Facebook stock drops 11
percent – Facebook shares closed at $23.70 today, down
significantly since the company’s second
quarter earnings call on Thursday. The company met analysts’ expectations
with $1.184 billion in revenue, but many investors are underwhelmed by the
the social network’s ability to monetize its 955 million
users, who are increasingly accessing the site from mobile devices.
Facebook triples spending on lobbying - Facebook spent
$960,000 in lobbying from April to June of this year, up from $320,000 during
the second quarter of 2011, according to The Hill. The company, which lobbies on issues
related to privacy, online piracy and cybersecurity, among
others, spent $650,000 in the first quarter of 2012. By
comparison Google spent $3.9 million in the second quarter of this year,
and more than $2 million during the same period in 2011.Facebook expands bug bounty program – The company announced that it recently expanded its bug bounty program to better reward people who discover vulnerabilities that could compromise the integrity of Facebook user data, circumvent the privacy protections of Facebook user data or enable access to a system within Facebook’s infrastructure. The program had paid out $300,000 in bounty as of June. Ryan McGeehan, who manages Facebook’s security-incident response unit, told Bloomberg, “If there’s a million-dollar bug, we will pay it out,” said. Information about the program is available here.
Facebook adds
engineering team to London office – Facebook announced that it is hiring engineers for its London
office. The company has a number of offices around the world, but
only Menlo Park, New York and Seattle have engineering
teams. According to a note from the Facebook Engineering page, “Our team
in London will start small, focusing on building a core of great engineers, and
then grow over time and eventually focus on building products in key areas like
mobile and platform.”
