This reminds me of a when a subordinate asks for a raise, you offer them a title in lieu of cash

Retro is the act of old things coming back into fashion, and the dot com crash to most of facebook users is in a history book they never read, look at some of the google revolutionized search, it created it posts . What it did do was monetize in a back of the newspaper classifieds way, low key and behind the scenes.

groupon is another recent big ego boaster about size, when they have no revenue stream (profits, not just turn over). I heard on the radio yesterday there is a push from some underwriters to be in on the fb IPO on a no fee basis, they want the prestige of the association. Of all the players in finance, wallstreeters have never been pop culture before cash types. So maybe your position on dominance has infected them, and anyone who's been in business knows, when the idealists gain control the company can be destroyed in a short time.

I won't get anywhere near the stock, but it should be an interesting 2012 to look back on.

I dont wanna sound like a conspiracy-tard, but wouldn't you feel rude if you accepted people's friend's requests and then subsequently blocked them from seeing most of your actual profile. Isn't it like "hey you can speak with me on facebook, but I dont like you or trust you enough to show you things I am interested in"..

The other post about it is easier to quit facebook than be nitty about privacy settings is also correct in many cases imo. Some people will not feel comfortable having everyone they know connected on FB and constantly having to worry about what level of privacy they have given each person.


I love stories like this from IPO's, ****ing unreal.

If anyone ever wants to start the next FB, not only will I think you are doing something awesome, I am an awesome cook and will lend my services for 1%.

I think you are being a bit narrow minded though. Even if advertising sales do drop off because they aren't viable for many of the companies spending big dollars now, that doesn't mean they are doomed, it just means display ads next to profiles on facebook.com wont be their cash cow.

They have 450 million mobile users that they aren't earning a dime from right now. That isn't because there aren't ways to do it, its because it isn't necessary.

There are so many ways they could leverage what they have to print cash. And they will, but printing cash is not their goal. As Zuckerberg said in the filing:

'we don't build services to make money, we make money to build better services'

Here is just one idea they are surely planning to do at some point:

They can compete with AdSense already and surely will at some point. Imagine how hard they will kick G's ass when they tie in like button 2.0 functionality to it (for anybody who doesn't know AdSense is 50% of Googles revenue and allows 3rd party websites to host Google ads) . I guarantee there is a team of people working on this at Facebook and its got some Project Bumrushlarryandsergey code name and its uber top secret. And Zuckerberg wont roll it out until he feels like it because he's the CEO, bitch.

It,s not that i think its a bad company, What they have done is genius, but its not worthy of a 100 billion dollar cap , or anywhere near that . Not with its current business model, which in turn will lose a big % of their followship if they make their attempts to monetize too overt.

I find much better values out there I rather own then owning facebook @ 100billion market cap. If anything it seems like an obv short once the initial hoopla is over and it starts reporting 10q's .

Also, those quotes about Zuckerberg not caring about his co not making money , will go out the window once he realizes he must always be beating estimates . Do no Evil.

You're reading weird things into my posts dude. I never said FB would be a good investment, my comments were purely in the context of whether there was any chance Google+ could overtake FB anytime soon. You are reading crazy stuff into what I wrote, I don't think you get what I am saying. I am saying it will be incredibly hard to topple Facebook's dominance of it's market. I am saying nothing about the stock/IPO/whatever. I was replying to someone who was asking about the danger of Google+ overtaking Facebook.

I don't think I have posted anything here about whether FB will be a good investment. I assume it will be fundamentally overpriced. You talk about Groupon - check out the GRPN thread on here, I'm one of the most vocal posters in there, I think GRPN is a huge joke and I have spent a LOT of time thinking about how to capitalize on them not being around in a few years. Comparing FB to GRPN is a joke, FB is a highly profitable company, GRPN is a dog who has never made any profit, and is declining in every way possible.

btw honestly not sure what you are saying about Google, but it DID revolutionize search. When it appeared, it's results were so much more relevant than anything out there, it was revolutionary. Then they also did a 1000x better job monetizing search than any of the also-rans did. If you don't know that, then it's you who doesn't know your history.

They're only floating 5% of the company right?

Has the decision been made as to whether it will be dutch auction?

The hype will drive up this stock for sure. Try to buy first day, exit day 3-7.

Long term, I'm not sure. But FB is making 1B profit on 3.7B revenue and none of the current revenue sources are in any jeopardy and all are projected to grow - on top of which you have other potential sources of revenue they can explore.

We're all reading the opinions of someone who think "don't be evil" came from Facebook/Zuckerberg apparently. Time for the old ignore list.

Pretty sure it's not Dutch auction, at least that's what they said on some webcast I watched randomly yesterday.

I have been having similar thoughts about the hype driving the stock up for a few days. Look what has happened to Zynga and LinkedIn's stock today (although I guess some of that is more based in stuff that became public in the Facebook papers last night). I really feel like people who normally just stick their money in some mutual funds or whatever, will get in on this too, because Facebook is just so huge and the IPO is going to be all over the press. Obviously not all of them will, but I'm sure some percentage will just say "look what happened to Google's stock after their IPO" and put some money in. IMO.

Would be pretty sick to see FB's market cap if they had LNKD's nice rational 1042 P:E ratio hahaha.

This strategy would have lost you money on every single internet 2.0 ipo that has happened so far.

compared individually vs other activities it is .



http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.s...er_google.html

You are making a case for their technological skill. itf I apply their tech to how it integrates with users and their decisions, which are monetary ones. My comments were in line with your position stated, more specifically that fb was so big it's entrenched as king, I disagree with a conclusion that size matters in a social environment.

but if all you got is to go the personal attack route, whatever, not interested. I go back to the days where internet access meant disconnecting your telephone line, or paying for a 2nd (which I had) and search was a pick your fav. google offered the cleanest, non portal interface, but it wasn't always the most relevant. And just a few days ago a search query brought up top half, first page dead links from google. top sponsored ones probable were good(?) but their spiders are still as inconsistent as they were back then.

They became my search of choice because of the interface, not the tech. They didn't go the yahoo route of dumping their community in my face to find the answer to a query. A majority of users could care less about the tech, just as they don't give a rats ass about how fb operates, it just needs to work without being a pita. Why, because that's where the money is.

I don't feel rude, and neither does anyone else I know. I just setup a few groups of people. They can all see my profile, but not everyone can see my pictures/activities. It took less than 5 minutes. They don't know if I have pictures, nor do they know if I do tons of activities, so if they really go through the effort of finding out how limited of a profile I have them on then they sound like a bunch of stalkers.

I have a tough time believing that tons of people are quitting FB over this kind of stuff, since they have like a zillion users and every single person I know uses FB in some capacity, even the guys who don't post anything(like me) still login to make sure nobody died and other major events. Most old people don't have anything to hide, and most young people will figure out the privacy settings(before getting old and having nothing to hide). I just don't see this as anything even reasonably close to a major road block to anything.

seriously though.. i rather split it up with these companies if i HAD to go long. I rather split up with these co's that total 100 bill.


pcs - 3.35b
yhoo - 20b
sgms - 1.125b
pzza - 990m
mtw - 1.9B
cf- 12.1B

all those companies total up less than half of what facebook will ipo at.. sick.

and because i am a permabear a little

spxu and tza mixed in.

It appears that you may be right.

Groupon also floated a tiny share of the company, and it didn't even bump up the first week. I wonder why that is. They were hyped to death too.

Is there any way for an unaccredited newbie trader with modest portfolio to come in short on this?

Or alternately, a way to buy something else that's tightly tied to FB's share price if it goes down?

I took this as comparing Facebook to how Google's "Do no evil" position has degraded. How is Zuckerberg going to react when Facebooks misses its earnings and the media starts calling him a failure? When the VCs make their exit, what kind of advice will he get?

I am interested in what is going to happen with the talent in the year following the IPO. I don't think people with a few million+ are going to stick around.

I know Exactly who came up with that .. i was using that as an example, sadly you are too dense to read into it. Once they went public , just like facebook, policies will change.

Sorry if the answer to this question is obvious. I'm an IPO newb.

But what are they planning on using the $5B they're raising for?

Because all of these companies' shares have already been trading for years via private share sales. Facebook went from being valued at $15b in early 2010 to $80b+ last year based on these trades. That is where the $100b price tag comes from. So they've all already experienced the rapid doubling/tripling in market cap that a company like Google had to go through to get to the valuation they had today, before they even became public - and before anybody saw their financial statements.

In the case of Groupon the hype was that they would have a valuation of $25b++. But then they filed for their IPO and investors discovered things were a lot less rosy than they anticipated, and that valuation was revised down and down and down.

Zynga is a similar story.

Facebook might be too. They were projected to have higher revenue than they do.

So you've asked over 100 people out of their 800M user base.

Got it.

we could ask 1,000 here . Eventually the number will be statistically significant.

They really arent using all that money. Its just a way for the early investors to start cashing out.
Also a good way for them to start acquiring other businesses with stock swaps.

Needing the $5B for something specific wasn't the catalyst for the IPO. They apparently would have had to disclose a whole bunch of their financial info with, I believe, the SEC, because of some regulation related to companies with more than 500 investors. That's what I keep seeing reported, I guess they figured it was a good time to let everyone cash out if they were going to have to disclose all their stuff anyway.

zynga up 40% since the filing

Pretty crazy. I know this didn't happen with the other recent web IPOs, but I really feel like FB is going to go bat**** and blow away the 100 bill market cap when it first starts trading.

(and before anyone who can't read in this thread says anything, I'm not saying it DESERVES some insane multiple, or that I'm buying any, I'm just stating my gut feeling)