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Re: NASDAQ:FB

#241

Post by cube13 »

ramanujan wrote: post #181

This is Hacker News. The top-voted comment on this thread really should be words of praise for what Zuckerberg and his team have accomplished. Every hacker, every entrepreneur, every creator should derive inspiration and uplift from Facebook's story. It's a rare bright day in the middle of the worst economic environment since the 1930s. It doesn't matter whether the company will grow into a $100B valuation. It does m…

>Every hacker, every entrepreneur, every creator should derive inspiration and uplift from Facebook's story. It's a rare bright day in the middle of the worst economic environment since the 1930s. It doesn't matter whether the company will grow into a $100B valuation.

Here's the problem: Facebook doesn't have time to "grow" into the valuation. They're worth that much to investors now. They need to prove that they are worth that kind of investment money. They need to prove that they can make the kind of money that $100+B companies make. Facebook made a TON of money today.

The size of the IPO is simply way out of scale with the actual company. Facebook had a net income of $1B last year. Companies that have market valuations around $100B make that much per month. Now, if Facebook's market cap was around $30B or $40B, I think everyone on HN would be celebrating their success, because that's a good valuation for a $1B/year company.

Re: NASDAQ:FB

#242

Post by corford »

pbiggar wrote: post #231
corford wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm with you on the major props to the team (of which MZ is a big part). Execution is king, and Facebook's execution of their strategy thus far has been exquisite. What that should translate to in dollar terms I don't know but, for me, it feels like it should be quite a bit less than a hundred billion.

Well, company valuation and stock exchange pricing have no relationship to effort at all. $100B is nothing to do with rewarding effort. The stock exchange is a game where people bet on what the price will be in the future. Everything is based on perceived value, and there's no requirement to have any relationship to objective reality. I would wager that many of the people betting today do not themselves perceive that…

True but it's also true that if MZ or any other shareholders choose to sell some of their equity, they will convert that paper money in to real money. Assuming the current share price holds long enough, that's a lot of real money.

But I take your point that there isn't really a strong connection between stock price and effort expended (although maybe there's more of an implied connection at the initial IPO price versus the share price a few months after trading). If I think about it a bit more, MZ and team are effectively bystanders in all this. It's not as if they got to decide the IPO price (if I've understood the process correctly i.e. the banks recommend the starting price?). Unfortunately, that's where my knowledge of high finance stops. Sometimes, I wish I'd taken a finance degree just to be equipped to understand the real game that's going on.

Re: NASDAQ:FB

#243

Post by noname123 »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #238
ramanujan wrote: post #181

This is Hacker News. The top-voted comment on this thread really should be words of praise for what Zuckerberg and his team have accomplished. Every hacker, every entrepreneur, every creator should derive inspiration and uplift from Facebook's story. It's a rare bright day in the middle of the worst economic environment since the 1930s. It doesn't matter whether the company will grow into a $100B valuation. It does m…

Over the years I've watched this exact conversation play out, dozens of times. I personally was inspired to leave Sun by a guy I know who worked there, and seemed like a complete idiot, who joined a startup and subsequently got reasonably wealthy [1]. The other bit of experience I brought to the table was growing up in Las Vegas Nevada where money was a sort of 'quantum' thing in that sometimes you had it, sometimes…

And all during that time/process people will be trying to sort out how much of the success or lack of success of their peers reflects on their own success or lack of success. As folks work through that process they sometimes become enlightened, sometimes bitter, often cynical, and ideally wiser.

As someone who will be facing his 5 year college reunion, do you have any tips to deal with this floodgate of emotions? Personally, I'm planning to embellish my accomplishments by saying I have sired 5 kids.

Re: NASDAQ:FB

#244

Post by jacquesm »

staunch wrote: post #237
jacquesm wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The top-voted comment on this thread really should be words of praise for what Zuckerberg and his team have accomplished. The top voted comment actually is an excerpt from a book by a man that I respect a whole lot more than I respect Mark Zuckerberg. For one he seemed a genuinely nice and modest human being. He also influenced the lives of countless people by being creative rather than by selling off their private…

It must be thoughtlessness. You can't honestly look at Facebook's contribution to the Arab Spring (and similar social justice causes) or the millions of people it has reconnected (long-lost family/friends) and think that SpaceX has any chance of creating comparable positive impact at any point in the near future. I like SpaceX too. It's every geek's childhood fantasy. It's a great thing. Elon is the real Tony Stark.…

I think it's a bit of a leap to attribute the Arab Spring to Facebook's contribution. It was long overdue and it would have happened with or without facebook.

Would we blame it on facebook if the spring failed to lead into summer? If not then it stands to reason that we can't credit facebook with the success either.

The Arab Spring and all the good that may come out of it belongs to the Arabs, to those that laid their life on the line and to those that stood up to oppression.

Connecting humanity is an important thing but we have a very large number of ways to do that, facebook is but one of those.

I'm with you that connecting peoples lives in such a way is beneficial, but I'm not quite sure yet if Facebooks net value is positive or not if you factor in the massive privacy violations that have already happened coupled with those that are surely to come.

No social network has the potential for good as much as facebook does at the moment. But at the same time that potential needs to be realized and that needs to be balanced with a healthy respect for the privacy of the users of that network.

For a good read on the Arab Spring and the online movements:

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/09/so-was...

The telephone, the internet in general, twitter, online news media and yes, Facebook all played a minor role. But in the end it was the people that made the change and they would have found a way to communicate. Possibly not as effective but there have been revolutions all over the world that pre-date the invention of the telephone so a new piece of technology is likely not an enabler but simply one more line of possible communication.

Re: NASDAQ:FB

#245

Post by dudurocha »

staunch wrote: post #237
jacquesm wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The top-voted comment on this thread really should be words of praise for what Zuckerberg and his team have accomplished. The top voted comment actually is an excerpt from a book by a man that I respect a whole lot more than I respect Mark Zuckerberg. For one he seemed a genuinely nice and modest human being. He also influenced the lives of countless people by being creative rather than by selling off their private…

It must be thoughtlessness. You can't honestly look at Facebook's contribution to the Arab Spring (and similar social justice causes) or the millions of people it has reconnected (long-lost family/friends) and think that SpaceX has any chance of creating comparable positive impact at any point in the near future. I like SpaceX too. It's every geek's childhood fantasy. It's a great thing. Elon is the real Tony Stark.…

I got to disagree. Not in the part that Facebook was important to Arab Spring and reconnect people long seen. I desagree in the part that rockets doesn't give benefits.

Rockets and all 'complicated' science, push the human race forward. Your cellphone is only able to connect to the internet because of the rockets that were send to the atmosphere, long time ago. Better than me, I have to people to talk about this.

Read Science and Culture, by Thomas Huxley : How often have we not been told that the study of physical science is incompetent to confer culture; that it touches none of the higher problems of life; and, what is worse, that the continual devotion to scientific studies tends to generate a narrow and bigoted belief in the applicability of scientific methods to the search after truth of all kinds. How frequently one has reason to observe that no reply to a troublesome argument tells so well as calling its author a "mere scientific specialist." And, as I am afraid it is not permissible to speak of this form of opposition to scientific education in the past tense; may we not expect to be told that this, not only omission, but prohibition, of "mere literary instruction and education" is a patent example of scientific narrow-mindedness? source: http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/Best/HuxleyScienceC...

And the great Neil deGrasse Tyson , in the pretty "We stopped Dreaming": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbIZU8cQWXc

Re: NASDAQ:FB

#246

Post by DrCatbox »

staunch wrote: post #237
jacquesm wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The top-voted comment on this thread really should be words of praise for what Zuckerberg and his team have accomplished. The top voted comment actually is an excerpt from a book by a man that I respect a whole lot more than I respect Mark Zuckerberg. For one he seemed a genuinely nice and modest human being. He also influenced the lives of countless people by being creative rather than by selling off their private…

It must be thoughtlessness. You can't honestly look at Facebook's contribution to the Arab Spring (and similar social justice causes) or the millions of people it has reconnected (long-lost family/friends) and think that SpaceX has any chance of creating comparable positive impact at any point in the near future. I like SpaceX too. It's every geek's childhood fantasy. It's a great thing. Elon is the real Tony Stark.…

Facebook was not made with intent to spur political unrest, thats a side effect, a collateral.

And anyhow, the effect on arab spring of social media such as facebook is highly overstated, as one rebel said in an interview "We turned to facebook and twitter only after we had destroyed 90% of the police stations in our town."

Re: NASDAQ:FB

#247

Post by staunch »

dudurocha wrote: post #245
staunch wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It must be thoughtlessness. You can't honestly look at Facebook's contribution to the Arab Spring (and similar social justice causes) or the millions of people it has reconnected (long-lost family/friends) and think that SpaceX has any chance of creating comparable positive impact at any point in the near future. I like SpaceX too. It's every geek's childhood fantasy. It's a great thing. Elon is the real Tony Stark.…

I got to disagree. Not in the part that Facebook was important to Arab Spring and reconnect people long seen. I desagree in the part that rockets doesn't give benefits. Rockets and all 'complicated' science, push the human race forward. Your cellphone is only able to connect to the internet because of the rockets that were send to the atmosphere, long time ago. Better than me, I have to people to talk about this. Rea…

You can't possibly think I was saying scientific progress isn't good, right? We're comparing the positive impact of Facebook and SpaceX to date.

Re: NASDAQ:FB

#248

Post by paul »

jacquesm wrote: post #219
ramanujan wrote: post #181

This is Hacker News. The top-voted comment on this thread really should be words of praise for what Zuckerberg and his team have accomplished. Every hacker, every entrepreneur, every creator should derive inspiration and uplift from Facebook's story. It's a rare bright day in the middle of the worst economic environment since the 1930s. It doesn't matter whether the company will grow into a $100B valuation. It does m…

> The top-voted comment on this thread really should be words of praise for what Zuckerberg and his team have accomplished. The top voted comment actually is an excerpt from a book by a man that I respect a whole lot more than I respect Mark Zuckerberg. For one he seemed a genuinely nice and modest human being. He also influenced the lives of countless people by being creative rather than by selling off their private…

The top comment has shifted place.

Re: NASDAQ:FB

#249

Post by jacquesm »

paul wrote: post #248
jacquesm wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The top-voted comment on this thread really should be words of praise for what Zuckerberg and his team have accomplished. The top voted comment actually is an excerpt from a book by a man that I respect a whole lot more than I respect Mark Zuckerberg. For one he seemed a genuinely nice and modest human being. He also influenced the lives of countless people by being creative rather than by selling off their private…

The top comment has shifted place.

No it hasn't :)

Anyway, what the top comment actually is will not change my feelings towards what it was when I wrote that. I thought it was quite appropriate and a lot more in line with what I'd expect of HN than gushing praise.

Re: NASDAQ:FB

#250

Post by corford »

staunch wrote: post #247
dudurocha wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got to disagree. Not in the part that Facebook was important to Arab Spring and reconnect people long seen. I desagree in the part that rockets doesn't give benefits. Rockets and all 'complicated' science, push the human race forward. Your cellphone is only able to connect to the internet because of the rockets that were send to the atmosphere, long time ago. Better than me, I have to people to talk about this. Rea…

You can't possibly think I was saying scientific progress isn't good, right? We're comparing the positive impact of Facebook and SpaceX to date.

I think he's saying SpaceX is a "Bigger Fucking Deal" than Facebook.
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