Facebook Expected To Go Public Next Week

First time accepted submitter foozie writes "Many credible sources, including Forbes and CBS, say that Facebook will finally IPO next week, raising about $10 billion and valuating at $75 billion, almost three times the valuation of Google at the point of their IPO in 2004. This shift raises questions about how the new ownership will affect the company's ability to innovate and remain on the forefront of social media."

Comments

Innovate?

[tidepool]

Innovate? I think we're already past that with Facebook, no?

If you're looking for innovation, personally, I'd look elsewhere -- Way past the social-network situation that we see graying at a rapid rate.

Re:Innovate?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh oh ... Farmvile?

Re:Innovate?

[Fri13]

We should have.... but Facebook did something what WWW couldn't and that is that every person has a own "website" where they have their contact information, photos, journals and so on.

The 90's boom for WWW was that everyone would have a own website.
It did not succeed as now WWW is primarily only used by corporations and teams (projects etc) but the normal people are far away from WWW idea to have homepages.

Facebook is the "homepage 2.0".

Is it innovative? No.... but is it something? Yes.

To get innovation back to people, from corporations for sake of security. We should have easy way to get normal people to make own pages, for their chosen server provider with small fee (like 1-2 euros a month for 1GB storage).

It should be easy as just drop a package to directory and then open site with editor and drag'n'drop images, resize tables and banners, place input boxes and link to existing data just by drag'n'drop way and automatic galleries with directory hierarchy.

But even today, almost after decade of CMS's and others... It is still too difficult to make a own website. So people love facebook or Google+.

Re:Innovate?

[rrossman2]

I believe live journal, MySpace, geocities, tripod, etc all beat Facebook to your so called innovating by providing people with their own "web page".

Please try again

Re:Innovate?

[thegarbz]

Given how they've just made the single biggest change to their interface since the launch of Facebook I'm wondering just what you define as innovating? They've just done a complete re-think of how they tell the story of a person's life through a profile page.

Re:Innovate?

[Pharmboy]

I believe live journal, MySpace, geocities, tripod, etc all beat Facebook to your so called innovating by providing people with their own "web page".

Yes, a webpage that 5 people saw. Blogs made it possible for ordinary persons to have 12 to 20 people see their webpage. Facebook users typically have 50 to 500 "friends" who are forced to see updates about their cats, or the latest shared "image that is really only text" bit of wisdom. More importantly, it created networks with all their personal information available to the platform, and most importantly, Facebook figured out how to get people to give them this information for free. Some even pay for it, by purchasing game credits.

Facebook is different, and is the "necessary evil" of the month if you want to catch up with old friends from high school, etc. Other than conversation and "free" games that are designed from the ground up to be addictive, it offers very little to the user, but it offers tremendous value to the advertiser. Five years from now, Facebook will still be here. Likely worth a tiny fraction of the 75B that is laughably being touted, but it will be here.

Google brought advertisers millions of people. Facebook tells the advertisers where they live, what they like, and who their friends are. The problem of course is that everyone goes to Google when they are looking to buy something, not Facebook.

Re:Innovate?

[Macthorpe]

I don't know what the GP defines as innovation, but change certainly isn't inherently innovative. You can make a lot changes that make an interface worse... like the timeline, which on investigation appears to me to be a jumbled mess with no real thought put into its layout.

Re:Innovate?

[Githaron]

I don't go to Facebook to see someone's whole life. I go to see their current status.

Re:Innovate?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please quote me where I said Facebook was innovating?

Re:Innovate?

[kyrio]

GeoCities had many very high traffic user sites on it. Just because your world revolves around Facebook, it doesn't mean every other person's Internet use is that shallow.

Also, if I want to catch up with old friends, I'll call them.

Re:Innovate?

[sydneyfong]

Likely worth a tiny fraction of the 75B that is laughably being touted, but it will be here.

I don't know why people here are so skeptical of Facebook's market value as a company. Most people spend more time on Facebook than they do on Google. Facebook has a lot more and a lot accurate data than Google has on their users. If Google can become so huge just by selling ads on their websites, why can't Facebook be at least as big as them?

Re:Innovate?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who do you think is a bigger asshole: Vic Gundotra or Mark Zuckerberg?

--
Jordyn Buchanan

Re:Innovate?

[xeoron]

I am no fan of Facebook as a platform, but you have to admit their contribution to OSS and open hardware designs has brought much to the tech community.

Re:Innovate?

[Pharmboy]

Some of us are 50, so we don't have every phone number of every person we knew and liked from the 1970s.

Yes, GeoCities was great. That might explain why it is gone.

I'm not saying Facebook is great, I'm saying they are doing a better job, and managing to make a profit, something the other "technologies" never manged to do.

Re:Innovate?

[ClioCJS]

I believe internet usage statistics make your assessment incorrect.

Re:Innovate?

[korean.ian]

GeoCities had many very high traffic user sites on it. Just because your world revolves around Facebook, it doesn't mean every other person's Internet use is that shallow.

Also, if I want to catch up with old friends, I'll call them.

Just because your friends are shallow, doesn't mean that everyone uses Facebook in a shallow way.
I love that canard about calling old friends. Some of us have moved out of our mom's basement - I have friends in East Asia, Europe, Australia and the Americas. When it's convenient for them to receive phone calls, it's almost never convenient for me to make them. The reverse holds true as well.

Re:Innovate?

[Anonymous Coward]

and this is where FB is innovating.
Running a website and turning down credit card purchases from Nigeria because of likely credit card fraud?
Wanted to buy directly from a vendor in Pakistan and unwilling to give them your credit card details?
Dont trust the ebay seller with 50,000 +ive transactions who has been trading for only a month?
Unwilling to send goods to a buyer who wants to pay via paypal (who can then reverse the transaction?)

FB has been touting FB$, now they have critical mass in the connected world and sellers realise the value of selling goods to known customers their value will increase. Add to that the advertising value that will come when buyers FB page shows "fred bought xx at yyy".

I dont like FB for all the security/privacy reasons widely debated. Should be posting this under my login... Reality is a lot of users will use this feature when it becomes available becuz 'it's cool!'.

Re:Innovate?

[AlXtreme]

This. The Wall is what gives users a reason to go back to Facebook. You don't want to call everyone every day, you choose the people you want to keep informed about, get a look into their lives and know what they are up to without having to bother them.

Of course, MySpace and Friendster had the same but Facebook has both the clean implementation and the reach to keep people hooked. Unless they do something stupid they will remain king of the social networks for quite a while.

Re:Innovate?

[kyrio]

so we don't have every phone number of every person we knew and liked from the 1970s.

Yes, that's the point. If you don't have their number (or email address, or address), you're obviously not friends. Why do you need to know about what they are doing, or think they need to know what you are doing?

It seems that you are too mentally challenged to understand why some people used a website host to publish their information on the Internet, instead of publishing it on a forum or other such website. This shows that anything you say (or type) is meaningless drivel.

Re:Innovate?

[kyrio]

No, they don't.

Re:Innovate?

[ClioCJS]

Yes, they do.

Re:Innovate?

[crdotson]

Wow, who pissed in your Post Toasties?

And you don't think anyone is interested in catching up with people that they've lost track of over the years? What are you, fifteen? Are you going to go bombing reunions, too?

Just because nobody would want to catch back up with YOU doesn't mean that they feel the same about others.

Re:Innovate?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Way past the social-network situation that we see graying at a rapid rate."

Yep, Gramps an Meemaw are coming to FB, so the teens are leaving in droves.

Re:Innovate?

[Anonymous Coward]

This.

This what?

Re:Innovate?

[kyrio]

If you cared so much about the people you want to "catch back up with", you'd never have lost contact.

Re:Innovate?

[kyrio]

No, they do not.

Re:Innovate?

[ClioCJS]

Uh huhhhhhhh

Re:Innovate?

[Pharmboy]

What are you, 6? I have people I lost contact with years ago in the military, and from school. We didn't trade email addys in the 70s and 80s and most of the 90s.

So you are saying "If you lost contact, then you must not have liked them very much, so you shouldn't contact them now". This of course, makes you sound like a fucktard with no concept of how the real world works. Move out of mom's basement for Christ's sake.

Social media lets me talk with friends, even when we can't talk at the same time, like USENET (and less conveniently, FidoNET) used to do before spammers killed it. Just because you have no friends doesn't mean the rest of us don't have people we knew 30 years ago that we still care about, and now, even fly back to visit after a couple decades of absence.

Really?

[TheRaven64]

This shift raises questions about how the new ownership will affect the company's ability to innovate and remain on the forefront of social media

Yes, that's exactly what I thought. Well, actually what I thought was 'I wonder how much money the investors in the Goldman Sachs Facebook fund will make out of this bubble,' but your version sounds better.

Re:Really?

[marcosdumay]

My thoughts were more aking to: "They didn't sell the company yet? What are they thinking? That they have a sustainable business?"

"company's ability to innovate"?

[wisnoskij]

Since when has Facebook innovated since its creation?
shifting around the GUI elements every few months is NOT innovation.

Re:"company's ability to innovate"?

[TheRaven64]

Facebook does quite a lot of research in data mining. You probably don't see it because you're their product, not their customer.

Re:"company's ability to innovate"?

[rtb61]

Innovation in social networks will involve the shifting from company held servers to a distrusted social network via IPv6 and router/modem/firewall/web server/mail server/file server in the residential environment

The social network company providing the links between like minded people, backups and redundant services for blackouts.

So greater personal control and privacy, with access to your files from your hardware and shared access that you specifically have control over.

As Facebook aren't into hardware or software they are screwed. This is a battle between Google, Apple and M$. Then new distributed social network portal who gain the lead first.

Re:"company's ability to innovate"?

[tidepool]

Innovation in social networks will involve the shifting from company held servers to a distrusted social network via IPv6 and router/modem/firewall/web server/mail server/file server in the residential environment

The social network company providing the links between like minded people, backups and redundant services for blackouts.

You know, I agree with this to a massive extent. I would however like to see it on a 'large local' scale, ie. 'City' wide, Town wide, Burrough-wide.

I imagine something like this, but running over a town-wide MESH network, being an absolutely positive force in that of a moderate sized community. Actually bringing people together, that live in a 10 (or whatever) mile radius. A scaled back internet, a scaled back 'social network', where the social aspect is a given, because the people involved are the people you see when you grocery shop; When you get gas; When you walk your dog.

Scale it back; Decentralize it. Make it work for US, the general person.

A man can dream, right?

Re:"company's ability to innovate"?

[betterunixthanunix]

Is there proof of this? I thought I remembered Facebook researchers publishing a paper somewhere, but now I cannot seem to find it. Maybe everything is being done in secret, but then how would we ever know if they are innovating or just copying innovators?

Re:"company's ability to innovate"?

[tidepool]

Innovation in social networks will involve the shifting from company held servers to a distrusted social network via IPv6 and router/modem/firewall/web server/mail server/file server in the residential environment

The social network company providing the links between like minded people, backups and redundant services for blackouts.

So greater personal control and privacy, with access to your files from your hardware and shared access that you specifically have control over.

As Facebook aren't into hardware or software they are screwed. This is a battle between Google, Apple and M$. Then new distributed social network portal who gain the lead first.

You know, I agree with this to a massive extent. I would however like to see it on a 'large local' scale, ie. 'City' wide, Town wide, Burrough-wide.

I imagine something like this, but running over a town-wide MESH network, being an absolutely positive force in that of a moderate sized community. Actually bringing people together, that live in a 10 (or whatever) mile radius. A scaled back internet, a scaled back 'social network', where the social aspect is a given, because the people involved are the people you see when you grocery shop; When you get gas; When you walk your dog.

Scale it back; Decentralize it. Make it work for US, the general person.

A man can dream, right?

(Sorry, double post, my first post was completely mis-quoted.

Re:"company's ability to innovate"?

[Slashdot Assistant]

I'd have to ask, why? A distributed model could be useful for load sharing (hosting files and such like) and for failover, yet for those to be of much there'd have to be some way of sharing the data across the network - same for the idea of the company providing backups and redundant services. Wouldn't this set-up undermine the notion of greater control and privacy?

Security and privacy may in fact suffer if the system is reliant on each user securing their own systems. The main advantage I can see of a decentralized system would be in terms of not being reliant on a company to keep the lights on. Overall though it seems to be a step backwards, to the era when people ran their own web and mail servers from home. It's fun for the more geeky types, yet not really something that the average social networks user is likely to want. I'm pretty geeky, and I appreciate the simplicity of Facebook - particularly the way in which it's made communication with less technical relatives far easier. I have decent enough privacy settings there, and I don't see how a distributed network would make much of a difference. Either way, the data are going to be flying around, and with both approaches, I can choose what I want to make public. Facebook are bound by data protection laws, although there'd be no harm in the US tightening things up a bit.

Apple and MS could try to get in to this market, but it'll be a tough fight. Ping, despite being tied in to the most popular legal downloads system, has hardly been a roaring success.

Regardless of Facebook's perceived hardware and software shortcomings, they have an amazing amount of momentum and social lock-in. A competitor is going to have to do something good to make a dent in that. I walk around town, and I see signs on a lot of businesses now inviting patrons to follow them on Facebook. This is pretty serious name recognition for an online service. Twitter too is big in this area.

Re:"company's ability to innovate"?

[tukang]

They wrote a php to c++ source code transformer - https://github.com/facebook/hiphop-php

Re:"company's ability to innovate"?

[betterunixthanunix]

I suppose that counts as innovation...if you ignore the fact that people have been doing it for decades:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-to-source_compiler

BUT BUT BUT IT IS SO ORIGINAL, THEY DID IT WITH PHP AND C++ UNLIKE ALL THE OTHER ONES OUT THERE!

Re:"company's ability to innovate"?

[TheRaven64]

Given how baroque both languages are, creating something that either parses PHP or emits valid C++ is an achievement. Doing something that manages both is even more impressive...

Re:"company's ability to innovate"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm. Facebook, with their massive data portfolio, would be a good partnership with whomever makes the best software or hardware. Facebook doesn't have to win hardware or software; they need to win the data access and filtering battle. Facebook aren't the only ones fighting this battle, but they certainly have an advantage because of the size of their user base (sample size).

Re:"company's ability to innovate"?

[rtb61]

Being complex is the benefit to company selling the hardware and providing online tools to simplify the task. It keeps those customers coming back and logged in.

It is all about marketing, people will need a firewall/router/modem adding in those other bits doesn't really add much cost but it doesn't give them something to sell "Your Social Network", "Your Server", "Your Control", "Your Media Network". They have to have something to sell if they want to pry end users away from existing services.

You can always provide a link to Facebook but of course block vice versa. It's all part of the IPv6 revolution and creating the real cloud not the pretend one. It will help drive a more private and secure P2P network, where you only share with people who you know.

Re:"company's ability to innovate"?

[petermgreen]

IMO email and the web are examples of how internet services should work. I can choose whether to use my ISP, a commercial provider, an advert supported provider or run it myself. Whichever I choose I can exchange mail with people who made other choices and those people can view my websites. If I pay a little for my own domain I can have email/website addresses which I get to keep as and when I choose to switch between the options.

I find the trend towards lockin based servies to be a disturbing change in internet communications. Competition should be based on quality of service provided, not on who can lock in the most users fastest.

Re:"company's ability to innovate"?

[shiftless]

A man can dream, right?

It's not a dream. It's a picture of the future.

RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

It won't IPO next week. It might *file* for it. Sigh.

Given Goldman Sachs' non-public/non-US offerings..

[sethstorm]

This just sounds like a cashout opportunity with the IPO folks holding the bag.

Timothy You Dolt

[Anonymous Coward]

This headline and summary are totally incorrect. The story is that Facebook is going to FILE for an IPO, which is a big difference from actually going public. It will be months before that actually happens. For any gullible readers, you won't be able to buy or sell FB shares next week.

Once again, come to slashdot to see news stories mangled up beyond recognition by incompetent editors.

Re:Timothy You Dolt

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly, Facebook is rumored to file for an IPO next week.

Also the phrase in the article, "Facebook will finally IPO next week" makes no sense. "IPO" is not a verb, it stands for "initial public offering".

Does that include inflation ....

[oztiks]

Over three times of that of Google, does that factor in the dwindling over inflated USD?

Re:Does that include inflation ....

[dukeblue219]

There's been virtually no inflation since 2005 in the US, so that's not a factor here. Prices for some things have gone up, but there hasn't been any real inflation, at least not based on any official numbers.

Re:Does that include inflation ....

[oztiks]

Okay, so consider but my question is still valid. If the overall value of technology is dropping cloud computing, saturated markets, tablet pcs, cheap notebook pcs.... How is this 10x figure estimated? Is it more than 10x then?

In any case the dollar may not be domestically changing, internationally it has, oil / gold prices keep going up, and the US keeps printing money like it's going out of fashion. I guess one could call it the unofficial inflation :)

Re:Does that include inflation ....

[oztiks]

3x figure ... Sorry don't know where 10x came from:)

Re:Does that include inflation ....

[Znork]

The Fed's balance sheet and the price of gold suggest otherwise...

Asset inflation is mainly driven by monetary expansion, but asset prices are usually not included in 'official' inflation measure which are almost entirely based on numbers tightly coupled to wages. As production outstrips demand we're not going to see significant inflation in wages as there is a huge oversupply of labour as we leave the age of scarcity behind.

Separating official 'inflation' figures from real inflation has many political advantages, especially for the friends of power, so we can expect it to continue or even get more separated from reality than the current hedonics pretense (there have been serious suggestions to modify the calculations with ideas like 'if food gets more expensive people eat less food so there's been no inflation as the amount they pay for food is the same').

Re:Does that include inflation ....

[LynnwoodRooster]

That's OK, you were just making sure your comment was relevant for 2013...

Re:Does that include inflation ....

[oztiks]

Probably the fact that facebook hasn't had as much b2b contact as say google had. Adwords is what really kept google afloat, all other sponsored advertising companies pale in comparison to adwords really.

To not steal the words of the late Kurt Cobain "I'm too busy acting like I'm not Naive. I've seen it all, I was here first."

Where does facebook have to go? Where google / bing / yahoo hasn't already been?

Re:Given Goldman Sachs' non-public/non-US offering

[bacterial_pus]

Before I buy any stock, I'd like to know how much ad revenue have they generated in the past year, which would be a small fraction of it's valuation. Can't wait for this stock to come crashing down

Surprised this hasn't happened already TBH

[Gricey]

It can be argued that these guys are behind "Noo Meejuh" being an everyday household concept, but I still don't have a facebook account :-)

If anything I'm surprised this hasn't happened already given the size of the company, the talent they attract, etc.

Maybe this will make them innovate and change their game a bit, but for me they seems somewhat like a one-trick-pony and G+ seems to have stolen their trick. /G

How can i bet on a falling stock price again?

[drolli]

.com bubble is calling.

Re:How can i bet on a falling stock price again?

[betterunixthanunix]

Buy "put" options. Keep in mind that these expire after some amount of time, so you have to be able to predict how quickly the price will fall. Also, I would not be so quick to assume that Facebook is overhyped; they have a lot of data that they can sell, a lot of advertising power, etc.; it is like claiming that Google is overhyped.

Re:How can i bet on a falling stock price again?

[huge]

If you are sure about this, I suggest you short the stock and make some money out of it.

Re:How can i bet on a falling stock price again?

[Anonymous Coward]

spoken by someone who has no idea about options trading, you should do a little more research about what the hell your talking about before you give investment advice.

Re:How can i bet on a falling stock price again?

[drolli]

dont worry. i anyway thought this more of as an ironic comment than a request for advice..

Facebook Innovation?

[betterunixthanunix]

I am having trouble remember what innovation we ever actually saw out of Facebook. I vaguely recall that they contributed some patches to a few open source projects, and I thought that they had done some research on distributed computing but I cannot seem to find that paper. Perhaps "past that" should be "never saw that?"

Re:Facebook Innovation?

[marcosdumay]

They created a social network that, for some reason, people tought was better than the alternatives. That is called inovation.

Now, you can say they stopped inovating. As a consequence, they must have also stopped improving.

Re:Facebook Innovation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because they didn't open source their work does not meen they have not innovated. Maybe they want to profit from their work instead of just giving away their time and effort for someone else to profit from.

Re:Facebook Innovation?

[betterunixthanunix]

That is a pretty poor measure of innovation, since it basically defines innovation by popularity. Maybe Facebook was marketed better than its competitors; would consider that to be "innovative?"

Re:Facebook Innovation?

[Charliemopps]

Sure it is, just ask Apple.

Re:Facebook Innovation?

[poetmatt]

wha? open source isn't even a question, nor is it related to the situation.

The answer is: facebook didn't innovate at all, they simply had the most popular site by method of exclusivity before they went public. That's it.

that's not "wow! amazing!", it's more a stroke of luck. Their dealings with zynga and microsoft (who surely is positioned to profit from the IPO) highlight that facebook otherwise has no idea what they're doing aside from trying to sell every user's information in every way possible.

Re:Facebook Innovation?

[yog]

You pretty much summed it up. I fear that Facebook is a one-trick pony. "And now, for our next act... uh... hm... where's that card..." What more can they realistically do, other than poach internet services from competitors like Google?

Facebook messaging is encroaching on email turf, but I doubt it will ever replace an independent email service; no one trusts them, and it's unrealistic to force all your email recipients to join Facebook; this was AOL's downfall as well.

The comparisons with AOL are accurate and portend future trouble for Facebook. The broader, out-of-control Internet has a way of bypassing closed systems with ever more flexible and innovative alternatives.

Sooner or later, someone will think of something even easier and more convenient to use than FB, and FB will begin to lose its relevance. I have no idea what; it could be some sort of mobile-to-mobile chat and messaging paradigm that bypasses the website-based interfaces like FB's, or maybe a return to basics because of social network fatigue.

Personally, I've grown tired of FB after using it somewhat extensively for a year or two. It's been a great way to get back in touch with old classmates and the like, but the novelty's worn off and I now find it tiresome to sit down at a computer, bring up facebook.com, and read some oh-so-clever status messages from people who should be working or reading or (God forbid) exercising :)

Re:Facebook Innovation?

[TubeSteak]

That is a pretty poor measure of innovation, since it basically defines innovation by popularity.

There are endless innovations that couldn't be monetized and were accordingly never became popular or useful.

Facebook doesn't have much more room to innovate, unless you consider further monetization to be innovation.
Sure, they'll keep tweaking the site design, but feature wise, they've already got the kitchen sink.

Re:Facebook Innovation?

[jhoegl]

The only reason Facebook was better was because MySpace was its only competition. I mean, a virus laden social media platform that you could customize with terrible backgrounds, fonts, oh.. and music embeds vs friendly banter messages and drunken photos.
The world has spoken, and the world said "noobs shouldnt mess with html!"

Re:Facebook Innovation?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hadn't heard that neologism "inovation", but it is good to know what Facebook is called.

It is not, however, innovation.

Re:Facebook Innovation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, we know, it's only innovation if it's open source. Right?

Re:Facebook Innovation?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is a pretty poor measure of innovation, since it basically defines innovation by popularity. Maybe Facebook was marketed better than its competitors; would consider that to be "innovative?"

Well, it is the Apple measure of innvation, that many seem to accept. Making a new version of something existing that is much more appealing to users than old alternatives.

Re:Facebook Innovation?

[iMadeGhostzilla]

The $75bn valuation is based on the *idea* that FB will become a better advertising platform than Google. Because so many people from all walks of life spend time on FB, the logic goes, it will make a perfect platform for advertising and selling anything.

But in reality when people are FB they are drug addicts looking to score. The drug is stimulation -- in the form of their friends' gossip, funny photos, maybe even a post from a fan page if it's really super interesting, anything to break the boredom or make you forget about hard stuff. I'm speaking from own experience and that of close friends. Anything that is not stimulating is not welcome -- and that includes ads for the majority of products and services out there. By contrast, when you want to buy bicycle tires you go to Google with the intention of buying them, so it's a different mindset, one where good ads are actually welcome. Drug addicts do spend money on drugs though, so FB will be a great platform to sell Zynga games, music, digital goods that offer instant gratification and the like. But that is all.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2011/02/01/four-keys-to-facebooks-valuation/

Is the market for selling digital crack worth $75bn? I hope not.

Re:Facebook Innovation?

[marcosdumay]

It does not require popularity. Well, ok, it does, up to the point that somebody must think it is usefull. If nobody thinks that, ok, it may still be inovation, but it is failled inovation.

Anyway, if somebody thinks it is better than the alternative, then it is innovation. The reciprocate and the inverse aren't always true or always false.

Re:Facebook Innovation?

[spire3661]

Smartphones sucked ASS before Apple, full stop. You can argue over semantics of the word innovation, but at the end of the day Apple succeeded where microsoft failed for a decade.

Re:Facebook Innovation?

[Anonymous Coward]

>I have no idea what (...) or maybe a return to basics because of social network fatigue

Already happened. Social networks originated in South Korea and Japan, they are 5 years ahead on us. They returned to... forums, next-gen 4chan like sites, group IM. Constants: Use of aliases instead of real names, smaller communities, communities based on common interests not real life yet random "friends". Bottom line: Otaku networks (such as slashdot but smaller), not social networks because the guys you knew in high school don't share your interests, nor do you want to know what they ate for breakfast. It's all very obvious.

Re:Facebook Innovation?

[TheRaven64]

Except that in Apple's case, they actually do innovate. In fact, I can think of a department in Apple that probably innovates as much as the whole of the rest of the industry. What other company has a legal department that would think of patenting screen-shaped as a shape for a tablet?

Re:Facebook Innovation?

[cyber-vandal]

The N95 was a great phone as was the N96. Sadly Nokia failed to build on the success of those two products.

Re:Facebook Innovation?

[korean.ian]

The number of my Korean and Japanese friends jumping on facebook would seem to indicate otherwise.
yes 2ch is still wildly popular in Japan. Yes in Korea daum/naver "cafes" (bulletin boards usually dedicated to a single topic, often with a frightening degree of focus) are very popular (also it should be noted that you cannot register for these cafes without a national ID number, so anonymity is not really a consideration). But I don't think they are abandoning social networks by any stretch. If anything, there is probably increasing personal online separation - you are a member of a cafe because it serves your interest and you have a facebook account because it allows you to stay in touch with a larger circle of friends. Being an "otaku" is not so frowned upon anymore, so people aren't going to think you are total reject for liking something obsessively, but they might not want to be a part of that interest.

Re:Facebook Innovation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Smartphones sucked ASS before Apple, full stop. You can argue over semantics of the word innovation, but at the end of the day Apple succeeded where microsoft failed for a decade.

You can make exact same argument for Facebook vs. earlier competitors like MySpace, which was the point.

Re:Facebook Innovation?

[Burning1]

Facebook messaging is encroaching on email turf, but I doubt it will ever replace an independent email service; no one trusts them, and it's unrealistic to force all your email recipients to join Facebook; this was AOL's downfall as well.

Now that we've invented the screw, why the hell would we ever use a nail?

Yeah, seems pretty pervasive in technology that whenever a new technology comes out, there are thoughts that it will completely replace the old technology. Email and the FAX have certainly cut into snail mail's market share, but I don't see them replacing it completely. Hell, there's still a place for typewriters in the modern age (great tools for filling paper forms, when you don't have a digital copy handy.)

Re:Facebook Innovation?

[flyingsquid]

You pretty much summed it up. I fear that Facebook is a one-trick pony. "And now, for our next act... uh... hm... where's that card..." What more can they realistically do, other than poach internet services from competitors like Google?

The question isn't whether Facebook is a one-trick pony, the question is whether that trick is one they can consistently make money off of.

Look at newspapers. They were a one-trick pony. They gave away content (news stories) and made money by selling space to advertisers. Until the rise of the internet and Craigslist, it was a very, very profitable trick. TV networks? One trick pony, same trick. Give away content (news, sitcoms, talk shows) and sell space to advertisers. Google... same pony, same trick all over again. Give away content (Google search, Youtube videos), sell space to advertisers.

Anyone care to guess how Facebook makes money? You got it. Give away content, sell ads. It's a rock-solid, highly profitable business model proven by more than a century of newspapers, radio, TV, magazines, Google, Youtube- and now FaceBook. But the real beauty of it is that they don't even have to generate any content themselves. The users do all that, all Facebook does is provide a platform for it. Facebook doesn't really need to diversify, they just need to figure out how to do this single trick- give away content, sell ads- over and over again.

Personally, it's a company I'd strongly consider investing in. They have a good business model, they're profitable, they have rapid revenue growth. The big issue is whether the stock can be had at a price that's reasonable, or whether it's going to be Internet Bubble Part II, with speculators driving the share price to absurd levels of 50, 60, 80 times earnings. If you can get the stock at 30 times earnings or less, I would say buy as much as you can; in my experience that's a reasonable price for a profitable, rapidly growing tech company.My guess is that it will get hyped like crazy and trade at substantially more than that, in which case the best bet is to wait until the market tanks and hope you can get some stock at fire-sale prices. But the market is very, very jittery right now, so there's a good chance of doing just that.

Re:Facebook Innovation?

[jedwidz]

The concept of advertising on FB is much more solid than people spending a lot of time on the site. FB knows a lot about you and the recommendations of people you know or respect. Thus it can target you with advertising that you might actually be interested in.

I consider it abhorrent, BUT, if the ads served up for me were mostly useful rather than mostly junk, I'd hate advertising just a bit less.

Re:Facebook Innovation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. The things that facebook innovated, was stuff like this. It had a uniform and pleasant appearance that people couldn't ruin with crap html. It identified people by their real names instead of crap like cutiegrrl23410. At first, many of the features were contained in "networks" limited to individual universities. This made it very easy for you to reach your fellow classmates, but it limited access from outside your local area to friends that you already had.

Re:Facebook Innovation?

[iMadeGhostzilla]

No question that it's all true -- you may well be interested in the ad, but most likely *not at the moment* when you're on FB and looking for social stimulation. (Unless it's more games, music etc.) Imagine if a porn site knew everything about a user and served a highly targeted ad for Nike Air that it knew the user needed at the moment -- he wouldn't even notice.

TV advertising works because the user is already there and has to look at it. Google advertising works and works great because the user is in the mindset of searching for those running shoes for which the ad is shown. If all FB does is shows targeted ads on the side of the stream of fun fun fun the user is looking for, I predict those ads won't be clicked on by many.

And I bet FB knows it and are hoping will think of something later.

Re:Facebook Innovation?

[dintech]

Ooops, looks like someone angered Apple Boy.

Re:Facebook Innovation?

[Anonymous Coward]

read mark zuckerberg's wikipedia biography. Facebook can do anything it is possible to do illegally, unethicallya, and with the money they raise. If zuckerberg could hire a company to bribe an insider at apple and have all of google's traffic silently redirect through facebook first, and to receive all of google's user information so facebook can sell it, all without this getting back to facebook, then zuckerberg would do it and pay a billion for it.

zuckerberg is the histler of the internet. just read his wikipedia entry. google has already been drawn into the world war, overhauling their entire privacy thing, which I think zuckerberg must already be stealing from them. i belivee there is literally nothing zuckerberg wouldn't do. he is creating the fourth reich.

Re:Facebook Innovation?

[poetmatt]

Do you know what defines a better advertising platform? It's not the capability or the accuracy, but sheer numbers of people. All they care about is eyeballs and dollars to eyeballs.

Meanwhile, advertising is simply becoming less and less accurate and more and more obtrusive. I'm really hoping advertisers go back to actually focusing on quality, but online advertising by definition has no correlation to the quality at all.

Re:Facebook Innovation?

[iMadeGhostzilla]

Not really. Context is important. Check out this Forbes article:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/forrester/2012/01/31/how-facebooks-ipo-could-transform-marketing/

"For a site that makes almost all its money from advertising, and which claims 96 of the top 100 US advertisers as customers, Facebook harbors a dirty little secret: Marketing on Facebook doesn’t work very well. In fact, user engagement rates on branded pages are declining rather than increasing, and most large marketers tell us they simply haven’t gotten much value from their Facebook investments. (The biggest difference between the Google IPO in 2004 and the Facebook IPO? In 2004, even the least sophisticated marketers were generating enormous ROI on Google; today, even the savviest marketers often struggle to do likewise on Facebook.) Facebook can – and must – domuch more to turn the data it has on users into effective ad targeting."

The problem Facebook must solve is not just technical -- it's psychological. What can you show the user to alter his mindset so he becomes receptive to doing business?

It's the reverse challenge that Google faces: how to alter goal-oriented mindset into one that's all about social and party. Google is failing in theirs, and I predict FB will fail in theirs too. Except that Google doesn't need the new goal for money to keep flowing, and FB does.

Re:Facebook Innovation?

[poetmatt]

I think you're missing it. Microsoft is majorly invested in facebook and is watching it collapse. When it collapses, they will snatch it up for pennies on the dollar, as Microsoft continually has done for over 25 years, and is positioning to do with Nokia and tried to position (and still is) with yahoo. Not a new premise.

I'm pretty sure facebook would have potentially managed had they not taken the ad money to basically flag "we're done trying to be creative".

Re:Facebook Innovation?

[poetmatt]

clarification: I think we're in agreement in what we cover, but I think you're missing the bigger picture of "what's going to happen to facebook" which I think will affect the situation more than the pending failed IPO.

Re:Facebook Innovation?

[tbannist]

But the real beauty of it is that they don't even have to generate any content themselves. The users do all that, all Facebook does is provide a platform for it. Facebook doesn't really need to diversify, they just need to figure out how to do this single trick- give away content, sell ads- over and over again.

As is often the case, I think Facebook's strength will also be it's fatal weakness. They have little control over the content, so if the content dries up they're finished. Google's advantage here is that they find the content where ever it may be hiding (as long as they are allowed to) Facebook requires people to go to Facebook and generate the content. As I understand it selling ads on Facebook doesn't work very well. The ads I see usually range from awful to apparently fraudulent. I remember hearing not so long ago that the Lion's share of Facebook's revenue come from Zynga and that without Zynga they probably wouldn't be profitable. If that's true, then Facebook is actually in a dangerously precarious position.

Personally, I think the IPO is ridiculously over valued. The minimum is twice GM's market cap and half of GE's. Slightly less than half of Google's and slightly less than a third of Microsoft's. It's about a sixth of Apple's and Apple currently has the largest market cap in the world. If anything, ridiculously over valued is an understatement.

Re:Given Goldman Sachs' non-public/non-US offering

[Trepidity]

At least some of that information should come out in the IPO filing. They generally have to file financial reports before they can list.

Facebook timeline

[Anonymous Coward]

Having just seen the idiotic monstrocity, the Timeline, that Facebook is forcing on its users as the new face to their world I can come to only one conclusion. Facebook's own timeline will show that it's already fallen into the chasm, even as its IPO approaches, and it's speeding toward the web-giant apocalypse where it will soon be keeping MySpace company. A select few will make money from the Facebook IPO. The rest will lose everything.

FBI wants a new keyword monitor for Facebook

[AHuxley]

http://www.allgov.com/Top_Stories/ViewNews/FBI_Stepping_Up_Monitoring_of_Social_Media_120128
Careful if you Web 2.0 about terrorism, surveillance operations, online crime and other criminal matters in any of 12 languages.
800 million members - whats that in Persona Management Software terms?
Don't chat about insider trading - before big valuations.

Re:FBI wants a new keyword monitor for Facebook

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Careful if you Web 2.0 about terrorism, surveillance operations, online crime and other criminal matters in any of 12 languages ... Don't chat about insider trading - before big valuations.

This is good advice, but especially good advice when applied to publicly posting on the internet.

myspace

[Anonymous Coward]

I am sure that the people who invested in myspace a couple of years ago are really eager to jump on this opportunity.

10/75 doesn't mean new ownership

[Anonymous Coward]

Selling 13% of the company to outside investors doesn't really mean that de facto ownership is changing. The same people who were running the company before and making the decisions will continue to do so because they continue to own the majority of the company.

Someone please remind me ...

[Alain Williams]

how facebook makes money. The real foldy stuff, not stock prices that are based on hopes of increased stock prices at some nebulous date in the future.

Re:Someone please remind me ...

[marcosdumay]

They sell ads. And it looks like their ad revenues has some space to grow.

I'd be more concerned about how they intend to keep their ever moving customers from moving to the next big thing once it appears on the horizon.

Re:Someone please remind me ...

[Overzeetop]

They sell you to advertisers and game companies. It's big business - just as Google how well your habits and interests can generate advertising revenue.

Re:Someone please remind me ...

[vlm]

how facebook makes money. The real foldy stuff, not stock prices that are based on hopes of increased stock prices at some nebulous date in the future.

Have you seen a facebook addict after being forcibly removed from the service for a day or two? Not a pretty sight. Apparently, amongst the addicts, it rates just below breathing, but above all other bodily functions.

They'd be doing a huge disservice to their stockholders by not charging at least a buck a day for the "heavy users". I could see something like your streamy-line-thing only updates once a day (or once per hour, etc) for free, but if you're a paid member then its realtime. Or paid members get realtime but free members live perpetually 30 minutes in the past...

Re:Someone please remind me ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd be more concerned about how they intend to keep their ever moving customers from moving to the next big thing once it appears on the horizon.

They don't. Hence the IPO - so they can cash out before everything goes down the drain.

Re:Someone please remind me ...

[swillden]

I could see something like your streamy-line-thing only updates once a day (or once per hour, etc) for free, but if you're a paid member then its realtime. Or paid members get realtime but free members live perpetually 30 minutes in the past...

That's be the best thing that could happen for Google+.

Re:Someone please remind me ...

[vlm]

That's be the best thing that could happen for Google+.

Yeah because the MBA types always move in lockstep herd-like mentality, so having to pay 0.1 bitcoin to make a post on G+ would act as a nice filter and make the Mighty GOOG even mightier.

You know what else would be hilarious? How about if your ISP/telco/cellphone provider peers directly with us so we pay no transit costs, then you get free service, if not, we post your telco's customer support hotline number and bill you $1/day for access to pay for bandwidth until your telco peers with us. This would be good for the net, more or less. Its not all bad news.

Re:Someone please remind me ...

[goldgin]

youtube link plz...

Re:Someone please remind me ...

[swillden]

That's be the best thing that could happen for Google+.

Yeah because the MBA types always move in lockstep herd-like mentality

Except that Google has vanishingly few MBA types, and basically none in any decision-making positions.

your tax dollars at work

[decora]

and who will be the 'bookrunner' for this IPO? who will suck up untold millions of dollars, while hundreds of thousands of joe blow investors get screwed by the IPO process? who are the favored few hedge funders and well-connected who get to make a lifetime's savings in a few seconds simply for knowing the right people?

is it Goldman Sachs, is it Merrill Lynch? Morgan Stanley?

Well, there is one thing we know for sure: the Bookrunner would not exist, unless you, your tax dollars, bailed them out in 2008. Because god knows, without these hard working wall street guys and hedge fund managers skimming tens of millions off of the process of an IPO, there is no way that we could ever have innovation or progress.

Re:your tax dollars at work

[Anonymous Coward]

Occupy Facebook IPO

Re:your tax dollars at work

[MRe_nl]

http://whoownsfacebook.com/

Re:your tax dollars at work

[jbwolfe]

Your point should be obvious to all, but the sad part is there are still enough active voters in America to amount to about half of the votes going to the Republican candidate for President. They hear that candidate say that Obama is going to raise their taxes, he's against "small" business. he's raising the deficit (not stimulating the economy), He's godless and wants to take away my guns... Who's the "bookrunner"? Part of the wealthy elite that own not only the Republicans, but all of Congress.

Re:your tax dollars at work

[Anonymous Coward]

Want to know an opensecret? Goldman Sachs has given more money to Obama's campaign than any republican. His Treasury Secretary is ex big bank. Both Parties are in the pockets of Wall Street. Except Ron Paul as he doesn't accept lobbyists.

Re:your tax dollars at work

[maxwell demon]

Goldman Sachs has given more money to Obama's campaign than any republican.

Well, I wouldn't expect any republican to give money to Obama's campaign. So if Goldman Sachs has given just one Cent to Obama's campaign, this statement probably already is true. :-)

yeah other than food, energy, transportation,

[decora]

and everything that the lives of ordinary people depend on, there has been no inflation.

oh wait, maybe the modern 'science' of economics is a gigantic pile of horse shit? maybe 'inflation' is a political number manipulated by assholes at the Fed in order to support various fucked up ideologies, policies that benefit the already rich, and whichever corrupt bribery machine happens to be in power at the moment?

Re:yeah other than food, energy, transportation,

[vlm]

Yes, exactly like unemployment figures, which are manipulated to meet political goals, not to report facts.

You'd probably find the free data at

http://shadowstats.com/

to be very informative.

Re:yeah other than food, energy, transportation,

[Marcika]

The data at shadowstats is bullshit. A back-of the envelope calculation will show it. Take their "shadow CPI" average over the last 30 years, compound it, and multiply a shopping basket from 30 years with that number; the outcome will show you how the numbers are made up from thin air by a guy who wants to sell newsletters.

Re:yeah other than food, energy, transportation,

[vlm]

Go shopping sometime. Also hedonistic corrections also happen in the shopping basket, not just made up govt imaginations. If I have to go to whole foods and pay seven bucks for a ball of lettuce because my local supermarket now only sells junk ...

Oh Good

[florescent_beige]

Another sociopathic tech billionaire...that'll solve all the world's problems. I wonder what self-serving laws he's going to buy.

Re:Oh Good

[Rik Rohl]

Are their any tech billionaires that _aren't_ sociopaths? That seems to be the primary requirement...

Innovate?

[Anonymous Coward]

Three years from now you will be wondering how it could ever have been worth 70Billion and where all the 'innovations' went.

ICQ?

[Paulee]

Did ICQ go public yet? I'm sure that instant messaging is the next big thing...

They just pulled out their thorn

[bouldin]

I'd say the timing has to do with the Ceglia case.

With a recent judicial decision to sanction Ceglia, Facebook most likely believes they are in the endgame of that suit and can move forward with an IPO without the suit causing problems.

Think about it. Would you file for a $75B IPO (or whatever bullshit figure they've come up with) if there was an open suit with someone claiming they own half of the founder's shares, and backing it up with a signed contract?

little, almost no comments.

[Anonymous Coward]

Where are you people?

On an other note. As an non facebook / social-media user. I find the web still being in 1.0 / 1990 stage when it comes to searching for, and browsing through knowledge.
I really had hopes on wikipedia, but it seems to have stalled into:
* To sparse to be usable when you need to go deeper.
* To concentraded information (ie, what is found often relys on alot of prior knowledge) see math section for example.

I would like to have wikipedia browsing in different modes/filter and levels:
* levels are easy, more level increases the amount of explanations, details etc..
* modes, rearrange the article or filter out stuff that you are not your focus area.

Re:little, almost no comments.

[rrossman2]

Easy.. just use your brain to formulate which sections aren't relevant to you (and examples), and just don't read them.

If you want all those features, make a web page that pulls and processes the article, only showing the sections you'd like to see based on your criteria.

Personally, between targeted Google searches and Wikipedia, I think it works just fine.

You could also try wolfram alpha

Where's the numbers?

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean they plan to IPO next week, yet where's the books? Who bought those Goldman Sachs shares? Who at the SEC decided that these 'non-shares' that Goldman's wanted to sell were garbage enough not to be sold in the USA, but somehow could be sold outside the USA?

So will this shadowy group of Goldman's customers now manipulate the IPO?

Re:Where's the numbers?

[TheRaven64]

Who bought those Goldman Sachs shares?

This is private information, so won't be disclosed. The public filing will just say that GS owns 10% (or whatever) of the company. The people who own the shares in the fund do not have to be disclosed.

Who at the SEC decided that these 'non-shares' that Goldman's wanted to sell were garbage enough not to be sold in the USA, but somehow could be sold outside the USA?

My understanding is that nobody did. Someone at GS decided that not selling them in the USA let them avoid the need to bother with SEC approval.

So will this shadowy group of Goldman's customers now manipulate the IPO?

Possibly, although I suspect that the IPO means that GS has decided that the bubble is now over. They hyped the shares, sold them to their preferred customers (at a big profit) hyped them some more, got their customers to sell them to other people, and now they have no further interest in Facebook. It can go public, people can review its books, and it could file for chapter 11 next week for all GS cares. They've moved onto the next bubble.

Re:Where's the numbers?

[phantomfive]

Possibly, although I suspect that the IPO means that GS has decided that the bubble is now over. They hyped the shares, sold them to their preferred customers (at a big profit) hyped them some more, got their customers to sell them to other people, and now they have no further interest in Facebook. It can go public, people can review its books, and it could file for chapter 11 next week for all GS cares.

This is exactly it. GS didn't buy Facebook shares because they thought Facebook was a good company, they bought Facebook shares because they knew they could sell them. They paid a high price because they knew they could sell them at a higher price. They are the middle men, they buy in one place and sell in another. It's a good gig if you can get it.

IPO of Net ventures

[Taco Cowboy]

It's a sucker game, actually

Back in the 1980's when Al Gore proclaimed the "Information Super Highway" there had been more hype than everything else combined

There were so many example of Net venture wasted all the money being pumped into them, and yet, the financial world never learn

Take search engines for example

The was Altavista, and people was like goo-goo and gaa-gaa all over it

Then Yahoo came along, and the goo-goo gaa-gaa people flocked to it

When Google arrived, Yahoo withered

Take "community", for example

There was "The-Well", AOL, tripod, whathaveyous

How many of them are still left, today?

How many BILLIONS have they wasted?

I do not have a crystal ball, but I can tell you that FB will be just like any of the above-mentioned, and the billions pumped into it would be wasted

I can't remember how much $$$

Re:IPO of Net ventures

[Anthony Mouse]

There were so many example of Net venture wasted all the money being pumped into them, and yet, the financial world never learn

In this case it's even worse. Think about it: What's the point of an IPO? It's so that a company can raise money, to fund expansion or revitalize the company.

So, does Facebook need money to expand? No, they're undoubtedly sitting on a mountain of cash already. They're not a little company that needs capital to expand, and they're not a big company with aging plant and equipment that needs a capital infusion to get with the times.

The reason for the IPO is obviously so that the existing owners can cash out.

Re:IPO of Net ventures

[Thing 1]

I do not have a crystal ball [...] I can't remember how much $$$

I love it! I, too, tend to rarely remember the past or the future. But I do have a growing rule set; getting old isn't all that bad.

Re:IPO of Net ventures

[Anonymous Coward]

They aren't sitting on a mountain of earned money, if thats what you are thinking. They simply do not have the profits or revenue to justify their valuation. It will be very interesting to see their IPO prospectus to see if they can even imagineer a credible plan to acheive revenue/profits. Tech IPOs are a suckers game. They are structured to gives VCs, founders, early investors, and well connected investors their 10-100x investment bang and perhaps another round or two get a few % gain out of the suckers. That is all.

Re:IPO of Net ventures

[Sir_Sri]

You're missing an important one, and the one that eventually caught up to microsoft. If you're using stock options as a form of compensation you eventually have to go public, because the company cannot have more than some number of shareholders and be considered private.

Facebook may need to expand, a lot. Who knows what their plan is? They may need a massive infrastructure investment to support higher bandwidth in system applications (videos, 3d games, who knows), and they may need a massive investment to hire a large number of staff to start running revenue generating activities, along with a building full of lawyers to go with it all (advertising sales teams mostly). If they're serious about making facebook into a platform rather than just a webpage there's a lot of time and money that could be thrown into basically writing a giant web OS.

But Facebook faces a lot of fundamental problems. First off, if they have a billion users a 75 billion dollar IP values each user at 75 dollars. That's... absurd (admittedly, not 75/year, but even at 7.5/year you're pushing your luck, that requires a lot of suckers giving you 75/year for each user who contributes nothing). Right now they sell facebook points, which is all well and good, but 3rd parties take I think 70% of that. So again, you need to be moving a LOT of money per user.

So how else do you get money? Well advertising. And again, what is a user worth on facebook to an advertiser? My Facebook experience is going to be different than in the US, because they feed different ads to canada, but right now the ads they feed me are for very sketchy (not necessarily illegal, just not really serious big businesses). Valuing a facebook user might be like trying to value television viewers, but 10x harder.

Or you can sell your data to companies. Which is where this whole thing starts to fall apart fast. Facebook is now big enough that they're going to get buried in Laws from every country in the world (see the Twitter story that just got to the front page for another example). Some of those rules are going to be 'no selling data, anonymized or not, without explicit consent' and suddenly your whole revenue stream is first a legal quagmire, and second very very limited. And laws may be written about targeted ads (see previous paragraph), ads to under 13's and compliance...

So yes, the existing owners want to cash out, and I'm sure a lot of them are looking to jump ship ASAP. But google started as just a search engine, and now they have more products than I can keep track of and billions in revenue (and profits), so you never know. I would not be surprised if Facebook has a lot of thought going into what their future will look like and the manpower and infrastructure to support that gets expensive fast (when you're funded by private capital anyway).

Re:IPO of Net ventures

[swalve]

They also have to raise the money to pay off the private investors.

Re:IPO of Net ventures

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason for the IPO is obviously so that the existing owners can cash out.

Cashing out is an important part of the early-stage venture capital process. If you're providing early-stage seed money to start-ups, most of that money will just evaporate when the majority of the companies they fund fail. The model depends on being able to cash in big on the companies that do succeed. If the successful companies they fund don't go public or get acquired so they can cash out their shares, they won't have cash to invest in new companies and they wouldn't want to anyway with very little way to profit from that highly-risky investment.

Love it or hate it, a Facebook IPO is a part of the process begun when Facebook accepted venture capital funding. That they've put it off as long as they have is actually pretty amazing.

Re:IPO of Net ventures

[TheRaven64]

I don't see why you think Facebook has no revenue. Google makes crazy amounts of money selling advertising based on the information that they've harvested. Facebook harvests even more information (their tracking cookies are personally identifiable and, for a couple of hundred million people, linked to real names, addresses, dates of birth, and so on, and they have a lot more personal communication to mine than Google), and sells not just advertising but also the information itself. Until people realise that Facebook is selling them a service worth a couple of dollars a year in exchange for personal information worth tens or hundreds of dollars, they'll keep making money...

Re:IPO of Net ventures

[Anonymous Coward]

With a couple exceptions, that hasn't generally been true since the '00 tech crash. One exception that tried that was Groupon, who got their asses handed to them.

Re:IPO of Net ventures

[TheRaven64]

But Facebook faces a lot of fundamental problems. First off, if they have a billion users a 75 billion dollar IP values each user at 75 dollars. That's... absurd

Actually, that seems pretty low to me. If Facebook can't harvest information worth $7.50 to advertisers, political parties, and so on from each user then I'd be very surprised.

In the last US Presidential election, Obama spent $7.39 per vote, McCain spent $5.78 per vote (as with every other recent US election, the candidate who spent the most won). In most elections, around 80% of the voting population has already decided to vote for either the red team or the blue team and will always vote for their favourite colour. In winner-takes-all states, the effect of getting a few tens of thousand of undecideds to vote for your team means that you win the election. Facebook has enough information to make a mostly accurate list of who these undecided people are and where they live. How much do you think that information is worth? I bet either party would pay $10/name for it, maybe more if you promised not to sell it to the other party.

Now, of course, not every person in Facebook will be on that list - probably only a few million - but that's just one example. How about the list of people who own cars and are bad at arithmetic? That would be very valuable to a lot of insurance companies...

Re:IPO of Net ventures

[r1_97]

It's not a question of FB needing cash. It's striking while the iron's hot.

Re:IPO of Net ventures

[HuguesT]

Yes but perhaps not enough crazy money to warrant an IPO price of 75 billions.

Re:IPO of Net ventures

[Anonymous Coward]

What an interesting interpretation. And I disagree in part:
AltaVista was a tour-de-force, shackled by corporate stupidity, and an emphasis on the irrelevant (namely "views"). I was a Digital employee at that time. Instead of being focused on success, the spinoff was by PHBs, for PHBs, and operated by PHBs. (ref: see dilbert)
Yahoo was an inept concept (100% manual qualification of web sites) which became popular.
AOL WAS ALWAYS STUPID (ONLY A VERY SMALL NUMBER OF THE PARTICIPANTS KNEW HOW TO NOT TYPE WITH THE CAPS LOCK ENABLED)
The well - that actually was an interesting experiment, if one ignores flame wars started by "Mark E. Smith" on soc.*

Re:IPO of Net ventures

[Sir_Sri]

That goes to my point about laws though. I agree, the information is valuable, but if Germany france and the UK, US, canada, Overall EU, middle east, india, china japan, etc. all come up with different rules about what Facebook can, and cannot do with that harvested data all those users suddenly become worth a lot less, and the regulatory compliance costs skyrocket.

Then you get into the problem of valuing what a user actually is worth. Lots of facebook users are a casual page and then they check their newsfeed, they're worth nothing (and cost next to nothing). That's fine to pad your subscriber numbers, but in practice you may not have enough to monetize them in anyway, and my suspicion is that represents a huge portion of their userbase. It's like saying "I have a billion users, but 300 million of them are in india (so worth next to nothing no matter what), 300 million are locked down to regulatory requirements and of the remaining 400 million, 300 million do next to nothing on our service so we aren't sure what they're worth, and 100 million are actually worth something. But not 750 dollars something.

Facebooks bit statistical value is large sample size. But what is the significance of a self selected sample size of 10 million vs a phone survey of 10 000? Sure it's probably better. But not a lot better.

This is where facebook could pull an amazon or a google. Sure they're a webpage company. Maybe they could make that infrastructure available to businesses like amazon's cloud services. Or maybe they'll pull out a whole trans-formative technology, 'tv while you chat' and get a legitimate TV in the web or something. Or phone services or the like (and believe, if you've ever tried to call actual people in india, any way to do that which doesn't involve dealing with the phone company is going to be glorious because phone numbers keep getting reassigned randomly).

I'd compare to Skype. Skype had 500 million accounts, of which about 50 million were regularly active. That put them for sale at 8 billion dollars. I bet Facebook, without some other secret up its sleeve, is 1 billion users, with about 100 million meaningfully active, but a lot of them are worthless (young people in 3rd world countries basically). So sure, they're worth a lot of money, but 75 billion seems like a stretch unless there's something else going on, which, given the number of my former students and colleagues they've been hiring, I'm guessing there is.

Re:IPO of Net ventures

[jmauro]

I believe it's less of that, but the fact that Facebook has enough investors (I believe the number is 500, but don't quote me) that it's pretty much reached the point where it needs to file all the paperwork with the SEC as if it was a publicly traded company. As such it really makes no sense not to do it since at least they can raise extra capital since they'll be forced to file the paperwork anyway.

Re:IPO of Net ventures

[flyingsquid]

The Internet Bubble was launched by the IPO of Netscape. People bought the stock because they looked at what Netscape did- they made a "browser" program that allowed you to access these things called "web pages" via this whole "internet" thing, and it was pretty clear that this was the Next Big Thing. It was going to change society, business, *everything*. And it did... so what went wrong?

Well, one problem was that Netscape didn't actually have a history of making money. The other problem is that they didn't even have a clear idea of how they were going to make money. There wasn't a clear business model. It was basically "hey, this is the Next Big Thing! Get in on the ground floor, and we'll figure out that whole profitability thing later. But hey, this is after all the Next Big Thing, how can you lose?"

Now, that's not how IPOs are supposed to work. You're supposed to go public *after* you have a proven track record- consistent profitability, a history of growth. But Jim Clark really wanted to cash in, so he decided he'd just skip those steps. And that basically set the model for the Internet Bubble. Profitability was meaningless, sound business models were meaningless, the only thing that mattered was getting lots of people to use your software/web site/service. The profitability thing, well, they'd just figure that out later. Except, of course, most of them didn't. Inevitably people realized that most of these companies weren't the Next Big Thing, and the market tanked. The only stocks that ended up being worth anything were the old-fashioned ones. You know, the ones with business models. The ones that made a profit.

So how does FaceBook stack up? Well, according to Reuters, Facebook raked in $1.2 billion in revenue the first 9 months of 2010, and earned $355 million on that, a profit of 30%. That's a lot of money, and that's a really good profit margin. And they're growing. According to a Reuters article, Facebook earned $500 million in just the first six months of 2011. FaceBook is not another Internet Bubble company. They actually know how to make money, and a lot of it. Whether the stock is a good investment will depend entirely on how much you pay for it. Right now, a typical company trades at around 20 times earnings- that is, for $20 for every dollar of profit. This is the P/E (price/earnings) ratio, which is the single most important number to know in looking at stocks. Anyway, If you're paying several times that- 50, 60, or 80 P/E- FaceBook will have to increase its earnings massively in the future to justify that price.

So it's all about how cheaply you can get it. A terrible company can be a great investment if you can get it really cheap. A great company can be a terrible investment if you pay too much. The Wall Street Journal and other publications are going to be chattering a lot about how much the company is really worth. The reality is that the average Slashdot reader probably has just as much clue as they do about Facebooks long-term viability.

So I'm curious. What do people here think- is FaceBook here to stay? Or is this just another social media fad that will go the way of Friendster and Myspace, as soon as something better goes along? Do people still use FaceBook, or have people sort of reached a saturation point with it?

Re:IPO of Net ventures

[LostMyBeaver]

I'm personally seeing them more as an ICQ type company. The difference is, they figured out a way to make money by becoming an advertising company and a bank. They effectively are issuing their own international currency now. In reality, I'm more than a little bit nervous about that aspect. Since they're not actually a regulated bank or casino, they could in theory treat their currency as having value within itself and start behaving like a nation that prints more of it when they need it. Also, people blindly convert their real money into FaceBook money without understanding that all it takes is a creative hacker to wipe them out. FaceBook accounts are hacked all the time.

I think FaceBook will be around for a while, but I also think that if Microsoft or Apple release their own proper social networking system (as opposed to the crap ones int he past) which initially builds onto FaceBook and simply "Value Adds" until it starts taking over the feed a well, then FaceBook has a relatively limited life ahead of it.

On the other hand, the IPO isn't about raising money. They already have real revenue streams in place they can build on. They're not going to run out of money anytime really soon, at least not while they're charging sucker companies to try and sell me slutty party dresses (seriously, you'd think they'd target better by checking my gender) and getting millions of people to spend money on coins to play games with. This is about providing a means to current shareholders to convert parts of their investments into cash.

Re:IPO of Net ventures

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. Facebook is overrated. I also have tired of it's novelty. I have yet to ever click an add. I've never provided anything personal with exception to my name (all that... where you work, live, interests, birthday stuff, I left blank... it's just creepy to publish personal stuff like that. People are so insecure and gullible). And god forbid I would never use FB to purchase products like an Amazon, or use it for email. It pisses me off that after I buy something that there's now a button for me to press to broadcast it to all my friends. Doesn't anyone have any sense of, digging for the right word... self control... or privacy? The user is the product here and they are be assaulted in all directions by advertisers (for their shopping convenience). I can go on with cradle to grave methodologies that target kids, etc. The whole thing is sick. I wouldn't pay a dime for a share of FB unless it turns out their users (product source) are ignorant enough to continue providing so much personal behavior data... yes, that is indeed possible.

Re:IPO of Net ventures

[NJRoadfan]

Its reaching saturation in some areas. How many here have a few friends who left Facebook because they were sick of it?

Re:IPO of Net ventures

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this the only way to go public? Shouldn't there be a way for private investors to decide to sell their shares in the company without raising large amounts of money for the company in the process? Why can't they just go to the stock market, say, "we'd like people to be able to freely trade our stock" and just let whichever investors want to sell their shares start selling them?

Re:IPO of Net ventures

[greg1104]

The difference between Facebook and all of its fallen ex-competitors is the applications system. That puts a giant stack of external developers working on improving their platform. There are plenty of less technical people who aren't even aware of the line where Facebook proper ends and their favored Zynga games begin. At this point, people who want to offer something different in the social networking space aren't as motivated to build a competitor to Facebook, because in so many cases it's possible to just build an application instead, putting the new ideas in there. Social networks take a while to support themselves; creating an app instead means you have no serious infrastructure to run, and FB does the billing etc. for you. You just have to figure out how to sell something usefully.

Combine that with the fact that any competitor is facing a profitable organization with piles of cash, and it will be quite hard to displace Facebook now. Google had a shot at it with Plus, which was launched during a period when Facebook frustration was leading many people to search for alternatives. But Google has blown it with controvery around their "real name" and privacy policies, which seems to make them no better than Facebook now, in the areas Facebook was the easiest to improve on. And Plus is certainly a regression in feature set if you consider all of the applications available for both platforms.

Re:Given Goldman Sachs' non-public/non-US offering

[vlm]

...I'd like to know how much ad revenue have they generated in the past year, which would be a small fraction of it's valuation....

To extend on those remarks, two years ago the entire online advertising market was about $25B annually, with about half that going to GOOG for search placement. Old timers like myself will be surprised that only about a third of the online ad market is banner ads. I suppose adblocker-type technology will eventually completely kill off that market segment, or at least I hope it does. Anyway, FB can only be a small fraction of $10B ad revenue.

In normal market conditions companies used to sell for P.E. ratios in the single digit-ish range, but for a couple decades ultra high PE ratios have taken over. Once the baby boomers cash in their 401Ks that'll drop back to normal. Anyway it would not be all that out of line for a couple billion in revenue to account for a couple dozen billion in valuation.

Also the data they have is useful for spam services that are not online. Expect it to be mandatory to link your postal spam mail address and your social security number to your FB account, supposedly to cut down on griefers and spammers, but more likely to make the data they have on you more valuable.

Good news everyone; It's going to DIE!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the beginning of the end for facebook. I know people have been predicting that forever, but now it's as certain as the pull of gravity.
Once it's gone public, the pressure to maximize short term profits will force their hand, and really put the screw on the user.

Internal bureaucracy, not innovation is dominant for a company at this stage of its life, and totally dependent on the network effect (must remain above critical mass or else).
Facebook is going to be torn apart by tidal forces, and there is nothing anyone can do about it. /popcorn

The opposite of insightful is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't the fact that someone parrots this in every single story about Facebook / Google / any advertising based company make it decidedly LESS insightful?
Yes it's pithy, and panders to the mods, but I always felt it grossly simplified the love triangle between these companies, their advertising customers, and their users.

How about something recent about the company. What's the velocity of new signups. Maybe a critique on how Facebook features have shifted over time to being increasingly self-serving. How satisfied are users right now? Is facebook overplaying it's hand without Google's amazing PR, and appearing too corporate? If so, they'll be dumped as uncool by avant garde seeking younger users.

Sorry to rip on you, but you only said this because you had NOTHING new to add, and maybe for the +5 insightful.

Facebook's made mySQL "scale" better

[Anonymous Coward]

https://www.facebook.com/events/232436933489216/

They've enhanced mySQL's ability to 'scale' better!

(No, I can't recall the specifics but iirc, it had SOMETHING TO DO with putting addons onto mySQL (HBase? Not familiar with THAT exactly here).... but they are in that search result above I am fairly certain, so it can "scale" better over FAR more users than it can by default...)

* Now, THAT's something... & it is innovation.

APK

P.S.=> I also heard to enhance that further, they "busted up" their data across many more DB devices as well (9.10 times, processing smaller sets that end up adding up to a whole larger complete set, just process faster - period... Ask any DB people (you're talking to one now - all you have to do is avoid OVERLY complex "joins" mostly in SQL's all))... apk

Re:Facebook's made mySQL "scale" better

[Anonymous Coward]

If I were an investor, I'd expect a lot more innovation from an apparently $75 billion company than the optimisation of a single application for a particular use case scenario, one that already leads in said use scenario anyway.

Public?

[Anonymous Coward]

what, was Facebook in a closed beta before now? Or could only college students in the United States and Canada could signup for an account? Maybe those two ideas were true a few years ago.

I thought anyone could signup for a face book account now? I see a blue sign up button on their front page. Maybe I'm not just familiar with IPOs and how they affect tech companies.

The end of Facebook

[plopez]

This is it. As soon as an IPO is done the owners will begin to lose control and probably get forced out the "suits". See Ted Turner as an example. Personally I think Facebook has "jumped the shark". Only old people hang out there anymore and since I can't stand old gossips, or gossips in general, I avoid it. Not to mention the crappy ads and the security breeches.

Re:The end of Facebook

[Anonymous Coward]

...Personally I think Facebook has "jumped the shark". Only old people hang out there anymore and since I can't stand old gossips, or gossips in general, I avoid it...

Not old people. *Dumb* people.

Among my friends and family, I notice that only the dumb and stupid use facebook while the smartest don't seem very interested in any social media. I know it's not a big enough sample size to be valid but it seems facebook attracts mentally feeble people. That might explain a lot!

Re:The end of Facebook

[phantomfive]

I really, really hope you are right. I'm willing to bet that the terms of the IPO will be designed to keep the Zuck in control, much like Google's IPO.

Re:The end of Facebook

[glwtta]

security breeches

Is that some kind of Victorian chastity device for men? Sounds unpleasant.

Re:The end of Facebook

[shiftless]

I think Slashdot attracts just as many mentally feeble people as FB does

Re:The end of Facebook

[plopez]

I told you they are OLD. They need security breeches. :)

new dictionary

[Anonymous Coward]

Facebook has cheated it's way to GET BIG. Asking for a person's email AND password to load your friends list is not only illegal but damn well rude. I still get emails from facebook persisting that so called friends of mine want to be friends on the network. Every available impersonation trick was used to get millions of users within weeks signed up, people either too young, too old or too ignorant to provide their email account's password.

The people behind it had balls. They either took a big risk on loosing them or there were people behind them with even bigger ones.

Btw, it takes some pretty simple php code to protect your privacy on a web site which the "innovators" of the century have failed(?) to produce several times...

Bubble Collapse imminent?

[marcroelofs]

I have a bad feeling about this. This type of IPO hype strongly reminds me of the previous Web 1.0 collapse and the timing would be right for FB to maximize it's peak on the market.

Got Facebook?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who from you got a facebook account?
Who has one but dont use it?
Who has not got one?

Is it patents all the way down?

[angularbanjo]

Shudder to think what will become of this hulk when the masses move on to the next thing and the investors look a little silly. Will its red giant / downward spiral business strategy be based on firing patent suits at anyone who ever thought of adding social concepts to their projects?

Re:Given Goldman Sachs' non-public/non-US offering

[oldlurker]

...I'd like to know how much ad revenue have they generated in the past year, which would be a small fraction of it's valuation....

To extend on those remarks, two years ago the entire online advertising market was about $25B annually, with about half that going to GOOG for search placement. Old timers like myself will be surprised that only about a third of the online ad market is banner ads. I suppose adblocker-type technology will eventually completely kill off that market segment, or at least I hope it does. Anyway, FB can only be a small fraction of $10B ad revenue.

In normal market conditions companies used to sell for P.E. ratios in the single digit-ish range, but for a couple decades ultra high PE ratios have taken over. Once the baby boomers cash in their 401Ks that'll drop back to normal. Anyway it would not be all that out of line for a couple billion in revenue to account for a couple dozen billion in valuation.

Also the data they have is useful for spam services that are not online. Expect it to be mandatory to link your postal spam mail address and your social security number to your FB account, supposedly to cut down on griefers and spammers, but more likely to make the data they have on you more valuable.

Facebook has become a giant in web advertising. Their revenue was estimated at $3.8 billion in 2011 (slightly lower than their own prediction of $4b), and to reach $7b next year (2013). Similar numbers have been reported many places, but one source: http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1008598

Total online ad market is at $31b, so Facebook has 12% market share of the global online ad market. source: http://www.iab.net/insights_research/industry_data_and_landscape/1675/1816825 . Their market share of users and time is even higher than that - 16% -- source: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/facebook-is-destroying-google-in-time-spent-online-chart/4183

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Not so much

[Anonymous Coward]

"Many credible sources, including Forbes and CBS, say that Facebook will finally IPO next week..."

No, they will file for their IPO next week. They will not have their IPO for several months.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Raises? No.

[Kynde]

This shift raises questions about how the new ownership will affect the company's ability to innovate and remain on the forefront of social media.

No, quite the reverse. This shift answers all those questions in one fell swoop.

Re:Given Goldman Sachs' non-public/non-US offering

[vlm]

Thanks for the much more recent data.
Three interesting things about 50% growth rates
1) wall street is notoriously bad at fairly pricing on the upswing at that rate
2) that growth rate cannot go on forever
3) wall street is notoriously bad at fairly pricing on the downswing at that rate
Its going to be a fun rollercoaster to watch.

Re:Given Goldman Sachs' non-public/non-US offering

[phantomfive]

It seems the big GOOG has been suffering lately on the advertising front. Their latest profit report wasn't so good, and they've been doing things, like horrid redesigns, that seem like they are trying to shake things up. At first I thought they were doing it in response to BING, and there might be some of that, but I'd bet a lot of it comes from Facebook. Facebook knows a lot more information about its users, so they can do targeted advertising better (which is what advertisers want; they don't want to advertise to people who aren't going to be interested in their stuff).

Listed on?

[unixisc]

Dow? Nasdaq? S&P500?

You're not making any sense man... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

"If I were an investor, I'd expect a lot more innovation from an apparently $75 billion company than the optimisation of a single application for a particular use case scenario" - by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 29, @12:12PM (#38858113)

Facebook uses mySQL as their DB Engine - ordinarily, with such a mass of users that nigh constantly "pound" on it 24x7 from all over the planet, it'd be FLOORED/FROZEN... however, that's NOT THE CASE with their modifications!

(To me, that indicates "technical prowess" & some "future proof" designs (especially IF said future means even MORE users)).

APK

P.S.=> Here's where you left us ALL 'hanging' though on what it is you meant:

", one that already leads in said use scenario anyway." - by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 29, @12:12PM (#38858113)

Did you mean FACEBOOK itself (as a 'social network' - yea, it IS pretty much "#1" here)

OR

Did you mean mySQL (as a DB engine - it's NOT as 'scalable' by default/by itself, as is say the competition from Oracle, IBM (DB/2), &/or Microsoft(SQLServer))?

... apk

"IPO" is an acronym . . .

[wrencherd]

. . . for "It's Pretty much Over", isn't it?

Re:"IPO" is an acronym . . .

[93 Escort Wagon]

. . . for "It's Pretty much Over", isn't it?

93 Escort Wagon likes this

They Have to Go Public

[geoffrobinson]

They're forcing themselves to use Timeline and there's no other choice. Duh. Old news.

Usenet vs Facebook

[Anonymous Coward]

Facebook: Usenet for dummies.

Usenet vs. Facebook

[ebillcoyne]

Facebook: Usenet for dummies.

This Is Pointless

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no way Facebook needs that kind of capital to do the kinds of innovation they should be doing. There is no way billionaire investors are going to possibly have the best interests of the users at the forefront. This is a greedy IPO that accomplishes nothing as far as bettering facebook or making Facebook more viable going forward.

House prices inflated.

[Colin Smith]

There's been virtually no inflation since 2005 in the US

What?

House prices went up like a rocket. Boy that was a fucking bubble and a half.

Wheat, corn, soy, cotton, gold, oil, copper, coal are all up 200 - 300% over the 2005 levels. That's kind of strange...

What exactly are you measuring to say there is no inflation?

Let them eat iPads:

Y'see what haven't inflated are wages, and that's because you are competing with China and going personally deeper into debt to pay for more and more stuff. The wage component of finished goods is fairly significant so the inflation which has indeed already happened to raw materials is coming to the US just as soon as Chinese workers stop jumping off roofs and decide they need better living conditions and higher wages.

The rest of the world has already experienced dollar inflation. The "Arab Spring" was ignited by the food inflation caused by US monetary policies.

This is the chart which describes how finished product inflation in the US is being regulated (because everything Americans buy is made in China); how quickly wealth is being transferred from Americans to Chinese. It defines how wealthy (and expensive) the Chinese people are.

http://www.indexmundi.com/xrates/graph.aspx?c1=CNY&c2=USD&days=3650

In South Korea...

[Anonymous Coward]

In South Korea, only old people use Facebook.

(Oh man, haven't brought that one out of storage in a while. Felt pretty good!)

Re:Given Goldman Sachs' non-public/non-US offering

[similar_name]

$2 billion in 2010, around $4 billion for 2011(around half a billion from Facebook credits). At least according to this Bloomberg article. I don't know what their costs are though.

Unnecessary

[RevEngr]

What's really remarkable is that with all of the cash in 'secondary markets' these days it's not like they couldn't get all the growth capital they could possibly want without a public offering (unless they wanted to start a moon base or something).

Even cashing out early investors seems like it would be fairly easy given the institutional cash abundance.

Going IPO these days seems to just be about getting access to less sophisticated investors. Maybe they should just put a "buy a share of FB" button on everyone's Facebook profile and cut out all the middlemen.

Facebook is for chump investors....

[katorga]

Facebook has already reached maximum growth, and future efforts to monetize the service will only alienate users. This IPO is simply a huge cash payoff to the private investors, the owner and friends of the owner, because Facebook is no longer a "growth" company. The risk is also high. Look at how fast AOL, then MySpace collapsed...it will not take much for Facebook to do the same.

Unless I had access to privileged pre-IPO shares that could be flipped in a few days as the suckers pile in, I'd not touch this IPO.

Delete

[plazman30]

I'd better go delete my profile before that happens. Cause once the new ownership kicks in, they'll want to keep your data forever.

Mod parent up.

[Animats]

Facebook has already reached maximum growth, and future efforts to monetize the service will only alienate users. This IPO is simply a huge cash payoff to the private investors, the owner and friends of the owner, because Facebook is no longer a "growth" company.

Mod parent up.

Look at Facebook's Alexa traffic graph. Grew continuously until mid-2011; flat since then. Once past the growth period, a stock should be priced based on its revenue.

Facebook

[Anonymous Coward]

... and nothing of value was lost

Only a moron would invest

[shiftless]

Facebook will be obsolete in 3-5 years with the rise of distributed social networking.