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Investors wanting to get in on the Facebook IPO might soon find out what it feels like to get "unfriended."

When it comes to the initial public offering of Facebook, the world's largest social network, there's ironically very little for the masses. Facebook's IPO, as with most IPOs, will only be sold at the offering price to privileged investors. Most regular investors who want a piece of the company will have to wait until the shares start to trade on the stock market, possibly at a price much higher than at which they were offered to initial investors.

Facebook is following the traditional investment banking model for IPOs, which typically limits the number of individual investors who can get access at the IPO price. How it works:

The company will first file the prospectus, or S-1, a document that explains the details of the business and IPO. As regulators review the S-1, Facebook will then meet with large investors such as mutual funds and pension funds.

When it comes time for the shares to be sold, they're first offered to these large mutual funds and pension funds able to buy the largest amounts of stock. Meanwhile, the major investment banks leading the deal, specifically Morgan Stanley, may allow some of their best customers, typically high-net-worth individuals, to buy shares at the IPO price, says Jay Ritter, professor of finance at the University of Florida.

Once the stock starts to trade on the exchange, those privileged investors may then sell into the open market, where all investors may compete to buy the shares. Most likely, if demand is as strong as expected, the share price may jump, forcing regular investors to pay up for the shares.

There has been some effort by discount brokerage firms to offer IPO shares to customers. Fidelity, for instance, has offered more...

As campaign rhetoric boils and Americans on both sides of the political divide hurl insults, law enforcement officials are watching social media carefully for threats or signs of violence.

The Secret Service says political incivility is nothing new, but the Internet is making more of the venom public.

"Historically, it's the same issues we've always had and the same things people are upset about," Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan said. "There are just a lot more venues for people to put it out there, including the Internet."

Last week, a group of Arizona men, including a Peoria, Ariz., police sergeant, triggered a federal investigation when they appeared in a photo posted on Facebook with weapons and what appears to be a bullet-riddled image of President Obama. The sergeant has been removed from patrol and assigned to desk duties pending an internal investigation.

On Wednesday, the Secret Service assigned protection to Mitt Romney, who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination. Republican contender Herman Cain, who has dropped out of the race, had also received federal protection.

The Secret Service assesses every potential threat, or what Sullivan calls "inappropriate interest," to determine whether someone is simply mouthing off or intends to act. The agency won't say how many threats it fields. "We are very aggressive in running it down," Sullivan said.

The agency established an Internet threat desk in 2000, spokesman Ed Donovan said. "Logic dictates we receive more information to sift through and look at, but it doesn't necessarily translate to more cases," he said.

Donald Tucker, a Phoenix private investigator who served as a Secret Service agent for 25 years, says he's stunned by the level of incivility and disrespect. He said he fears the nasty rhetoric could trigger violence.

"I have never seen any political campaign with the type of hatred, animosity and language directed not only...

Twitter is one of the most frequently mentioned social networks for businesses adopting social marketing. But how can you tell if a tweet is boring or not? A group of researchers is trying to set some guidelines, having found that users actively dislike, or are neutral about, most tweets.

The researchers, from Carnegie Mellon, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Georgia Institute of Technology, created a Web site called Who Gives a Tweet? at WGATweet.com. Users registering with the site are asked to rate tweets of friends and strangers, and to have theirs similarly rated.

Only About One-Third Enjoyed

Although more than 200 million tweets are sent by Twitter each day, few users get any feedback about whether their followers enjoy their mini-observations, or even if they continue to read them.

The researchers point out that a better understanding of what makes for an interesting tweet could lead to better content filters and other tools, such as automatically showing location check-ins on maps. It could also lead to more effective marketing and political use of Twitter.

One graduate student involved in the research, Kurt Luther at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said that the Who Gives a Tweet? site allows "a more nuanced type of feedback than is currently available," with insight on how updates are seen by different groups.

Over nearly three weeks in December, 1,443 users visited the site, and provided analysis of 43,738 tweets from more than 2,000 user accounts. The comments indicate that slightly more than a third of the tweets, or 36 percent, were enjoyed, while 25 percent were disliked. The feeling toward 39 percent was neutral.

Tweeting Guidelines

Generally speaking, the researchers found, the least-liked tweets are those that relay snippets of other people's conversations, or that give an update on current moods or activities. The best liked were ones that...

As Facebook heads toward its IPO destiny on Wall Street, speculation grows over whether the world's leading social network can and will continue to offer its service for free.

The company has long boasted that it's "free and always will be," even featuring that phrase on its sign-up page.

Meeting Expectations

But will that change when investors start demanding even bigger returns than Facebook can provide from their current application partnerships and ad sales, which generated a $1 billion profit last year?

"Typically, investors put new pressures on a company that the company is not ready for," said technology analyst Jeff Kagan. "Investors always mean there are too many captains on the bridge. Do you focus on the customer, on the competitors, on the workers or on the investors? This is where many companies get it wrong and end up in trouble."

Even a $1 fee per month from what Facebook says are 850 million users would bring in more than $10 billion a year, offsetting operating expenses to maximize profit from traditional revenue streams. How many people addicted to sharing status updates and other information with their network of friends would bail rather than pay that nominal fee?

Alternatively, Facebook could set up a premium service, similar to Microsoft's Xbox Live membership that offers enhanced features over the free membership. Many newspapers now offer additional services and content behind a paywall.

Rumors Swirl

Paid Facebook accounts would run contrary to the path of Internet trailblazer America Online, which started out with a range of account levels based on time spent online and is now free.

Perhaps because the progression seems so natural, rumors have long persisted that paid use is right around the corner. A viral hoax spread via status updates last fall said the new Timeline changes coming to user profiles would usher in membership fees.

There...

Mozilla has unleashed a new Firefox 10 browser that marks the organization's first implementation of a new schedule that will give businesses and their vendors enough time to certify each new Firefox release while maintaining a high level of Web security.

Many enterprises, SMBs, academic institutions and government agencies have found it difficult to deploy Firefox to their users in a managed environment. To address their concerns, Firefox 10 will be Mozilla's first extended support release, or ESR.

Though future ESRs for business environments will occur at 42-week intervals, enterprises and other organizations will continue to receive security updates in the interim -- but without Mozilla making any other changes to the Web or its Firefox add-ons platform.

The new ESR schedule is key for enterprise adoption, said Al Hilwa, director of applications software development at IDC.

"Mozilla does not have a big base of enterprise customers at this point, but does have a few who have found rapid, forced updates a problem," Hilwa said in an e-mail Thursday. "This should help these customers and also potentially win over others."

Keeping Developers in the Fold

Thursday's release of Firefox 10 comes at a time when the upward trend for Google's Chrome browser on desktop PCs and laptops has come to a halt, according to Net Applications. The bad news for Mozilla is that Internet Explorer's market share rose 1.1 percent last month to 53 percent, while Firefox slipped one percentage point to 20.9 percent. Google's Chrome declined 0.17 percent to 18.9 percent of the browser market.

Going forward, however, Mozilla will be able to distinguish itself by offering "a more customized browser that supports a broader range of operating systems -- and one that can help enterprises protect their privacy," Hilwa said. "I think this is a win for Mozilla, which stands to...

Facebook finally filed for its initial public offering. Now the social-media giant can look ahead to a potentially new source of revenue from "social advertising." Or it could come out with plump prices, only to deflate after a few quarters.

Many industry watchers expect Facebook's valuation to range between $75 billion and $100 billion. Facebook wants to raise up to $10 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal. Facebook posted a $1 billion profit in 2011 on $3.71 billion in revenues.

"The social network IPOs have been trending down. What is interesting is there appears to be no connection to financial viability," said Rob Enderle, principal analyst at Enderle Group. "The weakest company was Groupon, which started the strongest. The strongest company was Zynga and it was also the most tightly connected to Facebook and it barely made it out of the gate."

Dampened Success?

As Enderle sees it, Facebook is massively popular but there is also a sense that people are tiring of social networks. And that, for all the hoopla over the long-anticipated Facebook IPO, could significantly dampen their initial success.

"Odds were this would go big initially and then collapse down to a more reasonable price. Facebook is limiting supply to drive initial price into the stratosphere," Enderle said.

"If investors see the subsequent fall like they apparently did with Zynga, Facebook's initial high could be a fraction of numbers we've been discussing so far. And their prospectus does point to a strategy that likely will have them operating in the red, with more investment expenses than revenue for some time after the offering.

"While I still think it will initially come out strong -- it is Facebook, after all -- the risk it won't is increasing, and suggests caution," he said.

Power of Social Advertising

But new research by Catherine Tucker, associate...

Brocade and Cisco are making a big splash in cloud-optimized switches this week. While Cisco is pushing 100-gigabit Ethernet capabilities to its switch portfolio, Brocade is rolling out advancements to its ServerIron ADX series of cloud-optimized application delivery switches.

Dubbed OpenScript, ADX now offers an open platform that paves the way for intelligent predictions of network impacts before developers introduce scripts into production. OpenScript is built on Perl, a standards-based programming language, and allows ADX customers to customize service delivery to drive performance and scalability improvements.

"Brocade has been dancing around the application delivery controller space for years -- since they acquired Foundry. F5 has been the run away leader in that market for some time," said Zeus Kerravala, principal analyst at ZK Research.

"Brocade's core competency was historically on the network side while Foundry was always focused on performance. The traditional app delivery space went more down a path where application prowess started being more than pure horsepower and raw speed, which was Foundry's strength."

Critical Customization

With its latest innovation, Brocade is showing that it understands how critical service customization and traffic manipulation are for businesses as they move to deliver cloud-based services. The OpenScript engine promises network operators the freedom they need to deploy custom capabilities to meet their individualized needs.

And the Brocade OpenScript Performance Estimator lets network operators estimate the performance impact of custom scripts before implementing them in live production environments. That opens the door for more accurate service capacity requirement planning. Customers are responding positively to the new version.

"Application delivery performance, scalability and flexibility are critical requirements for our customers. These requirements have a direct effect on our ability to scale our business while exceeding customer expectations," said Rob Jackson, solution line leader for networking and security at Rackspace.

Jackson said the ADX solution would let Rackspace implement "stable,...

Having established itself recently as the world's leading computer maker, Apple has now moved into third place among phone makers worldwide. According to a new report, the jump from the fifth spot is largely due to record-breaking shipments of its iPhone 4S smartphone.

The report, from industry research firm IDC, noted that sales of the 4S were particularly strong in Japan as well as the U.S. It also found that, while the overall mobile phone market grew 6.1 percent in the fourth quarter compared with a year ago, this is the lowest growth in over two years because the feature phone market is dropping fast. The third quarter of last year showed 9.3 percent growth overall.

Few 'Stupid' Phones Anymore

Although smartphone sales are growing, most of the phones shipped are still feature phones. Ramon Llamas, an IDC senior research analyst, said in a statement that, "even though their proportion is ending, feature phones maintain their appeal on the basis of price and ease of use."

Even as the boundary between smartphones and small tablets is becoming less distinct, so is the difference between smartphones and feature phones. The IDC report noted that feature phones "are becoming more like smartphones, incorporating mobile Internet and third-party applications."

Michael Gartenberg, research director at Gartner, said that "it's hard to tell what's a smartphone anymore." He added that feature phones are showing more capabilities, and smartphones can be obtained through carriers for little or nothing.

"It's difficult to find a stupid phone these days," he said.

Gartenberg pointed out that, when the 4S was released, many observers expressed disappointment that it wasn't more innovative, more of an advance over previous models. But, he said, "Apple has sold boatloads of them," which has now pushed its position higher on the worldwide scale.

Nokia Still No. 1

The IDC report noted that Nokia...

Despite rising sales, Amazon, the largest Internet retailer, reported a 57% decline in its fourth-quarter profit due to heavy spending.

The Seattle-based company also said it may fall short of analysts' earnings estimates for the current quarter as it continues to invest in long-term initiatives, such as the Kindle Fire tablet and Amazon Prime, aimed at enticing customers to buy more and exclusively on its site.

Net income fell to $177 million from $416 million a year earlier. Revenue rose 35% to $17.4 billion. But revenue fell short of analysts' estimates. The stock closed Tuesday at $194.44, but fell as much as 11% in after-hours trading.

Amazon's revenue growth was clipped as more customers flocked to items sold by other vendors on its site, Colin Sebastian, an analyst at Robert W. Baird, told Bloomberg. Millions of third-party sellers now represent 36% of products sold, Amazon says. "Whenever there's a mix-shift toward third party, it helps margins, but it reduces revenue" growth, he says.

Heavy spending ate into net income. Much of the $17.2 billion Amazon spent for operations during the quarter, a 38% year-over-year rise, was to pay for shipping, to subsidize the production of Kindle Fire and to build fulfillment centers.

Amazon's growth strategy involves enticing customers to buy its Kindle tablets and e-readers at low cost so that they'll be compelled to buy books, songs and movies from the company. The company is also heavily promoting membership in Amazon Prime, which costs $79 a year and includes free shipping and free streaming of selected TV shows and movies. Amazon is betting that customers will buy more if they're not concerned about shipping costs.

But some investors aren't convinced the bet will pay off. Sales of books and DVDs rose 14.8% to $6 billion. But Amazon stock has dropped 12.6% in the last six months.

Still,...

The television set won't be the only place to watch video of the New York Giants and the New England Patriots this Sunday. For the first time, U.S. football fans will be able to watch the Super Bowl live on a computer or on a phone.

You may be wondering whether anyone without super-strength eyesight would be able to follow the football on a tiny phone screen. And what about the ads? After all, many people tune in more for the commercials than for the game.

I got a chance to test the offering with a pair of playoff games and last weekend's all-star Pro Bowl. Although it's impossible to say what will happen Sunday, I have found the experience decent so far, but no substitute for the big screen.

The phone offering is made possible through a collaboration involving the National Football League, Comcast Corp.'s NBC and Verizon Wireless. The nation's largest wireless carrier had rights to carry NBC's Sunday night broadcasts live during the regular season, as well as some games from the NFL Network and ESPN. The post-season games broadcast by NBC are an extension of that package.

That means you'll need service through Verizon Wireless to watch on an iPhone or an Android phone. Unless you have the higher-speed 4G service through Verizon, you'll also need its V Cast video service, which costs $3 a day or $10 a month on top of your regular phone bill. A generous data plan or a Wi-Fi connection will help you avoid additional charges.

If you don't have the right phone or wireless carrier, or if you have a super-cheap data plan with low caps, you can watch for free on a computer instead at NBCSports.com. You can interact with the game more that way, but you won't get the same commercials.

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