John Zappe
2 days ago
Yesterday afternoon, Facebook did what everyone expected: It filed for an IPO.
In the paperwork submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Facebook said it expects to raise $5 billion from the public sale of its stock. That’s based on the registration fee it paid. The New York Times says it could end up raising much more.
Amybeth Hale
11 days ago
A couple of things have happened in the word of search in recent weeks that were overshadowed by some of the legislature going through the US House of Representatives as well as the US Senate: speculation of an Amazon cloud search, and announcement of major changes to Google’s search functionality, otherwise known as Google ‘Plus Your World.’
Amybeth Hale
11 days ago
Boy, the Internet itself sure has created a lot of buzz in the last week, hasn’t it?
With protests of SOPA and PIPA last Wednesday ultimately leading to the shelving of SOPA by its original creator, House Judiciary Committee Chair Representative Lamar Smith, you’d think that the collective “we” had won.
Well, not necessarily.
Though this was seen as a major victory, the very same day these two bills were vehementy protested, a new bill was introduced called OPEN.
John Zappe
2 weeks ago
Financially troubled Arbita has closed its job posting service and transferred its remaining clients to Broadbean, one of the leading vendors in the field.
News first broke yesterday when Arbita’s CEO Don Ramer sent emails to customers notifying them of the decision to shut down the OnePost job distribution service. Broadbean, meanwhile, issued its own announcement saying it would take over the balance of uncompleted customer contracts.
“We are excited at the opportunity to work with Arbita’s client base and will, first and foremost, provide a high-quality, stable platform that meets their global posting needs,” Broadbean’s CEO and founder Kelly Robinson said in the company’s announcement.
Amybeth Hale
2 weeks ago
Today, many Internet websites are participating in a “blackout” protest against two bills that have been making headlines recently due to their controversial nature. SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (PROTECT IP [Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property] Act) discussions have taken online communities by storm over the last several weeks — but do you really understand either of them, or how they may affect sourcing?
Let’s start with PIPA, because it was introduced first and it’s really the only bill that’s still an immediate issue since President Obama shelved SOPA on Monday (why people are still protesting it today confuses me, but that’s another story…).
John Zappe
3 weeks ago
Recruiting software vendor iCIMS has a new business partner and $35 million to spend on expansion. The company announced this morning that private equity fund Susquehanna Growth Equity has taken a minority stake in the firm.
“The company,” says today’s announcement, “plans to significantly increase investments in marketing, product development, and additional acquisitions that will further accelerate the organization’s rapid growth and expansion plans.”
Founded in 1999 by its CEO Colin Day, iCIMS offers SaaS-based talent acquisition, onboarding, performance and talent management tools. The company has made the inc. 5000 list of fastest growing companies for six consecutive years, finishing 2010 with revenue of $25.6 million (2011 rankings won’t be released until later this year).
Amybeth Hale
on Dec. 23, 2011
Following notification a couple weeks ago that VisualCV.com, an Internet-based resume building and career portfolio management service, would be shutting its doors at the conclusion of 2011, this morning the company announced that it had been acquired by Talent Technology, a leading solutions provider in the recruiting technology market.
With that announcement, VisualCV also noted that Talent Technology would continue to operate the VisualCV.com website and that it will not be shut down as previously announced.
Amybeth Hale
on Dec. 20, 2011
Though the news hasn’t appeared as an update on its official blog, Facebook has has begun introducing a new feature which allows business pages to receive private messages from their fans on the social network.
Right now, the new feature has only been rolled out to Asia-based admins. When it launched on Monday morning, Facebook page admins woke up to the following information box:
John Zappe
on Dec. 19, 2011
Last week, Bloomberg reported that Monster Worldwide Inc. (MWW) is being removed from the S&P 500 after losing almost $5 billion in market value in the last five years. With a stock price low enough to force the world’s largest online-recruiting company out of the S&P 500, there’s some very public speculation that the global employment advertising company could be bought by a private equity fund. According to the Bloomberg article, the company has plunged 66 percent this year, the most in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, as American businesses remained reluctant to hire.
Rumors have periodically made the rounds of a potential or even pending sale — 20 of them since 2006, according to Bloomberg. All have proven false. But now, says the financial news service, financial analysts and some of Monster’s largest shareholders say the time and price may be right for a takeover.
“The valuation is absurdly cheap,” Eric Green, a Philadelphia-based fund manager at Penn Capital, told Bloomberg. With 3.2 million shares of Monster stock, Penn Capital is one of the company’s largest shareholders.
“The stock has been a clear disappointment,” Green is quoted as saying. He suggested a takeover price of $15 a share. That’s more than a 92 percent premium over Friday’s closing price of $7.71. “I would love to see someone buy it,” he said.
Monster’s stock price has declined steadily since hitting a 10-year high of $59.28 in May, 2006. In the last 12 months, the stock has been as high as $25.90, reaching there in January, when the economy seemed ready for a hiring surge. Since August, it has been under $10 a share. The market value of the company is now about $1 billion, $5 billion less than it was worth in 2006.
Amybeth Hale
on Dec. 9, 2011
On Thursday, Twitter made an announcement of some major changes to its profile pages:
…we are introducing enhanced profile pages that help marketers create an even more compelling destination on Twitter for their brands.
Communicating with users isn’t just about what you say. It’s also about how you say it. Now, your profile page does more to help you make an impression with a large header image for displaying your logo, tagline, and any other visuals.
With a goal of making the site simpler to navigate, Twitter says it wants to “win over more users and make the site more attractive to advertisers.” Twitter’s Chief Executive Officer, Dick Costolo said,
As other services tack feature after feature after feature on top of each other, we’re going to go in an entirely different direction and offer simplicity in a world of complexity…This new Twitter is really a foundation for us.
Through the site they’re calling “Fly,” Twitter shares a video showing some of the new capabilities of the new profile pages. And they look to compete with Google Plus and Facebook for marketing and advertising reach.
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