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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."
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.
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.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Since when has Facebook innovated since its creation?
shifting around the GUI elements every few months is NOT innovation.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
It won't IPO next week. It might *file* for it. Sigh.
This just sounds like a cashout opportunity with the IPO folks holding the bag.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
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.
Over three times of that of Google, does that factor in the dwindling over inflated USD?
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
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
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken.
.com bubble is calling.
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?"
Palm trees and 8
At least some of that information should come out in the IPO filing. They generally have to file financial reports before they can list.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
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.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
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.
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.
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?
Another sociopathic tech billionaire...that'll solve all the world's problems. I wonder what self-serving laws he's going to buy.
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
Three years from now you will be wondering how it could ever have been worth 70Billion and where all the 'innovations' went.
Did ICQ go public yet? I'm sure that instant messaging is the next big thing...
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?
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.
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.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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 $$$
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
...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.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
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). /popcorn
Facebook is going to be torn apart by tidal forces, and there is nothing anyone can do about it.
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
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.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
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.
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?
...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 based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
1 Earth is warming, 2 It's us, 3 it's royally bad, 4 we need to take action NOW
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.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
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.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
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).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Dow? Nasdaq? S&P500?
. . . for "It's Pretty much Over", isn't it?
They're forcing themselves to use Timeline and there's no other choice. Duh. Old news.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Facebook: Usenet for dummies.
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
Deleted
$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.
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 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.
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.
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 will be obsolete in 3-5 years with the rise of distributed social networking.