NASDAQ fired over compromising Facebook photos

May 29, 2012 By Leave a Comment

In a stunning series of events this morning, MockCrunch has learned that the SEC and FINRA plan to announce that they have pulled the charter allowing NASDAQ to work as an exchange, essentially firing him. While details are still coming together, it appears as though NASDAQ, which recently signed up on the social networking service Facebook, was photographed in some compromising situations. Many Americans will be familiar with losing their job after appearing in questionable Facebook photos, but NASDAQ is perhaps the highest profile casualty of Mark Zuckerberg’s crusade to make the world less private.

NASDAQ, who only signed up for Facebook two weeks ago, was still shocked when we reached him for comment. “I don’t know what happened. Honestly, I am a good person. I have been selling securities for over 40 years now. I have a great reputation. It’s not like I am some sort of hedge fund manager.”

When we reached Mark Zuckerberg for comment, he seemed very put off. “I am busy hunting right now. Do you know how much time it takes to hunt everything you eat? Why do you think our privacy settings are so hard to understand? Besides, it’s not my fault that NASDAQ is a slut.”

NASDAQ was seen pole dancing with escorts and call girls. That would have been enough, but he was also seen doing the 80′s stock broker salute, snorting cocaine off of a stripper’s ass.

NASDAQ, who is now working at a Brooklyn Audi dealership, shared his frustration with the privacy settings in Facebook. “They told me that it would be easy to control my privacy. It felt so good to get Facebook before NYSE, but then I lost all of my money on Facebook stock and now I lost my job. Do you know how hard it is to get a job as a stock exchange? I saw the Lehman brothers yesterday and they just laughed at me.”

NASDAQ appears to be more like an everyday slacker than his reputation suggests. “The joke is on Zuck. I wiped my ass on that bell everyday.”

Filed Under: Facebook, Social Networks, Technology Tagged With: ,

Facebook isn’t making a phone, Facebook is making a pager. Wait, what? [PIC]

May 28, 2012 By 2 Comments

Facebook has been the center of attention this past week, making headlines all over the place. First the Facebook IPO launched after Zuckerberg threatened to cancel it, then it bombed, then Facebook started getting sued left and right, then Mark Zuckerberg apparently felt like it was a good time to get married to his longtime girlfriend. To top it off, Facebook decided to stir the pot by hiring Apple engineers to begin work on a project that many believe is a Facebook phone. This coincides with a long standing rumor Facebook has been working on a phone, but they heavily denied it. Well today, the rumors have been quelled. An image has been leaked showing a pager-like device with a Facebook notification message on its display. It seems Facebook isn’t working on a phone at all. We are about to see the return of the pager, courtesy of Facebook. Huh?

Why in the world would Facebook make a pager? We reached out to Tom Garwinkle, tech analyst at the WSJ for his opinion. “Sometimes I hate my job. This is one of those times. But, I suppose I’ll be as professional as I can be”, Tom said. Since Tom was no help at all, here is our analysis. We know that Facebook is lacking a monetization strategy for mobile users. A pager provides immediate notification of activity on your Facebook page, encouraging users to login to the site and view the activity. This is where they want users, on the website, so it certainly plays into their current strategy. At the end of the day, this is a roundabout mobile monetization strategy. Does it make sense? Not at all. But it’s a strategy, nonetheless. That’s a step in the right direction.

Tom did say that he feels they may have a shot at bringing Baby Boomers, seniors, and dumb phone users into their mobile strategy as well. That is, if this pager is cheap enough and people are receptive to bringing a pager back into their lives.

If introducing a whole new device into the cutthroat market of smartphones is their solution for mobile monetization, what’s next for Facebook? We’d suggest making a mobile app that works.

Filed Under: Facebook, Technology Tagged With: , ,

Congress Demands Return of Facebook Poke Button

May 22, 2012 By Leave a Comment

facebookThe United States Congress has issued a demand to Mark Zuckerberg, the new billionaire head of Facebook: “Bring back the Poke Button”. It seems, although most people didn’t really notice it was missing, that it is in fact, missing. However, upon investigation, we were able to find the elusive button. We found it buried in the “settings” menu on our friends’ pages. To find out why this has happened – out of pure curiosity and not real concern – we contacted the Director of Poking (yes, the title is real) at Facebook in Palo Alto, CA. We were surprised to receive a quick response from Andy Baldwin. Yes, the same Andy Baldwin of ABC’s The Bachelor. Here is an excerpt of his response:

Lt. , U.S. Navy, who was a contestant on the t...

…[Mark] Zuck[erberg] pulled the plug on poking. I don’t care if I get fired over this response, but that smarmy weasel can kiss my smooth hot ass. Turns out, he made the button as a way to feel like he was poking girls. I suppose since he couldn’t get laid in real life, he would “poke” every girl who joined Facebook. He even has this wall in his office, where he puts a mark for every girl he poked. Anyway, he has essentially killed my job – I won’t be here much longer. Why did he get rid of the poke? I can’t say for sure, but it may have something to do with pressure from his investors. I saw a lot of “professional” looking women going in his office ever since he pulled the poke…

We thanked Mr. Baldwin for his time and set our sights on Congress. We interviewed a Congressman who wished to remain anonymous, so we’ll call him Congressman Bill Long representing the 7th District of Missouri. Bill said the entire congress is in an uproar over the missing button. When asked why, he stated that he and his colleagues have used the poke for years as a contest and to gauge the availability of chicks. Startled, we asked him to clarify. After reassuring the Congressman (Bill Long, 7th District, Missouri) that we would keep is comments anonymous, he gave us more detail:

079 Capitol Hill United States Congress 1993

“Around the congressional offices it is sort of a game to see how many babes we can poke. And if they poke back, then we get a notch on our desk. If you poked a honey three times, and she poked back three times, that meant you could get a ‘real’ poke – if you know what I mean. My desk looks like a serrated knife. This is anonymous, right?”

We reassured Congressman Bill Long, 7th District, Missouri, that this was an anonymous interview.

I suppose we will wait and see how Facebook responds to this demand.

Filed Under: Facebook, Politics, Social Networks Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Facebook IPO uncovered as a Ponzi scheme by SEC [BREAKING]

May 18, 2012 By Leave a Comment

In 2004, Eduardo Saverin registered a business in Massechusets. The company was registered as “The Facebook Inc.” This is a story that we’re all familiar with: a Harvard sophomore Mark Zuckerberg built a website that has taken the world by storm. This is the story that was told to Savern’s investors. He said that Facebook was changing the world. He said that it was used by the hundreds of millions. There’s just one problem. Zuckerberg and the website never existed. Today, the Securities and Exchange Commision has released documents after an investigation detailing a long running Ponzi scheme that ends with valueless stock being sold to the general public.

At first the scheme was easy. The Facebook was an exclusive site. He told his investors that only Harvard students could use the site, and that’s why the investors couldn’t see it. In order to raise more money, Saverin had to convince investors that the site was growing. He continued the story, acting like it was open to other colleges, and then high schools. This ploy got him further, but at some point, in order to keep the investment money flowing, he had to open the fake site to the public.

This is where the scheme got much more complicated for Saverin. Once open to the public, his investors wanted to join the site that didn’t exist. Saverin hired a team of developers in India to put together a basic functioning website. He then used Mechanical Turk to create tons of fake users in the database. This was just enough to convince the investors that The Facebook was legit. Some questioned why they couldn’t see any information from the claimed millions of other users. He told them that they could only see content and profile information from their “friends”. This was the start of social media as we know it.

The developers had left the website open to the public and a few people started signing up for the website. Worried that people might find out that the website was only a sham, he started hiring cheap foreign labor to play the part of the new users’ friends. They would spy on the friends of the users that were joining and create fake profiles and content for those people. Even today, Facebook only has about 2,000 users, and their friends’ activity is being written by non-english speaking people, which explains all the bad grammar and misspellings.

Eduardo Saverin fled the United States years ago and continued to run this scheme. He just renounced his citizenship and his whereabouts are unknown, but the FBI would like to know any information you may have. With the release of the SEC’s investigation, Facebook’s stock is expected to plummet, as Facebook has no real assets. Mockcrunch has placed a target price of $0.01 and a SELL rating on FB.

Filed Under: Facebook, Finance, Social Networks Tagged With: , , , , ,

Zynga launches Draw Something clone despite acquiring it

May 17, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Zynga is widely known as the game development powerhouse behind hot Facebook and mobile games such as Farmville, Cityville, Mafia Wars and more. Their incredible success was highly contributed to a formula they discovered which combined two very dangerous things – addiction and virtual goods. Zynga replicated this formula many times, using the same elements of gameplay and changing the theme, ranging from kingdoms to zoos. And it worked. Zynga has even been known to use analytics to help them tweak aspects of gameplay until it reaches the perfect point of obsession and impatience, leading to uncontrollable splurging, amounting to a gazillion dollars for Zynga.

Zynga is also known for blatantly ripping off games without any shame or concern. For example, one of their first hits, Mafia Wars was an exact copy of a Facebook Game that already existed. Zynga is also currently in production of a near-identical version of the hit mobile game, Tiny Tower. The Tiny Tower developers even reacted with a sarcastic “thanks for copying our game” response. Adding to their wreckless actions, Zynga announced today that they have launched a clone of their recently acquired game Draw Something, called Whiteboardville.

Whiteboardville is Zynga’s latest addition to their mobile lineup, allowing users to take turns drawing pictures for their friends based on a word selected from a random list. So basically, Draw Something. Some users believe that Whiteboardville is Zynga’s rebranding of Draw Something. However, apparently this is not the case. We reached out to Mark Pincus, Zynga’s CEO for a response.

“Oh Whiteboardville? Yeah that has nothing to do with Draw Something. We’re letting the Draw Something team do what they do best – improve Draw Something. Whiteboardville was our way to capitalize on a completely different market – those who love drawing and spending money.”

Mark expects Whiteboardville to be a huge success for Zynga. “In Whiteboardville, we reward users based on how many pictures they draw. But, you can only draw up to 3 pictures an hour. If you want to draw more pictures, you’ll have to pay to refill your picture meter”, he said. “Our analytics show that Draw Something users draw a lot of pictures. We expect that Whiteboardville will be a huge success for us.”

Filed Under: Facebook, Mobile, Video Games Tagged With: , , , , , ,

GM discovers why $10M Facebook campaign was ineffective: it never began

May 16, 2012 By 4 Comments

On the eve of Facebook’s IPO, General Motors made the surprising announcement that they will be pulling out of their advertising efforts on Facebook, worth around $10 million annually, claiming that their ads were ineffective. GM was one of the highest spending advertisers on Facebook, causing speculation of the true value of Facebook ads. Many are now concerned for the future of the social network and their long-term growth potential. Upon further investigation, it appears that GM never actually started any Facebook campaign at all. The team in charge of the campaign at GM never figured out how to use Facebook’s ad platform.

We reached out to Jody Liscrow, Social Media Manager at GM for comment. “We had no idea that the campaign wasn’t running. I remember we went into the platform and set up some ad targets. Well, at least I think we did. Now that I really think about it, I don’t know if we even got that far”, she said. “We weren’t really sure what we were supposed to do. Facebook has very little documentation on their website and no customer service team to help us. We were left to figure all this out on our own, and it didn’t go very well.”

This was not the first time that GM’s social media team made an astronomical mistake. Back in 2011, an accidental and very inappropriate personal tweet went out on GM’s company Twitter account.

GM’s CEO is said to be making an announcement today regarding the fate of their social media team. If we had to guess, we’d say it doesn’t look very good.

Filed Under: Facebook, Social Networks Tagged With: , , , , ,

Shocking new evidence proves Abraham Lincoln really did invent Facebook

May 11, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Earlier this week, a blogger posted a long-winded story claiming he had proof that Abraham Lincoln invented Facebook. His story was an adventure which lead him to discover a patent filed in 1845 by Abraham Lincoln for a newspaper comprised of Facebook-like profiles and status updates. The patent stated “every Man may have his own page, where he might discuss his Family, his Work, and his Various Endeavors.” Or in other words, Facebook.

Shortly after he broke this story, it went viral. Thousands of people began to share the story. Then, credible media sources got word of it and stated it was a hoax all along. At Mockcrunch, we were not going to allow the “gotcha media” to sweep this important part of our history under the rug. We went out and began our own investigation. We consulted with the most prestigious hackers and sleuths in the world, including the famous Sherlock Holmes, who unfortunately ended up being useless and computer illiterate, carrying nothing more than a magnifying glass. But I digress. Our hackers did their job, and boy did we find a gem.

Extensive research lead us to a very interesting domain: facegazette.com. Take a look at the WhoIs information.

This was pulled directly from NetworkSolutions WhoIs page. If you’d like to see it for yourselves, visit any WhoIs service and search for the domain facegazette.com. This discovery is remarkable. Even the address listed on the domain matches the address of his residence in 1845, right around the time he had filed the patent. Abraham Lincoln was clearly getting his ducks in a row, as he registered a .com domain name for this Facebook-like service using GoDaddy before GoDaddy or the Internet even existed. Not only does this domain registration give us damn-near surefire proof that Abraham Lincoln really did invent Facebook, but this is phenomenal evidence of something much bigger: time travel. There is no other logical explanation for our findings.

We reached out to famous American astrophysicist Irwin I. Shapiro to help us make sense of this. He wouldn’t take our call. Nevertheless, we have a feeling that this story is far from over.

Filed Under: Facebook, History, Social Networks Tagged With: , , , , ,

Zuckerberg cancels Facebook IPO: “No hoodie, no IPOie” [BREAKING]

May 10, 2012 By 3 Comments

One week from now, Facebook was expected to launch their highly anticipated IPO, allowing employees, shareholders and the general public the ability profit off of the dominating social network. Everything seemed to be lined up and ready to go. Facebook even prepared a roadshow to entice investors. Well, that was until an analyst was interviewed on Bloomberg TV, making remarks that caused a very unexpected result: the end of Facebook’s IPO.

Michael Pachter, an analyst for Wedbush Securities and one of the first analysts to give Facebook a “buy” rating, was questioned on why he believed Mark Zuckerberg was a risk for Facebook. His reply caused a stir. “Mark and his signature hoodie: He’s actually showing investors he doesn’t care that much; he’s going to be him; he’s going to do what he’s always done. I think that’s a mark of immaturity.” Shortly after this interview, Mark got wind of it, and he wasn’t happy.

Today, Zuckerberg himself released the following statement.

Michael thinks he’s soooo smart. “I wear a suit so I’m mature”. You know what Michael? I built a f*cking social network in this hoodie that most of the PLANET uses! Facebook has more users than you’ve had minutes alive, which I assume is a hell of a lot since you’re like 120 years old, you old butt munch. What have you done with your life? Trade stocks? In a suit? Sounds dumb. And really uncomfortable. You should wear a hoodie sometime. And take that stick out of your ass while you’re at it. Oh yeah, one more thing. You want immaturity? How’s this. No hoodie, no IPOie. Yep, I’m canceling the IPO. Sucks to be you.

As if this statement and decision wasn’t shocking enough, it is said that Zuckerberg made it irrationally and entirely on his own. He didn’t consult with a board member or fellow executive, similar to when he made the decision to acquire Instagram for $1 billion. This is classic Zuckerberg and clearly justifies Michael’s concerns. We’ll watch as this story continues to develop.

Filed Under: Facebook, Finance, Social Networks Tagged With: , , , , ,

Facebook CEO Zuckerberg on mobile strategy: “Let’s get the app to work”

April 26, 2012 By 3 Comments

Facebook has been known as a mobile pioneer. The original Facebook iPhone app was one of the first truly notable native mobile apps, producing an interface and experience that some claimed was even better than facebook.com. Even before the wide popularity of iPhone and App Store, Facebook’s mobile website nearly recreated the app experience in mobile browsers.

Facebook has been continuously evolving their service, adding features and improvements to help them get closer to their ultimate vision of “connecting the world.” But over the last few years, their mobile app began to lag behind. They would release improvements and revamps with great interface changes, but instead of a great experience, the app would welcome users with loading and stability issues. Their latest revamp is arguably the worst experience thus far, as News Feeds and Notifications are rarely loading for most users.

Here we have a chronological list of Facebook’s various mobile strategies. See if you can tell where they might have gone wrong:

  • Set the usability standards for a new era of mobile apps
  • Bring the same great experience to mobile web users
  • Bring the same great experience to the Motorola Razr (This one didn’t work BTW)
  • Develop for users who have only ever used Facebook mobile
  • Become a platform that other mobile services can use
  • Keep the servers running
  • Feign a fueud with Google as excuse for not making Android app
  • Release Android app anyway
  • Change the UI because way too many designers were hired
  • Show off the loading animation
  • Don’t melt phones

Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg is sick of not being able to get his News Feed or load comments on posts. He’s especially upset that others can’t load the images from his latest hunting trip. Instead of reviving Facebook’s early ambitions for its mobile experience, “functional” will have to do for now. After all, Facebook has to put its priority on figuring out where their revenue went to keep its shareholders happy.

Filed Under: Facebook, Social Networks, Technology Tagged With: , , , , , ,