Facebook: 'substantial complexities' to entering China

Mark Zuckerberg has a Chinese girlfriend and told Oprah Winfrey he was taking Chinese lessons, but that doesn't mean he'll be taking his social media network into China any time soon.

In its IPO filing Wednesday, Facebook Inc. said it would continue expanding its operations abroad and noted that Facebook is currently available in 70 languages and has offices or data centers in more than 20 countries. 

The company noted that while it will "continue to evaluate entering China," the market there has "substantial legal and regulatory complexities that have prevented our entry into China to date." 

"If we fail to deploy or manage our operations in international markets successfully, our business may suffer," Facebook said. "In addition, we are subject to a variety of risks inherent in doing business internationally." 

Those risks, Facebook said, include political, social or economic stability; fluctuations in currency exchange rates; burdens of complying with foreign laws; and difficulties in staffing and managing global operations.

There has been been no secret to Facebook's interest in breaking into China, which has hundreds of millions of Internet users and is relatively new to social networking.

Zuckerberg took a widely publicized vacation to China in December 2010, where he met with top technology executives in Beijing, including the CEO of leading Chinese Web portal Sina Corp. and the chairman of state-owned telecommunications carrier China Mobile Ltd.

The Chinese government has blocked access to Facebook to its citizens since 2009. 

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-- Andrea Chang

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Photo: Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard University in November. Credit: Kelvin Ma / Bloomberg

Facebook cites Google+, Twitter among rivals, says growth will slow

Facebook Inc. is king of the social media world now, but the tech giant is looking over its shoulder.

In its S-1 filing Wednesday, Facebook said its business was "highly competitive" and that the competition "presents an ongoing threat to the success of our business."

"We face significant competition in almost every aspect of our business, including from companies such as Google, Microsoft and Twitter, which offer a variety of Internet products, services, content and online advertising offerings, as well as from mobile companies and smaller Internet companies that offer products and services that may compete with specific Facebook features," the company said.

Facebook said it also faced competition from "traditional and online media businesses for advertising budgets" as well as social networks such as Google+ and regional sites. Facebook said some of its current and potential rivals "have significantly greater resources and better competitive positions in certain markets than we do."

"These factors may allow our competitors to respond more effectively than us to new or emerging technologies and changes in market requirements. Our competitors may develop products, features or services that are similar to ours or that achieve greater market acceptance, may undertake more far-reaching and successful product development efforts or marketing campaigns, or may adopt more aggressive pricing policies," the company said. "As a result, our competitors may acquire and engage users at the expense of the growth or engagement of our user base, which may negatively affect our business and financial results."

Facebook also said it expected its growth rates to decline in the future. It said annual revenue grew 154% from 2009 to 2010 and 88% from 2010 to 2011.

"Our user growth and revenue growth rates will inevitably slow as we achieve higher market penetration rates, as our revenue increases to higher levels, and as we experience increased competition," Facebook said. "As our growth rates decline, investors' perceptions of our business may be adversely affected and the market price of our Class A common stock could decline."

Here's the S-1 filing.

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-- Andrea Chang

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Facebook says ticker symbol will be FB, annual revenue $3.7 billion

Facebook Inc. finally filed its long-awaited S-1 on Wednesday afternoon and revealed lots of juicy details about the company. The social media giant also disclosed its ticker symbol, FB, but did not say whether it would be listed on the Nasdaq or New York Stock Exchance -- it could be weeks or months before that is determined.

Here's a quick rundown of Facebook's pertinent numbers, according to the filing: 

Users: 845 million, of which 483 million are daily users

Annual revenue: $3.7 billion

Operating income: $1.8 billion

Profit: $1 billion

If you'd like to dig through the filing yourself, you can find it here. Keep checking back for more updates.

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Despite strong Kindle sales, Amazon's fourth-quarter disappoints

Despite strong sales of its Kindle devices during the holidays, Amazon.com's fourth-quarter earnings report missed expectations Tuesday, sending the online retail giant's shares plunging in after-hours trading.

The Seattle e-commerce company said its sales rose 35% year over year, to $17.4 billion for the three months ended Dec. 31. But Wall Street analysts had expected sales to rise 40%, to $18.3 billion, according to AllThingsD, which cited FactSet Research. 

Meanwhile, profit plunged 58% to $177 million, or 38 cents a share, as Amazon continued to spend heavily on development and infrastructure to support its Kindle business and other costs. That was compared with profit of $416 million, or 91 cents, in the year-earlier period. 

Amazon, which reported its results after the markets closed, saw its shares quickly fall more than 8.5%, to $177.90, in after-hours trading.

Jeff Bezos, Amazon's founder and chief executive, said "millions" of customers purchased Kindle devices over the holidays, making it the company's best-selling item in the U.S. and Europe. During the nine-week holiday period ended Dec. 31, sales of Kindle e-readers and Kindle Fire tablets increased 177% over the same period last year. The company didn't release exact device sales.

For the first quarter, Amazon projected sales of $12 billion to $13.4 billion, up 22% to 36% compared with the first quarter of 2011. 

The company will hold a live webcast at 2 p.m. PST to discuss the earnings report.

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Samsung Galaxy Note will be available at AT&T stores Feb. 19

Samsung's much-anticipated Galaxy Note will be available at AT&T on Feb. 19 for $300 with a two-year contract. 

The 4G LTE smartphone can be pre-ordered online or in stores beginning Sunday for delivery by Feb. 17, the company said.

Samsung has been hyping the Galaxy Note as a new device category geared toward the creative-minded set, although most consumers will likely view it as a combination of a smartphone and tablet. The device features a large 5.3-inch touchscreen -- one of the largest on a phone -- and a stylus, called the S Pen. 

By using the pen, Samsung says, "users can easily sketch drawings, jot down notes, or write emails and texts quickly and easily in free-form handwriting."

S Memo, a multimedia app, allows pictures, voice recordings, typed text, handwritten notes and drawings to be combined via a single application, converted into a memo and shared.

"The Galaxy Note brings a new level of efficiency to busy customers who would normally rely on multiple devices," said Jeff Bradley, senior vice president of devices for AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets. "This new breed of smartphone helps consumers accomplish more with a single device than ever before."  

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this month, Samsung devoted a big portion of its floor space to showing off the Galaxy Note and hired artists to use the device to draw caricatures of convention-goers.

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Photo: The Samsung Galaxy Note smartphone. Credit: Samsung via YouTube

Facebook, Google, other firms team to fight email phishing scams

Major tech firms including Google, Facebook and Microsoft have teamed together to fight email phishing scams. Members say the partnership will lead to better email security and protect users and tech brands from fraudulent messages.

The group, which calls itself DMARC -- for Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance -- says it wants to help reduce email abuse by standardizing how email receivers perform authentication. Now, email senders will get consistent authentication results for their messages at Gmail, Hotmail, AOL and any other email receiver using DMARC.

Email phishing scams are messages designed to trick recipients into providing personal information by replying or clicking on links. The emails look like they come from a legitimate sender, often featuring brand logos and mimicking the format and language of authentic messages.

With the rise of social media and e-commerce sites, spammers and phishers have "a tremendous financial incentive" to compromise user accounts, leading to theft of passwords, bank account information and credit card numbers, DMARC said.

"Email is easy to spoof and criminals have found spoofing to be a proven way to exploit user trust of well-known brands," the group said. "Simply inserting the logo of a well-known brand into an email gives it instant legitimacy with many users."

Other companies involved in DMARC include Bank of America, LinkedIn, PayPal and Yahoo.

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Image: Screen shot of the companies involved in DMARC. Credit: DMARC

Former Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein leaves Hewlett-Packard

Jon Rubinstein, the former chief executive of Palm who joined Hewlett-Packard after a 2010 buyout, is leaving the company in the latest of several recent management departures.

His exit wasn't a surprise, according to AllThingsD, which said Rubinstein -- a former Apple executive who helped develop the iPod -- hadn't been seen at HP's offices in months.

After former HP CEO Leo Apotheker announced last year that the company was going to stop making WebOS-based hardware, Rubinstein's role appeared to be reduced and he was assigned to a "product innovation role" that AllThingsD said was a move intended to "lessen its PR impact when he finally left."

The tech blog quoted Rubinstein as saying he was going to take a "well-deserved break after four-and-a-half years of developing WebOS."  

An engineer by training, Rubinstein left Apple in 2006 and later joined private equity firm Elevation Partners, a major investor in smartphone maker Palm. In June 2009 he replaced Ed Colligan as Palm's chief executive.

PalmOS was replaced by WebOS, which was used on several Palm devices and on HP's TouchPad tablet. This week, HP released a timeline for making its WebOS platform open source, with the goal of completing the process by September.

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Photo: Jon Rubinstein at CES in Las Vegas in 2010. Credit: Michelle Maltais / Los Angeles Times

Santa Monica embraces Silicon Beach -- don’t call it Tech Coast

Silicon Beach, the burgeoning tech start-up scene that’s taken root in Santa Monica and the surrounding area, continues to gain traction.

On Thursday, the city devoted much of its annual State of the City address to promoting the tech community, with Mayor Richard Bloom declaring: "Today we are not just Santa Monica, but Silicon Beach and the Tech Coast." (In an unofficial vote later, hundreds in attendance overwhelmingly threw their support to the Silicon Beach name.)

"Our technology-qualified workforce, creative workplaces and leading broadband infrastructure will keep our economy well-positioned for future growth," Bloom said. 

After the mayor's address and a short video touting the rise of tech companies in Santa Monica, Jason Nazar, who is chief executive and co-founder of local start-up Docstoc.com and has become one of the main boosters of Silicon Beach, moderated a panel of people connected to the tech scene.

The group -- Paige Craig, CEO of start-up BetterWorks; David Travers of venture capital firm Rustic Canyon Partners; Chui Tsang, president of Santa Monica College and Keith Klein of law firm Bryan Cave -– discussed the region's success so far and what needs to happen here in order for the tech community to thrive, such as partnerships with local schools, financial resources and other incentives.

Travers said the "critical issue" was getting a future tech powerhouse to stay put in Santa Monica and “be the tent pole around which many other companies will blossom."

"The next Facebook or Amazon or Google or what have you -- the next multibillion-dollar great company needs to not only come out of here but needs to be able to stay here," he said. "Once a company starts getting big it needs a larger campus, you have a lot of MBAs sitting around thinking about how to optimize tax policy…. Santa Monica needs to be ready for when one of these companies takes off."

Tsang said he hoped tech employers would be "a little more active, a little more pushy with us in letting us know what it is they’re looking for" so the college can make sure its curriculum is relevant.

And despite the Silicon Beach name, the region needs to develop its own tech identity, Travers said. 

"We compare ourselves a lot to Silicon Valley. I think we have to stop obsessively benchmarking ourselves against that," he said. "We need to stop acting like the little brother who’s always comparing themselves and just be ourselves."

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Photo: (Left to right) David Travers, Paige Craig, Chui Tsang, Keith Klein and Jason Nazar discuss Santa Monica's tech start-up scene during a panel discussion. Credit: Andrea Chang / Los Angeles Times

HP plans to make WebOS open source by September

Hewlett-Packard, which announced last month that it would make its WebOS available to the open-source community, said Wednesday that the platform's full source code would be released to the public by September and gave a timeline for when it would release individual elements.

On Wednesday, the Palo Alto tech company released version 2.0 of WebOS's developer tool, Enyo, "giving the open-source community immediate access" to the application framework for WebOS.

Enyo 2.0 enables developers to write a single application that works across mobile devices and desktop Web browsers from the WebOS, iOS and Android platforms to Internet Explorer and Firefox. 

"This is a decisive step toward meeting our goal of accelerating the platform's development and ensuring that its benefits will be delivered to the entire ecosystem of Web applications," Bill Veghte, HP's executive vice president and chief strategy officer, said in a statement.

The WebOS code will be made available under the Apache License, Version 2.0, beginning with the source code for Enyo. 

Other individual elements of the WebOS source code, such as core applications like mail and calendar as well as its Linux kernel, will be made available until the full code base is contributed to the open-source community in the fall, HP said.

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Photo: An HP TouchPad tablet running apps on the WebOS operating system. Credit: Armand Emamdjomeh / Los Angeles Times

Start-up spotlight: LuxeYard brings social aspect to flash sales

LuxeYard, a luxury home furnishings and decor flash sale site, officially launched on Tuesday with the aim of making e-commerce more social.

The Marina del Rey start-up (which will soon move to Culver City) is the latest newcomer to the rapidly growing flash sale marketplace, which includes One Kings Lane, Fab.com, Gilt and Rue La La. The site offers two new approaches to the usual for-members-only, limited-time sales: concierge buying and group buying.

With concierge buying, LuxeYard members can request items they'd like to purchase at a discounted price. The most popular product will be voted up and LuxeYard will then source either the exact product "or one known to be comparable or even higher quality," the company said. 

Group Buy allows members to push prices down on certain items by using social media and networks to encourage others to purchase that product. The price is driven down if the product receives enough buzz. Everyone who purchases the Group Buy item will pay the final lowest price. 

Chief Executive Braden Richter said the company was evolving the concept of flash sales by putting the sourcing and pricing of goods in the hands of consumers.

Flash sales were "originally designed to liquidate inventory; it was sort of born out of 2009," he said at a launch party Tuesday night at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood. "I think a lot of the current flash sale companies are now trying to figure out what to do. We've come into it at a perfect time to create this next generation."

Like other flash sale sites, LuxeYard features a community of design professionals and stylists, dubbed trendsetters, who offer product recommendations and other advice. Trendsetters include Nicky Hilton; Daniella Clarke, founder of Frankie B Jeans; and designer Faye Resnick.

The site is free to join and launched with $3.5 million in financing from private investors; about 185,000 people had already signed up during the site's pre-launch beta phase. On Tuesday, LuxeYard averaged about five new members a minute, Richter said.

The company has about 30 employees and offers luxury home furnishings -- including furniture, textiles, cookware and lamps -- at 70% off retail. LuxeYard doesn't hold inventory or operate warehouses; instead, manufacturers ship products directly to consumers. 

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Image: Screen shot of LuxeYard's home page. Credit: LuxeYard