Conversations about the Facebook IPO accounted for 0.25 percent of all online discussion during the first part of the workday, according to NM Incite, a company that tracks social media traffic.

That may sound small, but it’s an increase of 5,000 percent compared with the buzz about the Facebook IPO a month ago.

It is also four times greater than the chatter for the LinkedIn IPO and 10 times greater than the Groupon IPO.

After really high expectations, Facebook’s stock price (Nasdaq: FB) is stumbling.

Update: right now it’s 40.92 (up to +7,68 %)

The inauspicious opening suggests that retail investors paid close attention to reports of soft financials and big selling by insiders.

Still, Facebook raised $16 billion in what will go down as the third-largest public offering in U.S. history and the biggest ever for a technology company.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg rang the Nasdaq opening bell from company headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif.

Analysts are still struggling to understand, realize and tell (and will be doing it for a long time).

“It’s a total disaster because the stock is trading right at the IPO price,” said Francis Gaskins, editor of IPOdesktop.com in Marina del Rey. “They didn’t want that in a million years. A traditional IPO is up 10% or 15%.”

But how does it really go? The stock most recently hovered at about $40, which is only $2 above what shares were priced at late Thursday night. Shares touched that $38 level multiple times during trading.

[Via LATimes and USA Today]

The idea is simple: build a starship, not just for low-orbit tourism… a full-featured (almost) USS Enterprise! (yes, the one with Captain Kirk, Scotty, Bones but, actually not Mr. Spock).

Forget the Space Shuttle, dump all those toys: this is for real!

Bte-Dan, for sure a die-hard Star Trekker, has built a website filled with technical data, drawings, animations and did even the math that may concern every government or agency (barely) taking into account his idea.

Building a 1st-generation Enterprise will take no less than 20 years a should cost no less than $1 trillion (read it again, that’s right).

Sporting not one, but three nuclear reactors, the real Enterprise should be long as much as 950 meters (about 3,150 feet): undoubtely the largest moving human manufacture ever in history, and should be able to reach Mars in 90 days (not months).

He even solved some minor problems like keeping gravity acceptable to human beings, check the video below…

Ok, now let’s see the part of his thought that very few may disagree with: the Space-Race that took place in the 60s, USA vs. former USSR, sparkled thousands of new technologies and ideas (we’re still relying on that legacy of technology, right now).

I can recommend this book, The Apollo Guidance Computer: Architecture and Operation, about 1960s tecnology and how much computers have gone far these days.

As far as I can recall, some half a million people worked at Nasa for the Apollo missions, building everything, sometimes from scratch, from the tiniest part to the massive Saturn V.

Later, in the 70s, political issues, oil crisis and (more recent) economic downturns have nearly killed human-based space exploration and we’re (just) sending automatic probes in the nearby planets to collect data.

I don’t know if this engineer (should he be) is right or not, but he asserts strongly that such a project may re-start USA (and worldwide) economy, build workplaces and give a boost to every aspect of human knowledge.

Low-budgeters and price conscious-trekker can have their own Enterprise too, anyway: check this Enterprise Coffee Table, for a mere $ 2,400…

[Update: right now, the website is not available or offline]

[Via GizMag]

The song and the video are sooooo 80s, so fun and remind me/us that, back then, IBM was Apple’s arch-rival, not Microsoft, Samsung or one of these days lawsuit-drama characters…

Happily wearing classic Macs as anti-IBM-ghosts-backpacks, Apple’s BlueBusters succeed in fighting a somehow depicted DOS invasion and defeat faceless bluemen.

Check Apple’s lineup in 1984 when shown in the computer store: an Apple Lisa, an Apple //e and a 512k Mac.

Also check the previous post about Steve Jobs acting as FD Roosevelt in a 1944-1984 computer/war video!

[Via Gizmodo]

Brazilian fashion retailer C&A has come up with an innovative solution.
Much the way both Renault and Bacardi have found ways to translate between real-world approval and Facebook “likes”, so C&A has found a way to bring customers’ Facebook approval into full view in its real-world stores.

Through its new Fashion Like initiative, C&A has posted photos of a number of the clothing items it sells on a dedicated Facebook page, where it invites customers to “like” the ones that appeal to them.
Special hooks on the racks in its bricks-and-mortar store, meanwhile, can then display those votes in real time, giving in-store shoppers a clear indication of each item’s online popularity.

[Via C&A Facebook Page and C&A]

As simple as it gets:

• how to get started with the right profile info
• how to get more followers
• what to tweet
• when to tweet
• what’s a hashtag and why it’s so important!
• a lot more… (with fun)

Business users? Check this video too!

Great infographic, Twiends!

[Via Twiends]

Back in 1984, when the first Mac 128K was introduced, Steve Jobs played this ‘wartime’ TV spot where other computers (running mainly DOS) were enemies and Macs were powerful weapons!

Such a great promotional movie from the past!

Users could connect their phone directly to the billboard, essentially turning it into a virtual basketball, to take 3 “Free Throws” in the competition and emulate german basket star Dirk Nowitzki.
Leveraging Facebook Connect along with a mobile (iOS + Android) app, the installation allowed for easy live broadcast to friends and family along with a wall post of you in action shooting virtual basketballs on Facebook.

Results?
More than 21,000 users, more than 2,800 active players, some 8,000 Likes… and one broken iPhone!

A pretty cool idea, a great user-engagement result and an installation I suspect we’ll see more and more like this…

[Via DigitalBuzz]

Keep reading to discover how your business can connect in a personal way with your customers using this face-to-face video conferencing tool.

Google+ has been updating the regular Hangout features. There used to be two distinct types of hangouts—regular and with extras—but recently some of those extra features have been added to the regular type.

[Via SocialMediaExaminer]