United Continental Holdings to Pay More Than a Quarter Billion Dollars in Profit Sharing to Employees [MarketWatch - 2/13/12] #MyStock - http://www.marketwatch.com/story...
United Continental Holdings, Inc. UAL -0.44% tomorrow will distribute $265 million in profit sharing to employees based on the combined full-year financial results of its subsidiaries, United Airlines and Continental Airlines. The company is paying eligible employees approximately 5 percent of their annual pay for profit sharing.
- Mitchell Tsai
from Bookmarklet
In addition to profit sharing, co-workers of the combined company earned cash incentive payments for on-time performance totaling $40 million during 2011. The on-time incentive program pays up to $100 monthly when the combined airline hits targets for on-time domestic and international arrivals.
- Mitchell Tsai
Facebook, Groupon Inc (GRPN.O), LinkedIn Corp (LNKD.N), Zynga Inc (ZNGA.O) and others have put in place governance provisions that go against a long-term swing towards more shareholder-friendly rules.
- Mitchell Tsai
from Bookmarklet
In the past 10 years, many of the biggest publicly traded companies in the U.S. have been getting rid of staggered boards and dual-class stock structures. Currently, for example, only about 24 percent of S&P 500 companies have classified boards, down from 61 percent in 2002. But there hasn't been such a significant change among new arrivals. Of the 76 companies that went public last year, nearly 65 percent had classified boards. In 2002, 82 percent of IPOs had the feature.
- Mitchell Tsai
Of the eight high-profile IPOs in the social networking and new media space last year, all either had classified boards or dual-class structures, with some having both. Of these companies, Zillow Inc (Z.O) and LinkedIn had both, Angie's List Inc (ANGI.O), Jive Software Inc (JIVE.O) and Pandora Media Inc (P.N) had classified boards, while Groupon, FriendFinder Networks Inc (FFN.O) and Zynga had dual-class structures.
- Mitchell Tsai
It has some major investors feeling dissed. "These are companies who for one reason or another decided that they are going public, but they do not want to have to answer to the public market," said Janice Hester-Amey, a portfolio manager in the corporate governance unit at the California State Teachers' Retirement System.
- Mitchell Tsai
Still... It's a pain to double post in Facebook also, since Bookmarklets don't show up individually in Facebook. Might have to bite the bullet and spend time in Google+ , but I like the search in FriendFeed.
- Mitchell Tsai
Manual FriendFeed posts do show up at Facebook.
- Mitchell Tsai
3 FriendFeed bookmarklets showed up together in a mini-box. (and bookmarklet posts older than the latest 3 disappear). It would be nice if they looked as large as regular posts. Even better if the pictures would be as large as the regular Facebook posts.
- Mitchell Tsai
It's a pain to double post in Facebook also, since Bookmarklets don't show up individually in Facebook. Might have to bite the bullet and spend time in Google+ , but I like the search in FriendFeed.
- Mitchell Tsai
It's a pain to double post in Facebook also, since Bookmarklets don't show up individually in Facebook. Might have to bite the bullet and spend time in Google+ , but I like the search in FriendFeed.
- Mitchell Tsai
2012 will likely see an acceleration of structured, push button, social curation across the web. Why? Because most users don't want to take much effort to produce content, and consuming content in a structured manner (especially photos) is also much faster. Just as the first wave of social media has transformed the consumption of information, this next wave of social curation will fundamentally change how users find and interact with content over time.
- Mitchell Tsai
from Bookmarklet
Moving from a stream to a structured collectible set of content was the next innovation in social media....
- Mitchell Tsai
How successful is Pinterest? Unique visitors to the site grew 400% from September to December 2011, and just last week one study showed that Pinterest drives more visitors to third-party websites than Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn combined.
- Mitchell Tsai
from Bookmarklet
As tech entrepreneur Elad Gil insightfully explained in an article on his blog last month, sharing on the Web has been following three parallel trends. (1) The first is that sharing involves less effort over time. (2) The second is that social sites are becoming more visual over time.
- Mitchell Tsai
(3) And the third is that "people-centric" recommendations are being augmented by "topic-centric" networks -- which is to say that while Facebook lets you explore the Web through information shared by friends, newer social networks organize content by topics of interest. Some in the technology industry call this the "interest graph."
- Mitchell Tsai
1000 Lead Hill Blvd, Roseville, CA 95661, (916) 781-9001 sro@extendedstay.com, Stove (with pots & dishes), full refrigerator, microwave. $13.60/day cheaper than Heritage Inn Express $47.65 http://ff.im/QGseG One day at $29 is $40.12 (after taxes/fees). The priceline after-tax rate is lower as you book more days at a time. The walk-up weekly rate is $50/day ($350/week). Walk-up daily rate is $89 + tax (I think).
- Mitchell Tsai
from Bookmarklet
Booked 5 days on Priceline: Wed 2/8/12 - Mon 2/13/12 for 29 x 5 + tax/fees = 173.90 - 2.5% eBates rebate (3.63, 2.5% on pre-tax price) = 170.27 (34.05/day)
- Mitchell Tsai
Booked another 2 days on Priceline: Mon 2/13/12 - Wed 2/15/12 for 29 x 2 += 73.58 - 2.5% = 72.14 (36.07/day)
- Mitchell Tsai
Her talks have gone viral. On YouTube, videos of her speeches have been viewed more than 200,000 times. Some have been included in syllabuses at the Stanford and Harvard business schools. Put simply, she exudes that certain something that seems to leave many people, particularly young women, a bit star-struck.
- Mitchell Tsai
from Bookmarklet
Other women in Silicon Valley have been role models. Many, like the Google executives Marissa Mayer and Susan Wojcicki, have quietly campaigned to promote women inside their companies. Others — like Meg Whitman, the former chief executive of eBay who now runs Hewlett-Packard; Carly Fiorina, the former H.P. chief; and Carol Bartz, the former head of Yahoo — have reached pinnacles of success in tech.
- Mitchell Tsai
But none have made promoting women a cause the way Ms. Sandberg has.
- Mitchell Tsai
EVEN so, some say her aim-high message is a bit out of tune. Everyone agrees she is wickedly smart. But she has also been lucky, and has had powerful mentors along the way. After Harvard and Harvard Business School, she quickly rose from a post as an economist at the World Bank to become the chief of staff for Lawrence H. Summers, then the Treasury secretary. After that, she jumped to Google and, in 2008, to Facebook.
- Mitchell Tsai
There’s no denying that Ms. Sandberg has been remarkably successful at Facebook. When she joined the company, it had some 70 million users and no business model. With her in the C.O.O. seat, profits have reached $1 billion on $3.7 billion in revenue.
- Mitchell Tsai
She has arguably made an equally big mark with her frequent speeches to women, which are a call to draw more women to technology, and to Facebook. She personally recruited Lori Goler, its head of human resources, and Katie Mitic, its head of platform and mobile marketing. Ms. Sandberg’s role in keeping such employees has been even more crucial.
- Mitchell Tsai
Why was it, for example, that in the hundreds of hours I'd clocked at French playgrounds, I'd never seen a child (except my own) throw a temper tantrum? Why didn't my French friends ever need to rush off the phone because their kids were demanding something? Why hadn't their living rooms been taken over by teepees and toy kitchens, the way ours had?
- Mitchell Tsai
from Bookmarklet
Soon it became clear to me that quietly and en masse, French parents were achieving outcomes that created a whole different atmosphere for family life. When American families visited our home, the parents usually spent much of the visit refereeing their kids' spats, helping their toddlers do laps around the kitchen island, or getting down on the floor to build Lego villages.
- Mitchell Tsai
When French friends visited, by contrast, the grownups had coffee and the children played happily by themselves.
- Mitchell Tsai
Middle-class French parents (I didn't follow the very rich or poor) have values that look familiar to me. They are zealous about talking to their kids, showing them nature and reading them lots of books. They take them to tennis lessons, painting classes and interactive science museums.
- Mitchell Tsai
Yet the French have managed to be involved with their families without becoming obsessive. They assume that even good parents aren't at the constant service of their children, and that there is no need to feel guilty about this. "For me, the evenings are for the parents," one Parisian mother told me. "My daughter can be with us if she wants, but it's adult time."
- Mitchell Tsai
French parents want their kids to be stimulated, but not all the time. While some American toddlers are getting Mandarin tutors and preliteracy training, French kids are—by design—toddling around by themselves.
- Mitchell Tsai
One of the keys to this education is the simple act of learning how to wait. It is why the French babies I meet mostly sleep through the night from two or three months old. Their parents don't pick them up the second they start crying, allowing the babies to learn how to fall back asleep. It is also why French toddlers will sit happily at a restaurant.
- Mitchell Tsai
Delphine said that she never set out specifically to teach her kids patience. But her family's daily rituals are an ongoing apprenticeship in how to delay gratification.
- Mitchell Tsai
When Pauline tried to interrupt our conversation, Delphine said, "Just wait two minutes, my little one. I'm in the middle of talking." It was both very polite and very firm. I was struck both by how sweetly Delphine said it and by how certain she seemed that Pauline would obey her. Delphine was also teaching her kids a related skill: learning to play by themselves. "The most important thing is that he learns to be happy by himself," she said of her son, Aubane.
- Mitchell Tsai
Speaking Up Is Hard to Do: Researchers Explain Why - Virginia Tech Carilion Research Explains Why Some People Don't Speak Up in Small Groups [Elizabeth Bernstein, Wall Street Journal - 2/7/12] - http://online.wsj.com/article...
Ever felt like an idiot in a meeting at work or clammed up at a cocktail party? New research from Virginia Tech shows that many people are actually less intelligent in small group settings.
- Mitchell Tsai
from Bookmarklet
Days Inn Rocklin/Sacramento [Rocklin, CA] - staying here for 49.99 + tax = 54.99. Heritage Inn wouldn't honor their AAA rate on walkup, and wanted to charge $55 + tax. #hotels#california - http://www.daysinn.com/hotels...
Kenneth Waters, who spent more than 18 years in prison for a murder he did not commit. His sister Betty Anne put herself through high school, college and, finally, law school in an 18 year quest to free Kenny.
- Mitchell Tsai
from Bookmarklet
It took her another seven years to track down the evidence that would prove the police had deliberately and knowingly sent the wrong man to prison. ... in 110-degree heat, we found the manila envelope with all the fingerprints in it, and a list that had my brother's name on it, eliminating him from the inquiry. They'd tested his prints twice. They knew he wasn't guilty. They knew from day one that Kenny was innocent.
- Mitchell Tsai
from Bookmarklet
Pauley Perrette (born March 27, 1969) is an American actress, best known for playing Abby Sciuto on the U.S. TV series NCIS, a role that has made her the most popular actress on U.S. primetime television. She is also a published writer, a singer and civil rights advocate.
- Mitchell Tsai
from Bookmarklet
"Wilson said he was surprised to learn recently that his two college-age daughters, who had grown up during Facebook's early years, are actually infrequent Facebook users. Instead, they're using other social-networking sites, such as Instagram and Foursquare."
- Mitchell Tsai
from Bookmarklet
One evening while he was having dinner with his teenage son, he noticed that his son took a picture of his meal and posted it on Instagram. Wilson asked him why he didn't post this particular photo to Facebook. And his son said he didn't think his 2,000 Facebook friends would appreciate the post. But he said his much smaller group of Instagram followers, who all post pictures of what they eat and where they go, would be interested in the photo.
- Mitchell Tsai
Oakley's most famous trick is perhaps being able to repeatedly split a playing card, edge-on, and put several more holes in it before it could touch the ground, while using a .22 caliber rifle, at 90 feet.
- Mitchell Tsai
from Bookmarklet
I just watched a wonderful documentary on Annie Oakley on TV.
- Mitchell Tsai
Earth’s tidal forces have slowed down Moon’s rotation so that it always presents one side to us. The other side, although receiving as much light as the front side, is called the far (or, more poetically, dark) side of the Moon, notably giving the name to one of Pink Floyd’s most successful albums.
- Mitchell Tsai
from Bookmarklet
In the 30-second video, you can see Moon’s heavily cratered, rough surface; notable sights include Moon’s north pole, the 560-mile-wide Mare Orientale impact basin and, near the bottom of the screen, the 93-mile-wide Drygalski crater.
- Mitchell Tsai
#Gambling My first free room at Thunder Valley ($123). Starting this month, Cache Creek & Thunder Valley are giving me 8-11 free rooms/month. Both are AAA 4-diamond hotels. $30 Free Play & $50 match play turned into $255 so far... ($415 at the end of the day).
1st time in a regular room. Last time I came with a friend, and upgraded to a suite for a $20 tip.
- Mitchell Tsai
Both Cache Creek & Thunder Valley rooms have tiny refrigerators (yay!), but no microwaves/stoves (boos). Both have fancy coffee makers which can make hot water though.
- Mitchell Tsai
She is Facebook's 42-year-old Chief Operating Officer. According to the S-1 filing, Sandberg has 1,899,986 shares of Facebook common stock. She also holds 39,321,041 options and restricted stock units which haven't yet vested.
- Mitchell Tsai
from Bookmarklet
Oprah would still be the wealthiest self-made woman with a net worth of $2.7 billion. But Sandberg could nudge out Meg Whitman, who is worth an estimated $1.3 billion.
- Mitchell Tsai
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... Harvard '91 MBA '95. From 1996 to 2001, Sandberg served as Chief of Staff to then United States Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers under President Bill Clinton.
- Mitchell Tsai
Rise of the dragon: China isn't censoring the Internet. It's making it work. [George Yeo and Eric Li, CSMonitor - 1/23/12] - http://www.csmonitor.com/Comment...
Norbert Wiener, authored an influential book entitled “Cybernetics.” Mr. Wiener separated human responses to new challenges into two types: ontogenetic and phylogenetic. Ontogenetic activities are organized and carried out through centrally designed institutions to shape the development of society. The phylogenetic response, on the other hand, is evolutionary. It is analogous to the way bacteria behave in mutual interaction without organizational oversight.
- Mitchell Tsai
from Bookmarklet
The development of human civilization has always been characterized by the constant struggle between these two opposites – the ontogenetic attempts to control the phylogenetic and the latter’s undermining of the former. The relationship is both adversarial and symbiotic, much like yin and yang.
- Mitchell Tsai
In today’s context, political authority is ontogenetic while the cyberspace is phylogenetic. The health of human society depends on the balance between the two. When they are out of balance, the body politic falls sick with catastrophic consequences.
- Mitchell Tsai
The easy scalability of the Internet makes it perhaps the most powerful phylogenetic invasion of the body politic in recent times. Bill Davidow, in his book, “Overconnected: the Promise and Threat of the Internet,” talks about how the Internet’s “hyper-connection” can spread “contagions” like pandemics. The Internet is not an unmitigated force for good. It can also do harm to human society.
- Mitchell Tsai
(1) It is extremely profitable. In 2011, it brought in revenues of $3.7bn and had an operating income (the profit after you subtract day-to-day costs, but before taxes) of $1.7bn. Its net income for that year was $1bn - giving it a 27% net margin. For comparison, most physical businesses have net margins of between 5% - 10%.
- Mitchell Tsai
from Bookmarklet
(2) The Like button - and user growth - turned loss into profit. In 2009 Facebook flipped from loss to profit, and the introduction of the Like button that February helped to target advertising.
- Mitchell Tsai
(4) Active user numbers are still growing fast: at the end of 2011 had 845 million active users, up 39% from the same time in 2010.
- Mitchell Tsai
(5) Facebook depends on advertising, but less of its revenue comes from that. The proportion of revenue from advertising in 2009, 2010 and 2011 was, respectively, 98%, 95% and 85% of revenue. The rest comes from in-app purchases such as in games like Zynga's Farmville.
- Mitchell Tsai
(6) Zynga is an important partner. In 2011, 12% of Facebook's revenue came from it (so between advertising and Zynga, that's 97% of revenues.) So much so that Zynga gets a special mention: "If the use of Zynga games on our Platform declines, if Zynga launches games on or migrates games to competing platforms, or if we fail to maintain good relations with Zynga, we may lose Zynga as a significant Platform developer and our financial results may be adversely affected."
- Mitchell Tsai
(8) 2009 is the year when everything clicked into place. In the years up to that point, as recorded on the S-1, revenues were small compared to costs (which aren't broken down, but consist of activities such as running the site and getting advertising sales). But in 2009, it broke through: from 2008 to 2009, revenues grew from $272m to $777m, almost tripling, but other costs only doubled. Result, profit.
- Mitchell Tsai
(9) Facebook's revenues for 2011 are about the same as Google's were in 2004, when it filed its S-1. But its profitability is much higher.
- Mitchell Tsai
(16) Lots of Facebook employees who have been there a while are going to be very rich. This isn't surprising, but there are 138m shares that have been issued to them for $0.83. At an expected price of around $45, that's almost $6.2bn of pure profit for all those staff.
- Mitchell Tsai
http://mashable.com/2012... 100 billion friendships on Facebook. In other words, the social network has fostered more than 14 connections for every man, woman and child on the planet.
- Mitchell Tsai
http://online.wsj.com/article... Looming a few months away is Facebook's giant offering, which would top rival Google Inc.'s 2004 IPO. It holds the record for the largest U.S. Internet IPO by raising $1.9 billion at a valuation of $23 billion. Among U.S. companies, only Visa Inc., General Motors Co. and AT&T Wireless have held larger...
more...
- Mitchell Tsai
Mr. Zuckerberg's thinking began changing when Facebook realized in 2010 that it would have more than 500 shareholders by the end of 2011, which would trigger a regulatory requirement that the company start publicly reporting financials. Mr. Zuckerberg decided it made more sense for Facebook to go public and reap some financial benefit from an IPO.
- Mitchell Tsai
The company's research and development expenses ballooned last year to $114 million in 2011 from $9 million in 2010, primarily due to growth in employee head count and equity compensation. Facebook's costs and expenses are going up faster than revenue. It employs 3,200 as of December, up from 2,172 a year earlier.
- Mitchell Tsai
So far, enthusiasm for the idea has reportedly generated modest annual profits for Facebook of around $1bn, or just over $1 per user per year. Mr Zuckerberg will need to exploit – or “monetise” in Silicon Valley jargon – his users much more effectively to justify the up to $100bn valuation the first tranche of shares is expected to confer on them.
- Mitchell Tsai
You can now get a daily or weekly email digest for anybody's feed on FriendFeed. You'll get a daily or weekly email with the most popular posts from that person's feed. To get the email, click the "Email/IM" link at the top of anyone's feed, and select the "Best of day" or "Best of week" email option.
Thanks to Kevin for doing a great design for what turned out to be a more complex set of UI options than we had originally anticipated, and thanks to Tudor for implementing the email backend.
- Bret Taylor
I now get the FriendFeed Feedback posts as a Best of Day email so it doesn't fill up my feed, but I don't miss feedback. I also set up a "Best of Day" email for my "Technology people" friend list so I get a pretty good overview of tech news every day via email.
- Bret Taylor
This is a really cool idea Bret, I wish you can make that an RSS feed option as well. I'd be much more likely to read summaries in RSS than in email.
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
Casey: Thanks for the tip. What's the 7 before the "?" mean in the URL? The number of likes or replies needed to be included?
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
this is killer, the random influx of email during the day was kinda getting fail-ish. I love the daily digest.
- Drew Lucas
Very cool! Any way to get archives of previous months? (especially helpful for those of us who leave the internet for weeks at a time...)
- Mitchell Tsai
Just curious - at what time of the day will we get these emails ? Midnight US-Time, or will it respect our timezones ?
- Ahsan Ali
Ahsan: it is somewhat random right now when the emails are sent, but we built in the backend capability to control what time they are sent, and we plan on exposing that control to users in the future. Right now, it is kind of random - sorry!
- Bret Taylor
But what exactly is "Best"? Is it anything that has a certain number of likes/comments?
- Laura Norvig
@Bret LOL THAT WAS MY PROJECT! I will release it tomorrow. But you've also did it and killed my friendfeed application **sigh** But mine has multi-reporting weekly-daily-monthly at the same time and adjustable entry count!
- Alp
@Bret please consolidate me or I won't code new apps with you api! :-)
- Alp
Alp: we were not trying to withhold data. Later today the documentation will be updated to reflect the ability to obtain "Best of" for users. The feed id will be USERNAME/summary/N (similar to "Best of" for lists)
- Benjamin Golub
Hi Ben, that is pretty funny, I tried that URL earlier today to see if it has been secretly released :)
- Paul Kinlan
Bret: While Twitter struggle to keep their fail whale under control, you guys are developing stuff like this. Amazing - Thanks!
- Jim Connolly
awesome feature, this will be highly useful for my corporate group ideas / content sharing; projects, etc.... THANK YOU :)
- Susan Beebe
Great work. I especially like that it works on lists too.
- Meryn Stol
my inbox might say different, but I like that :-)
- Dobromir Hadzhiev
Wow, this is really neat! And it links into the idea I expressed earlier, re: reducing signup friction / enabling limited guest privileges. Imagine if I could embed one of my FF rooms on my personal web site, and enable people to subscribe to that feed by e-mail with just a couple of clicks... rather than saying "you can get e-mail notifications but you have to sign up for Friendfeed first." "sign up" -- though admirably lightweight on FF -- is still a huge barrier.
- Adam Lasnik
is there a love button cause I dont like this option I LOVE this option..great work guys
- (jeff)isageek
Three options I would like (1) Can I select "top 100" instead of "top 30"? (2) Could I select both "best of day" and "best of week"? (3) How about older timeperiods? I'd love to get an e-mail with stuff from last week or Mar 2009? Start & end dates? Anything to help me read FriendFeed off-line would be great since I spend long periods off-line at festivals (especially during summer time) or overseas. - Awesome job guys!
- Mitchell Tsai
So this works on groups too, cool! But we still cannot see Best of for groups on the site on friends lists. :-( I have several friends lists that include just groups and when I select to view the best of the page it's empty (even though if I got to the individual best of for those groups there are entries there).
- Kol Tregaskes
does anyone know of a web service that can do this? (I'm thinking weekly email updates of my favorite feeds/people) I don't think there's anything like friendfeed ..
- Friendfeed's Francisco
I see bookmarklet is "still" having trouble posting from google images, now I can't post anything at all. Is it because no one actually maintains friendfeed any more?