"It's complicated" is the only relationship status that fits the rocky romance between Wall Street and Facebook. Shares of the social-networking giant took a hit on Friday after it failed to post blowout quarterly results. But are investors being unfair to Facebook?
That's the value a $200 million venture investment led by Kleiner Perkins this week implies. But that means Twitter would have a price-to-sales ratio of 840 compared to Facebook's 26 -- or Google's 8.7. And Twitter's growth may be stalling.
In another setback on employment, initial jobless claims jumped a larger than anticipated 20,000 to 457,000, the Labor Department announced Thursday. Economists had predicted initial jobless claims would total 443,000.
Online advertisers may see up to a 78% price increase in paid-search rates once Yahoo and Microsoft wrap up their search alliance. Cost-per-click will likely rise sharply as advertisers shift to the single Bing search platform.
Initial jobless claims continue to trend in the wrong direction: They rose 13,000 to 472,000 last week, the Labor Department said, and are now up 3.5% since January. The more-telling four-week moving average also rose, by 3,250 to 466,500.
The New York Times will soon charge, AT&T is ceasing unlimited data usage for iPhones and not all video will be free on Hulu. It's slowly sinking in that even online, free can't compete with paid and unlimited can't compete with tiered. It's the end of an era.
