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VentureBeat just wrote an interesting article about what will happen to tech stocks when the exchange opens later today.

The European Central back and other finance ministers pledged bold action to calm the markets. And on Sunday, the Obama administration announced that Timothy Geithner would stay on as Treasury Secretary, to reassure investors. Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke pledged to take “all necessary measures” to support financial stability and growth.

Full article here

Social- and group-buying company Groupon is preparing for its IPO and has submitted, under great fanfare, its S-1 PO filing quite some time ago. I don’t think two weeks have gone by without some news item either stating Groupon is growing and succesful or that it’s a useless hot air balloon that will drop as soon as it runs out of air.

What I also notice is that whenever something big comes out, like say an unusual accounting method that was used in the S-1 filing, they are quick to release a statement with some fact telling us how big they are.

Both are very interesting to read:

• All Things D: Exclusive: Groupon Will Dump Controversial ACSOI Accounting in Amended IPO Filing
• VentureBeat: Groupon continues strong growth, with 115M subscribers

Great article about the US stock market specifically targeted on video games. Even the Zynga IPO, which I feel is strongly over-valued and over anticipated, is discussed.

The company [Zynga red.] was hoping to ride a wave of positive sentiment led by LinkedIn and Pandora after those companies picked up multi-billion dollar valuations when they went public.

But game stocks were down at least 1 percent across the board. Saints Row developer THQ Interactive was the worst performer after falling nearly 6 percent, while publishing supergiant Electronic Arts fell by about one percent. Those companies revolve around delivering cinematic triple-A titles like Activision’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Those games still carry large price tags, which would give social and online gaming companies the edge.

Read the full article here.

A great slideshare presentation by Earlybird gives us insight into the performance of European Venture Capital firms compared to the US based firms. European VC funding is only 20% of what it is in the US, and a major comparison is made with Germany. Germany is 25% of the economic size of the US but only has 4 investment-grade firms compared to the US” 227. And at the same time, EU VC’s generate half the liquidity of the US (15 bln vs 30).

The presentation discusses what causes this improved performance and the article linked below discusses the findings even more extensively. If the global VC market is of any interest to you, this is well worth the read/view!

Interesting post over on TechCrunch about Consmr, a company that is aiming to become the rottentomatoes of consumer packaged goods (CPG’s). And they incorporate gamification to do just that.

While the idea is an appealing one, the question is, of course, why one should spend time writing reviews of toothpaste? What incentive is there? Consmr isn’t going to bribe you to write reviews, but it will give you badges. Whether an average day-to-day user is browsing for the answer to a question like “what’s the best green-friendly laundry detergent?” or a micro-expert (like an ice cream blogger) wants to share their particular experience, the initial incentive is a game-ified user experience: Anyone can compete to earn badges that Consmr calls “flair” (a la Office Space), or “level-up” in reputation, or become a category expert.

While I am mostly interested in the b2b aspects of gamification, this is a great example of something that might just work.

Last week I attended a networking drinks and dinner session and I discussed many things with the various attendees. And as often happens during things like this, the subject of social media comes up. Centralized around the questions; do you use it, what purpose does it serve and where is it going.

While I’m currently writing an article about effectively using social media in B2B (will be shared on this site for sure) I wanted to address a misconception a lot of entrepreneurs have.

It’s not a new advertising channel, it’s not about you and it’s not noncommittal. What you do will stay visible for quite some time, people will not listen if you just talk about yourself and serve your own purposes and they will ignore any advertising.

There are a lot of people that think this behavior is regular behavior for an entrepreneur, and these are the people you’ll see talking about themselves both on Twitter and on the networking drinks like the one I mentioned earlier. Everyone else knows very quickly these are the people to avoid, and this is why the ‘skilled networkers’ get around the room so much; people don’t really engage.

Sorry for the rant, some car salesperson at the networking session kept talking about his uninteresting business, and I had to get the frustration out. In the article I will extensively discuss every angle! I promise!

As I wrote earlier; Rumor: EA is buying PopCap, this turns out to be true! The deal is expected to close in August 2011 and EA will pay a total of $ 650 million and an additional $ 100 million in stock. Also, earn-outs and other incentives allow for an added $ 550 million in payments over the next two years. PopCap’s CEO David Roberts has the following to say about the deal: “By working with EA, we’ll scale our games and services to deliver more social, mobile, casual fun to an even bigger, global audience.”

More interesting is the position of PopCap within the EA universe. EA’s CEO John Riccitiello explains the reasoning behind the offer:

“PopCap adds to our portfolio some of the best casual intellectual property in gaming – hit games that are growing fast on mobile and social platforms. Where some companies are built on a single hit, PopCap has made lightning strike again and again. They have built a powerhouse of evergreen casual properties and proven their ability to create new hits again and again on the fastest growing platforms – mobile, tablets, PC, online and Facebook.”

Sadly they make it about shareholder return in the end by saying: “ this deal is expected to be at least ten-cents accretive in fiscal year 2013″. Which I don’t care much about, a good company buying a big casual gaming name in order to expand on their position seems smart to me and will probably prove beneficial for the company in a few years. I take the ability of the bankers to broker a financially solid deal as a given and they shouldn’t be that concerned about it.