investors

Facebook has tremendous potential to become a cash-generating machine, but can it capitalize on its opportunities?

That's the question a lot on Wall Street are asking themselves a day after Facebook filed its S-1 IPO prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The social network boasts an impressively large--and engaged--user base. Yet the company hasn't fully figured out how to make money off of them.

Investors will be clamoring to get ahold of Facebook stock, with many hoping to get in before the company figures things out and the stock takes off.

"I think Wall Street's … Read more

There's plenty of live video broadcasting platforms to choose on the Web these days, but today we're chatting with one of the pioneers.

Justin Kan is one of the co-founders of Justin.TV, and he drops by our studio today for a full episode about the origins of life streaming and how the site paved the road to Justin's new project for live video gaming, TwitchTV.

We'll also talk to Justin about his participation in Y Combinator, a start-up incubator that helps green entrepreneurs through the first three months of genesis.

The boot camp gives founders the seed funding they need for general living expenses, allowing them to focus on the business idea. YC also guides them through the media pitching process and how to grab the attention of venture capitalists and seed investors.

Some of the headline-grabbing companies to grow from Y Combinator include Scribd, Loopt, Grubwithus, and Justin.TV itself.

Tune in to hear about how TwitchTV is bringing competitive gaming to a much larger audience, not to mention a few tips on what it takes to earn a spot in the next Y Combinator batch!… Read more

Yahoo has been playing hard-to-get lately, saying that it doesn't want to be acquired. But according to a new report, the company is handing out financial information to give potential suitors much of the data they need to file a bid.

According to The Wall Street Journal, which cites "people familiar with the matter," Yahoo has authorized investment banks Goldman Sachs and Allen & Co. to send out both public and nonpublic financial data to a host of companies that have indicated some interest in acquiring the online giant. According to the Journal's sources, the data … Read more

Scottrade Mobile puts all of the online brokerage's trading tools in the palm of your hand. It lets you conduct research on securities, manage your account, and place trade orders just as easily as you would on the full Web site.

From anywhere in the app, you can get stock readings by hitting the Get a Quote button on the bottom of the screen. Type in a ticker symbol or company name to bring up all of a stock's vitals, as well as options to find relevant news, set alerts, and add the stock to your Watch List. … Read more

Luke Fishback believed the energy monitoring company he started had some potential. But when General Electric handed him a $100,000 check from its Ecomagination competition earlier this summer and touted his company Plotwatt in the media, he found himself with an express pass to the big leagues.

"We were flying under the radar and then after Ecomagination all of sudden the phones were ringing off the hook--we got a huge influx of customers," said Fishback. "It just put us on the map."

More important than the money is the marketing muscle and technology depth GE could bring to a tiny company like Plotwatt, which has relied largely on word of mouth to find customers.

"GE is one of those companies that could make our service available to a massive number of homes really quickly," said Fishback. "And it's opened lots of doors for scaling in different ways, including raising funds. Investors look at GE as a smart discriminator in this space."

For the thousands of green-tech start-ups out there, big brothers like GE have never been more important. Corporations, once the nemesis of environmentalists, have emerged as vital partners in getting new energy products to market. Whether businesses continue making bets on smaller players will determine how quickly many green technologies, from solar power to plug-in vehicles, become mass-market or remain niche products. … Read more

Yahoo today held its annual shareholder meeting, and although the company touted its growth in some areas, it failed to discuss some of the hot-button issues on the minds of investors.

That was made clear by a shareholder who took aim at Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz during the meeting's question-and-answer session. The investor told Bartz that he wanted to discuss "the elephant in the room"--namely, recent rumors that Yahoo's board of directors is secretly considering replacing Bartz with another CEO.

Yahoo failed to discuss the rumor during the investors meeting, though chairman Roy Bostock said … Read more

Speaking at his first shareholder meeting since becoming CEO two months ago, Google's Larry Page tried to address some nagging issues that have concerned investors and taken a bite out of the company's stock price.

Calling Page's talk yesterday a "response to critics who who say the company is too free-spending, too unfocused, and too aloof to investors and Wall Street," Silicon Valley-based Mercury News said that the CEO defended Google's spending and reiterated that Google remains focused on its core business.

Focusing on the issue of spending, Page said even though the company … Read more

In case anybody had any doubts about the impact of the iPad on the PC, Intel laid those doubts to rest this week at its investor meeting.

Echoing trends touched on in an April 23 post, the company that makes the silicon core of most of the world's PCs said this week, in effect, that laptops will become a lot more like tablets, i.e., more like the iPad.

And why will this happen? The slide below--shown at the chipmaker's investor meeting--makes this clear.

This time, thin is really thin: At the meeting at Intel's headquarters in … Read more

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--CEO Paul Otellini said today that Intel is embarking on a big shift in focus, moving its center of gravity to the most power-efficient devices.

Otellini said that Intel, long the heavyweight in processors for PCs, will move its "center" from the power range--measured in wattage--of mainstream laptops to small mobile devices like ultraportable laptops, smartphones, and tablets, as well as devices such as smart TVs. Otellini was speaking at the Intel investor meeting at the company's headquarters here.

"We're shifting from 35-watt to 15-watt...the center is increasingly about ultramobility," … Read more