Social Networking, Startup | featured news

Facebook’s post-IPO performance has been poor. But is it so poor that it will hurt the prospects for other startups? The short answer: Almost certainly.

Zynga CEO Mark Pincus wants some of the online game company's early employees to give back stock they own ahead of the company's initial public offering of stock, according to a published report Thursday. The Wall Street Journal said that Pincus, who gave out stock freely to keep top talent early on, developed "giver's remorse."

Start-up Posterous, best known for its simple blogging service via email, has revamped the company around a new product called Posterous Spaces, which is designed to help people easily privately share photos and videos with friends or family.

Investors pile into Internet IPOs and start-ups, making overnight millionaires. House prices and salaries soar. Another dot-com bubble? Maybe, but with differences. As she unloaded groceries in the driveway of her Palo Alto home, Lisen Stromberg was approached by a real estate broker who asked whether she'd be willing to sell her five-bedroom house to a senior Facebook executive.

On Thursday afternoon, social deals site LivingSocial confirmed rumors of an investment from Amazon, announcing a $175 million in funding from the Seattle-based giant.

The Walt Disney Company became Hollywood's leading player in the booming social gaming business on Tuesday with the purchase of Playdom in a deal valued at $763.2 million.

Here's something different from the world of online dating. "Wings," a Facebook app from a company called Triangulate, pulls in data from your account and analyzes and uses what it finds to populate your dating profile page. You can also opt to let Wings access data from your other social and media accounts on Netflix, Twitter, Pandora or Foursquare. It was built around the concept that actions speak louder than words.

Divvyshot, a photo-sharing start-up, said it had received an offer from Facebook it couldn't refuse.

Digital Sky Technologies, the Russian venture capital firm that has invested $400 million in Facebook, has apparently made an offer to buy a piece of Chatroulette, the webcam network where you can chat with random strangers. According to Spiegel Online, DST made an offer to 17-year-old Andrey Ternovskiy to buy a piece of his booming website. He has yet to say yes though, as he is traveling to the U.S. to speak with American venture capitalists before taking any investment.

Facebook appears to have made a third acquisition — this one smaller than its two previous buys. What’s more, Facebook has shut down the company’s service immediately.