facebook

[henry quirk]

What exactly makes facebook 'worth' the godawful amount of money the talking heads claim?

Seems to me: facebook's current 'value' is based solely on the possibility the company can -- in some fashion -- turn a buck (by way of service or product or advertising) tomorrow.

Seems to me: buying facebook stock is just buying very expensive lottery tickets.

What am I am missing?

[glatt]

Nothing.

You'd probably be better off buying Greek bonds right now.

[DanaC]

There's a lot of potential for microfunding in the social games side of things.

[henry quirk]

I don't know what 'that' means.

[BigV]

Usually it means the opposite of 'this'.

[ZenGum]

Two income streams, that merge.

Firstly, those little adds that sit on the side. A tiny drop of money per time, by a gazillion drops = $$$.
Secondly, amassing all your data - derived by sifting through your posts, activities, likes, comments etc, cross referencing this with your google search data, youtube browsing history, gmail keywords, etc - and building a detailed picture of you to sell to advertisers, to better target those little adds mentioned above.

Feeling paranoid yet?

[glatt]

Yeah. Facebook has value. They do make money. But the amount of money they make is miniscule compared to what their stock just went for. It doesn't make sense that they are valued at 38 bucks. They should be one tenth that, or maybe one fifth, if you factor in irrational exuberance.

[Blueflare]

I'm glad I'm not the only person baffled by the $104 billion figure. Where the hell does that come from?
I know they make a lot of money from advertising, but, not a huge amount. And they are thinking of starting to charge people for their services, so that's a revenue stream, potentially. Though I must say I find it hard to imagine that users will actually start paying.
Does anyone actually like Facebook at all? I rather get the impression that it's just sort of tolerated as a tool for life.

[DanaC]

I think there's a lot of potential...but whether or not it will be realised to an extent which might justify that figure is another matter entirely.

[glatt]

The paper this morning is reporting that at several point throught the first day of trading, the banks that put the deal together ( including JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs)stepped in to prop up the share price and keep it above the 38 opening price.

They can't keep it propped up forever. It will be interesting to see where it settles.

[Undertoad]

I like Facebook a lot. Half of the civilized world uses it. I think it will be worth the IPO rate. The theory is that no advertising will survive except targeted advertising which takes into account who you are and what you like. These are things FB knows about us because we told it and our friends also told it.

The big question is whether it is a fad a la Myspace. I think it has enough infrastructure to be blue chip Internet and not suddenly go away by making some terrible privacy setting error.

[DanaC]

I think one of the things that also went wrong with MySpace was that it became very youthcentric. Which is fine whilst you've got the youngsters on board, but youth culture moves wayfast. When it lost its cool status, there was no alternative userbase to pick it back up again.

Facebook has an advantage in that it is the communication tool of choice for many different sectors, both in terms of users and in terms of industries. Very widely used by academics, political types, the charity sector just to name a few.

As much as I hate interfacing with it, Facebook is ubiquitous.

@ Henry: the microfunding I mentioned refers to the way a lot of social games and even full-on massively multi-player games fund their projects now. Instead of a purchase fee for the game and/or monthly subscription, many games finance themselves through microtransactions. So, in a game you may have certain items which can be gained through play. But there may be additional items (or in-game currency to use when playing) which can be bought from an online store. Or you may be able to play so much of the game but in order to unlock the 'premium' content you have to pay.

Facebook has proved an interesting medium for light social games (Farmville, Mafia Wars etc). There's room there for microfinancing. Some are already doing it I think.

[Gravdigr]

Originally Posted by henry quirk

I don't know what 'that' means.

Originally Posted by BigV

Usually it means the opposite of 'this'.

As in:

[classicman]

Google currently makes 10x more than FB.
They only made 3.7B last year. Yeh, that's a shit ton, but nowhere near enough to justify the 100+B.
I play no games, use no apps and unfriend people that keep offering them to me.

[Clodfobble]

Originally Posted by DanaC

As much as I hate interfacing with it, Facebook is ubiquitous.

I disagree. MySpace was ubiquitous right up until Facebook came along. I'm gonna predict that in... say, five more years, max, Facebook will be as dead as MySpace. Which is to say, not gone, but a graveyard, not used by anyone you know. Zuckerberg knows it, which is precisely why he's cashing out now. The next "big" thing, I predict, will be pinterest.

The thing about popular culture, as opposed to technological innovation or engineering, is that people will change simply because change is interesting, not because the new thing is objectively better than the old.