts were predicting that the market would keep heading downward. The question is whether the latest weekend news will be enough to reassure nervous investors or will simply plunge the market further, and if tech stocks will get swept up in a larger market trend.

On Friday, Standard & Poor’s downgraded the debt rating of the U.S. from AAA to AA, making everyone brace for a big negative reaction. The Group of Seven leading economies convened a conference call on Sunday to address Europe’s rising debt problems as well as the ratings downgrade.

The European Central back and other finance ministers pledged bold action to calm the markets. And on Sunday, the Obama administration announced that Timothy Geithner would stay on as Treasury Secretary, to reassure investors. Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke pledged to take “all necessary measures” to support financial stability and growth.

Asian markets opened lower. The Nikkei fell 2.1 percent, and markets in China, Hong Kong, South Korea and Australia also declined. The Tel Aviv stock market delayed its opening as early pre-market trades dropped 6 percent. Then the market fell 5.7 percent. U.S. traders will have had the whole weekend to think about it, but who’s to say whether a panic will ensue.

Moody’s, meanwhile, said the U.S. still needs to lower the federal deficit. As we noted, a lot of plans in the tech world and Silicon Valley are riding on the stock market’s health. Groupon and Zynga are still trying to go public. It probably won’t be great to be a tech company reporting earnings this week, as stocks could fall regardless of the news. Game maker Take-Two Interactive reports on Monday, while graphics chip maker Nvidia reports on Wednesday.

In the venture community, private investing shouldn’t be affected by day-to-day stock market swings. But in 2008, we saw venture funds pull back because their own investors had trouble making capital calls as a result of a prolonged drop in stock prices. The capital calls were a downstream effect of the falling markets, with real impacts months after the declines started. But they eventually made venture investors pull back and lose confidence in the market, leading to fewer investments in startups.

We’re a long way from that seeing that set of dominos fall again, but it’s worth remembering that everything is connected.

Xunlei’s business model is reminiscent of the now defunct peer-to-peer file sharing services of companies like Napster and Grokster. Both Napster and Grokster were found liable for the copyright infringing activities of their users. (You can view the court opinions here, here and here.) A careful read of the risk factor section of Xunlei’s preliminary prospectus reveals pages of text devoted to the company’s copyright infringement liability exposure, including litigation warnings from the Motion Picture Association of America and complaints from the Recording Industry Association of America. Xunlei, however, does not operate inside the United States. Because intellectual property laws are territorial, Xunlei isn’t subject to U.S. copyright law, and the holdings of U.S. federal courts in the Napster and Grokster cases don’t mean a thing.

For Xunlei, the legal view that counts is the one in China. Or, more specifically, the view of the Nanshan District People’s Court in Shenzhen. A 2006 interpretation issued by China’s Supreme People’s Court indicates that internet-based copyright infringement lawsuits must be brought at the location of the infringement or the location of the defendant. This rule often results in a home court advantage to defendants. Unsurprisingly, of the 234 copyright infringement cases brought against Shenzhen-based Xunlei in 2009 and 2010, the company lost only one. Presumably Xunlei’s relationship with the judges of the Nanshan District is as outstanding as this defense record.

After downloading Xunlei’s free proprietary software, users can search for and download any of the 3.7 billion digital media files included in the Xunlei index. The company enables its users to access digital media files through its resource discovery network, which connects 291 million active users, over one million third-party servers and another 3,600 Xunlei servers. On an average day in 2010, Xunlei facilitated 138 million downloads.

Xunlei does, however, take initiatives to protect third-party copyrights. A team of 15 people monitor and review content the company licenses before that content is released on the Xunlei Kankan website. Those same 15 people also remove any infringing content promptly after the company receives notice. Yes, you did read that correctly: 15 content monitors verse 3.7 billion digital media files.

Although the local view in Shenzhen’s Nanshan District on copyright enforcement is soft, content censorship is quite another matter. A search of Xunlei’s preliminary prospectus for the term “filter” leads to only two places – a risk factor describing what a court might require Xunlei to do in order to remove unlicensed content from its network, and a description of the content-filtering system Xunlei constantly updates in order to comply with newly issued government censorship notices. Predictably, a search of Xunlei’s network for content banned in China, like Richard Gere’s “Red Corner”, turns up not one single download. The result is the same for the documentary on the collapse of shoddily constructed schools in Sichuan province during China’s 2008 earthquake.

In other words, Xunlei is fully capable of filtering out undesirable content. Unlicensed digital media files simply do not fall into the undesirable category.

Nonetheless, Xunlei’s legal risk profile is very different from that of Napster or Grokster. In essence, the company appears to be under the protection of its local government and therefore immune from liability for any of the many millions of illegal downloads it facilitates every day.

As Xunlei delay’s its IPO for a better market day, the question for America, for Congress and for the Securities and Exchange Commission, is this: Should the U.S. capital markets fund the expansion of this business?

Given the importance the United States consistently places upon the protection of intellectual property rights during trade discussions with China, the planned listing of Xunlei on Nasdaq is a very strange deal indeed.

Greg Pilarowski is the founder of a boutique international law firm focused upon the internet and digital media industries in China. Firm website: www.pilarlegal.com. 

LinkedIn, one of the highest-profile tech initial public offerings this year, indicated today that it will list its shares on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) rather than the NASDAQ stock exchange, according to an updated version of its S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The NYSE has dueled with the NASDAQ stock market to attract high-profile tech IPOs, but it’s traditionally been a losing battle as the NASDAQ stock market regularly plays host to the largest tech companies in the world like Google and Apple. But recent high-profile tech IPOs indicate that is changing. The NYSE nabbed Chinese social networking site Renren last month. Pandora, an online radio station and another high-profile tech IPO this year, also said it would list its shares on the NYSE.

LinkedIn’s announcement also comes at a time when NYSE Euronext, the company that runs the New York Stock Exchange, is in a high-profile fight with NASDAQ OMX, the company that runs the NASDAQ stock market. NYSE Euronext is fighting off a takeover bid by its tech-heavy rival stock market. NASDAQ OMX said it is committed to making a deal worth $11.1 billion for NYSE Euronext.

The business-savvy social network will list its shares under the ticker “LNKD.” The company filed to go public in January this year to raise up to $175 million. The latest filing with the SEC also indicates that LinkedIn now has 100 million members, up from the 90 million it indicated in its last S-1 filing.

The updated filing also included some new information about its financial performance. The company brought in $94 million in the first quarter this year, up 110 percent from $45 million in the first quarter last year. It earned $2.1 million off that revenue in the first quarter this year, up 15 percent from $1.8 million in the first quarter last year.

LinkedIn is a business network that’s designed to help professionals connect with other potential business contacts and get a “warm introduction” through people in their network. The company said it had 990 employees at the end of 2010.

Zipcar is looking to sell around 6.7 million shares when it finally goes public, meaning it could raise somewhere between $93 million and $107 million excluding underwriting costs — higher than its original estimate of a $75 million IPO. Existing Zipcar shareholders are also selling around 1.7 million shares — though none of the proceeds from those sales will go to Zipcar, according to the filing.

There were some questions as to when the company would finally go public after it closed a $21 million funding round led by Meritech capital in December. That funding was designed to clean up its balance sheet and make the stock more appealing to public investors.

The service is available in most cities — cars are kept at various locations across a city in special parking spots. Users sign up for a subscription and then schedule a time and a car to pick up. They receive a card that activates the car and are free to drive it during their scheduled time.

The company has racked up some pretty hefty board members ahead of the IPO. Former AOL CEO and co-founder Steve Case joined Zipcar’s board as part of the most recent funding round. John Mahoney, CFO of office supply chain Staples, is joining the board as well. The company also added Meg Whitman, former eBay chief executive and now partner at storied venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, in February.

The updated filing also indicated that Zipcar brought in $186 million in revenue in 2010, up 42 percent from $131 million in 2009. The company still lost $14 million in 2010 — compared to a loss of around $4 million in 2009. That loss comes from Zipcar’s aggressive acquisition strategy — it has bought several car-sharing services to ramp up its operations in other cities. Zipcar most recently picked up London car-sharing service Streetcar and acquired a minority stake in Spanish car-sharing service Avancar. Zipcar also acquired American rival Flexcar in 2007.

To date, the Cambridge, Mass.-based company has raised $59 million to finance its operations.

If it’s true, then the entire stock market is vulnerable to disruption that could potentially wreck billions of dollars in electronic commerce on a daily basis. The worry remains that if hackers can penetrate Nasdaq, maybe they can break into the computer systems of other secure entities, from air traffic control systems to defense computers.

The exchange’s computers that execute stock trades weren’t compromised, but so far it isn’t clear how deep the hackers were able to penetrate. Investigators aren’t sure about the motives, but they could include financial theft, trade secret theft, or some kind of terrorist threat to damage the exchange. So far, the hackers may have only been probing the system. Nasdaq declined comment to the Wall Street Journal. The Secret Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are looking into the matter.

The company that runs the exchange is New York-based Nasdaq OMX Group. Details of the hack aren’t available yet. The Journal said that hackers broke into the Nasdaq’s web site in 1999.

Shares of Apple, the manufacturer of consumer electronics like the iPhone, iPad and Macbook Pro, rose for the seventh day in a row today, and are now priced at an all-time high of $301.40 as of 9 a.m. PST.

That means Apple is closing in on Exxon Mobil as the largest company on the stock market with a market capitalization of $274.9 billion, behind Exxon Mobil’s market cap of $330.6 billion. A company’s market capitalization, or market cap, is the product of a company’s stock price and the number of shares it has issued to investors. It is a measure of the company’s value. Apple passed PetroChina, another oil company whose shares are traded on the New York Stock Exchange, with a market cap of $235.6 billion, in September.

Apple’s shares have been on a hot streak in advance of the release of its fourth quarter earnings next week, hitting a new all-time high each day for the past seven days. The last quarter will be Apple’s first full quarter in which it sells the iPhone 4. Expectations are high, as Apple crushed estimates last quarter by selling about 3.3 million iPads.

Shares were up across the board on the stock market on positive earnings reports from Intel and other companies like JPMorgan Chase and railway company CSX Corporation. The tech-heavy NASDAQ composite, of which Apple and other tech juggernauts like Google are part, rose about 1 percent.

Keep an eye out on Monday for VentureBeat’s report on Apple’s quarterly results. Positive earnings reports traditionally send share prices up, so there might be even more momentum coming Apple’s way.