Groupon Staff POACHED by Competitors and 4 Social Media Stocks Move

Facebook, Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) shares fell to a new low Thursday, on volume which doubled typical daily levels within the first hour of the session, as rules expired restricting some early investors from lowering their stakes. The alleged lockup agreements which prohibited early investors from selling stock began to expire on Thursday, making 271 million additional Facebook shares eligible to be sold, although holders may also choose to keep some, or all, of their shares. Pre-IPO investors continue to hold the majority of Facebook’s stock, but lockup expirations may see nearly two billion of the company’s shares hit the market between now and next May. The shares traded down $1.28 (6.04%) recently at $19.92.

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LinkedIn Corporation (NYSE:LNKD): Telesocial, the San Francisco-based cloud telephony service platform, announced the extension of its social voice API to the LinkedIn developer platform today. By using the Telesocial API and the LinkedIn platform, developers will now have the ability to integrate mobile voice calling into applications with no usage fees. Also, web users will be able to click-to-call directly to a mobile phone from within an app without needing to know the phone number of the receiver, making the LinkedIn profile a user’s ultimate phone book for networking in a safely and conveniently. The shares traded up $1.75 (1.71%) recently at $103.98.

Groupon, Inc. (NASDAQ:GRPN): The trouble and expense of maintaining a sales force is what Angie’s List and Groupon have in common, although Angie’s List does not seem to have the additional human resource issues that Groupon seems to have with its sales force. Recently, the Wall Street Journal reported that the sales staff for Groupon is fleeing in large numbers, destroyed by competing daily deal sites. On a different note, CEO Andrew Mason stated recently that the company is adding additional front-line sales reps, which makes analysts that were already panicked regarding the stock even more anxious, but the reputation of the company as an unhappy place to work may show its effects. The shares traded down $0.31 (5.83%) recently at $5.01.

Pandora Media, Inc. (NYSE:P): Online streaming music revenues are predicted to grow at nearly five times the rate of download revenues during 2012, according to Strategy Analytics’ latest Global Recorded Music* Forecast. Also, Streaming revenues are to see a 40 percent rise during 2012, reaching $1.1 billion, while download revenues will increase by only 8.5 percent to $3.9 billion, the firm estimated. The shares traded up $0.29 (3.12%) recently at $9.59.

Zynga, Inc. (NASDAQ:ZNGA) is investing in California and Washington lobbying efforts concerning gambling, as the social-gaming firm believes that the U.S. will not be an initial market for the possibly lucrative new line of business, according to the Wall Street Journal. The shares traded down $0.10 (3.27%) recently at $2.96.

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