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Facebook Profit Jumps 71% Year-over-Year

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Re: Facebook Profit Jumps 71% Year-over-Year

#261

Post by Quarrelsome »

teirce wrote: post #142
chollida1 wrote: post #5

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 -…

Maybe I'm just a crazy millennial, but I absolutely loathe the idea of FB / Insta stories. Snapchat going under wouldn't convince me to move over -- I'd just stop using the service and move on to communicating some other way. And Stories aren't the only appeal of SNAP, though I suppose they are a large producer of revenue. HN just loves to hate SNAP, and I can't really fathom why. I can get being skeptical but every…

> HN just loves to hate SNAP, and I can't really fathom why

Their entire product was marketed on the lie of ephemeral messaging. That's why I've always hated it. I don't like it when people talk down to the general public like that and lie to them about what technology can and cannot do.

Re: Facebook Profit Jumps 71% Year-over-Year

#262

Post by lmm »

teirce wrote: post #142
chollida1 wrote: post #5

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 -…

Maybe I'm just a crazy millennial, but I absolutely loathe the idea of FB / Insta stories. Snapchat going under wouldn't convince me to move over -- I'd just stop using the service and move on to communicating some other way. And Stories aren't the only appeal of SNAP, though I suppose they are a large producer of revenue. HN just loves to hate SNAP, and I can't really fathom why. I can get being skeptical but every…

Snapchat's founder always came across as hubristic in a way Facebook's wasn't. I try not to hate, but I don't like it when people act like they've made something wonderful when actually they built the thing with other people's money and made hardly any revenue.

Re: Facebook Profit Jumps 71% Year-over-Year

#263

Post by lmm »

acchow wrote: post #116
adventured wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In any real scenario, debt should obviously never be ignored, but we're counting cash in a vacuum here basically. Some of these companies are carrying vast amounts of debt now, Microsoft and Apple for example. They can't discharge all of that cash without suffering severe consequences due to their need to sustain a high credit rating. I added the ignoring debt tag, because who knows which of those cash / cash-like in…

> They can't discharge all of that cash without suffering severe consequences due to their need to sustain a high credit rating. What do you mean by this?

If they spent all of their cash (in a not-obviously-investment way) it would hurt their credit rating (and their business can't operate the way it does without a high credit rating). So they might have $43B (say) "in the bank", but that doesn't necessarily mean they could actually spend that $43B if the debt markets didn't think what they were spending it on was sensible.

Re: Facebook Profit Jumps 71% Year-over-Year

#264

Post by lmm »

ingenuous2 wrote: post #205
adventured wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft for example has $76 billion in debt, accumulating at a rapid pace. Apple is in a similar situation. They're adding debt at a historic pace. Despite the immense profitability the companies have, their debt holders will get freaked out if those large cash piles were to get discharged down toward zero. For example, Berkshire Hathaway got slapped for allowing its cash to drop a bit low (relatively speaking) a n…

I am naive in this area, but if the creditors freak out, what does that mean? Seems like a "freak out" would mean higher interest rates, and when those rates cross the return from the cash stockpile, they just would stay paying down the debt more aggressively?

Sure; it's just that we're talking about spending the cash stockpile. Microsoft has $126b "in the bank" but that doesn't mean they could actually spend all $126b on some moonshot, because by the time they'd spent half of it it would affect their interest rates and they'd have to start doing something about their debt.

Re: Facebook Profit Jumps 71% Year-over-Year

#265

Post by lmm »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #217
nradov wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies don't try to maximize total profit, but rather return on invested capital.

This can't possibly be right. Why would you forego making extra money to keep your statistical average up? What are you getting from the average number? Your theory predicts that price discrimination can't happen because companies would rather sell M widgets at X price than sell M widgets at X price and N widgets at Y price.

> This can't possibly be right. Why would you forego making extra money to keep your statistical average up? What are you getting from the average number?

You're serving the best interests of your shareholders, who have other things to be doing with their capital. They'd often rather invest $10 and get 10% than invest $20 and get 7%, even though that means getting $.10 rather than $.14.

Re: Facebook Profit Jumps 71% Year-over-Year

#266

Post by skybrian »

losteric wrote: post #173
skybrian wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest issue is what the rules are and how that affects the user interface. Using email, the rule is that if someone sends you something, you own it; they could ask you to do delete it, but you can refuse. Facebook and other social networks let you edit and delete posts. Snapchat became big because you can send pictures that are automatically deleted after you view them. Sure, you can reimplement basic message e…

I think RSS is a closer analogy than email, but anyway... it could be argued those rules don't really exist today. Good snaps get stored and shared forever, everyone knows to screenshot dumb posts on FB, and there are plenty of twitter archival tools. Youtube's DRM and takedowns work OK against film pirates, but it's still easy to find many movies and redistributed personal content online. Though I'd be curious what…

Despite the exceptions and workarounds, the defaults matter for the user experience and social dynamics of an online forum.

Even on Hacker News, the various moderation features and things like being able to edit your post after publishing make a difference to how the community works. It's not only what you can get away with but also what people feel like they have a right to do.

An interesting proof of concept might be to try to create a forum like Hacker News, but using distributed software.

Re: Facebook Profit Jumps 71% Year-over-Year

#267

Post by lmm »

tedunangst wrote: post #230
lwf wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP was referring to freedom of speech, I assume?

No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.

Bills of Attainder were against humans. Limited liability corporations exist by consent of the state and the state has no obligation to grant them new charters or continued use of their existing one.

Facebook could continue operating as a partnership - that would be much harder to stop - but they might not want to given the liability implications.

Re: Facebook Profit Jumps 71% Year-over-Year

#268

Post by lmm »

dbbk wrote: post #186
StevePerkins wrote: post #77

Maybe I live in a bubble, but I just assumed that Facebook would be on a decline trajectory by now. Their website is almost meaningless to my day-to-day life at this point. I login once every couple of weeks, upload some pics of my kids for Grandma to look at, and then log off. I don't personally know anyone who still uses it regularly as we did back in 2007. I don't know a tactful way to put this... but it seems lik…

To be fair, your behaviour does count you in the MAU. I'm from the UK and just left university. Everything social at university is organised on Facebook still, through Groups and Events. Weirdly, I can't even think of any competing service that societies and sports clubs would move to.

Meetup has some traction but it charges the organiser directly.

Re: Facebook Profit Jumps 71% Year-over-Year

#269

Post by lmm »

dopamean wrote: post #20
solomatov wrote: post #13

Interesting thing is that GOOG's results which were released several days ago weren't so stellar. It's good to see real competition in advertisement market.

I'm not trying to be snarky but is it really competition if it's just two players?

I remember seeing a paper that in any market where the top 4 players have more than 60% of the market, they'll naturally behave in a cartel-like way in terms of pricing etc.. So it's not ideal. But still, two players seems much better than one in terms of, if nothing else, limiting quite how much customers are soaked for.

Re: Facebook Profit Jumps 71% Year-over-Year

#270

Post by afpx »

jdhn wrote: post #149
teirce wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm just a crazy millennial, but I absolutely loathe the idea of FB / Insta stories. Snapchat going under wouldn't convince me to move over -- I'd just stop using the service and move on to communicating some other way. And Stories aren't the only appeal of SNAP, though I suppose they are a large producer of revenue. HN just loves to hate SNAP, and I can't really fathom why. I can get being skeptical but every…

Another crazy millennial here. I don't have an Instagram either, and frankly I don't want one. As for why HN hates Snap, I'm not exactly sure. Is it because the average user on HN is older and isn't targeted by Snap? Maybe it's seen as a frivolous plaything? No matter what the reason, there's definitely a lot of hate for Snap on this site.

40 year old, here. I mainly use snap to play with filters with my young kids. I'd never use it for communication because the UX is horrendous. A while ago, there was an odd corporate push to try to use snap internally (was there some marketing push?). And, all of my co-workers spent lots of time brainstorming how to even use snap effectively.

The swarms of 13 years olds that roam through my house only ever seem to use their mobile for Instagram, snap, and youtube. However, more recently I've noticed that the boys have been walking around with bluetooth headsets on as they have a large group chat going on in the background. Not sure what app they're using.

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