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Re: NASDAQ:FB

#211

Post by pbiggar »

twakefield wrote: post #140

Seems like Morgan Stanley and friends priced/played it perfectly for their client. Isn't that their role...to get the highest IPO price for the company they represent? It seems like the companies get screwed when there is big post IPO pop. It's a way for the banks to reward their customers at the expense of the company.

Excellent point. Any pop after an IPO is money the company should have raised if it had priced better (or in many cases, if it had been able to price better). The child comment about Facebook having MS by the short hairs is also valid - I wonder if Facebook did the price engineering here so the institutional investors didn't take their money?

Re: NASDAQ:FB

#212

Post by AznHisoka »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #206
AznHisoka wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook was just an iteration over other social networks. If FB didn't exist today, things would be a tad different - we'd be using MySpace to connect, Flickr to share photos, and AIM to chat. It's not like they introduced the internet, or a cure to cancer.

Google was just an iteration over other search engines.

There's a magnitude improvement from Altavista to Google. Not so with Facebook over an alternative.

Re: NASDAQ:FB

#213

Post by corford »

pbiggar wrote: post #207
corford wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except it isn't quite as "rags to riches" or "one man's dogged perseverance against the odds" as "one guy and his computer" implies, is it? Mark stumbled upon the thing while at Harvard after goofing around with a few different concepts for fun (like most teenage/college hackers do). The site took off due to a mix of: a). being birthed in Harvard (with all the clout, connections, mentoring and cachet that brings) b).…

Do you think that maybe, just maybe, Zuckerberg might have contributed in some way? I don't know, maybe he took a good concept at a good time and executed it so well that it's now worth $100B? FFS, give the man (and the rest of his now giant team) some credit. $100B doesn't just happen.

You're right and I should have said that. Of course I give him some credit. However, I wouldn't necessarily give him as much credit as he gets (and to be fair to him, I doubt he seeks the crazy accolades either).

Frankly, it almost goes without saying that if you and your team put together a system that handles a billion users, you deserve some credit. The question is simply: how much?

Re: NASDAQ:FB

#214

Post by yumraj »

Amazing.. Are there other examples of where on IPO, especially as hyped as this, companies went flat, less than 0.1% change.

NOTE: IPO had 480 million or so stocks, and the net Volume was 486 million.

Re: NASDAQ:FB

#215

Post by pbiggar »

corford wrote: post #213
pbiggar wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think that maybe, just maybe, Zuckerberg might have contributed in some way? I don't know, maybe he took a good concept at a good time and executed it so well that it's now worth $100B? FFS, give the man (and the rest of his now giant team) some credit. $100B doesn't just happen.

You're right and I should have said that. Of course I give him some credit. However, I wouldn't necessarily give him as much credit as he gets (and to be fair to him, I doubt he seeks the crazy accolades either). Frankly, it almost goes without saying that if you and your team put together a system that handles a billion users, you deserve some credit. The question is simply: how much?

I dunno, I think he deserves a massive amount of credit. The guy was 18 when this thing started, and he was competing against 800lb gorillas (myspace etc).

The other thing to note is that everything has gone right for Facebook. I don't believe that would have happened if their execution wasn't so fantastic. Major major props are due to Zuckerberg and the entire early team (and I find this hard to disagree with, regardless of whether one thinks it's worth $100B or not)

Re: NASDAQ:FB

#216

Post by corford »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #209
corford wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but is it $100 billion's worth of hard work? I guess that's what the market gets to decide. Edit: also half the problem is caused by assuming 1 billion users translates to anything meaningful. Apart from being an impressive number in its own right, what exactly does it mean? Facebook is free to use and helps satisfy basic human social desires in a digital way. Great but would they have 1 billion users if it wasn…

So your basic issue is that in your judgement the founders and employees don't deserve their level of success? Which internet company does, in your judgement?

Frankly, I struggle to see how virtually any internet company warrants a valuation north of $100 billion dollars. Especially those with a P/E ratio approaching or beyond 100.

$100,000,000,000 is a VERY big number. It feels almost absurd (to me at least) that a single company can create that much "value" in less than 8 years. But maybe I'm the one with the problem and I just can't get my head around "web scale" economics.

Re: NASDAQ:FB

#217

Post by abhaga »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #206
AznHisoka wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook was just an iteration over other social networks. If FB didn't exist today, things would be a tad different - we'd be using MySpace to connect, Flickr to share photos, and AIM to chat. It's not like they introduced the internet, or a cure to cancer.

Google was just an iteration over other search engines.

An iteration with huge improvement. Would you say if Google wouldn't have happened, we would be fine searching on Yahoo, Altavista and Lycos? And webmail would be fine and dandy with Yahoo Mail and Hotmail if there was no Gmail?

Re: NASDAQ:FB

#219

Post by jacquesm »

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 details to the highest bidder. I really like that top voted comment, instead of gushing admiration for a pile of virtual money it causes you to reflect and think.

Making a lot of money does not automatically equate accomplishment.

Contrast this with the SpaceX announcement on the homepage at the moment. If Elon Musk succeeds, which I certainly hope for then that will be an accomplishment. Even if SpaceX fails it will still be a huge and daring move. Compared to giving humanity a new window on access to space photo sharing seems a little underwhelming.

If you can't understand anyone who actually wishes them ill then please consider that we do not all have the same goals and we do not all have the same vision of what the internet could be like. As a creator, as an business person and a hacker I would happily see facebook replaced by a company or an entity that gave us 80% of the functionality with our joint privacy in tact. That would be progress.

Facebook is just AOL re-invented for the new millenium.

Re: NASDAQ:FB

#220

Post by rondon1 »

They put in a floor at 38.00 because they cannot stand the idea of the stock going down on the first day of trading.
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