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Why I'm not buying Facebook

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Re: Why I'm not buying Facebook

#81

Post by ericd »

nas wrote: post #64
matthewcford wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The future of Facebook is not targeting you on 'a social network', its opening up an ad-sense competitor and targeting you on any website - with your personal information. The like and connect buttons are just the first step. With that in mind it sounds like a good deal to me.

So why would people want to be Facebook users? What value are they getting besides targeted ads? I find it amusing to see people trying to imagine theoretical ways Facebook could earn income to justify their insane valuation. It is essentially the very definition of speculation. A prudent investor wouldn't touch that shit with a ten foot pole.

So why would people want to be Facebook users? What value are they getting besides targeted ads?

Erm... people like talking and interacting with their friends, and facebook makes that extremely easy?

Ways it could make money in the future - since it could act as the online identity of a substantial portion of internet users, and gets the attention of a significant portion of those daily or weekly, there are a hell of a lot of ways.

Re: Why I'm not buying Facebook

#82

Post by joe_the_user »

phreanix wrote: post #28
krschultz wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I had $50 billion on this day to buy part of 1 company, I'd take Goldman no question. A few years ago if you got Facebook stock at a lower valuation, sure that would make you a lot of money. But if Facebook makes $2 billion now, and they already have 25% of the internet users as members, where does the growth come from? 50b valuation is right given their current revenues, but they're not going to go from 25% to 10…

While I'm sure it's a factor, I'm not convinced that Facebook's growth needs involve having to increase their userbase in that manner. There are still many ways to monetize the existing one since I don't believe they've done that very efficiently yet.

I think you're missing the danger that a lack of growth involves to Facebook.

Facebook isn't monetizing their existing customers and their customers are there because "it's the thing" - all one billion of them or however many they currently have. We aren't just there because everyone else is, we're there 'cause it's like a new club, a new experience, new thing. NEW. If everyone's on Facebook and it's just that dumb place that everyone on, then... the appeal shrinks...

If Facebook growth visibly stalled, if I'm no longer having that interesting experience of old acquaintances becoming newly visible, then suddenly the process of Facebook shrinkage appears. And if this is the moment Facebook is visibly trying to get more out of me, then the shrinkage might really accelerates.

I've seen just a couple friends quit FB recently. Not a big trend but I also haven't seen more people join.

Imagine if ... it was ... the most ephemeral $50 B ever...

Re: Why I'm not buying Facebook

#83

Post by cincinnatus »

If these guys precipitate a bubble burst we should all hate them.

2011 is the year Facebook growth (users, hours, page views, pick one) plateaus, it is inevitable it will happen as some point, and this is very likely the year.

Re: Why I'm not buying Facebook

#84

Post by cincinnatus »

Swannie wrote: post #11

One reason why I'm not buying Facebook: I don't have $2mil lying around. Another one; Why is Mark so reticent to IPO? Because he loses control? Or because that means making the numbers public, and people will see just where the money is going. Either way, if the CEO doesn't want to go public and may be forced to, that is not good.

It may simply be that he's heard from others who do run public companies how much it sucks. It dramatically changes how you run things, and you wouldn't want to be CEO of a public company. He knows that much at least.

There may be other reasons as you say, certainly having to deal with the scrutiny would not be fun, no matter how above board you may be (or likely not).

Re: Why I'm not buying Facebook

#86

Post by meric »

nas wrote: post #62
bemmu wrote: post #58

On Zynga: You think they're going to justify a $50 billion market capitalization through banner ads? These games actually do really well, not from banner ads but from virtual currency. Now that FB is pushing devs to use FB credits, they should be in for a healthy cut of the action.

Games like Farmville are a fad, like Rubix cube and Cabbage Patch Kids. That's not to say that casual games won't continue to an important segment of gaming, just that they will not provide an income stream that justifies a 50 billion company valuation. If it wasn't for the fact that "the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent", I would short a Facebook IPO in a heartbeat. Facebook's core value i…

Perhaps if facebook could move beyond the website facebook.com... Like a piece of facebook branded communication device.

Re: Why I'm not buying Facebook

#87

Post by jswinghammer »

code_duck wrote: post #45
noahc wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain further about Etsy? Is this documented somewhere?

There is plenty of discontent documented on the web, in blogs, on Etsy's forums (which are difficult to penetrate, since the search and navigation features are poor), on the forums of other marketplace sites, on Twitter, and so on. They have a knack for turning away people who should be their biggest supporters. I can think of many successful shop owners have left after 2-3 years, disappointed by the way the site is…

Yeah this is my experience with Etsy as well. I have a poor opinion of the company from talking to sellers who are friends.

I wrote a scraper of their site for friends to get their sales data for taxes. Years went by before they bothered to implement this trivial feature. My code worked because in two years their pages didn't change at all. Sorta crazy.

They seem to be getting better but I don't know.

Re: Why I'm not buying Facebook

#88

Post by phreanix »

joe_the_user wrote: post #82
phreanix wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I'm sure it's a factor, I'm not convinced that Facebook's growth needs involve having to increase their userbase in that manner. There are still many ways to monetize the existing one since I don't believe they've done that very efficiently yet.

I think you're missing the danger that a lack of growth involves to Facebook. Facebook isn't monetizing their existing customers and their customers are there because "it's the thing" - all one billion of them or however many they currently have. We aren't just there because everyone else is, we're there 'cause it's like a new club, a new experience, new thing. NEW. If everyone's on Facebook and it's just that dumb p…

I think Facebook's way past being the 'new' thing. People are finding a use for it beyond 'old acquaintances becoming newly visible".

You have the average user who uses it to keep in touch with friends, but you also have a growing number of users who are using Facebook in more and more creative ways. I personally know a couple of hundred friends who have thousands of pictures hosted on it (not something they'd give up easily), I've seen my mother find all her elementary classmates and organize a reunion spanning several states all within 2 months (surprised even me, I didn't think she got past her yahoo email).

My point is, Facebook's utility for its users is still increasing, something that stagnated in Myspace' case. We haven't even touched on the social gaming aspect of it (If I see another cityville invite I swear I'll block them fools). Growth to me involves more creative ways to involve its existing users, as well as of course growing its numbers (which it is). There's still the potential of its international users (which I believe is larger than its US Mainland users), increased corporate/business identities on the site, social commerce (barely touched), organized product reviews, that new mail system it's supposedly rolling out, and so on. We can talk numbers, but potential for monetizing their existing userbase appeals to me more.

Re: Why I'm not buying Facebook

#89

Post by lsc »

cincinnatus wrote: post #83

If these guys precipitate a bubble burst we should all hate them. 2011 is the year Facebook growth (users, hours, page views, pick one) plateaus, it is inevitable it will happen as some point, and this is very likely the year.

we shouldn't, really. I mean, they practically /made/ the bubble, and I think we've all profited from that, even those of us who don't work for google. Demand for webapp dudes (and infrastructure) is way up because of this bubble. Hell, my own biggest account does some kind of facebook app thing.

Re: Why I'm not buying Facebook

#90

Post by bad_user »

ericd wrote: post #81
nas wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why would people want to be Facebook users? What value are they getting besides targeted ads? I find it amusing to see people trying to imagine theoretical ways Facebook could earn income to justify their insane valuation. It is essentially the very definition of speculation. A prudent investor wouldn't touch that shit with a ten foot pole.

So why would people want to be Facebook users? What value are they getting besides targeted ads? Erm... people like talking and interacting with their friends, and facebook makes that extremely easy? Ways it could make money in the future - since it could act as the online identity of a substantial portion of internet users, and gets the attention of a significant portion of those daily or weekly, there are a hell of…

If the noise gets unbearable, people will stop interacting on Facebook.

E.g. every time I login I'm seeing lots of invites for stupid games and lots of my friends taking stupid quizzes/tests (like, "what does your birth month make you?", or other stupid shit like that).

I've blocked as many apps as I could, I even deleted people from the friends list ... but it doesn't help, as the noise keeps getting more unbearable every day (no, I don't care about what my friends ate for breakfast).

The only time I found Facebook useful was when I contacted a friend who changed his phone number. But that's about it in 2 years since I've had the account.

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