wow, i didn't see that. Amazing. Well, that's a good sign for doc

This would be another reason not to buy in my opinion.

really? so a sample of tech-savvy 20-30 year old males is indicative of the entire internet surfing population when it comes clicking ads? if you can't see why this board's demographic is particularly poorly suited to predicting user behavior across all of facebook then i don't know why you even consider yourself qualified to talk about ad profitability.

So you're saying sampling the 2+2 community on its click-through rates is as useful to understanding the click-through rates of the entire population

AS

Sampling 100,000 Christian Fundamentalists on its position on abortion to understanding the nations attitude on abortion

I'm not interested in derailing this thread cause you made a ****ty analogy and got your feelings hurt. Why don't you just elaborate on why 2+2 users make such a poor sample,,,average education? we can use photoshop? what makes this place so special?

Here's a link to a Webtrend study talking about click through rates:
https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=h...erformance.pdf

And I'm more qualified at spotting ****ty analogies than ad profitablity...I'm just here to talk

it's not about being particularly special, obviously, it's about being just one incredibly small subset that happens to have non-average characteristics. i would say the same about reddit, or any other 'special internet community'.

if you actually want some analysis to uphold the incredibly obvious concept that 2p2 would deviate greatly from internet-wide CTR...

PER THE REPORT YOU LINKED, females are significantly more likely to click ads than men. twoplustwo is 65% male, while facebook is only 45% male.

additionally, twoplustwo's age demographics are way way way off from facebook's averages. as you can see in my links above, twoplustwo is

8% Under 18
10% 18-24
32% 25-34
31% 35-44

These values for Facebook are
26% Under 18 (+18%!)
24% 18-24 (+14%!)
18% 25-34 (-14%!)
13% 35-44 (-18%!!!)

since gender and age are some of the clearest determinants of CTR, as outlined in your own report, I expect these monumental deviations from site to site would be enough to convince you of the idiocy of why 2p2 would be an incredibly poor sample to make judgments about facebook CTR from.

I just read through every single post pretty interesting arguments here and a lot of good thoughts and opinions.

I didn't see anything about the potential of facebook in countries that currently have facebook banned including China. It's within reason to think they could unban facebook just like Pakistan did a while ago.

The Chinese govt could buy some facebook stock and unban it then profit from it.

Another thing is facebook mobile is free to so many people with data plans, if facebook worked something out with cell phone providers they profit from mobile fb users even if it means not letting facebook be completely free.

Also what else is there good to invest in, in Canada pension funds and people who used to rely on Treasury bills are looking elsewhere since T-bills now charge a premium which basically means it's a negative/losing investment since it pays such a low rate of interest. There's also an aging population that is starting to use facebook. Retired people want to reconnect with old friends.

They could work out a way to profit from company fan sites and profiles on facebook, maybe make an arrangement to track links from companys or charge small fees to company sites I don't know.

I never hear people talk about google+ I don't have it and don't know many friends who have it. I don't see facebook going anywhere.

I'm planning on buying but I'm not sure what a good strategy is or when I should sell. Is it worth taking a loan out to invest in?

I was thinking of investing $10,000 waiting until it increases 30% then selling $10,000 worth and keeping the profit in for the long-term until I dont know when.

Seems like a ton of speculation and wild rumors on how facebook could raise profit's that no one could know the answer to. I'm wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole and absolutely do not take out a loan to invest.

Fundamentals aside, FB has some serious buzz if people are talking about getting loans to buy shares.

About the "Facebook signups have plateaued in the US" thing - may be true, but that's not where they need to expand, they don't need more people to multiply their business, they just need to make more money per person. People are saying there's no room for growth and focusing on membership numbers, but there's clearly a lot of room for growth in revenue. Seems like syndicating ads out to 3rd party websites ala Google Adsense might be a huge deal, but no clue if FB has any plans for that.

I mean, he already is (and Sheryl Sandberg and all the other ppl there). Facebook is so huge because he's given all it's users what they want, and created an engaging product that satisfies everyone. On top of that, it actually produces a profit, so it hasn't just gotten huge by bleeding away money (like Twitter, Groupon, most 90s dotcoms).

Now, is it worth a 100 P:E? Who knows, quite likely no. I doubt I'd buy any FB for long-term investing at this valuation, but I'd be pretty happy at 50:1. The company has done everything right product-wise so far IMO, and in a market where LinkedIn has a 1000:1+ ratio and Groupon went public without ever making a profit (and it never will), FB would at least be one of the best social networking stocks if valued at 100 Billion.

I seriously doubt that it'll open at 100bill though, I think it's going to be way higher. Guys, wait and watch the hype/news stories about this in the next few months.

This seems like a very bad idea to me.

Im a noob to investing, thanks I appreciate the advice.

Says the guy with roughly 20,000 posts (12/day) on a social media website.

i dont think google + is really going to be competitive w/ facebook , honestly i think facebook has to worry more about twitter . me and more of my friends are using twitter more often and using facebook less..

seems like the flow of information is quicker and easier . also in the last 6 months i cant really watch any sporting event without getting on twitter and seeing what everyone has to say and talking about the game in real time . i get most of my news from twitter etc . i still share photos with my friends on facebook but it seems like i rarely update my status on there ...

+1.

They already make a profit of 1 billion on 4 billion in revenues... and yet half the people in this thread are puzzled on what they sell and how they make money.

That is a clear sign that FB is not milking their user base nearly as much as they could without being too obtrusive to user experience.