Mark Zuckerberg will face taxes of around $1.67 billion when he inevitably exercises options to buy 120 million shares in Facebook. What’s a mere multi-millionnaire to do?

Well, many pundits expect the 27-year-old CEO to sell back about $1.67 billion of Facebook Inc. stock in the company’s initial public offering to cover his tax liabilities. And even then, such a figure will be a drop in the ocean compared to the value of Zuckerberg’s overall stake in the social network, which could be worth as much as $28.4 billion.

Facebook’s IPO filing, first made on February 1, proposes a valuation of $75 billion to $100 billion, though the company attracted a valuation of at least $94 billion (about $40 a share) when it auctioned its shares on the private market this week.

The IPO filing goes on to address Zuckerberg’s tasty tax bill:

“We expect that substantially all of the net proceeds Mr. Zuckerberg will receive upon such sale will be used to satisfy taxes that he will incur upon his exercise of an outstanding stock option to purchase 120,000,000 shares.”

Incidentally, as tax rates are a hot topic right now, Zuckerberg’s tax rate will be 35 percent, according to Victor Fleischer, associate professor of law at the University of Colorado.

Businessweek got a ‘no comment’ when it approached Larry Yu, a spokesman for Facebook, yesterday.

[Via Businessweek]

Mark Zuckerberg May Cover Taxes By Selling $1.67 Billion in Facebook Stock is a post from: The Inquisitr

Facebook is apparently quite the money making machine, which it should be I guess with almost a billion users (and yes it is almost there) but this is nothing compared to how much money it will be worth once it goes public with a much rumored IPO.

If you think that MArk Zuckerberg is rich now it is nothing compared to after his company hits the stock market with its initial offering. It is suggested that when Facebook does go for its IPO the company will have a value of anywhere from $10 billion to $100 billion.

No matter how you look at that is a honkin’ lot of money and social media guy Greg Voakes decided that in order to easily understand the enormity of the money involved it needed a handy dandy infographic to help us navigate through the flood of money.

via AllThingsD

Infographic explains just what the humongous Facebook IPO will look like is a post from: The Inquisitr

I love the Web. I love writing about the Web and for the most part one can ignore the stupid stuff that gets posted on a daily basis – sometimes.

Today was one of those days and even though my good friend Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins over at SiliconANGLE was much more cerebral in his response to Austin Carr’s post at Fast Company I’m afraid I can’t be. After all when someone puts forth the argument that Mark Zuckerberg is more powerful that the President of the United States you have to seriously wonder what drugs the person must be on.

Yet this is exactly the point Carr was trying to make and what is really scary about this whole thing is that I can just see the social media pundits lapping this stuff up. What’s even scarier, given Hollywood’s inability to create good movies, is that I could see this premise as a sequel to that other ridiculous movie about Facebook.

Who knows maybe Carr will have a bit part in the movie and I have the perfect title

top image courtesy of SiliconANGLE

Zuckerberg more powerful than Obama? Someone take away Carr’s drugs is a post from: The Inquisitr

If there is one thing you can say about Mark Zuckerberg it is that he great at the ass-kissing ‘oopps we’re sorry‘ type of PR that Facebook is becoming so well known for.

His latest foray into this realm of gag-inducing public relations spin doctoring is a letter published in the Washington Post this morning. It contains all the right words placed in the right way in order to try and convince everyone once more that Facebook, like some recalcitrant child caught with its hand in the proverbial cookie jar, has seen the error of its ways and will make it all up to us.

Ya. Okay. Whatever.

Here’s the PR spin talking points that Zuckerberg made sure to get out there:

Here are the principles under which Facebook operates:

– You have control over how your information is shared.

– We do not share your personal information with people or services you don’t want.

– We do not give advertisers access to your personal information.

– We do not and never will sell any of your information to anyone.

– We will always keep Facebook a free service for everyone.

Uh-huh.

Here’s the uncensored and real principals that Facebook operates by:

Facebook needs to be making enormous amounts of money.

In order for them to make enormous amounts of money they need the users of the service to share everything possible in order to make Facebook the most attractive platform available.

In order to make these enormous amounts of money Facebook will do whatever it needs to in order to make you share everything possible.

Sure Facebook might indeed bring new easier controls for people to use but the one thing no-one is talking about is whether Facebook will be changing to opt-in rather than the current opt-on model. As well there is no talk about whether; in light of these new control, Facebook will be rolling back its recent changes to what they were before all this mess started.

So once again we see Facebook’s now typical modus operandi in action – push everyone to their limits, profess regret when the outrage gets too loud, and then appear to acquiesce while rolling out the PR machine. In the end though it is the old case of two steps forward and then one back in order to appear like they care.

Here’s a hint – they don’t.

Zuckerberg please stop. You are making me want to gag. is a post from: The Inquisitr

So, Facebook is calling an all hands meeting today to try and deal with this privacy firestorm that their megalomaniac of leader has gotten them into – think it will do any good?

Personally, I doubt it. Sure they might pull another Beacon rollback move but in the end they’ll wait a little while, come up with a fancy new name and roll it out all over again.

The fact is that Facebook is a juggernaut that will weather the storm even though its moves have cost it some high profile users. It also helps that the Web has an incredibly short memory and a love of shiny new things so Zuckerberg can probably rest easy as something else will come along fairly shortly to distract us.

As long as it isn’t more gems like this one courtesy of Business Insider of an instant message exchange between Zuckerberg and an unknown friend in university.

According to SAI sources, the following exchange is between a 19-year-old Mark Zuckerberg and a friend shortly after Mark launched The Facebook in his dorm room:

Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard

Zuck: Just ask.

Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS

[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How’d you manage that one?

Zuck: People just submitted it.

Zuck: I don’t know why.

Zuck: They “trust me”

Zuck: Dumb fucks.

Ouch!

Gee Zuckerbaby it’s sure nice to know what you think of the people making you so filthy rich.

Zuckerberg thinks people using Facebook are dumb f*cks is a post from: The Inquisitr

I see that Facebook it taking a lot of well deserved flack over it’s recent changes to its Terms Of Service (TOS) to the point that baby faced Zuckerberg had to come down from his ivory tower and try to stem the flow of negative comments about the changes. I won’t bother going into all the finer points of what has changed since many of the bigger voices are chipping in their two cents worth – even down to Perez Hilton calling for a boycott of the service (like that will ever happen).

In the process of all this verbiage flying back and forth people like Kara Swisher chimes in with the following little gem

Here’s the key definition of interactive: “mutually or reciprocally active.”

That means once you send something to others, it is out there in cyberspace forever, never ever to return.

And that goes double on social-networking sites, where–let’s be honest–people egregiously overshare and then get all righteous when it is explained to them that sharing means, um, sharing.

As in: You cannot take it back, if you have shared with 476 of your closest “friends,” your bikini shots from Cabo.

The fact is that the moment you sign up to any of the myriad of social media services you can kiss any concept of personal privacy goodbye. That is the trade off you make with you sign on the dotted line with the devil’s many cool little toys you want to play with. Privacy in this instance a thing of the past.

What bothers me is that no one is up in arms over the fact that once you upload anything to Facebook they own that material regardless of what it is forever. All those photos you upload belongs to Facebook, all those messages passed between ‘friends’ now belongs to Facebook and all you expressed opinions belong to Facebook. It is these facts of ownership that is being overshadowed by the bullshit argument about privacy.

From their TOS – just to refresh your memories

You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service

While we are busy playing the shell game over the so-called privacy issue Facebook has at the same time etched in stone that for time immemorial it owns all the things you upload and it can do anything it wants with it – to which you have no say what so ever. If it wants to use that really cute picture of your granny in any way it seems fit there is nothing you can do about it. If it wants to use something you have said about a product or service there is nothing you can do to stop them – even if they take what you have said out of context.

We can argue until we are blue in the face about this so-called privacy issue but we will never reach any solid conclusion because how we each define what our own personal levels of privacy will affect how we behave; and on the Internet. What isn’t being talked about is who owns what because like a true magician Facebook – and other social media services – our attention is being misdirection by the big bugaboo called privacy.

The reality is that once you enter the gates of Facebook you own nothing – they do even after you delete your account or more permanently – die. That’s some deal with the devil if you ask me.

Facebook – the sleight of hand shillster is a post from: The Inquisitr