Today in Tech: Why Facebook is worth $15

Fortune launches new daily app for the iPad [FORTUNE]

Beginning with the current issue, iPad users can experience Fortune soup-to-nuts in a dashboard on their tablets. The magazine content is interspersed with daily news and analysis in an easy-to-swipe news app. It’s the best of Fortune in a mix of free and paid content.

We have insightful daily commentary from bloggers like Dan Primack on private equity and Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Apple, right next to our provocative magazine columnists like Allan Sloan on the economy and Geoff Colvin on leadership.

Apple sells 5 million iPhone 5 in first weekend [CNNMONEY]

Apple sold more than 5 million iPhone 5 phones since the highly anticipated device went on sale on Friday, setting a new sales record for the device, Apple announced Monday.

Over the weekend, the company outpaced the 4 million iPhone 4S units that it sold during last year’s opening weekend, though the numbers are a bit skewed. This year’s iPhone was simultaneously launched in the United States, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore and the United Kingdom, while last year’s launch did not include Hong Kong and Singapore.

Facebook is worth $15 [BARRON’S]

Facebook’s 40% plunge from its initial-public-offering price of $38 in May has millions of investors asking a single question: Is the stock a buy? The short answer is “No.” After a recent rally, to $23 from a low of $17.55, the stock trades at high multiples of both sales and earnings, even as uncertainty about the outlook for its business grows.

Source: Apple aggressively recruiting ex-Google maps staff to build out iOS Maps [TECHCRUNCH]

Another coworker that was a project lead at Google Maps, left for the East Coast after his contract ended, and was recently contacted by an Apple recruiter. The position sounds like a product development manager position, and will pay him $85k+ and all the moving expenses from the East Coast. He’s gone through 2 rounds of interview and seems like a frontrunner to land that position.

For Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, these days it’s hip to be Square Inc. [THE WALL STREET JOURNAL]

Square’s revenue rose to roughly $42.5 million in 2011, from $2 million in 2010, according to PrivCo.com Inc., a New York research firm that provides data about private companies. Square declined to confirm revenue figures.

Startup = Growth [PAUL GRAHAM]

Starting a startup is thus very much like deciding to be research scientist: you’re not committing to solve any specific problem; you don’t know for sure which problems are soluble; but you’re committing to try to discover something no one knew before. A startup founder is in effect an economic research scientist. Most don’t discover anything that remarkable, but some discover relativity.

The indomitable Mary Meeker [WIRED]

Now everybody listens. Since the mid-2000s, her annual info-packed presentation on the state of the Internet has become a tech industry event in its own right. Meeker has nailed the most important dynamics of the tech and investment climate, from the spread of mobile computing to the rise of China. She gave her most recent address—99 slides in about 19 minutes—at last May’s All Things Digital conference. In it, she focused on the idea that nearly every conceivable human activity was in the process of being transformed—connectivity (mobile phones), cash registers (Square), manufacturing (3-D printers), window shopping (decor site One Kings Lane), and even education (Codecademy). Her Majesty dubbed this trend “the reimagination of everything.”

Don’t miss the latest tech news. Sign up now to get Today in Tech emailed every morning.