Slashdot Mirror
Facebook To Put Off IPO Until Late 2012
jfruhlinger writes "Facebook's whispered about IPO is one of the most anticipated in the industry — but it looks like we'll have to anticipate it for a bit longer. The Financial Times, quoting anonymous sources, says that it won't happen until late next year. Those sources say the purpose is to keep Facebook employees focused on product development, but it seems more likely that Facebook's bankers aren't happy with the company's numbers (or the economy's prospects)."
To be honest, Facebook has done a lot of good. It's incredibly easy to keep up with people living on the other side of the world, even with those you don't really know that well but still have gone out to bar sometimes etc. It has also brought businesses, restaurants and everything to one single page with one unified interface, so you don't have to hunt them from Google or other search engines. The real names and connections between people make it a lot easier for you to discover new things and people too. I can see the popularity and its reason, even though slashdot users seem to hate Facebook. I guess I'm just a little bit more social geek.
For all the privacy they've squashed and all the censorship they've jack booted.
Some of the issues are collected here http://stallman.org/facebook.html
This doesn't come as a surprise to me at all. Who in their right minds would go forward with an IPO when the investors are trying to pull out their money from the market. Seems to me, Facebook has a lot of time before it can go ahead with this, if they want it to be a success!
Doesn't matter. They've benefitted from it already, and without that pesky regulation stuff. The sold a big chunk of (massively overvalued) shares to Goldman Sachs, who then sold shares in a fund backed by Facebook shares. Because GS was the only shareholder, they didn't pass the threshold required to go public (and so have to publish accounts). Facebook got a big chunk of capital, GS got a new to you play their hype-and-dump games with, a load of rich people got to buy in early and enjoy the bubble, and a load of other people will get left holding the hot potato when they eventually revalue the fund to be based on something sane.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I've got an old theory that everyone's hot at some point in their lives...which is why it's difficult to see a cute little kid knowing full well they've got a devastating blow coming to them as their nose grows too long, their face takes on odd proportions or their complexion goes to pot, oftentimes before they've even hit dating years.
Now, there's Facebook. Did they get hot once already and the decline is starting to set in? When you think about the "social infrastructure," are they the first to come to mind? Does Google actually have the opportunity to change the game on them in a way that they'll never be able to compete with? And does the radical demise of every hot property from CompuServe to Yahoo! tell us everything we need to know about how deep our roots are in the social world?
Not saying it's true, just saying it's worth pondering...
---- Please be nice in case my Slashdot karma ~= my real life karma.
I've been in a tech company that was poised for an IPO just before the sub-prime bubble burst and rained on everyone's parade. An external firm was brought in to handle it, took one look at the books, and told us that we were, to paraphrase only very slightly, having a laugh.
A business model based on growing on private investment rather than revenue, vastly over-inflated self estimate of worth, and years of accounting sleights of hand were easily rooted out.
Sight unseen, I'd suspect - OK, to be honest, hope - that Facebook is in a similar situation. They may have to go through a few firms before they find out willing to take them to market with a multi billion dollar cap and a straight face.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
To be honest it's a pain. It's blocked from just about every work place and even after you've clocked off and you want to go drinking all the info is locked away. The phone app is so invasive I've un-installed it and make do with awful webpages they serve up on mobile.
I book people for events and people book me for events and to be honest, it's one more point of contact that I could do without. It's best use is for one to many dissemination of information. For many to many it is dire; but as so many people are on, it I'm stuck with it. It has a long way to go and I'm looking forward to the next company that steps over it with something better. Getting everyone to move will make that hard.
I hate the Facebook, try as I might I've had zero success in migrating my family and friends to superior services like twitter & google+. (I'm gen x btw). Reason being is my non computer literate family and friends can't cope with the cognitive dissonance of learning yet another www site on the internet. If they do manage to do so, then there's no-one there, except boring self-promoters (hello twitter!). So Facebook will be around for a long time to come and people like me who know there's better alternatives will still be forced to use it.
Getting back on topic, postponing the IPO makes a tonne of sense. The markets are in turmoil with Greece and Italy about to default. For an IPO of the size of Facebook, any sensible banker would wait and see.
Plus the USA has its election next year, so inevitably the pork barrel will come out. No doubt that will add a couple of digits to the user/revenue/ebitda mulitple that Facebook will be valued at.
I'll see your hokum and raise you a boondoggle.
I think it's because it's insecure by design. The internet, websites and emails is what's brought people together. Anyone with Google can google the company name, and go to the site. Having to create a Facebook account before you can use it is a problem if you value security. The real names thing (to the extent that it's policed, which is not very much, just like the `no children` rule) is doesn't help.
Yes, there are more people into social stuff than there are geeks. If the internet were only used by geeks, there wouldn't be a Facebook; there were BBSs, email etc for that sort of thing.
If anything, Facebook has made it much harder for me to stay in touch with friends and relatives.
Not being a social type, and having a taboo-strength aversion to any conversation in which I only know one of the parties, I'm just not Facebook compatible.
So I rely on e-mail for communication. But with the advent of Facebook, people no longer check their e-mails, nor bother to reply. So I lose touch with people.
I'm sure Facebook is great for those who are social. But it's crippling for those of us who can't cope with social situations.
This is going to be a tough one. Google has already changed the game and Facebook is squirming. I see mainstream news stories about Facebook adding new features that copy Google+. Bankers have advisers who see this kind of thing happening. Frankly, any brokerages/banks willing to float the IPO are looking for an IMMEDIATE payoff (i.e. stripping new "investors" of their buy-in of common stock). Read the "Wall Street Jungle", its an old book the explains this stuff in a simple manner. It is not magic. Plus, the MySpace fiasco is still fresh in everyone's mind. It was SOOO hot!
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Goldman Sachs bought all those private shares some time ago, looking to make a bunch of money off the IPO. Now that they've had a look at the books, maybe they fear that Facebook isn't worth nearly as much as they hoped.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
Someone who has that much difficulty being social won't be found outside of Facebook either.
I'm not asking to be "found" - that's a social networking concept alien to me. I'm asking not to be forgot.
Believe it or not it's 100% possible to have a social life without using Facebook, Twitter,
Absolutely. But it requires that those you communicate with don't abandon one-on-one communication in favour of social networking.
I post a fair bit to Google+, although I usualy duplicate the post to Facebook and twitter. I much prefer Google+ to Facebook, so keep posting there enough though I have less contacts there. My reason being that if anyone else does migrate over to Google+ from Facebook or elsewhere, they will see some activity instead of nothing happening and stop logging on.
The interaction with people is about the same I think. For example, I posted a photo to both Google+ and Facebook, and it got a similar level of interaction in both places, even though the number of contacts I have on Facebook is far far greater than Google+.
I remember reading on slashdot a few weeks ago that the easiest way to get people to move from Facebook to Google+ would be to post a link to your Google+ profile saying "I will only be adding new baby photos to this account", to get family to move to it so they can continue looking at photos of their grandchild/niece/nephew/etc.
Facebook's user count has stopped growing in the US and UK. That's a killer sign for an IPO.
Once growth has stopped, the company's value has to be based strictly on revenue. The value of the stock is the present value of future dividends. It's not clear how profitable Facebook really is. Since they're private, audited numbers are not available.
Once the number of users has peaked, all the ways to increase revenue annoy users. Facebook can run more ads. (See Myspace for where that leads.) They can add more services (Yahoo and Google went overboard in that direction. It didn't help.) They can force developers to pay them. (That works in the short term, until the major developers figure out another way to get paid.)
Social networks have a life cycle, like nightclubs. They start small, get the cool people, then allow massive numbers of people in. The jerk level becomes excessive, the cool people leave, and the social network winds down. This happened to AOL, Geocities, Orkut, Tribe, Xanga, Bebo, Yahoo 360, Nerve, and Myspace. Facebook looks to be next.