Today’s Top Stories: Mark Zuckerberg’s Hoodie, Sony’s Powerful LTE Smartphones

Welcome to this morning’s edition of “First To Know,” a series in which we keep you in the know on what’s happening in the digital world. Today, we’re looking at three particularly interesting stories.
Mark Zuckerberg’s Hoodie a “Mark of Immaturity”
Mark Zuckerberg went to a meeting in New York on Monday with potential investors wearing a hoodie, and analyst Michael Pachter thinks it’s a mark of immaturity. “I think that he has to realize he’s bringing investors in as a new constituency right now, and I think he’s got to show them the respect that they deserve because he’s asking them for their money,” Pachter said in an interview on Bloomberg TV.
Sony Unveils Two LTE Smartphones for the Japanese Market
Sony has unveiled two powerful LTE smartphones to be launched in Japan this summer: The Xperia GX and the Xperia SX. The first smartphone sports a dual core, 1.5GHz CPU, a 13-megapixel camera and a 4.6-inch screen, which makes it one of the most powerful devices in Sony’s lineup.
The Xperia SX is much smaller, with an 8-megapixel camera and a 3.7-inch screen. The device weighs only 95 grams, and Sony claims it’s the lightest LTE device in the world right now. Both devices will launch with Android 4.0.
Twitter Debunks Hacking Claims
Reacting to the claims that 55,000 Twitter accounts have been hacked with users’ credentials posted online, Twitter said those claims are largely false. Those accounts are mostly duplicates, Twitter claims, or contain the username and password information for suspended spam accounts.

11:10 by Robert dawne · 0

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Joins Pinterest

Facebook’s co-founder and CEO has joined the hottest new social network on the block, Pinterest.
Mark Zuckerberg’s profile, located at www.pinterest.com/zuck, isn’t very lively. He is following more than 100 other users, but has posted very little content himself. The Pinterest profile is linked to his Facebook profile.
While it’s too early to say Pinterest poses a threat to Facebook in any way, the simple content sharing site can easily be called the hottest startup of 2012. The site reached 10 million unique visitors extremely fast; it has more than 2 million members (connected through Facebook), and it’s already used by more than 100 brands.
At the very least, Zuckerberg must be curious to see what this little site has been doing to become so successful. Facebook has never been too shy of adopting successful concepts seen on other services; for example, its Subscribe button, launched in September 2011, is an obvious nod to Twitter’s Follow.

15:35 by Robert dawne · 0

The Facebook IPO: Marketing, hypocrisy, and arrogance

There's something to be said for being a fossil when it's time to look at a phenomenon like Facebook's pending stock offering. The medium is new, the numbers are high, the buzz is huge, but it's the same old story I've seen a million times in four decades of business writing: A hot company is graciously offering the investing public a piece of its action. At a hot high price, of course.
Look, I know I'm a print dinosaur. I was wrong, early and often, on Google's (GOOG) stock price when it first went public, for which I ultimately apologized. My one and only Internet innovation came about 20 years ago, when I was among the first business columnists to publish an e-mail address. I don't use social media because I value my privacy and fear committing some online indiscretion that would follow me forever.
That said, I'd like to share three things that leaped out at me from Facebook's financial filing. They involve marketing, hypocrisy, and arrogance -- in other words, standard Wall Street fare.
Marketing
If Facebook's offering ends up being the advertised $5 billion, and the company's stock market valuation is in the expected $75 billion to $100 billion range, it means that only 5% to 7% of the company's shares will be available to public investors.
While there are all sorts of rationalizations for having such a small public offering relative to a company's size, the real reason, as any Street insider will tell you, is to create an initial shortage of stock so that the share price runs up when public trading starts.
It's not enough for Mark Zuckerberg & Co. to have created an amazing, incredibly valuable company over an incredibly short period. They feel the need to use this tacky market trick to drive up Facebook's value even more.
Why do it? Facebook gets bragging rights -- and so do the venture capital types who have put money into the company. A higher Facebook share price begets a higher reported return for investment managers to show potential clients, making it easier to market the next fund. In VC-land, there is always a next fund.
Hypocrisy
A key selling point of social media is that it's a democratizing force -- everyone's on an equal footing, yadda, yadda, yadda. But Facebook's stock structure, like Google's, is far from democratic.
There's one class of voting stock for the public peasants, and a higher voting class that ensures control for the elite insiders. Everyone's equal in theory. Just not in practice.
Arrogance
Ever since Google included a "don't be evil" screed in its initial public filings, a founder's letter has become de rigueur for a hot Internet offering. Zuckerberg's is a classic. My (admittedly skeptical) takeaway: I'm not just a really rich guy, I'm a really good guy because I'm in this to make the world "friendlier," not to make money.
Yeah, right. And Wall Street exists to help small retail investors. And the check is in the mail.
This article is from the February 27, 2012 issue of Fortune.

21:30 by Robert dawne · 0