Facebook has just acquired mobile commerce startup Karma, which makes apps for gifting friends and family. The terms of the deal are undisclosed but 16 employees of the startup will be joining Facebook. The purchase will help Facebook build up monetization prowess on mobile platforms — an area it’s admittedly weak in. The price was not disclosed.

With the deal, Facebook gets two extremely experienced leaders in building and monetizing mobile apps. Karma’s chief executive Lee Linden and its co-founder Ben Lewis were behind Tapjoy, a company that became a huge force in distributing and making money from mobile games. Both he and Lewis were product managers at Google and Microsoft. Linden and Lewis have known each other since they were kids and have been building companies together for a couple years.

Note: This was a real product acquisition, not a lower-priced, talent-based one. Karma had done one venture round with Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, Felicis Ventures and the CrunchFund. The sense that we’re hearing from social product industry sources is that Karma will get Facebook’s 901 million users at its feet and more power behind building partnerships with other brands. It’s not clear whether Karma will be left alone to run autonomously like Instagram or whether it will become a Facebook-branded product. Last year, Facebook acquired an early group messaging app called Beluga and turned it into Facebook Messenger.

This acquisition makes sense for a couple of reasons. Facebook needs all the help it can get in making its mobile platform produce revenue. Linden and Lewis built Tapjoy into what became a $100 million annual runrate business for app distribution and monetization. Now they’ve turned their attention toward mobile commerce. Facebook hasn’t figured out how to make money from mobile apps quite yet. It’s starting to show sponsored stories in the mobile news feed, but it doesn’t have that many opportunities to make payments revenue from third-party mobile developers because it’s blocked from taking a revenue share on iOS. Android offers some possibilities but it’s quite complicated to build a rival app ecosystem like Amazon has done over the past few years with the Kindle.

Facebook has tried its hand at gifting before, although it was the virtual kind. It abandoned its gifts store in favor of working on a more broad-based virtual currency offering called Credits that would power purchases of virtual gifts and goods from other developers. It also has tried direct commerce with its Groupon competitor Deals, but obviously that is a very expensive model to operate and scale if you look at Groupon’s margins.

But the physical good gifting that Karma specialized in could be a perfect fit. Facebook already knows who your friends are, when they have birthdays, and their interests. It could suggest gifts to give and who to give them too, let users pay with their credit card or credits, and take a healthy cut.

We had heard a few weeks ago that Lewis was considering taking personal time to travel the world and step down from running Karma with Linden, but apparently we were wrong. He is definitely joining Facebook with the rest of the team.

Facebook said in a statement: “We’ve been really impressed with the Karma team and all they accomplished in such a short time. This acquisition combines Karma’s passion and innovative mobile app with Facebook’s platform to help people connect and share in new and meaningful ways.”

Karma also had a post on its own blog:

We founded Karma with the goal of adding the sentiment and meaning back into gift giving. That’s what Karma is all about. That’s what the Karma team set out to achieve.

Over the last year, we’ve built a new e-commerce platform from the ground up. We’ve been honored to partner with amazing brands to create a curated catalog of products. We made those products instantly giftable in a brand new way. And we harnessed the power of Facebook’s social network to ensure you never miss a chance to show someone you care. The phenomenal response and feedback we’ve heard from customers has more than exceeded our expectations. And we’re just getting started — today we take social gifting to the next level.

We’re thrilled to announce that Karma has been acquired by Facebook. The service that Karma provides will continue to operate in full force. By combining the incredible passion of our community with Facebook’s platform we can delight users in new and meaningful ways. As we say … only good things will follow.

Simply put, together we can celebrate life’s important moments in ways we could not before. A word of heartfelt thanks to our partners, customers, and our incredible team for helping us share Karma with so many people.

Sincerely,
Karma Co-founders Lee & Ben

In addition, TechCrunch interviewed Karma co-founder Lee Linden at the South By Southwest conference in Austin, Texas back in March. You can watch a video of that interview, and see him walk us through a demonstration of the Karma app in person, in the clip embedded below:

The underwriters of Facebook’s $16 billion debut on NASDAQ fought to the finish to keep the company’s shares above last night’s final price of $38 a share. Shares closed at $38.23 today. Sources tell us that the syndicate of banks underwriting the deal have been putting in buy orders to keep its price afloat. For Facebook itself, it’s actually a great outcome as the company didn’t leave any money on the table. But bankers on the wealth-management side of the underwriters are sure to be unhappy. Plus, the company’s tepid premiere is killing the performance of tech stocks across the board.

Basically, what we hear is that the underwriters including Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, got too pushy in the final days before the IPO about pricing. Earlier this month, the company was slated to open at a $28 to 35 price range, but that range was pushed up to $34 to 38 a share. Then Facebook priced at the very high end at $38 last night.

“The only thing keeping it at $38 are support mechanisms,” a source tells us. “There just wasn’t the institutional investor demand that people thought there would be.” They added that about 20 percent of buying orders seem to be coming from retail investors (e.g. regular people), which is “unprecedented.”

Reuters estimates that the lead underwriter Morgan Stanley theoretically could have spent up to $2 billion to prop up the stock, if you look at volumes in the last 20 minutes of trading when Facebook was close to breaking under.

Because prices are being held up to avoid a negative finish, shares might dip lower into early next week. Already, we’re seeing the impact on other stocks across the board. Zynga is down 13.4 percent to $7.16. LinkedIn is down 5.9 percent to $99.02. “They’re all in the shitter because now they look expensive since Facebook didn’t go anywhere,” we’re told.

From Facebook’s perspective, the company shouldn’t care. The company and its early shareholders raised $16 billion at the very best price they could, leaving no money on the table for the underwriters’ wealthy clients to scoop up and sell for a quick profit.

Bill Gurley, who is a general partner at Benchmark Capital (which has a take in Facebook through the company’s acquisition of FriendFeed), said that the price was spot on in a tweet.

“This is way better than retail investors buying in an an inflated “pop” price,” he tweeted. Gurley bets that underwriters who propped up the stock will probably make a profit.

Plus, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has warned investors that he won’t be concerned with short-term fluctuations in the stock. From the very beginning, he has said that Facebook was originally not meant to be a company.

He even said today before the market opened, “Going public is an important milestone in our history. But here’s the thing: our mission isn’t to be a public company. Our mission is to make the world more open and connected.”

In case there was any confusion after Facebook’s eight years in business and its recent geographic expansions, it was cleared up today: Facebook’s home and heart lies in Silicon Valley.

TechCrunch TV saw that first-hand this morning at NASDAQ’s Marketsite in New York City’s Times Square. We were on hand there for the ringing of the NASDAQ opening bell, but as expected, Facebook’s founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg took advantage of the option to ring it remotely from his company’s Menlo Park, California headquarters.

NASDAQ is a fully digital stock exchange, unlike for example the New York Stock Exchange, so it doesn’t have a physical trading floor and the bell-ringing is really just a ceremonial gesture. Nevertheless, there were throngs of reporters, some die-hard Facebook fans, and a few bewildered-looking tourists gathered in Times Square around the NASDAQ Marketsite to see the action.

An Eerily Quiet Times Square

But as you can see in the video embedded above, that “action” was negligible. NASDAQ played a short, two- to three-minute simulcast of Zuckerberg before and during the ringing of the bell on massive television screens, but there was no sound from the event piped into Times Square — so for the duration of the broadcast the crowd fell eerily silent, just watching the screen together. There was a brief countdown shown, but no one called out the numbers or anything. New Year’s Eve it was not.

My colleague Anthony Ha found the scene at Facebook’s headquarters this morning to be “underwhelming,” but from where I stood it looked like a downright rager compared to the environment in NYC. In fact, I’m pretty sure this was one of the only occasions I’ll be able to say with near certainty that Menlo Park, California was a louder and more bustling place than Times Square.

The Power Shift From Wall Street To Silicon Valley?

Someone could easily see the whole event as a let down, but after thinking about it a bit I actually feel like it was the opposite. The scene at NASDAQ today strikes me as just the latest sign of an ongoing shift in power from the finance industry to the technology industry — from the proverbial Wall Street to the proverbial Silicon Valley.

Now, I don’t mean that literally, of course. We all live digitally these days, so power is by no means not actually moving geographically from East to West (or even being centered in the United States at all.) But it is a palpable shift in mentality. So for those of us who work and live in and around the tech industry, the silence in Times Square this morning represents something very exciting indeed.

~The Best Of TechCrunch’s Facebook IPO Coverage~

Video & Photos: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Rings In The NASDAQ Bell

No IPO Pop Here: Facebook Trades Slightly Higher At Around $40

Facebook’s Key Executives And Shareholders: What Is Everyone Worth?

Zuckerberg Receives Hoodie, Says “Our Mission Isn’t To Be A Public Company” In Pre-IPO Remarks

How Facebook Hacked The NASDAQ Button

Zynga Shares Go On Wild Ride During Facebook IPO — Big Fall, Then Recovery

Facebook Says Haters Gonna Hate, Likers Gonna Like

Is The Avengers worth your money? Do the disc-blasting Nerf guns leave a welt? How do you pull a Pebble and rein in $3 million on Kickstarter?

In this week’s TC/Gadgets webcast, we answer all this and more. John and Matt argue over the value in one of this summer’s tent pole movies, The Avengers. John finds it boring, while Matt thinks “it’s fun for everyone.” And while I can’t say I’ll be buying a ticket to The Avengers any time soon, I can say with great certainty that I’ll be at one of the opening day showings of Prometheus.

Who doesn’t love space, right?

The gang also discusses Nerf’s disc-blasting guns, and how they may or may not be used at this weekend’s Disrupt Hackathon. Last year we saw a raucous group of hackers start an all-out war with bungee darts. None of the TC editorial staff was injured (nor were the hackers), but this year we’ll at least have some Nerf Vortex and Vulcan guns slung over our shoulders. You know… Just in case.

In the words of the recent Game Of Thrones trailers, “War is coming.”

Finally, but likely most importantly, Matt, Chris, John and I offer up some tips as to what we cover on Kickstarter. Matt is done with iPad cases, and though I echo the sentiment, I’ll probably be more willing to make exceptions than he. John prefers the “little tweaks” to things we already use and enjoy, like the automatic bike light that knows when you’re moving.

I encourage a strong video, as marketing is a huge driver of any business. But the geeky stuff has its place too — Chris thoroughly enjoyed the electron microscope project that significantly reduced the cost of looking at really, really tiny things.

China’s Internet juggernaut Tencent announced today that it would undergo a restructuring of its business units into six groups. Ren Yuxin was also named as the new chief operating officer and will head  up the media and social-networking groups.

The six groups include:

TEG – Technology & Engineering Group, comprised of Tencent Research and operating divisions.

SNG – Social Networking Group, comprised of its Internet business lines and some divisions from Tencent Research.

CDG – Corp. Development Group, formed by Tencent Guangdong R&D Center and its corporate development arm.

IEG – Interactive Entertainment Group, original Interactive Entertainment service.

MIG – Mobile Internet Group, made up of wireless services and some divisions from Tencent Research.

OMG – Online Media Group, namely its portal business.

The most profitable Chinese Internet company and its red scarf clad penguin mascot, has been growing into quite the force by competing with other Chinese Internet companies on many fronts like portal business (rivals with Sina, Sohu and NetEase), online games (Sohu, NetEase and Shanda), social networking service (Sina, Renren), software and anti-virus services (Qihoo 360), online video (Qiyi, Sohu Video), eCommerce (Taobao), travel booking (Ctrip), online payment (Alipay) and search (Baidu and Sogou). Just to name a few.

In the firm’s freshly released Q1 2012 financial results, the company turned a profit of US $470.6 million on revenue of 1.53 billion, a 2.8% increase from this time last year.

All of its major offerings are still seeing big growth, for example, its instant messaging system QQ now boasts 751.9 million accounts, up 11.5% YOY. Both QZone and Pengyou.com, Tencent’s approach to social networking to date claims 576.7 million and 214.5 million users respectively, up 9.7% since last quarter and a stunning 30.2% YOY. And the Shenzhen-based company’s profit-making businesses including QQ Game Open Platform, Internet value-added service, wireless Internet value-added service as well as online advertising business all pulled off decent growth in the past quarter.

However, there’s always more than meets the eye.

For starters, Tencent’s investment spree last year hasn’t brought on too much revenue, for example, it still lags behind Alibaba/Taobao on the eCommerce front in spite of all its recent acquisitions. Starting last year, Tencent invested in a handful of eCommerce services, like Gaopeng (think Groupon), China’s Zappos OKBuy.com, the Chinese OTA elong.com, diamond dealer kela.cn, 3C etailer 51buy.com and so forth, with elong.com being the only one turning a profit.

Furthermore, Sina Weibo, which is like a Chinese mix of Facebook and Twitter, is posing a real threat to Tencent’s dominance in social networking. Just like Tencent built its empire on QQ, Sina has been working relentlessly on Weibo to reinvent itself from the traditional online media company to the leading social media outlet by adding a swath of innovations to the platform like Weibo Open Platform, Enterprise Weibo, Weibo gaming center and so on.

At the same time, Tencent’s search effort Soso has been long-rumored to be facing serious downsizing, which shows that a company that seems as strong as Tencent can still have weaknesses. Soso hasn’t had any major breakthroughs since its inception six years ago. It currently accounts for 1.5% of China’s search market in the first quarter of this year, according to a report by Beijing-based market researcher iResearch.

Tencent should be wary of the rise of its peers and an organizational restructure might help it be more responsive to market change and be nimble in execution.

Microsoft, just like Apple, usually runs a major back-to-school promotion every summer that is meant to give students (and their parents) some extra incentives to buy a new computer. The company’s just-announced back-to-school deal for the U.S. and Canada is pretty much the same as last year’s. A year ago, Microsoft gave students who bought a new PC and Xbox 360 and this year it’s doing exactly the same.

There are some differences to last year’s program, though. This time around, Microsoft isn’t just partnering with Best Buy in the U.S., but also with Dell.com, Fry’s Electronics, HPDirect and NewEgg.com (its own Microsoft stores, of course, will also honor this promotion. In Canada, students can buy their PCs from Best Buy, Dell.ca, Future Shop, Staples and The Source.

The program is scheduled to start on May 20 in the U.S and May 18 in Canada. To be eligible, students need to buy a Windows PC worth at least $699 ($599 in Canada).

Apple vs. Microsoft

Apple also used free products like an iPod touch as an incentive for shoppers. Last year, however, it switched to handing out $100 gift cards to its digital stores instead. Apple usually announces its annual back-to-school promotion in June.

By the end of last year’s summer promotions, some analysts noted that Apple handily beat Microsoft 8 to 2, with around 80% of incoming students opting for Macs instead of a Windows machine. This year, Microsoft hopes that Ultrabooks like the Samsung Series 5 ULTRA and the Dell XPS 13 will make students think twice about buying a Mac.

The tale of Docracy’s year-long journey is a fun one. When Matt Hall and his partner John Watkinson first went into the Hackathon last year, the only goal was to get a prototype working for an idea they had, a GitHub for legal documents. Sure, a win would’ve been nice, but the main goal was to push out a prototype they could pitch to investors (instead of just an idea) with a firm deadline hanging over their shoulders.

But alas, Docracy took home the top prize despite the fact that they were the first of more than 100 presentations that day. And after last year’s Disrupt NYC (tickets to this year’s Disrupt here), the story only gets better.

The original plan was to push out a fully functional Docracy within a week or so of the Hackathon, but after a chat with a more legal-savvy friend the pair realized that a little extra scrutiny to any liabilities was in order. That week turned into a full seven months, with a hard launch in December of 2011. In November, just a month before, the company received a $650,000 seed round led by First Round Capital. Vaizra Investments, Rick Webb and Quotidian Ventures also participated.

Matt and John were able to quit their jobs and focus on Docracy full time. And today the service already has over 10,000 users.

There’s something to be said about the power of a successful Hackathon presentation. It’s not only true with Docracy, but Group.me (which was recently acquired by Skype) won the TechCrunch Hackathon as well and has since gone on to fall under the almighty Microsoft umbrella.

Disrupt NYC is set to be one of our biggest shows yet, with returns from Michael Arrington and MG Siegler, along with a variety of big names like Marissa Mayer, Sarah Tavel, Fred Wilson, and David Lee and more. It’s going to be huge.

If you’re interested in checking out Disrupt and/or the Hackathon yourself, tickets are still on sale here and info on the Hackathon can be found here. Companies who want to join the Battleground can apply for the last remaining spots in Startup Alley. You can find the full agenda here.

The President’s technology gurus, US CTO Todd Park and CIO Steven VanRoekel, will be looking for savvy innovators to work with at next week’s TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York (tickets here). Park and VanRoekel will be announcing some new technology initiatives at their Disrupt Panel. We understand that they’ll be looking for both startup partners and individuals to work with the White House, and are eager to meet participants at Disrupt, who may be the fit that they’re looking for.

Big government data is becoming big business. For instance, the White House has been instrumental in the recent “Blue Button” initiative, to give universal access to patient health records for a select group of Americans. Health data is an industry ripe for disruption, as patients need user-friendly tools to help them turn information into actionable intelligence. The success of Blue Button led to its energy cousin, “Green Button,” and we expect more industries will continue to get the open data treatment.

Even if Park and VanRoekel haven’t already made plans, perhaps you have a better idea. So, if you have a brilliant idea for the federal government, or have dreams of working on open data at the White House itself, come by Disrupt and meet our panelists.

Image Credit: Matt H. Wade/Wikimedia

Facebook, which has now listed on NASDAQ, is set to make $16 billion if its share holds at the $38 price that it set yesterday — more if it ends higher. Here’s a coincidence: that’s just north of the total amount in damages, $15 billion, that a new class-action case is seeking against the social network over privacy invasion.

Filed in U.S. Federal Court in San Jose, California, the case (embedded below) combines 21 separate cases that have been filed in different courts in the U.S. in 2011 and 2012 — as the plaintiffs look for strength in numbers. All of the cases are connected to “Internet tracking,” or how Facebook tracks users when they are browsing the wider web outside of Facebook’s own pages, even after they have logged out of Facebook.

Facebook has already responded to the case with a flat statement of denial of guilt. “We believe this complaint is without merit and we will fight it vigorously,” a spokesperson told TechCrunch.

A lawyer from one of the firms representing the plaintiffs, David Straite from Stewarts Law Partners, said in a statement (via Bloomberg) that they were looking at how to include people outside the U.S. in the suit, too.

Here’s an example of one of the plaintiffs’ complaints from the suit:

“Plaintiff Davis is a Facebook user and during the Class Period had an active Facebook account. Plaintiff Davis, using the same computer on which Facebook installed tracking and session cookies, visited websites with Facebook-integrated content after logging out of her Facebook account. Contrary to its policies, Facebook intercepted Plaintiff Davis’ electronic communications and tracked her internet use post-logout. Plaintiff did not consent to post-logout tracking.”

The suit also goes through a lengthy explanation of how it believes that Facebook uses cookies for tracking purposes. Perhaps more damningly, it also includes excerpts of how Facebook itself has admitted to some of this tracking activity, and its “inconsistent public statements” regarding this. (Facebook has called the tracking “inadvertent” and a “bug”, but has also said it tracks for safety reasons.)

How did the lawyers for the plaintiffs arrive at the $15 billion figure? It is based on U.S. Wiretapping law, which “provides statutory damages of the greater of $100 per violation per day, up to $10,000, per Facebook user,” the lawsuit says. It bases its calculation on 800 million members, although now that number stands at 901 billion, according to Facebook’s most recent S-1 filing. And it looks like there is also a second calculation in the complaint for even more money extending to over $1 trillion dollars. According to the suit:

“Plaintiffs are thus each entitled to the greater of $100 of statutory damages per day (corresponding to $15 billion for the Class), or $10,000 each for the ongoing violations during the class period (corresponding to $1.5 trillion for the Class).”

Facebook has been embroiled in other privacy issues and how it handles user data — ironically the company has proposed a new privacy policy that is currently open for comment until 5PM Pacific time today (Friday, May 18). If those privacy changes do not go through, it could represent a big setback for Facebook and how it wants to implement new services that will potentially generate revenue for it in the future, such as around advertising.

It may have hit a bump on this: as we wrote earlier today, a Facebook activist group in Austria has rallied opposition and over 7,000 people have commented on the proposal. Facebook has a provision that states if 7,000 or more people comment on a proposed change to it policy, then it takes the policy to its entire active user base — currently 901 million people — to get their opinion. If 30 percent vote for or against that proposal, that decision will be binding.

Facebook is currently working through a list of changes suggested by the Irish Data Protection Commissioner that would make the social network more transparent in how a users data is used, and gives individual users more control over that data.

Other run-ins over privacy have included a case in Germany over the use of facial recognition software in photos: that case is still ongoing and may result in fines against Facebook, Bloomberg writes.

~The Best Of TechCrunch’s Facebook IPO Coverage~

Video & Photos: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Rings In The NASDAQ Bell

No IPO Pop Here: Facebook Trades Slightly Higher At Around $40

Facebook’s Key Executives And Shareholders: What Is Everyone Worth?

Zuckerberg Receives Hoodie, Says “Our Mission Isn’t To Be A Public Company” In Pre-IPO Remarks

How Facebook Hacked The NASDAQ Button

Zynga Shares Go On Wild Ride During Facebook IPO — Big Fall, Then Recovery

Facebook Says Haters Gonna Hate, Likers Gonna Like

If only Facebook IPO day were a little less of a snoozefest than it is now. If only it had Zuckerberg impaling investors while riding a bull rampaging through a city. Or an elevator to space. Or Zuckerberg bouncing Ronald McDonald and the Hamburglar off a giant scale. But sadly, our surrealist dreams will never be realized.

We will just have to settle for the ho-hum performance of Facebook’s shares so far. In the meantime, you can watch this re-enactment from NMA TV or Next Media Animation, that Taiwanese animation subsidiary that riffs off current events with 3D animated videos that look like what the lovechild of Salvador Dali and Reddit would make. Oh, and did we mention that their parent company invests in tech startups too?