SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Social media companies, once hailed by their Silicon Valley boosters as world-changing businesses with limitless potential, are instead proving a sobering reminder of how investors can be seduced by Internet hype.

With few exceptions, the first wave of social media firms to trade on the public markets has delivered a disastrous performance that conjures memories of the dot-com bust of 2000.

SAN FRANCISCO, July 27 (Reuters) – Social media companies,
once hailed by their Silicon Valley boosters as world-changing
businesses with limitless potential, are instead proving a
sobering reminder of how investors can be seduced by Internet
hype.

With few exceptions, the first wave of social media firms to
trade on the public markets has delivered a disastrous
performance that conjures memories of the dot-com bust of 2000.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Facebook Inc reported a drastic slowdown in revenue growth and failed to offer financial forecasts to quell fears about its ability to boost advertising growth, sending its shares plummeting to a record low.

In its inaugural earnings report since becoming the first American company to debut with a value of more than $100 billion, Facebook reported revenue increased 32 percent in the second quarter to $1.18 billion, in line with average forecasts.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Twitter suffered its second widespread outage in 5 weeks on Thursday, a blow to the micro-blogging service’s reputation and reliability.

Twitter – infamous for its “fail whale” outage messages in its early years – went dark for hours on June 21. On Thursday, users trying to log on to its website were greeted only by an incomplete error message: “Twitter is currently down for. We expect to be back in.”

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Game provider Zynga Inc slashed its 2012 outlook and quarterly results badly missed Wall Street targets, sending its stock plunging 35 percent and casting a chill over Facebook Inc on the eve of the social network’s inaugural results.

Investors now fear a larger-than-expected hit to Facebook’s earnings, which relies on the “FarmVille” creators for about 15 percent of its revenue. Shares in the No. 1 social network, which has yet to regain investor confidence since its botched May IPO, slid more than 7 percent to a new low of $27 in after-hours trading.

SAN FRANCISCO, July 25 (Reuters) – Zynga Inc, the
social gaming company, slashed its 2012 earnings outlook after
its second-quarter results badly missed Wall Street’s targets,
sending its stock plunging more than 40 percent to a record low.

The miss by the creator of the “Farmville and “Hidden
Chronicles” games also dragged down shares of Facebook Inc
. Facebook, which relies on the game publisher for some 15
percent of its revenue, is to release its inaugural results as a
public company on Thursday.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Zynga Inc, the social gaming company, slashed its 2012 earnings outlook after its second-quarter results badly missed Wall Street’s targets, sending its stock plunging more than 40 percent to a record low.

The huge miss for Zynga, creator of the “Farmville and “Hidden Chronicles” games, dragged down shares of Facebook Inc, which relies on the game publisher for some 15 percent of its revenue.

SAN FRANCISCO, June 27 (Reuters) – Mobile payments company
Square is close to securing around $200 million in new funding
from private-equity investor Suhail Rizvi at a valuation of
about $3.25 billion, a source familiar with the matter told
Reuters, less than the company had hoped for.

Square, headed by Twitter co-founder and chairman Jack
Dorsey, has secured previous financing from prominent venture
capitalists and some said it had been seeking new funding at a
$4 billion valuation.

By Gerry Shih

(Reuters) – Video website YouTube unveiled on Wednesday a way for users to automatically blur human faces in videos they upload, a feature that would help protect the identities of political dissidents, YouTube parent Google Inc said.

Once known more as a repository for fuzzy, home-made cat videos, YouTube has become a growing destination for slick, highly produced entertainment and serious news content. Earlier this week, a study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism said amateur “citizen journalism” footage from events such as the 2011 tsunami in Japan were some of the most-watched clips on YouTube.

SAN FRANCISCO, July 18 (Reuters) – Some of Zynga’s
most sophisticated games, including “FarmVille,”
generate greater revenues on smartphones than on Facebook’s
Web-based platform, the company’s chief executive, Mark
Pincus, said Wednesday.

Some of Zynga’s deeper-engagement games — titles like
“FarmVille” that falls into what the company calls its
“invest-and-express” category — successfully generate revenues
from smartphone users because of their mobile format as well as
gamers’ demographics, Pincus said.