Yesterday, I described how Morgan Stanley was holding firm-wide conference calls to explain the Facebook disclosure scandal to its angry financial advisors and clients...and how, on at least one of those calls, my name had come up repeatedly. The Facebook disclosure scandal, you will recall, is about how Morgan Stanley and the other IPO underwriters verbally relayed bad news to their big clients about Facebook having a crappy quarter...but didn't tell their financial advisors and individual clients about this. As a result of this selective disclosure, in the days leading up to the Facebook IPO pricing, institutions had much better information about Facebook's current business than individuals did. And that may be one reason why the stock tanked after the IPO: Because there's nothing like ... Continue reading →

Facebook plans to allow third-parties to sell its most expensive "premium" ad inventory, we reported yesterday. This is good and bad news for Facebook's ad business, which has actually been decelerating for some time now, and is in need of help (witness the sharp sell off of Facebook stock from its IPO price). The good news: According to one source briefed on Facebook's plan, demand for Facebook's "premium" inventory could go up by as much as 40%. The bad news: The amount of money Facebook will be able to charge for that inventory might crater. It won't be so "premium" anymore. A plugged-in industry source just explained why to us in an email. Here's a lightly edited version of that note: Advertisers were already getting ... Continue reading →

10 Things You Need To Know This Morning Follow 10 Things In Tech You Need To Know and never miss an update! Please Note: Business Insider will never share your information with any other companies. You also have the ability to unsubscribe from these newsletters at any time simply by following the unsubscribe link located at the bottom of each email Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook. Follow Nicholas Carlson on Twitter. Ask Nicholas A Question > Sponsored Link: Advertisement: Continue reading →

New Walter Cronkite Biography Reveals Less Ethical Side Of America’s Most Trusted Man » comments “Nobody wanted to go after Walter Cronkite,” writes David Brinkley in Cronkite, his new biography of the beloved CBS newsman. The book — written with cooperation from Cronkite and his family — “dents his halo,” Howard Kurtz writes in The Daily Beast. Today, Cronkite’s stunts would have the likes of Kurtz himself calling for him to step down. For starters, Cronkite cut a deal with Pan Am in the 1970s, furnishing worldwide travel for his friends and family. Everywhere from the South Pacific to Haiti. The “news division president, Dick Salant, was upset at what he deemed a blatant conflict of interest, but took no action against his star anchor.” ... Continue reading →

Walter Cronkite Meant Nothing To Me It’s not often that somebody dying makes me feel young. But the death of Walter Cronkite has inspires me with an overwhelming sentiment of youthfulness. You see, I really know next to nothing about Walter Cronkite. He means nothing at all to me. Hearing that he’s dead was like a looking at a well painted apartment wall. You get the feeling that a good job might have been done but that’s the limit of the emotional or intellectual reaction. So why does this make me feel young? Well, let’s face it. Cronkite was important to the kind of people whose memories of our public life is full of Kennedy and King assassinations, the hippies fighting cops at Democratic convention ... Continue reading →

It pains me deeply to disagree with something put forth by my good friend and colleague John Carney (Generally our thoughts on various matters are 99.5% alike [we’re like man and chimpanzee that way, just .05% apart!]). But his essay “Walter Cronkite Meant Nothing To Me” was as ludicrous as it was annoying. That Cronkite meant nothing to Carney would be fine if it were true. Indeed when I first saw the news in a breaking email alert over dinner with extended family, I was the least moved of anyone I was with, as I really knew next to nothing about the man. I had a few vague images of him reporting on Kennedy’s death rattling around in my brain. But Carney wasn’t indifferent towards ... Continue reading →

That, anyway, is the story according to the business press. The news comes from dogged reporters at Reuters, the Wall Street Journal, and other well-known chroniclers of the financial world. But if you can’t follow all of these guys—if you have neither the time nor the patience to wade through each new bulletin on the IPO’s disastrous path—there’s really only one place you need to check. Just visit Business Insider, Henry Blodget’s invaluable business news aggregation site. Not only does Blodget keep breaking news about the IPO himself, but he’s also rounding up everyone else’s scoops, rumors, and theories, and he’s wrapping it all up into intelligent, coherent analysis. Continue reading →

The WSJ reports: "While Wall Street moved into crisis mode over Facebook Inc.'s fumbled initial public offering, employees at the company's Silicon Valley headquarters had an entirely different response: a shrug." "Inside Facebook's Menlo Park, Calif., office, many employees either ignored the news of stock-price declines, or studiously avoided talking about it, according to people familiar with the matter. Public employee posts on Facebook that just days ago celebrated the IPO in photos and congratulatory notes have dried up to a trickle." A source of ours close to Facebook employees corroborates. "I think the WSJ article summed it up. It's a shrug. Stay focused on the mission. This is a long long term battle. Mark is like a Bezos or a Jobs. Ignore the noise." ... Continue reading →