Facebook Stock Maneuver Feeds IPO Rumors

Consider yourself forewarned: the official line is that "Facebook has no plans to go public at this time."  Just the same, a financial maneuver the company's performing has raised a few eyebrows since it seems to point towards that possibility.

Jessica E. Vascellaro reported this afternoon, "The company is in the process of converting all current shareholders to Class B stock, which carries ten times the voting power of Class A stock . . . .  Those shares will remain Class B shares unless the owner sells them during an initial public offering, at which time they will become Class A shares . . ."

This sort of exercise helps ensure that existing stockholders retain control of a company regardless of what happens on an open market.  In Facebook's case, Mark Zuckerberg, who owns many, many shares, would benefit most.  (Important note: It's not necessarily an "evil" move, though, as Google did the same sort of thing for the sake of Sergey Brin, Larry Page, and Eric Schmidt.)

So what we have here is one more piece of evidence (remember the preexisting enthusiasm surrounding its stock?) that Facebook could be headed towards an IPO.

Even if Facebook doesn't have definite plans to go public, the recession at least hasn't completely scared the company away from the idea, then.

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MySpace Stops Startling Users With Bad Music

In one particular way, MySpace has long been a dangerous place to visit: when browsing profiles with your speakers on, you never know if you'll deafen yourself (and/or your coworkers) with death metal, or worse yet, expose everyone to emo.  Fortunately, MySpace has now fixed the problem. 

Basically, the profile song autoplay feature's been chucked.  Although people are still able to attach tunes to their profiles, and passers-by are still able to listen to them without jumping through hoops (signing in, promising a record label their soul, etc.), music won't start blaring the moment any given page loads.

It seems likely that, except for some of the amateur musicians and bands who try to promote themselves through MySpace, most users will appreciate this gesture.

Then here's the more tangible benefit of the development: Michael Arrington wrote, "Autoplays accounted for a billion or more song streams per month, and were costing MySpace a significant amount of money.  Turning off that hose is a cost saving maneuver."

All in all, it's rather amazing that someone at MySpace didn't think to disable the profile song autoplay feature years ago.