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Peter Thiel Sells Majority Of His Facebook Shares In Deal Planned Pre-IPO

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Re: Peter Thiel Sells Majority Of His Facebook Shares In Deal Planned Pre-IPO

#71

Post by tedunangst »

brk wrote: post #26
aasarava wrote: post #25

Everyone keeps focusing on Facebook as an ad platform, and pointing to the difficulty in monetizing mobile via ads. But I'm betting Facebook is on the brink of rolling out a digital wallet. They already act as an authentication/identity service with hundreds of millions of users. If those users linked their FB accounts to their bank accounts, they'd be able to buy anything on any integrated website that they log into…

Given their past approach to several privacy and sharing type issues, there is no way in hell I'm buying anything with a Facebook wallet.

Which of the following companies paid an FTC fine for sharing user data, Facebook or Google? Do you trust that company with your money? :)

Re: Peter Thiel Sells Majority Of His Facebook Shares In Deal Planned Pre-IPO

#72

Post by robryan »

chii wrote: post #64
robryan wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see facebooks problem right now more as an inability to effective monetize their users, rather than at risk of a large set exodus any time soon. Facebook is very ingrained in what so many people and businesses do now unlike any other web service has been. You see Facebook branding on most businesses ads and physical locations. Of course it is possible to overcome these network effects but I think that if they are s…

> an inability to effective monetize their users this is the problem - facebook's value proposition for a user is not Facebook itself, but the ability to interact with another person easily (games, photoshares, pokes etc). However, this isn't actually worth very much money, and to try to extract that from the user is fruitless. The only real way to monetize is really to sell behavioural data of its users to advertise…

Or Facebook could accept a lower rate of monetization and not extend the reach of their advertising. Sure this is a horrible outcome for the share price but could be a better outcome for running a long term sustainable company.

Re: Peter Thiel Sells Majority Of His Facebook Shares In Deal Planned Pre-IPO

#73

Post by dutchbrit »

Peter, if you are reading this, there's one question I'd love to ask. Why did tou even buy Facebook shares in the first place? Just to say you owned a part of Facebook? It was a clear failure from the beginning when they hit the market, way overpriced - surely you must of known this too. And then comes why other question. Why sell now, after loosing so much money? If you were willing to take a gamble in the first place, you should of been prepared to stick with it for a few years - it might go back up, but that's only if FB manage to get their shit together.

Re: Peter Thiel Sells Majority Of His Facebook Shares In Deal Planned Pre-IPO

#74

Post by benjaminwootton »

dutchbrit wrote: post #73

Peter, if you are reading this, there's one question I'd love to ask. Why did tou even buy Facebook shares in the first place? Just to say you owned a part of Facebook? It was a clear failure from the beginning when they hit the market, way overpriced - surely you must of known this too. And then comes why other question. Why sell now, after loosing so much money? If you were willing to take a gamble in the first pla…

Did you even skim read the article? He invested $500k as one of their earliest investors, and turned that into $400 million. He sold when he did because of a lock up period.

Re: Peter Thiel Sells Majority Of His Facebook Shares In Deal Planned Pre-IPO

#75

Post by possibilistic »

xpose2000 wrote: post #35
cfront wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this some sort of extreme cognitive dissonance? Why can't people just accept that Facebook is a fad? It does not mean the world is going to end. It's a fad, not a solid company. We went through this before 12 years ago. Eventually the market figures it out. Move on. That's what Thiel is doing. More fads are around the corner. Investors will keep falling for the same old tricks. Gates and Ellison are very poor comp…

Facebook a fad? Think of it this way... The social web is just as important as search on the web. The web will always have search engines, and it will always have social networks. Google took over where Excite and Altavista left off. Facebook took over where MySpace and Friendster left off. Google controls the majority of the social search market. Facebook controls the majority of the social network market. So you mi…

For what it's worth, I think Facebook is a fad, and I think it's peaked. I know this is purely anecdotal, but most of my friends and colleagues deleted or abandoned their profiles long ago. The majority of the people I know that actively use the website are in their 50's and up. Like my mother.

I remember about four or five years ago when everyone was asking each other to look them up on Facebook. I never hear this anymore! The only time I ever note that Facebook is mentioned in conversation is with respect to their stock price or some privacy gaffe. And yet Google, Apple, and even Microsoft products frequently crop up in discussions I have.

... and I'm in the biochemistry field!

Re: Peter Thiel Sells Majority Of His Facebook Shares In Deal Planned Pre-IPO

#77

Post by cmircea »

aasarava wrote: post #25

Everyone keeps focusing on Facebook as an ad platform, and pointing to the difficulty in monetizing mobile via ads. But I'm betting Facebook is on the brink of rolling out a digital wallet. They already act as an authentication/identity service with hundreds of millions of users. If those users linked their FB accounts to their bank accounts, they'd be able to buy anything on any integrated website that they log into…

Google already has this with Checkout (now Wallet) and it isn't terribly popular.

Re: Peter Thiel Sells Majority Of His Facebook Shares In Deal Planned Pre-IPO

#78

Post by tjoff »

scotth wrote: post #60
chii wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

of course not - they are called average users for a reason. But when shit hits the fan and someone's privacy was violated and made the media, then FB will have a nightmare of a PR incident, and if there is money involved, probably law suits etc. Its just human nature to ignore what you can - and this privacy problem is a long term problem that tends to get ignored in the short term.

You're assuming that mistakes made in the past are likely to be repeated. It is as likely to assume that Facebook has learned from their mistakes.

You are somehow assuming that they only had a reason to learn from their last mistake. The fact that there have been numerous mistakes suggests that they don't get it and won't learn from it.

Re: Peter Thiel Sells Majority Of His Facebook Shares In Deal Planned Pre-IPO

#79

Post by chii »

robryan wrote: post #72
chii wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> an inability to effective monetize their users this is the problem - facebook's value proposition for a user is not Facebook itself, but the ability to interact with another person easily (games, photoshares, pokes etc). However, this isn't actually worth very much money, and to try to extract that from the user is fruitless. The only real way to monetize is really to sell behavioural data of its users to advertise…

Or Facebook could accept a lower rate of monetization and not extend the reach of their advertising. Sure this is a horrible outcome for the share price but could be a better outcome for running a long term sustainable company.

yep. But if you think about the incentives of a CEO (not mark, as its his baby, but just a CEO generally for a company facing this sort of decision), they have every incentive to do a "bad" thing that yields short to medium term benefit, at the cost of long term benefit (coz by then, they would've exited with their millions).

Re: Peter Thiel Sells Majority Of His Facebook Shares In Deal Planned Pre-IPO

#80

Post by [deleted] »

tedunangst wrote: post #71
brk wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given their past approach to several privacy and sharing type issues, there is no way in hell I'm buying anything with a Facebook wallet.

Which of the following companies paid an FTC fine for sharing user data, Facebook or Google? Do you trust that company with your money? :)

[deleted]
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