Reuter site - Facebook's new pitch to brand advertisers: forget about clicks

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Facebook's new pitch to brand advertisers: forget about clicks

Mon, Oct 01 12:12 PM EDT

By Alexei Oreskovic

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc, stung by doubts that advertising on the social network delivers enough bang for the buck, is preparing to unveil data to counter its critics and show that "clicks," the current metric of choice, tell only half the story.

The world's No. 1 social network, embarrassed just days before its IPO when General Motors declared it was pulling the plug on all paid advertising on its network, will argue that big-brand marketers should abandon the industry's obsession with numbers of clicks and focus on more effective advertising techniques.

Fewer than 1 percent of in-store sales tied to brand advertising campaigns on Facebook come from people who clicked on an ad, according to a new study that Facebook has conducted through a partnership with Datalogix, a data mining firm that tracks real world retail sales.

"We ended up in this world where the click is king," said Brad Smallwood, Facebook's head of measurement and insights, who will present some of Facebook's findings at one of the advertising industry's biggest conferences in New York on Monday.

While designing online ads to garner clicks makes sense for certain type of companies - such as e-commerce firms trying to ring-up immediate online sales - clicks are not relevant to brand marketers, Smallwood said.

Through its partnership with Datalogix, Facebook says it can now give brand marketers data on the actual in-store sales that their ad campaigns on Facebook have generated - a more useful piece of feedback than total clicks. Datalogix tracks the relationship between ads on Facebook and real-world spending by compiling consumer purchasing information from retail stores and matching it with data about Facebook ad impressions.

Facebook's push to provide marketers with more feedback comes as the company's revenue growth slows and the effectiveness of its ads remains a hotly debated topic. Facebook, whose stock by the end of the third quarter was down 43 percent since its May initial public offering, has unveiled a variety of new advertising capabilities in recent months, including its first ads designed to be viewed on smartpthones.

"Advertisers have been increasingly vocal about concerns regarding effectiveness of Facebook," said Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Wieser.

Clicks became a metric of choice in part because they had become directly tied to Google Inc's performance. The world's No. 1 Web search engine offers an effective and easy-to-measure form of advertising because it lets marketers reach consumers at the moment they are searching for a particular product.

If a consumer clicks on the search ad, the job is done.

But Facebook argues that for brand advertisers, fine-tuning the number of times a particular consumer sees an ad as well as ensuring that the ad has reached all of its target audience are far more effective techniques.

According to Smallwood, marketers can increase the return on investment from their ads by 40 percent by focusing on an ad's so-called frequency - instead of one Facebook user seeing an ad 100 times and another user seeing the ad only twice, for example, Facebook says it will soon offer advertisers' insight on the ideal number of ad impressions for a particular campaign.

"Using the Datalogix tool, we'll able to understand what that sweetspot is," Smallwood said, adding that Facebook will then control how often each user sees the ad.

Many large brand advertising campaigns are not even hitting half of their target audience, according to Smallwood. But ad campaigns that focus on getting the optimal reach are 88 percent more effective at improving their return on investment, Facebook says its studies have shown.

Getting online advertisers to break their long-running focus on clicks will not be easy, but Facebook says the techniques it is advocating are standard in the television advertising world.

As Facebook strives to convince marketers to think differently, the company also has to assuage privacy concerns.

Facebook's partnership with Datalogix has raised complaints from some privacy advocates, who say the social networking company could be violating the terms of a privacy settlement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission by not obtaining the express consent from users to share their personal information.

Smallwood said that the only information given to Datalogix is that people were exposed to certain marketing messages, adding that Facebook is not receiving any personal consumer information from Datalogix.

(Reporting By Alexei Oreskovic)

Reuter site - Insight: Italy's slow Internet set for reboot

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Insight: Italy's slow Internet set for reboot

Wed, Sep 26 04:55 AM EDT

By Danilo Masoni and Leila Abboud

MILAN/PARIS (Reuters) - IMM Hydraulics, a small exporter of hoses for industries such as agriculture and mining, is the kind of firm that should be at the center of Italy's efforts to rekindle its stagnant economy.

Instead, the company, located in the Abruzzo region of central Italy, is wrestling with a basic impediment to profitability: a woefully slow broadband connection. With just 2 megabits (MB) per second, IMM Hydraulics' broadband connection lags behind the 5 MB typical in Italian cities, which in turn is well behind an average of 12 MB in France and 16 MB in Germany.

"It takes us days to process an order whereas it could take half an hour," said finance director Marcello Di Campli. "Broadband is one of our biggest problems, probably just after our access to credit."

Europe's fourth-largest economy has long been an Internet laggard, its creaky networks stunting the development of online commerce and banking. Italians pay among the highest prices in Europe for broadband speeds on a par with Estonia or Cyprus. As a result, only half the population uses the Internet at least once a week and Italian firms generate 5.4 percent of sales on-line compared to 13.9 percent elsewhere in Europe.

Now the reformist government of Prime Minister Mario Monti has identified better broadband as a national priority to spur growth and reduce Italy's 11 percent unemployment and bulging deficits.

"The statistics on e-commerce are chilling ... The broadband gap constrains growth by reducing the competitiveness of export-oriented companies," said Paolo Gentiloni, former communications minister and member of a group of deputies that has made proposals to support online commerce and government services.

In the government's sights is one-time monopoly Telecom Italia, which it believes has long thwarted competition and put off investing in its domestic network because of its huge debts.

Monti's government has enlisted state-backed finance body Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (CDP) to work out a plan with Telecom Italia and its rivals to create a nationwide super-fast fiber optic broadband network.

One of the most radical options under discussion is for Telecom Italia to spin off its existing network of decades-old copper lines - worth between 9 and 15 billion euros - into a separate company that would run Italy's fixed telephone and broadband system and sell capacity to other Internet providers on a wholesale basis. The new "access network company" could be partly state-owned and would have more incentive to invest in broadband, say advocates, because it would have neither debt to pay nor market share to defend.

Such a move would amount to something of a revolution in Europe and would test whether the state can be more effective than the private sector in building national broadband infrastructure.

Australia's government provided the blue-print in 2009 when, frustrated with the slow pace of investment, it became the first country to create a national company charged with building a single open access fiber broadband network to 90 percent of homes by 2021. Britain adopted a slightly different approach, requiring BT Group to create a separate subsidiary to sells wholesale access to competitors and build fiber broadband across the country.

TO SPLIT OR NOT TO SPLIT

Telecom Italia, like other former telecom monopolies in Europe, owns the last meters of copper lines to homes and businesses, which it then rents out to competitors - mobile operators Vodafone, Wind, and Hutchison's 3 - for a monthly fee set by regulators.

In Italy and elsewhere, it is these decades-old copper lines that need to be replaced by fiber optic wires to boost broadband speeds to up to 100 megabits per second. Updating those wires will cost 200 billion euros, says the European Commission, a sum telecom operators will struggle to mobilize.

Italy can't just issue orders to Telecom Italia because the company is no longer owned by the state but by individual shareholders and a consortium of three Italian banks and Telefonica. So government officials are using other ways to persuade it.

After months of fruitless negotiations between Telecom Italia chairman Franco Bernabe and CDP head Franco Bassanini, the state pledged to invest up to 500 million euro in Metroweb, a competing fiber broadband project in Italy's north, to up the pressure, a source close to the Metroweb group said.

Bassanini told Reuters that the CDP was "absolutely open to finding an agreement" and that talks with Telecom Italia were ongoing on "a broader hypothesis" than just the Metroweb investment. He acknowledged that the creation of a combined network company that merged all the current Italian network assets would be "highly sensitive" for Telecom Italia.

According to a person close to Telecom Italia, the CDP has hired Deutsche Bank to analyze the value of its network in preparation for hiving it off.

The pressure is taking effect: Telecom Italia is debating the spin-off idea internally and Bernabe has promised a decision by the end of this year.

Telecom Italia has also agreed to share some infrastructure with rival broadband provider Fastweb and to co-ordinate the rollouts of their respective fiber networks in a bid to cut costs - a deal that could make negotiations over a broader nationwide project easier, analysts say.

But Telecom Italia executives are divided over whether spinning off its fixed network is wise, said two people close to the company. Chief Executive Marco Patuano is backing the move because he believes the infrastructure's value will decline with the advent of super-fast mobile technology known as LTE, as well as competing fiber projects in Italy.

By contrast Bernabe believes owning the last meters of copper into people's homes represents a competitive advantage since rivals must pay to access it to be able to offer broadband to their customers. He has repeatedly said Telecom Italia will not do anything to lose control over its network.

UPGRADE STRATEGIES

Governments around the world are trying different strategies to upgrade their systems.

The United States is relying solely on competition in the private sector while Japan and Korea have ploughed public money into building nationwide fiber-optic networks, a task made easier by dense urban geography. Sweden and Norway became European leaders in fibre-optic broadband penetration via a mixture of tax breaks, subsidies for rural deployments, and in Sweden's case, requiring state-owned municipal utilities to create local networks.

Although it is early to judge Australia's nationwide fibre project, Britain's effective separation of BT in 2005 has taken the country from the middle of Europe's rankings on broadband speeds, cost and usage to near the top.

In the European Union, telecom operators and policymakers have spent the past year fighting. Operators argue they shouldn't have to share the new networks with rivals if they are to bear the cost of building them alone. The wrangling has contributed to upgrade delays in Italy and elsewhere.

Brussels now says member states will not be required to make the operators share fibre networks and has given operators free rein to choose what technology to deploy, in a regulatory framework that will operate to at least 2020.

Crucially, regulators will no longer set the prices at which incumbents sell wholesale access to smaller competitors on new fibre networks, so long as incumbents offer "equivalent" prices to everyone.

Gabrielle Gauthey, a former telecoms regulator in France who now works at Alcatel-Lucent, argues governments have a role to play in enabling adequate broadband coverage.

"Many telcos just don't have the money to invest the sums that are needed," said Gauthey. "It's a massive effort not unlike electrifying a whole country."

A network spin-off could help Telecom Italia reach its debt reduction targets and cut its 30.4 billion euro debt pile - and the operator seems to be seriously considering the idea. In a recent presentation to investors at a Sanford Bernstein conference, Telecom Italia said the rewards of a separating out its fixed network now outweighed the risks.

A banker close to Telecom Italia put the probability of the group going through with the spin-off at 70 percent, and two other banking sources say the company is considering appointing two banks to advise it on the mechanics.

A decision can't come soon enough for businessmen like Siro Badon, who owns a business in a shoe manufacturing district near Venice where local companies export 92 percent of the 20 million pairs of shoes made every year.

"Some companies in our district work with brands like Louis Vuitton and Armani with stylists in Paris and all over the world. Imagine the huge damage it causes not being able to communicate swiftly," Badon said.

"Sometimes I feel we are carrying an old country on our shoulders. I wait and hope."

(Editing by Sophie Walker)

Reuter site - Apple snubs emerging mobile payment standard

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Apple snubs emerging mobile payment standard

Thu, Sep 13 20:47 PM EDT

By Alistair Barr and David Henry

SAN FRANCISCO/NEW YORK (Reuters) - EBay Inc Chief Executive John Donahoe often quotes a merchant saying NFC stands for "Not For Commerce" - and dismisses the prospects of Near Field Communication technology used to turn cellphones into mobile wallets.

He got some support this week from Apple Inc, which did not embed NFC chips into the iPhone 5.

NFC proponents had hoped Apple would endorse the technology, which passes encrypted data between devices at close range without contact. So instead of swiping a credit card, shoppers can simply wave their phones at a checkout terminal to pay for their goods.

The technology is backed by the largest U.S. carriers and credit card companies, but has failed to take off in America because merchants have been reluctant to spend money to upgrade their checkout terminals until NFC is more widely adopted.

"Anyone hoping NFC would be a reality soon is disappointed," said Sanjay Sakhrani, an analyst at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods. "Many in the industry were hoping inclusion in the iPhone would be a springboard for more adoption. This takes the impetus away."

NFC technology, which has uses beyond mobile payments, is backed by Isis, a mobile wallet joint venture between Verizon Wireless, AT&T Inc and T-Mobile USA. Isis' financial services partners include American Express, JPMorgan Chase and Capital One Financial.

Like many new technologies, NFC is hampered by a chicken-and-egg problem. Mobile phone makers like Apple are reluctant to take on the extra cost and engineering effort of embedding NFC chips because many merchants can't accept payments this way yet. Meanwhile, merchants won't install NFC until more consumers have the technology on their phones.

Isis said on Thursday that it was delaying the launch of its NFC mobile payments service for the second time this year.

"Isis has placed a massive bet on NFC," said David Evans, founder of Market Platform Dynamics and an adviser to companies in the payments business. Apple's decision "is another reason to believe that Isis doesn't have much promise of getting off the ground."

Apple did not include NFC because it is not clear the technology solves any current problem, marketing chief Phil Schiller told AllThingsD on Wednesday.

APPLE: WE'LL PASS

Instead of embracing NFC, Apple is developing Passbook, a mobile app that pulls together loyalty cards, tickets and coupons on the new iPhone. Many analysts consider this an early version of a digital wallet, except Passbook does not let users link their credit and debit cards yet.

Other digital wallets have already been developed by companies including eBay's PayPal, Google Inc and Visa Inc. These wallets aim to bring together credit and debit cards, bank accounts, loyalty cards, rewards and coupons in one place, letting shoppers pay for purchases mostly online, but increasingly in physical stores too.

NFC's advocates argue it eliminates plastic and cash and can be more secure than magnetic strips. But that alone will not persuade consumers to stop using credit cards in stores because plastic is already so convenient, experts say.

"It is a new technology and one that is unfamiliar to users. So that opens up new possibilities for abuse and naiveté," said Charlie Miller, principal research consultant with Accuvant. But he said NFC allows for interesting security options that traditional credit cards don't, such as account numbers that change dynamically.

PayPal is betting that other services that make digital wallets more useful will encourage consumers to switch - it is designing a digital wallet that helps consumers do as many things as possible from one place, including buying flight or movie tickets, sending money to other people and tapping coupons, rewards and loyalty cards.

"Technology is not what's going to win this digital wallet war. It's going to be about the consumer value proposition," said Carey Kolaja, senior director for PayPal's product team.

Others argue NFC still has potential, partly because merchant incentives from Visa and MasterCard are expected to spark a wave of payment terminal upgrades in coming years. These upgrades will include NFC capability.

"It is difficult to buy a new terminal that doesn't already have NFC technology, and soon it will be impossible," said Rick Oglesby of consulting firm Aite Group.

But the software and service providers behind the terminals will also have to be ready to accept and process payments that come with coupons, loyalty cards and rewards programs.

At the moment, most terminals can handle the amount of the transaction and the card number and not much else, Oglesby said.

Until this is all sorted out, Apple will likely wait to enter the payments business aggressively, Oglesby and others said. Apple took a similar approach to 4G LTE wireless technology, waiting until coverage was wide enough this year to unveil an iPhone that uses it, Oglesby noted.

"They won't do something until they know a lot of their customers will use the service," he said.

(Reporting By Alistair Barr in San Francisco and David Henry in New York; additional reporting by Jim Finkle in Boston and Sinead Carew in New York; Editing by Edwin Chan, Tiffany Wu and Phil Berlowitz)

Reuter site - Apple triumphs over Samsung in landmark patent case

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Apple triumphs over Samsung in landmark patent case

Fri, Aug 24 22:01 PM EDT

By Gerry Shih and Dan Levine

SAN JOSE, California (Reuters) - Apple Inc scored a sweeping legal victory over Samsung on Friday as a U.S. jury found the Korean company had copied critical features of the hugely popular iPhone and iPad and awarded the U.S. company $1.05 billion in damages.

The verdict -- which came after less than three days of jury deliberations -- could lead to an outright ban on sales of key Samsung products and will likely solidify Apple's dominance of the exploding mobile computing market.

Apple's victory is a big blow to Google, whose Android software powers the Samsung products that were found to infringe on Apple patents. Google and its hardware partners, including the company's own Motorola unit, could now face further legal hurdles in their effort to compete with the Apple juggernaut.

Samsung lawyers were grimfaced in the quiet but crowded San Jose courtroom as the verdict was read, and the company later put out a statement calling the outcome "a loss for the American consumer."

The jury deliberated for less than three days before delivering the verdict on seven Apple patent claims and five Samsung patent claims -- suggesting that the nine-person panel had little difficulty in concluding that Samsung had copied the iPhone and the iPad.

Because the panel found "willful" infringement, Apple could seek triple damages.

Apple upended the mobile phone business when it introduced the iPhone in 2007, and shook the industry again in 2010 when it rolled out the iPad.

It has been able to charge premium prices for the iPhone -- with profit margins of as much as 58 percent per phone -- for a product consumers regarded as a huge advance in design and usability.

The company's late founder, Steve Jobs, vowed to "go to thermonuclear war" when Google launched Android, according to his biographer, and the company has filed lawsuits around the world in an effort to block what it considers brazen copying of its inventions.

The legal win on Friday came one year after CEO Tim Cook assumed the helm of the company. Shares in Apple, which just this week became the biggest company by market value in history, climbed almost 2 percent to a record high of $675 in after-hours trade.

Brian Love, a Santa Clara law school professor, described the verdict as a crushing victory for Apple: "This is the best-case scenario Apple could have hoped for."

CHALLENGE FOR COMPETITORS

The verdict comes as competition in the mobile device industry intensifies, with Google jumping into hardware for the first time with its Nexus 7 tablet, and Microsoft's new touchscreen friendly Windows 8 coming in October, led by its "Surface" tablet.

Apple's victory could present immediate issues for companies that sell Android-based smartphones and tablets, including Google's own Motorola subsidiary, which it acquired last year for $12.5 billion, and HTC of Taiwan.

Amazon -- which has made major inroads into the tablet market with its cheaper Kindle Fire -- uses a modified version of Android for its Kindle products but has not yet been subject to legal challenge by Apple.

Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu said the entire Android universe may now have to consider "doing something different."

"It doesn't take a rocket scientist to look at it and figure it out," he said. "Prior to the iPhone, none of the phones were like that. Android, if you look at it, is very similar."

Some in the industry say Apple's legal offensive is bad for consumers.

"Thx Apple it's now mandatory for tech companies to sue each other. Prices go up, competition & innovation suffer," Mark Cuban, an Internet entrepreneur and owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team, said in a Twitter message.

But the legal battles are far from over. In a separate but related case, Apple has won a pre-trial injunction against the Google Nexus tablet. Another lawsuit, against Motorola, was thrown out recently by a federal judge in Chicago, but litigation between the two at the International Trade Commission continues.

Earlier on Friday, a South Korean court found that both companies shared blame for patent infringement, ordering Samsung to stop selling 10 products including its Galaxy S II phone and banning Apple from selling four different products, including its iPhone 4.

Still, the trial on Apple's home turf -- the world's largest and most influential technology market -- was considered the most important test of whether Apple would be able to gain substantial patent protection for the iPhone and the iPad.

FAST-PACED, HIGH-STRESS TRIAL

The legal fight began last year when Apple sued Samsung in multiple countries, and Samsung countersued. The U.S. jury spent most of August in a packed federal courtroom in San Jose -- just miles from Apple's headquarters in Cupertino -- listening to testimony, examining evidence and watching lawyers from both sides joust about patents and damage claims.

Jurors received over 100 pages of legal instructions from U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh on August 21, prior to hearing the closing arguments from attorneys.

Lawyers from both tech giants used their 25 hours each of trial time to present internal emails, draw testimony from designers and experts, and put on product demonstrations and mockups to convince the jury.

At times, their questions drew testimony that offered glimpses behind the corporate facade, such as the margins on the iPhone and Samsung's sales figures in the United States.

From the beginning, Apple's tactic was to present what it thought was chronological evidence of Samsung copying its phone.

Juxtaposing pictures of phones from both companies and internal Samsung emails that specifically analyzed the features of the iPhone, Apple's attorneys accused Samsung of taking shortcuts after realizing it could not keep up.

Samsung's attorneys, on the other hand, maintained Apple had no sole right to geometric designs such as rectangles with rounded corners. They called Apple's damage claim "ridiculous" and urged the jury to consider that a verdict in favor of Apple could stifle competition and reduce choices for consumers.

Samsung's trial team appeared to suffer from strategic difficulties throughout the case. Judge Koh gave each side 25 hours to present evidence, but Samsung had used more time than Apple before Samsung even began calling its own witnesses.

By the end of the trial, Samsung attorneys had to forgo cross-examination of some Apple witnesses due to time constraints. During closing arguments, Samsung lead attorney Charles Verhoeven played mostly defense, spending relatively little time discussing Samsung's patent claims against Apple.

The jury had not been expected to return a decision so rapidly. Even on Friday, Samsung's lead lawyer was spotted casually clad in a polo T-shirt and jeans.

But late Friday afternoon, a court officer announced a verdict had been reached. After the verdict was read, Koh found some inconsistencies in the complex jury form and asked the jury to revisit it, ultimately resulting in a reduction of about $2 million in the damages award.

The jury decided Samsung infringed six out of seven Apple patents in the case, and that Apple had not infringed any of Samsung's patents. Apple's protected technology includes the ability for a mobile device to distinguish one finger on the screen or two, the design of screen icons, and the front surface of the phone.

The jury also upheld the validity of Apple's patents, and said Samsung acted willfully when it violated several of Apple's patents. That could form a basis for Koh to triple the damages tab owed by Samsung.

"This is a vindication of Apple's effort to create significant airspace around their design, and that's relevant not just for Samsung, but for firms coming over the horizon," said Nick Rodelli, a lawyer and adviser to institutional investors for CFRA Research in Maryland.

Apple's lawyers said they planned to file for an injunction against Samsung products within seven days. Koh set a hearing for September 20.

The case in U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, is Apple Inc v. Samsung Electronics Co Ltd et al, No. 11-1846.

(Additional reporting by Poornima Gupta and Edwin Chan; Editing by Gary Hill)

Reuter site - Kodak to sell retail print, document imaging businesses

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Kodak to sell retail print, document imaging businesses

Thu, Aug 23 17:54 PM EDT

By Nick Brown

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Eastman Kodak Co said on Thursday it plans to sell most of its consumer and document imaging businesses and shift its focus to commercial printing as it works to emerge from bankruptcy.

The once-dominant photography firm, already in the midst of auctioning off its digital patent portfolio, hopes to complete the sales by mid-2013, Chief Executive Antonio Perez said in a conference call on Thursday.

The company needs to raise nearly $700 million to pay back its creditors and exit bankruptcy, and initially hoped its patent sale would generate at least that much. But more than two weeks into its auction and still without a deal, the company may be looking for other ways to raise cash.

"For ensuring sufficient funding for successful emergence (from bankruptcy), the sale of these businesses is important in that regard," Perez said on the call.

Kodak went bankrupt in January, unable to adapt to the shift to digital imaging.

The businesses to be sold are Kodak's personalized imaging business, which includes most consumer products and retail printing kiosks, and its document imaging business, which makes scanners for enterprise customers.

Perez declined to comment on the progress of the patent sale. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that initial bids, including from Apple Inc and Google Inc, came in lower than expected.

The auction began on August 8 and had been scheduled to wrap up by August 13, but Kodak extended the deadline as talks continued without a buyer.

The newly-announced sales would mean that Kodak would emerge from bankruptcy as a different company than when it went in, with less of a focus on consumer and retail, and heavier attention to commercial, packaging and functional printing.

"You can't succeed these days without focusing in certain areas and putting all your money in areas that are synergetic with each other," Perez said, adding that he believes Kodak is "as strong or stronger" in the commercial space as in the consumer space.

Perez would not reveal the estimated value of the businesses to be sold.

The bankruptcy is in Re: Eastman Kodak Co. et al, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York, No. 12-10202.

(Reporting By Nick Brown in New York; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)

Reuter site - Facebook co-founder Moskovitz sold stock post lockup

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Facebook co-founder Moskovitz sold stock post lockup

Fri, Aug 24 21:39 PM EDT

(Reuters) - Facebook Inc co-founder Dustin Moskovitz sold 450,000 Class A shares over the past three days, his second such sale since last Friday, becoming the latest insider to sell shares following the end of the lockup, according to a regulatory filing late on Friday evening.

Moskovitz, who was Facebook's first chief technology officer, sold the shares in three batches of 150,000 shares each beginning on Wednesday, raising more than $8.7 million.

A regulatory filing from Tuesday shows a similar 450,000 share sale in three batches beginning last Friday through Tuesday, raising a little over $8.83 million.

Earlier this week, Facebook director Peter Thiel sold roughly $400 million worth of shares in the company, as investors look to cash out their stake after the end of the first lockup, which barred early investors and insiders from selling shares following the initial public offering.

Moskovitz, a onetime Harvard roommate of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, had been with the company since its earliest days and left in 2008 to form a social-networking company for business called Asana.

Moskovitz still owns 6.6 million Facebook Class A shares and 126.2 million Class B shares, according to the filing.

More than 1.4 billion additional shares held by early investors and Facebook employees are set to become available for trading by year's end, as additional post-IPO lockup restrictions are lifted.

Facebook shares closed at $19.41 on Friday on the Nasdaq, down 3 cents.

(Reporting by Aman Shah in Bangalore; editing by Carol Bishopric)

Reuter site - Two members of punk rock band flee Russia

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Two members of punk rock band flee Russia

Sun, Aug 26 09:19 AM EDT

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Two members of Russia's anti-Kremlin punk band Pussy Riot have fled the country to avoid prosecution for staging a protest against President Vladimir Putin at a church altar, the band said on Sunday.

A Moscow court sentenced three members of the all-female opposition band to two years in prison on August 17 for staging a "punk prayer" at the Christ the Saviour Cathedral in February and calling on the Virgin Mary to rid Russia of Putin.

The sentence drew sharp international criticism of the Russian government, while opposition groups at home have portrayed it as part of a Kremlin clampdown on dissent.

Police said earlier this week they were searching for other members of the band.

"In regard to the pursuit, two of our members have successfully fled the country! They are recruiting foreign feminists to prepare new actions!," a Twitter account called Pussy Riot Group said.

Defence lawyers of the convicted Pussy Riot members - Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich - are expected to appeal against their sentences next week.

Tolokonnikova's husband, Pyotr Verzilov, told Reuters on Sunday that the two members of the group who have fled Russia had taken part in the cathedral protest along with his wife.

"Since the Moscow police said they are searching for them, they will keep a low profile for now. They are in a safe place beyond the reach of the Russian police," he said by phone.

Asked if that meant a country which had no extradition agreement with Russia, Verzilov said: "Yes, that suggests that."

"But you must remember that 12 or even 14 members who are still in Russia actively participate in the band's work now, it's a big collective," he added.

The Kremlin has dismissed criticism by Western governments and prominent musicians including Madonna and Sting as politically motivated.

Putin, back at the Kremlin since May for his third presidential term, said before the three band members were sentenced that they should not be judged too harshly.

Under Russian law the three Pussy Riot members put on trial could have faced as much as seven years' jail for hooliganism motivated by religious hatred, but the prosecutors asked for three years and they were sentenced to two.

(Reporting by Gabriela Baczynska, editing by Tim Pearce)

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Reuter site - Factbox: Journalists killed in Syria

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Factbox: Journalists killed in Syria

Tue, Aug 21 08:24 AM EDT

(Reuters) - More than 18,000 people have been killed in Syria since the revolt against President Bashar al-Assad began in March, 2011, according to the United Nations.

Here are some of the foreign and Syrian journalists who have died in the conflict:

FOREIGNERS

January 11, 2012 - Gilles Jacquier, of France 2 television station, is killed along with at least seven other people by bombardment during a government-organized visit to Homs. He was the first foreign journalist to be killed in the uprising.

February 22 - Marie Colvin, an American who worked for Britain's Sunday Times and Remi Ochlik, a French photographer, are killed by bombardment in Homs.

February 16 - New York Times journalist Anthony Shadid, an American of Lebanese descent, dies of an asthma attack while reporting in eastern Syria.

April 9 - Ali Shaaban, a Lebanese cameraman for Lebanon's Al-Jadeed television channel is killed by gunfire near the border between Syria and Lebanon's northern Wadi Khaled area.

August 20 - Mika Yamamoto, a Japanese journalist working for independent news wire Japan Press, is fatally wounded while travelling with the rebel Free Syrian Army in Aleppo.

SYRIANS

November 20, 2011 - Cameraman Ferzat Jerban is found dead in Homs.

December 27 - Basil al-Sayed, a freelance cameraman, dies days after being shot in the Baba Amr neighborhood in Homs.

January 4, 2012 - Shukri Abu Burghul, who worked for state-run Radio Damascus, dies in Damascus days after being shot.

February 4 - Mazhar Tayyara, a photo journalist who contributed to Agence France-Presse and other international outlets, is killed in Homs.

February 24 - Anas al-Tarsha, a videographer who documented unrest in Homs, is killed in a mortar attack.

June 27 - Gunmen storm headquarters of pro-government Syrian television channel Ikhbariya, killing three employees.

August 5 - Islamist militant group claims responsibility for the kidnap and killing of Syrian state television presenter Mohammed al-Saeed.

August 11 - Gunmen kill Ali Abbas, head of domestic news at state news agency SANA, at his Damascus home. Bara'a Yusuf al-Bushi, who contributed to international outlets including Al Arabiya, Al Jazeera and Sky News, is killed the same day.

Additional sources:

The Committee to Protect Journalists www.cpj.org/

Reporters Sans Frontieres (Reporters Without Borders) http://en.rsf.org/

Index on Censorship http://www.indexoncensorship.org/

(Compiled by David Cutler, London Editorial Reference Unit; Editing by Alistair Lyon)