631–640 of 871 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The comments on that reddit are insanely hilarious; The hatred is palpable.
Yesterday, they loved the guy. Say what you will about the deal, but Facebook has generated a lot of negativity in a lot of people. Not only did the Kickstarted future of VR sell out, they sold to Facebook. That subreddit has interpreted it as follows: The dream is real, take my money! (during Kickstarter) Shatter the dream. Take a dump on the scattered pieces. They are not happy.
Six days ago [1] we got an article where the most popular comment was this:
"I'm amused by it. It's a transfer of wealth from shareholders of those companies to founders and VCs. These are also the companies with dual class shares designed to keep control in the founders' hands. They all say it's to be able to focus on the long-term, but really it has bred empire building and poor stewardship of the shareholder's capital."
Since is Andreessen is in the board of both companies [2], do you think we are seeing an example of this problem?
(In finance-ish words, the problem would be that Facebook is doing "empire building". Usually the board is the defense against this, but if the directors own large interests in the potential targets, that may not happen)
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7430152 [2] http://blogs.marketwatch.com/thetell/2014/03/25/marc-andrees...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I am shattered right now. Oh come on -- this is just ridiculous. They (Oculus) now have many many more times the resources at their disposal than before to make countless imaginative projects. I know i'll get down votes for saying this, but if Google was the buyer, there would be much more positive comments here. Use some rational analysis here, folks.
but if Google was the buyer, there would be much more positive comments here. Not from me. Google has a history of acquiring stuff just for the talent and then shutting it down or (worse) letting it rot away. FB seems to have better luck with its high profile acquisitions (though not so much the smaller ones) staying alive: Instagram, Whatsapp (so far), Parse, Friendfeed.
I'm trying to calculate the valuation of Oculus VR. Obviously I don't know anything about calculating valuation :) They have 70 employees [1], funding of $91 million [2], headset sales of 50K for DK1 [3] (although claims sales of 75K). Unknown IP, unknown partnership deals, unknown real-estate cost, unknown inventory, molds, and hardware assets. I suspect that the valuation isn't entirely for their assets, but I cann…
By the way, there is an alternative hypothesis, that the valuation is just not there: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7471471
Do you think it makes sense?
I'm starting to think that fb thinks their stock is overvalued, and that they should buy as many things as they can before the price drops.
Yes this is exactly what's happening. They are turning into a holding company, this is just even more diversified than WhatsApp. FB's business model cannot justify the FB stock price, they are effectively using money people thought (wrongly) they were investing in social media and deploying it to better use because they know FB's revenue model is not going to live up to investors expectations long term. I can see the…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> bottom-of-the-ethical-barrel Again, this is silly sensationalist thinking -- companies aren't people capable of "good" or "evil" choices. If they were, I'd note that Facebook was one of the only companies NOT conspiring to deflate the wages of half of the people that visit this site. (Note: I don't work for FB -- I just rail against silly hyperbolic thinking.)
It's really not sensationalist at all. Facebook is run by a man who got rich on selling private data to advertisers, and then used his billions to buy all the mansions surrounding his own mansion so that he could protect his privacy. Zuckerberg is scum and this is a sad day for any fan of the Oculus.
the last thing I would want is for my house to be surrounded by people who won bidding wars just to own property near me.
it's not like he bought all the surrounding lots and kicked the residents out; iirc he actually went out of his way to essentially set up a pseudo reverse mortgage for one older couple.
I think that people would have been happier if it had been acquired by North Korea. I was seriously excited by OR, but for me personally its now DOA. It says a lot about a company that Sony is now the preferred alternative. Everyone expecting an instant turn to the dark side are naive. This is going only one way: 1. Facebook will say "We're hands off". 2. They'll persuade Carmack to stay and they'll burn cash to make…
I am pretty sure Jeri Ellsworth (AWESOME) had worked with Valve and is now working on a somewhat competing platform to Oculus. Perhaps they could use some attention in light of this? http://venturebeat.com/2014/02/02/technical-illusions-aims-f...