TechBiz

By Therese Poletti

With Facebook expected to become the most valuable U.S. company at the time of IPO when it goes public on Friday, there is no end to the frenzy around the deal.

As a result, it may be hard for many of Facebook’s 901 million monthly users to sit out the IPO party. They may try and jump in sometime after the initial trading craze abates, or even in the days following its debut because it is one of the most anticipated IPOs ever.

“Facebook is like Halley’s Comet,” said Marty Wolf, president of Martin Wolf M&A Advisors, a San Ramon, Calif.-based firm that focuses on information technology. “This is like a religious event, maybe it’s tied into the economy.” Every time he watches the news, Wolf said, the breathless buoyancy over Facebook’s IPO is like it’s Mardi Gras.

By David Hatch

Starbucks (SBUX) makes it easy for customers to buy coffee. So easy, in fact, that they don't even need cash or a credit card. A smartphone will work just fine. To capitalize on the growing popularity of these devices, Starbucks introduced mobile payment technology in January 2011 that enables purchases with the wave of an iPhone, Android or Blackberry.

"A lot of our customers have their phone in their hand when they come into our store," says Adam Brotman, chief digital officer at Starbucks. "We knew that customers were increasingly more mobile -- were increasingly using their phone as a primary computing device."

By Julia Boorstin

There's been a lot of talk about Facebook's valuation, but the real question behind that valuation is how Facebook makes money and what its prospects are.

First: The value of Facebook's reach shouldn't be underestimated. Facebook had 901 million monthly active users at the end of the first quarter -- and it turns those users into dollars, primarily by showing them ads.

It had 526 million daily active users at the end of the first quarter, 41 percent more than in the prior year. Users generated an average of 3.2 billion likes and comments per day in the first quarter, and there are more than 125 billion friend connections.

By Socrates Alvarez

As many people have probably noticed, there has been significant buzz and speculation flooding the blogs and news sites over this upcoming Friday's release of Facebook's IPO on the Nasdaq. Many financial pundits predict catastrophe and a second dotcom bubble bursting in the market, and expect Facebook's performance to mirror the struggles that have crippled recent tech companies -- like Groupon (GRPN) and Netflix (NFLX) -- that entered the market over the past 12 months. A few, on the other hand, see Mark Zuckerberg's darling of the Internet as a stock that could pop like Google (GOOG) did.

Silicon Valley's Eric Migicovsky had a vision for a watch that would seamlessly and wirelessly sync with his smartphone, alerting him to incoming calls, texts and emails. His idea, eventually dubbed Pebble, attracted the attention of business incubator Y Combinator and raised $375,000 from a few angel investors.

"Then he hit a roadblock," says Mark Milian at Bloomberg. "A big one." Pebble couldn't raise any more money, and the project screeched to a halt. So Migicovsky turned to the popular "crowd-funding" website Kickstarter, and suddenly, Pebble had scored an astonishing $10 million investment (Watch Migicovsky's video pitch at TheWeek.com).

Here, a guide to the multi-million dollar wristwatch's incredible journey.