Here are your social media business updates for Monday:
Twitter Picks German Headquarters: Bloomberg reports that Munich’s Focus magazine has just announced Twitter has chosen Berlin as its German headquarters. The e-mailed preview of the upcoming Focus article emphasized that Twitter intentionally avoided Hamburg and Munich, the German headquarters of major tech players Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), and Google (NASDAQ:GOOG).
Nepali Figurehead PMs Zuckerberg — Asks for Egalitarian Facebook Features: Sunibabu Pant, a prominent Nepali lawmaker and gay rights activist, has personally reached out to Mark Zuckerberg to request the Facebook CEO add a “third gender” option to Facebook’s profile setup. As the Washington Post reports, Pant is the only openly gay member of Nepal’s parliament, and has attracted worldwide notice as a fierce advocate for LGBT rights. While Zuckerberg has yet to respond, Pant is optimistic that the Facebook founder will contact him regarding transgender-sensitive customizing of Facebook’s profile features.
LinkedIn Chair Sells Facebook Holdings: Facebook’s much-anticipated and publicized IPO has attracted both enthusiasm and skepticism, but one high-profile social media figure has made a statement of his own. Bloomberg reports that LinkedIn‘s (NYSE:LNKD) Executive Chairman Reid Hoffman has just announced he will be selling a portion of his shares, stating “I am selling a minority of my position as part of a general diversification strategy.” Hoffman himself was instrumental in raising venture capital for the newborn Facebook in 2004, and estimates placed his ownership at a 0.5% stake in the company. Facebook’s pending IPO might be valued at $100 billion upon going public — meaning that Hoffman would have owned a $500 million share before he sold an undisclosed portion of his holding. Hoffman is the largest LinkedIn shareholder (his stake was valued at $1.9 billion upon last year’s IPO), and was also a crucial investor in the now-public social gaming developer Zynga (NASDAQ:ZNGA).
Adam Patterson is an Assistant Editor of InvestorPlace. As of this writing, he did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities. For more on social media, check out our previous Trending Social Media stories.
