Social Media

It's official: The social network used by more than 900 million people worldwide is now a publicly traded company.

Facebook shares finally started trading on the Nasdaq stock exchange today after the company priced its IPO shares at $38 dollars on Thursday, which made it the biggest technology IPO ever for the U.S. stock markets.

A glitch processing orders delayed the public debut this morning. Then more glitches with order processing on the Nasdaq caused confusion and put a cloud over the much anticipated debut. In a surprise to some financial analysts, Facebook shares failed to enjoy the big price pop that hot IPOs typical enjoy. The IPO price of $38 jumped to $42 at the opening; but after rising a bit more, the price fell back quickly to hover around the original offering price before climbing back over $40.

As major IPOs go, Facebook's was considered a disappointment. Analysts weren't too sure how much of the weak price action was due to the general downtrend in the stock market, versus worries over the company's business prospects as revealed in the Facebook S-1 filing.

Facebook Inc. may finally become a publicly traded company this week, with its long anticipated IPO stock offering apparently scheduled for Friday, though some news outfits are reporting it could be delayed.

The offering is expected to sell 337 shares to the public at a total cost of up to $35 per share, which would make Facebook's stock sale the biggest Internet IPO ever.

To read up on what pundits are saying about the investment prospects for this social networking giant, check out these articles:

• PC Magazine offers an overview of the IPO and what it means to various groups of users and investors
• Bloomberg News says Apple co-Founder Steve Wozniak is buying, even though Bloomberg also reported that institutional demand for the stock is lower than expected due to concerns about its slowing growth rate.

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If you're wondering why you like Facebook and Twitter as much as food and sex, researchers at Harvard may have some clues for you.

In a study published last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team reported that sharing information about ourselves -- zapping out that status update or tweet, for example-- stimulates our brain's pleasure centers just like food and sex.

It's still not clear, though, whether these happy feelings we get talking about me, me, me in tweets, status updates and other social messages are a good thing or a bad thing. It's probably both, even though a lot of people may not think so when they feel like they're suffering from social networking addiction.

Micro video sharing apps and photo sharing apps are the fastest growing category of mobile applications based on time spent using them, according to a report from mobile research firm Flurry.

The report measured which activities on smart phones are gaining speed or claiming a larger amount of time spent by users. Mobile video sharing and photo sharing claimed 89 percent more time spent by mobile phone users in March 2012 than in October 2011, the report said. Music apps were second, with time spent using those increasing 72 percent.

Flurry's conclusions were based on a sampling of millions of smart phone users; its software tracks usage for thousands of apps across major mobile operating systems. Read More...

Viddy, the mobile video sharing app, made a splash Friday when it announced that it had reeled in another $30 million from private investors to gear up for the heated competition to become the Youtube or maybe the Twitter of mobile video messaging. Viddy is seen as an emerging leader to become your phone's No. 1 video sharing pal, but plenty of others are strong contenders.

The Chicago Tribune noted in this article that a particular strong competitor is SocialCam.

My eye is also on another up-and-coming mobile video app called Tout, a total Twitter-for-video knockoff that offers video status updates. Tout has been on a publicity tear, trying to catch up with its rivals.

To learn more about each app, try these reviews:

• Tout Review
• Viddy Review

Facebook released an update to its mobile Messenger app on Friday to let people see who's reading their messages, and to add the location of the person who sent each message. The "Read Receipts" feature and other Messenger updates are available for both iPhone and Android devices.

The new features apply only to the standalone Facebook Messenger app, not to the general Facebook mobile app (which also includes some messaging capability, but not as robust as the mobile messenger.) Eventually, Facebook plans to add these new features to its general mobile app, too.

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Facebook purchased two-year-old mobile startup Glancee and is incorporating its founders into the larger social network, according to a note posted on Glancee's website.

Glancee homepage announces acquisition.

Glancee is a mobile phone app designed to help people meet other folks who are physically nearby and share Facebook friends and interests. It's available for iPhones and Android devices, and integrates with Facebook to leverage people's friends on the social network.

Glancee and a rival app, Highlight, were among the mobile apps that drew loads of attention a few months ago at the annual South by Southwest Interactive Festival in Texas. Bloomberg reported tonight that Facebook paid an undisclosed sum for Glancee. Glancee invited existing users to download their data through its Facebook app.

Mobile video sharing apps are all the rage this year, with literally dozens of startups vying to become your indispensible tool for turbo-charging that videocamera on your smart phone.

Klip video sharing app

To figure out which app is right for you, check out these guides describing the most popular mobile video tools:

* Micro Video Overview: Learn about the different types of tools available for editing and sharing short micro videos shot on cell phones in this explanatory guide.

* Top Apps for Mobile Video Sharing: Learn about Viddy, Klip, SocialCam, Glmps and Vimessa in this roundup on the top mobile video sharing apps.

* Top Apps for Video Status Updates A whole new class of mobile video apps is springing up to help people record quick video messages. Think of them as video versions of Twitter. Keek, Tout, Vloggo, VYou are just a few of these video status update apps.

Here's a look at a few stories trending in social media this week:

Klout Scores Used in Hiring

Wired published a noteworthy story about employers using Klout scores as a screening tool to evaluate job applicants. Klout, you may recall, is the trendy social media metrics firm that analyzes data from social media platforms in order to quantify each person's online influence. The Wired story has all kinds of examples of how Klout scores are being used,  even though their reliability remains in dispute. There's no question, however, that the young science of measuring social media influence is becoming more important.

Facebook Users Surpass 900 Million

In an amended IPO document filed this week, Facebook reported its number of monthly active users hit 901 million people as of March 31. It added 56 million new monthly users in the first quarter of this year, according to the filing with the SEC. Monthly active users were up 33 percent from the same period in 2011.

LinkedIn Launches iPad App

LinkedIn's new app for the iPad is drawing mostly good reviews. The professional networking site launched the tablet app in an apparent bid to drive more daily use. Even though it has 150 million users, LinkedIn has acknowledged that its members don't use the service nearly as often as people use Facebook.

Everyone knows Facebook shelled out a small fortune to buy photo-sharing service Instagram, but did you know video clones of Instagram are the latest rage?

Buzz is building around these new social and mobile video apps, especially the mobile video sharing services that have plugged themselves into Facebook Timeline so they are starting to go viral.

One hot one is Viddy, a year-old mobile video app that lets people add special visual effects and music to videos shot on their iPhones with one click of an FX button. Viddy is only available for iPhones at the moment, but the company is working on an Android version.

Read more: How to Use Viddy