Two major news events were at the center of the microblogging realm this past week, as tech executives from across the spectrum commented on the blockbuster IPO for Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) and the debut of latest iPhone from Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL). Executives were generally full of praise for the Alibaba IPO, which shattered numerous records when the stock began trading last Friday in New York. But there were also some hints of jealousy, as top executives from fast-fading e-commerce rival Dangdang (NYSE: DANG) and security software maker Qihoo 360 (NYSE: QIHU) suffered from valuation envy.
Meantime, domestic smartphone makers Huawei and ZTE (
0763.HK; Shenzhen: 000063) took advantage of the iPhone's formal launch last Friday to tout their own products, which are far cheaper and enjoy a reputation for reasonable quality. But unlike the iPhone, Huawei and ZTE still suffer from the "Made in China" stigma, and don't command anything near the level of respect and buzz that the iPhone gets.
Let's start our weekly microblogging round-up with Alibaba, which raced into the record books with a New York IPO that looks set to become the biggest of all time. The company raised $21.8 billion (HK$169 billion) in the actual offering, placing it behind Agricultural Bank of China (
1288.HK; Shanghai: 601288), which holds the record for the world's largest IPO after its $22.1 billion offering in 2010. But reports over the weekend indicated Alibaba was issuing additional shares due to the big popularity of its IPO, potentially bringing its total fund raising to as much
as $25 billion.
Its shares surged 38 percent in their trading debut, making Alibaba the world's second largest Internet company behind only US search titan Google (Nasdaq: GOOG). Among industry observers, one of the company's biggest admirers was Sina (Nasdaq: SINA) CEO Charles Chao, who posted a photo from the opening bell ceremony along with praise to Alibaba founder Jack Ma for letting 8 of his employees represent the company
at the ceremony.
Of course it's worth noting that Jack Ma is one of Chao's biggest shareholders, after Alibaba purchased a major stake in Sina's Weibo (Nasdaq: WB) microblogging unit last year. Shi Yuzhu, another good friend of Ma's and founder of the recently privatized gaming company Giant Interactive, also posted a photo of the ceremony and noted how everyone was chanting
"BABA" at the opening.
There was also just a hint of valuation envy in the microblog posts from Qihoo CEO Zhou Hongyi, as well from Dangdang CEOL Li Guoqing. Qihoo is one of China's more valuable tech firms with a market cap of nearly $10 billion, while Dangdang is a bit smaller at around $1 billion. But both of those figures pale in comparison to Alibaba's valuation which reached $230 billion after its meteoric debut.
