81–90 of 294 posts
Where are all the "analysts" from hn claiming fb wouldn't make it? Thats right. They left. Moral of the story is.... Never believe the consensus that is hacker news. Dare i say inverse Edit: why the downvotes? Is it because my networth is 23 mil?
The consensus I remember was that Facebook posed a real threat to a free and open internet, because it's a kind of walled garden. That consensus, alas, is as current as ever.
Some fun Facebook facts from the earnings call/report - Facebook has a massive, $35.5 billion hoard of cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities. It's the third biggest S&P 500 company by this metric that isn't paying a dividend, after Berkshire Hathaway and Alphabet. - Facebook's headcount is now at 20,658. That's up 43 percent since last year - Average Revenue Per User Rises 23% to $4.73, Down from 4Q 2016 -…
Slightly interesting aside, 3.9B for 20,658 employees is ~$188K/employee profit, which is about a 20% drop from a few years ago[1]. I'm not an economist nor statistician. 1. https://www.buzzfeed.com/peterlauria/what-18-of-the-biggest-...
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As far as I understand, In the US monopoly is fine unless it leads to increase of price paid by consumers. EU probably has different opinion.
I was under the impression that even this was okay, it was using a monopoly position in one market to take over another market that wasn't kosher.
> Facebook’s formidable ad business, along with Alphabet Inc.’s Google, soaked up 99% of the online ad industry’s growth last year, according to Pivotal Research. Does that seem crazy to anyone else?
The long tale companies are not worth it. The amount of hassle it takes to reach out to "Glam Media" and start working out your own ad deal is a stupid waste of time. You are smarter investing in monitoring your cpi on google/fb.
Edit: Glam media shutdown. https://www.recode.net/2016/9/15/12936470/mode-media-glam-sh...
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It seems like it would be a disaster to break up Facebook. You can't really have more than one social network that everybody uses. Forcing everyone to split off into groups wouldn't work, to put it mildly.
I don't even think it's clear that it would be a disaster to completely outlaw facebook.
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That is absolutely insane. Should we seriously be considering anti-trust regulators to crack down on their insane growth?
The point of anti-trust laws is not to punish success, but to police against an entity using their dominant position in one market to take over a different market.
I can't help it when the ads are for cool things like a $20 USB endoscope.
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Slightly interesting aside, 3.9B for 20,658 employees is ~$188K/employee profit, which is about a 20% drop from a few years ago[1]. I'm not an economist nor statistician. 1. https://www.buzzfeed.com/peterlauria/what-18-of-the-biggest-...
Why is that interesting? Companies should hire more people until marginal profit per new hire is $0 to maximize profits. And that number says nothing about marginal profits.