On the 21st of May 2012, N2V invested in Ecommerce SEA as an incentive to play a role in the development of e-commerce in the Arabic web. Making the online buying experience a more fulfilling one for the Arabic consumer.

Ecommerce SEA is a company specialized in building and starting projects in the e-commerce space all over middle east. The company focuses on building online brands in the form of eShops and target different market segments. In addition, in the near future Ecommerce SEA is determined to contribute to the e-commerce eco-system by providing the end-users and business owners with e-commerce services.

“We offer services to revive the e-commerce in the region, and focus to be sustainable and provide added value to the end customer, whether a store owner or a regular shopper.” Says E-commerce Sea CEO Mazen AlDarrab.

Ecommerce SEA was founded by Mazen Aldarrab a young entrepreneur enthusiastic about growing electronic commerce in Arabia, and he sees the opportunity in creating missionary electronic commerce at the level of buyer and seller, and creating successful models and experiences that are unique in the field of e-commerce.

Announcing this investment, Rashid Al Ballaa, N2V’s CEO said that the investment in Ecommerce SEAis in-lined with N2Vs entrepreneurial spirit that encourages youth to pursue their goals to starting their own projects. we also invested To cover the accelerated demand for E-Commerce services in Arabia. Due to a huge gap in E-Commerce services in Arabia, compared to other regions, this sector is becoming an attractive pie for investors in the region.

Mazen Aldarrab, Ecommerce SEA’s CEO, commented about this announcement saying: “We are glad that N2V chose to invest in this project, Ecommerce SEA has many plans and ambitions. And it is looking forward to achieve them with the support of N2V”.

About National Net Ventures (N2V)
N2V is one of the largest investment companies in Arabia in internet and mobile applications, focused on value creation through building and investing in Arabic consumer web & mobile ventures (e-commerce, Arabic content, social media, games, mobile apps), with over 200 employees spread in offices around different Arab countries (Saudi, UAE, Jordan, Egypt, Bahrain) and the USA.

Facebook Inc.’s FB 0.00% public debut had plenty of buzz but not much pop. The shares opened 11% higher, but soon struggled to stay above their offering price and traders experienced problems getting information on orders.

Faceebook’s IPO was delayed after traders experienced problems with their orders. Simon Constable joins Rolfe Winkler on Markets Hub with details. Photo: Reuters.

The Internet company’s shares, priced Thursday at $38, opened Friday around $42 and within the first half hour fell as low as $38. The stock recovered as underwriters stepped in to support the price, according to people familiar with the matter.

In the final hour of trading, the shares lost steam and changed hands at $38.16. That gives the eight-year-old company a market value of about $104 billion.

The debut was marred by a 30-minute delay in the opening of the shares, coupled with reports from traders about lack of communication about orders. That threatened to dent the reputation ofNasdaq OMX Group, NDAQ -3.48%operator of the Nasdaq Stock Market, which competed aggressively with the New York Stock Exchange for the chance to list the deal.

Nasdaq officials told exchange members in a notice at noon that its staff was “investigating an issue in delivering trade execution messages” from trades made in Facebook’s IPO. Around 1 p.m. Nasdaq indicated it would provide a “manual report” to brokers with information on Facebook trades.

Once the stock opened, trading was robust—100 million shares traded in the first few minutes and more than 200 million shares changed hands in the first hour.

The record for most shares traded on the day of an IPO is held by General Motors Co.,GM -2.22% at 458 million. Facebook, which sold 421 million shares, is on track to beat those levels easily.

Photos: Facebook’s First Day of Trading

View Slideshow

Reuters

People in New York took photos of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, seen on a screen.

But during the delay, and afterwards, traders said they were having trouble changing or canceling orders they had submitted to Nasdaq’s queue starting at 7:30 a.m.

Traders said the orders were accepted normally, but the usual process for canceling or altering an order wasn’t accepted, suggesting problems with the queue.

“We’re still waiting” for trade confirmations, said Mark Turner, co-head of sales trading for electronic brokerage Instinet, about 90 minutes after Facebook’s stock opened for trading.

One investor said at 12:20 p.m. he was frustrated after a market order he put in around 11:40 a.m., for 1,000 shares, still hadn’t been acknowledged by Nasdaq some 40 minutes later. “It’s not reasonable,” he said, adding that shorter delays for an order of 10,000 or 20,000 shares would be more understandable.

Traders speculated the glitches could be tempering demand for Facebook shares, because would-be buyers couldn’t be sure where they stood with earlier orders.

Representatives for Nasdaq OMX had no immediate comment. Shares of the company were down 2% midafternoon with the market flat and other exchange operators trading higher.

One person familiar with public offerings called Facebook’s a success, saying that, the delay aside, the trading indicated the stock was well priced. The person said big one-day pops are far-less common in large offerings where lots of trading can help keep pricing efficient.

Facebook’s debut wasn’t greeted positively in the broader market. The Dow Jones Industrial Average recently fell 19 points, or 0.2%, to 12423, after jumping as much as 51 points before Facebook started trading.

Social media stocks are among the day’s biggest losers. Online games maker Zynga Inc. shares dropped 13% to $7.17 and have been halted after hitting a single-stock circuit breaker. The stock fell more than 10% in five minutes, prompting the halt. Zynga is closely tied to Facebook, as 11% of the social network’s revenue comes from Zynga.

Other social media stocks were also faltering. LinkedIn shares were down 1.4% to $103.45, Groupon Inc. was down 5.9% to $11.68 and Pandora Media Inc. is down 4.1% to $10.09.

Facebook’s offering, as expected, drew in investors large and small.

Michael Mullaney, vice president and chief investment officer for Boston-based Fiduciary Trust, which primarily represents high-net-worth individuals, opted not to put in an order with underwriters before the offering, and instead bought shares on the open market Friday.

“If we did get one it would have been a small piece,” said Mr. Mullaney of an allocation. “And then who would we give it to? Which one of our clients gets the shares? I’d rather trade it on the open market with every Tom, Dick and Harry. It makes my life easier.”

On Friday at 1 p.m., Mr. Mullaney said in an email that he had received his shares at the price he liked, but considered the IPO “a dud.”

Meanwhile Theophilus Hodges, a 36-year-old property manager, stopped into an E*Trade branch in downtown Chicago on Friday morning specifically to open an account to buy Facebook shares, he said.

“If it wasn’t for Facebook I wouldn’t be here,” he said as he left the branch to go to his bank and transfer money into his new account. “I missed out on Groupon when it went public, so I’m not going to miss the boat this time.”

Mr. Hodges said he plans to invest $10,000 in Facebook shares—including $4,500 of his own money and $5,500 from his mother.

Mr. Hodges expressed confidence in Mark Zuckerberg as Facebook’s CEO and said he isn’t worried about Mr. Zuckerberg being young. “To me, he’s a genius. You know, he created something for the whole world… Everything is social now. The world is a different place with Facebook,” he said.

Companies and the bankers who take them public typically like to see a first-day pop in the share price, to make the deal worthwhile for those buying at the so-called inside price and to increase investors’ enthusiasm for the stock. Among social-media deals in the past year, LinkedIn Corp. LNKD -6.49% closed up 109%, Groupon Inc.GRPN -6.69% rose 31%, and Zynga Inc. ZNGA -14.63% fell 5%.

Data suggest Facebook would land in the positive camp Friday. Facebook is the 18th IPO world-wide so far this year to price above initial projections, said Dealogic. All of the 17 previous deals around the globe that priced above range recorded first-day gains, averaging a 44.8% pop, according to Dealogic. The company’s data counts global deals in 2012 that raised more than $50 million.

Facebook and its stockholders are selling about 20% of the company’s common stock in the IPO. By way of comparison, Groupon sold about 6.3% of its stock in its IPO, according to Dealogic, while LinkedIn sold 9.5%. Facebook’s bigger so-called float could mean fewer extreme moves in the stock price.

Facebook’s IPO is “unprecedented in terms of the demand” from average investors, said Stephen Kay, a managing director at brokerage Knight Capital who works with retail brokerages.

“I spoke to one of my big online brokers and at 6:05 this morning, when they allowed people to hit the button and make an order, there were hundreds of orders that were waiting,” Mr. Kay said.

From trading floors to Times Square, Wall Street pros and regular joes had been preparing for the moment, strategizing for the open or deciding whether—or when—to buy shares.

TD Ameritrade AMTD -0.61% had 54,000 orders for Facebook shares by 11 a.m., with half the clients who requested and qualified getting an allocation, according to Steve Quirk, senior vice president of trading for the firm.

Knight Capital Group, KCG +0.24% one of the biggest aggregators of U.S. retail share trading, on Friday morning saw an order from an investor willing to buy the stock at a price as high as $4,000, according to managing director Steve Kay. The order was essentially an indication the investor was willing to buy the shares at any price.

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an entire class. That class had insisted that Obama’s socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.

The professor then said, “OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama’s plan”. All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade so no one will fail and no one will receive an A…. (substituting grades for dollars - something closer to home and more readily understood by all).

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.

The second test average was a D! No one was happy. When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F. As the tests proceeded, the scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else. 

To their great surprise, ALL FAILED and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed. It could not be any simpler than that.
Remember, there IS a test coming up. The 2012 elections.

These are possibly the 5 best sentences you’ll ever read and all applicable to this experiment:

1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.

2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.

3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.

4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!

5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.

by: Ed Will

Instagram founders Kevin Systrom (left) and Mike Krieger.

To put the acquisition in perspective I pulled together data from a selection of 30 notable internet acquisitions over the last 10 years, from Broadcast.com to OMGPop to see if Facebook/Instagram for $1 billion was as crazy as everyone thinks. (I left out companies without public purchase prices or user stats.)

CODEWORD

Andy Baio

The spreadsheet below captures the acquisition date, dollar amounts, and ballpark counts of the users and employees at the time of acquisition. Be warned: Any of these numbers are very rough, cobbled together from Internet Archive searches, old news articles, Quora answers, and tech blogs. If you have more accurate information, please leave a comment and I’ll fix it.

Download the spreadsheet or view it on Google Docs.

COST PER USER

A startup is acquired for any combination of the technology, talent, or the user base.

If we look strictly at the acquisition cost per user, Facebook got a relative deal with the Instagram purchase, paying roughly $28 for each of Instagram’s 35 million users. (The median cost across all the acquisitions is about $92 per user.)

Compare that to acquisitions like Aardvark ($555/user) or Jaiku ($240/user), and it becomes clear which were likely technology or talent hires. The glaring exception is Yahoo’s famous $5.7 billion purchase of Mark Cuban’s Broadcast.com in 1999 — about $11,000 each for 520,000 monthly active users, or 10 times any other startup. (Broadcast.com skewed the chart so much, I had to leave it off.)

COST PER EMPLOYEE

But if you look at the payout per employee, Instagram is completely off the charts. If split equally, each of Instagram’s 13 employees would make nearly $77 million (though Wired’s Mike Isaac reported exclusively that CEO Kevin Systrom and co-founder Mike Krieger would take home $500 million themselves alone).

The nearest runner-up is YouTube, with a paltry $24 million for its 2006-era staff of 67. Skype, Broadcast.com, and Myspace all top the charts. The median? About $3 million.

Some would point to this as a sign of a bubble, but I think it’s more likely it just reflects the incredible scalability of modern app architectures. Using EC2 and solid monitoring, Instagram can quickly scale up to support a million new users overnight with very little additional engineering effort.

The Employee-to-User Ratio

Instagram’s numbers are exactly what you’d want to see in a social network — high user counts with the lowest number of employees. This ratio is a measure of efficiency, and it’s no surprise that Instagram comes out on top here, with one employee for every 2.07 million users.

The second highest employee-to-user ratio is OMGPOP, famous for developing Draw Something, the fastest-growing mobile app in history. With only one employee for every 875,000 users, they were able to scale to 50 million users within 50 days.

On the other end of the scale are the short-lived Q&A service Aardvark, with one employee for every 1,800 users, and customer-service giant Zappos with one employee for every 3,400 users.

More than anything, the app ecosystem rewards efficiency: the ability to massively scale with very little engineering effort. I’m guessing these ridiculously lean startups with huge exits aren’t a freak occurrence. We’ll see more of them as the rest of the world catches up, and learns how to do more with less.