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Facebook has more than 83 million 'fake' users

bbc.com

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Re: Facebook has more than 83 million 'fake' users

#81

Post by niels_olson »

caffeine5150 wrote: post #48
joshuahedlund wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had a similar experience and similar thoughts. I'm a strong believer in free markets, etc, but sometimes I don't understand the unending need for growth (i.e. why is it considered a bad thing that Facebook is so large that it doesn't have much room for growth?) If you're large and profitable, what's wrong with that? It often seems like the relentless pursuit for growth leads to short-term decisions to increase p…

I think its a fundamental flaw of the public company ecosystem. Management is driven to have a very short-term, myopic view of shareholder value (i.e. stock price quarter to quarter). This was made much worse by the rise in profile of analysts in the late 90's tech boom with increased focus on short term earnings guidance. Perhaps eventually Zuckerberg will be replaced by a more market-savvy CEO. Also being public wi…

I'm reminding of a picture of a board meeting at NeXT, and I vaguely recall Warren Buffet being mentioned, as either on the board, or giving Jobs advise. And one of Buffet's stories about getting turned onto stock trading by a guy at another firm telling him that the market in the short term is a voting machine, but in the long term, it's a weighing machine. You want to guess the right weight.

Here's the picture

http://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/305285_1015047964...

Re: Facebook has more than 83 million 'fake' users

#82

Post by forgottenpaswrd »

smacktoward wrote: post #73
joshuahedlund wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had a similar experience and similar thoughts. I'm a strong believer in free markets, etc, but sometimes I don't understand the unending need for growth (i.e. why is it considered a bad thing that Facebook is so large that it doesn't have much room for growth?) If you're large and profitable, what's wrong with that? It often seems like the relentless pursuit for growth leads to short-term decisions to increase p…

It's part of the tradeoff of being investment-funded. Investors offer you money based on an estimate of the future value of your company. When you take the money, you now have to get the company to at least that value for them to be able to make money on their investment by selling their stake. If you can't make that happen, the investors will be very unhappy with you, possibly up to the point of using their ownershi…

"...investors will be very unhappy with you, possibly up to the point of using their ownership stake (or joining with other dissatisfied stakeholders) to have you tossed out and replaced with a "better" manager in order to "save the company."

You need to add "if they can". One of the fantastic things of Zuck is... he accepted the money but gave himself 51% of the company. So investors are f*cked and can't do anything.

That someone could invest under those terms is beyond my understanding, but they did. Greed is going to make people loose a lot of money.

Re: Facebook has more than 83 million 'fake' users

#83

Post by at-fates-hands »

I think some of these can be explained as hacked accounts. I've had more than one friend who got their accounts hacked and FB wouldn't do anything to reset their password or give them back control. They just simply created another account and just forgot about the old account.

Re: Facebook has more than 83 million 'fake' users

#85

Post by unreal37 »

tatsuke95 wrote: post #72
unreal37 wrote: post #54

I think calling them "fake" users is incorrect and misleading. The majority, as the article states, are real people with two or more accounts. Two accounts represents an easy way to separate your personal and professional lives. Instead of fretting over the privacy settings of each picture, setting up lists, using the complicated and changing processes for managing privacy on FB, the "easy" way is to create two separ…

> "I don't see how this harms Facebook in any way" When an advertiser buys a Facebook ad, he is able to narrow down the target audience based on demographic information. Facebook then tells the advertiser the "reach" of that ad. So, if I want to advertise to Males between the ages of 18 and 24, from the UK, who like Ford, Facebook will tell me how many people my ad can reach. That's what you pay for. As an advertiser…

I would counter that with "it should be priced in". If Facebook really could deliver you 100% of your target demographic, the price should be X. If in reality, only 90% are in your target demo, then the price should be 90% less. You aren't harmed unless it's not priced in.

Re: Facebook has more than 83 million 'fake' users

#86

Post by petitmiam »

ghshephard wrote: post #55

After being a full time-500+friend user of Facebook since the days when you required your university account to sign up, I finally got around to deleting my account on Facebook. Moved my close family, including my five year old niece, and my six "actual" friends over to Path (well, five of six. #6 doesn't have a smart phone, ironic that my five year old niece does (her father's old 3GS)) I realized one of the nice th…

Did you have much trouble convincing your friends to move to Path? I think that's the biggest headache for anyone wanting to move away.

Re: Facebook has more than 83 million 'fake' users

#87

Post by Kilimanjaro »

I'll say this, facebook is dying. But the new king is not G+, no. Demographically speaking, FB users like gossip, while G+ users like quality. Mom will never go to G+ and I will never go to FB.

So, there is a need for a new facebook and G+ is not the answer. I dare to say something like pinterest, with a river of short messages and pictures, but highly visual, will replace FB.

No ads, no apps, no likes, no stupidity in the name of profits, no privacy whoring.

That's the new facebook.

Re: Facebook has more than 83 million 'fake' users

#88

Post by tatsuke95 »

Spooky23 wrote: post #80
tatsuke95 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say "they" like this is some outside entity. It isn't. It's me, and others on these forums. And I can't really accept ambiguity. If Facebook tells me I'm reaching 1,000,000 people, I better be reaching 1,000,000 people. If that number is really 930,000, and Facebook knows that the number is 930,000, they better be damn sure to tell me so I can calculate the correct ad-spend. As an advertiser, this figure shouldn'…

If you have an expectation that there will be little or no variance in a population of 1,000,000 people your expectations are not realistic. If you bought a billboard, would you get angry if a car drove past with a sleeping passenger? Ambiguity is a given -- is Facebook defrauding you if I say I live in Manhattan, but for 3 months I'm at my summer home in Lake George, NY, 200 miles away? You probably wouldn't be happ…

>"If you bought a billboard, would you get angry if a car drove past with a sleeping passenger?"

I can calculate, with precision, the traffic that drives by that sign every day.

>"As an advertiser, you need to do your own homework and adjust the relative effectiveness of Facebook vs. other mediums."

Yeah, I do my homework and decide that I'm not going to advertise with Facebook anymore, because I can't determine whether my ads are reaching the audience that I've balanced my spend around. That's what is happening. Right now.

You initially stated: "I don't see how this harms Facebook in any way". I'm explainly how Facebook is affected. Yes, I agree that advertisers will have to compensate. They are. But returns will be squeezed and that compensation will be downward. That hurts Facebook.

Re: Facebook has more than 83 million 'fake' users

#89

Post by tomjakubowski »

Kilimanjaro wrote: post #87

I'll say this, facebook is dying. But the new king is not G+, no. Demographically speaking, FB users like gossip, while G+ users like quality. Mom will never go to G+ and I will never go to FB. So, there is a need for a new facebook and G+ is not the answer. I dare to say something like pinterest, with a river of short messages and pictures, but highly visual, will replace FB. No ads, no apps, no likes, no stupidity…

No ads? Pinterest essentially presents nothing but ads.

Re: Facebook has more than 83 million 'fake' users

#90

Post by klawed »

tatsuke95 wrote: post #71
klawed wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're questioning the fundamental philosophy ow Wall Street (I almost wrote capitalism instead but I don't know if that's true). Solvency is not enough to drive stock prices because the price of a stock is a bet on the future value of the company, not the present value. I don't like it either... Edit:fixing phone-induced typos.

You can't call this a Wall Street philosophy; Facebook was trying to grow massively before they were public. In fact, that's where the growth was happening. At any point in time they could have decided to remain where they were, with the money they were making to pay the bills, and stayed private. They didn't. Instead, Facebook told us that they were going to, essentially, grow the company to 5 or 6 times the current…

But the most important factor that is considered during the IPO dog and pony show is projected growth. Nascent companies need at least double digit growth, preferably triple digit. And every quarter, when public companies announce their earnings, year-over-year, the stock price is impacted as much by revenue growth as it is by earnings/share. Ignoring high-frequency trades, the two main philosophies of trading on public exchanges are value investing (Warren Buffet) and growth investing. Facebook caused Facebook's problems in hopes of maximizing its IPO.
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