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After Facebook fails

blogs.law.harvard.edu

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Re: After Facebook fails

#191

Post by uncr3ative »

a3d6g2f7 wrote: post #190
snowwrestler wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is a tool and Facebook is entertainment. If you look at the history of advertising, entertainment companies have done far better than tool companies. Who made more money in the 20th century--the magazine publishing industry or the Yellow Pages? Think of Facebook like a magazine. When people read through National Geographic, are they looking to buy a camera right then? No. And yet all the camera companies adver…

I agree with you entertainment is a cash cow. But FB is _free_ entertainment. As is your photo-album and the discussions you have with your friends. You appear to be referring to future success. It's like Microsoft talking up "vaporware". It gets people's attention, maybe it convinces some to believe and some to invest, but it offers them nothing. Only a promise of some future of which no one can be certain. We have…

It really isn't "free" entertainment. There are many companies making lots of money (zynga for instance) selling virtual goods on facebook with FB credits. FB gets 30%. I'm not trying to say it's the same amount of money that google makes, but that alone is in the millions of dollars per month of gross profit.

Re: After Facebook fails

#192

Post by sp332 »

jackalope wrote: post #126
gulbrandr wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AdBlockPlus and Ghostery are always the two plugins I install first on my Firefox. http://adblockplus.org/en/ http://www.ghostery.com/

I like RequestPolicy because it blacklists all external domains by default and it's easy to whitelist them as needed. https://www.requestpolicy.com/

Request Policy is really annoying for daily use. Lots of sites use multiple domains to load images or CSS or other static content faster. Using the Readability plugin helps. Just tap ` and the missing CSS doesn't matter anymore.

Re: After Facebook fails

#193

Post by sp332 »

raquo wrote: post #160
PhrosTT wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ditto google's 'free' analytics Or being logged into Chrome.

You don't even need to log in – just visiting a URL sends it to google. I'm not sure if you can even disable that despite all the predictive/protective/suggestive checkboxes in config – I couldn't figure out how to stop my dev domains from being leaked to google until I moved to chromium.

Keystrokes are sent to your default "search provider", so if you configure chrome to point elsewhere it will send your keystrokes to someone else. You can add custom URLs as "search engines" so just put in a non-existant domain, or DuckDuckGo, and it won't tell on you.

Re: After Facebook fails

#194

Post by snowwrestler »

a3d6g2f7 wrote: post #190
snowwrestler wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is a tool and Facebook is entertainment. If you look at the history of advertising, entertainment companies have done far better than tool companies. Who made more money in the 20th century--the magazine publishing industry or the Yellow Pages? Think of Facebook like a magazine. When people read through National Geographic, are they looking to buy a camera right then? No. And yet all the camera companies adver…

I agree with you entertainment is a cash cow. But FB is _free_ entertainment. As is your photo-album and the discussions you have with your friends. You appear to be referring to future success. It's like Microsoft talking up "vaporware". It gets people's attention, maybe it convinces some to believe and some to invest, but it offers them nothing. Only a promise of some future of which no one can be certain. We have…

Facebook made almost a billion dollars in profit last year on gross margins of around 25%. They obviously have a business model and it's obviously working pretty well. Now--could they fail? Of course, but I don't see any reason now that they must fail, based on what we know now.

I find it kind of funny to see the complaints about Facebook's financial future...I'm old enough to remember when Google was a cool new free technology, but no one knew how the heck such a simple search engine was going to make money.

Re: After Facebook fails

#195

Post by a3d6g2f7 »

uncr3ative wrote: post #191
a3d6g2f7 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you entertainment is a cash cow. But FB is _free_ entertainment. As is your photo-album and the discussions you have with your friends. You appear to be referring to future success. It's like Microsoft talking up "vaporware". It gets people's attention, maybe it convinces some to believe and some to invest, but it offers them nothing. Only a promise of some future of which no one can be certain. We have…

It really isn't "free" entertainment. There are many companies making lots of money (zynga for instance) selling virtual goods on facebook with FB credits. FB gets 30%. I'm not trying to say it's the same amount of money that google makes, but that alone is in the millions of dollars per month of gross profit.

You mean the same Zynga whose stock price has dropped 50% in 60 days?

Let's assume you are right and I am wrong.

Let's assume FB is not "free" entertainment.

And in fact all those people who sign in to view/edit/upload profiles, photos, statuses and messages who do not also spend money on games and virtual goods are actually "freeloaders". Because they are using FB as if it's some kind of "free" service.

To save costs, shouldn't FB drop all the freeloaders? The ones who sign in to FB and do not spend any money. They are just wasting FB's resources. (This is a very old question that has been discussed many times.)

If FB is not "free", then why is FB letting all these users sign in and use FB's computing resources when these users never spend any money?

But here's the question I really want you to answer: Why are all these users signing in and not playing games and purchasing virtual goods? How do you explain this? Is FB some kind of "entertainment" to them? Some sort of recreation? I don't get it.

Re: After Facebook fails

#196

Post by duaneb »

raquo wrote: post #160
PhrosTT wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ditto google's 'free' analytics Or being logged into Chrome.

You don't even need to log in – just visiting a URL sends it to google. I'm not sure if you can even disable that despite all the predictive/protective/suggestive checkboxes in config – I couldn't figure out how to stop my dev domains from being leaked to google until I moved to chromium.

Bingo. Use chromium if you don't want Google to see everything.

Re: After Facebook fails

#197

Post by malandrew »

Random_Person wrote: post #142
jackalope wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed on all points, but websites that feature Like buttons or Analytics are complicit in this dubiously ethical behaviour. Webmasters should also be doing more to protect the privacy of their users. Sadly, even the ones that are supposed to be operating within FERPA or HIPAA restrictions in the US ignore this duty.

Are there better alternatives? (I ask this question honestly) As a web master of a very small, personal site, I find that running AddThis or something similar to be vital in generating traffic. Giving users a one click option to share my pages makes it much more likely that they will. Without that option, I have to resort to spamming message boards, Twitter, Facebook, etc manually, in order to drive traffic. I am not…

This makes me wonder if there is value in someone creating a Facebook Like button, Google +1 button, etc. widget set that doesn't keep any tracking data and only sends information about a user to Facebook, Google, etc. when a user explicitly clicks on the button.

Re: After Facebook fails

#198

Post by nnethercote »

duaneb wrote: post #196
raquo wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't even need to log in – just visiting a URL sends it to google. I'm not sure if you can even disable that despite all the predictive/protective/suggestive checkboxes in config – I couldn't figure out how to stop my dev domains from being leaked to google until I moved to chromium.

Bingo. Use chromium if you don't want Google to see everything.

Or Firefox. Or IE. Or Safari. Or Opera.

Re: After Facebook fails

#199

Post by a3d6g2f7 »

snowwrestler wrote: post #194
a3d6g2f7 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you entertainment is a cash cow. But FB is _free_ entertainment. As is your photo-album and the discussions you have with your friends. You appear to be referring to future success. It's like Microsoft talking up "vaporware". It gets people's attention, maybe it convinces some to believe and some to invest, but it offers them nothing. Only a promise of some future of which no one can be certain. We have…

Facebook made almost a billion dollars in profit last year on gross margins of around 25%. They obviously have a business model and it's obviously working pretty well. Now--could they fail? Of course, but I don't see any reason now that they must fail, based on what we know now. I find it kind of funny to see the complaints about Facebook's financial future...I'm old enough to remember when Google was a cool new free…

IPO means that $1BB was the plateau. They waited for this. Time to cash out. All down hill from here. How fast? Don't know. FB CFO probably does.

FB business model is display ads plus fad factor. Recent survey said 1/2 people think FB is a fad. What happens when fad dies down? Display ads alone are not a viable business model for a growth company. Hence we say FB has no business model.

There is no reason that FB _must_ fail. But there's nothing to suggest they will succeed. That's the problem. They do not have a business model that will allow growth.

FB now has $15BB to burn through while they keep competition in check (M&A but also G+) and wait for a business model to appear (more M&A). How fast will they burn through $15BB? Meanwhile they have to deal with Wall St.

Zuckerberg is still a kid; he's an unproven CEO but has unfettered control of the company. There is no Eric Schmidt to help him.

What about morale? What if FB believers start to doubt?

And then there's that sociopath/privacy thing... and peer-to-peer.

People are thinking about what happens after FB fails. And that's smart thinking, in my opinion, even if you're not in advertising.

From a consumer perspective, and we are all consumers, FB has a ridiculous amount of personal information. Imagine what happens if it finds its way into the junk mail/direct marketing/spam industry. One big mess.

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