Facebook IPO

[Krdshrk 3,878]

For facebook though, it's not really the NUMBER of users, it's how they MONETIZE the users - how can they make more money off of them? More ads? Well..... Zuckerberg is highly against them......

[NJDrew1 0]

Short term. Silver I actually prefer to gold... but silver became poor mans gold.

 

http://stockcharts.c...id=p45581966389

 

Silver I mean in my opinion, next bubble to burst, although arguably, it already has. being down nearly 50% from the peak of paranoia.

 

Anyone who bought silver in the past year.... has been hosed. People who bought silver back when it was $12 an oz, are lucky, and those that sold in the mid 40's, once again, when hype was at the peak... were smart.

 

http://stockcharts.c...id=p68975278849

 

Whatever you hear on tv.... do the opposite of it. By the time the talking heads on tv are discussing it, it is way too late.

 

If you were around during the last runup of bullion by the Hunt Brothers, you should have learned a valuable lesson. Many people lost their shirts. The bubble has to burst at some point.

[NJDrew1 0]

If they're counting on advertising $ to make Facebook profitable, they can forget it. If the results of the advertising my business did on Facebook is any indication of what other companies are experiencing, they can forget it. Our ROI was next to nothing. We spent a considerable advertising budget with Facebook, with little measurable return. They may be priced for massive growth, I don't see it either.

[Maksim 1,504]

For facebook though, it's not really the NUMBER of users, it's how they MONETIZE the users - how can they make more money off of them? More ads? Well..... Zuckerberg is highly against them......

 

Little to do with ads, more to do with selling user information. Not enough advertisers coming to FB.

 

FB's business proposition to business owners and advertisers is highly targeted marketing. IE, if I want ads, I can specify "Females, 18 to 26, within 50 miles of 08540" or within industry etc. You do not have such control over Google or Bing advertising. FB's issue...

 

You go to Bing or Google to search something, so you expect ads. You do not go on Facebook to search for stuff, you go there to waste time with your "friends." Add in the fact of how many hack apps there are out there, I do not trust, along with any others, any apps on facebook. The vast majority of business owners I speak with who tried FB advertising, do not see a return.

[rdsmith3 19]

the difference is Growth.

 

While those are the current metrics, it does not mean it will stay that way. FB is priced for massive growth, unfortunately, I don't see it, considering they already have 900 million users.

 

If you really want social media done right, LinkedIn. They have a more sound model, and have a lot more growth potential over facebook, a diversified income stream, and a userbase that is willing to pay.

 

Agreed. Facebook may just be a fad. Even if it is not, their growth will slow down dramatically. They offer info about people to advertisers and merchants. Google and Amazon do the same thing, with different business models.

 

I also think you're right about LinkedIn. In the last couple of years, whenever I have been contacted about a job, it has been through LinkedIn. When the economy picks up, they will see a lot of traffic.

[Maksim 1,504]

Linked in is still about growth... however beyond that, the model is different.

 

Linked in makes money....

 

1. Advertising on the website.

2. Paid Subscriptions for recruiters, sales people, etc.

3. Premium memberships for regular members.

 

What makes them better, privacy. You can easily opt out of most things on there.

 

Would I invest in it personally? Eh, probably not. I am a value shopper. But a far better play than FB imho, especially for a "growth" play.

[NJDrew1 0]

Linked in is still about growth... however beyond that, the model is different.

 

Linked in makes money....

 

1. Advertising on the website.

2. Paid Subscriptions for recruiters, sales people, etc.

3. Premium memberships for regular members.

 

What makes them better, privacy. You can easily opt out of most things on there.

 

Would I invest in it personally? Eh, probably not. I am a value shopper. But a far better play than FB imho, especially for a "growth" play.

 

I signed up but didn't do much with it. I'll have to go back and revisit Linked In.

[jgofnj 5]

So, who is buying this? I can see it going up in the (very) short term.

I think the company is worthless but a lot of people are opening brokerage accounts just to buy this, so. worthless or not, I can see it going up.

 

Don't be an idiot, if you thinks it's a worthless company DO NOT buy it's stock. That is just plain stupid.

[O-gre 7]

Turning point!

[rdsmith3 19]

The other problem with Facebook, aside from economic/financial ones, is that it does not really help people to relate to one another. In fact, it is one more factor that is contributing to the break-up of families.

 

http://blogs.smartmoney.com/advice/2012/05/21/does-facebook-wreck-marriages/

[Midwest 28]

Facebook decided to force a new interface on nearly everyone, it is called "Timeline" . Most of the people on my friends list who have it despise it and want the old interface back. There are a handful of us who still have the old interface. Since Timeline was introduced, there seem to be less people posting on my friends list.

 

Just an observation: If Facebook played their cards right they would have offered a choice of interfaces for its users instead of forcing a jumbled, crowded, cluttered looking mess of an interface on everyone whether they liked it or not. Zuckerberg missed a huge opportunity by offering to give back the old interface for a premium price, either by subscription or a one time cost.

 

Pissing off users of his own site isn't too bright of an idea, and then to go public after this miscalculated mess? I got the impression that this was not thought out correctly. Which leads one to wonder what else are they missing the boat on? My administrator of our IT department says we should shut our Facebook accounts off due to the privacy issues, spam and malware threats. I think he is right. I mainly keep Facebook to keep in touch with friends and family through the country. But then again I can do that through email or through the phone.

 

I believe next one who overtakes Facebook, (whoever) they may be, might be the ones to worth investing in. They will hopefully learn from Facebook's mistakes and growing pains and run with it. Remember how big AOL was at one time? Everyone had it, used it and 'we couldn't live without it'.

 

Disclaimer: It was just an opinion, not a stock recommendation...

[Cemeterys Gun Blob 165]

New gun? Or Facebook stock?

 

New gun comes out in top everytime.

[Tactical Turtle 11]

I almost bought some, until i talked to a buddy of mine, his mind set is this, as popularity is lost stocks will decrease. Remember MySpace ... Failed once Facebook started, the next big thing will make fb disappear like Ur money. I was even told its not even worth it short term since it is loosing value.

[NJDrew1 0]

You'll hear it a zillion times, but I'll say it again. Do your research, and don't act on impulse. Only invest what you can afford to lose. Invest wisely, and treat at it as a long term investment. History shows that in the long-run, good quality blue chip equities appreciate over time. Do not invest everything you have, you need some liquidity for emergencies.

[raz-0 1,259]

Little to do with ads, more to do with selling user information. Not enough advertisers coming to FB.

 

FB's business proposition to business owners and advertisers is highly targeted marketing. IE, if I want ads, I can specify "Females, 18 to 26, within 50 miles of 08540" or within industry etc. You do not have such control over Google or Bing advertising. FB's issue...

 

You go to Bing or Google to search something, so you expect ads. You do not go on Facebook to search for stuff, you go there to waste time with your "friends." Add in the fact of how many hack apps there are out there, I do not trust, along with any others, any apps on facebook. The vast majority of business owners I speak with who tried FB advertising, do not see a return.

 

1) Facebook gets near 85% of it's revenue from ads. They are going to need one hell of a growth plan before I'll believe it is about something other than ads.

 

2) Facebook's marketing is really not very targeted compared to the search engines. Try going to this address https://www.google.com/settings/ads/onweb/ . See how off it is. Facebook has tons of accounts with <13 year old kids at the helm, so their ability to target age is skewed. Gender they can do a bit better I suspect. Location is probably better served by geoip (where you are), than personal info (where you call home). The search engines have geoip, so does facebook if they aren't stupid.

 

3) The fact search engines get ads relevant to your guessed demographic in your face while searching for something subject related would seem to me a hell of a lot more useful targeting than getting your demographic correct.

 

4) In order to have a presence on facebook be useful, you have to drive people to facebook to interact with you. Hence the phenomenon of, for example honda, buying expensive tv ads, and spending 50% of them explaining you need to go find them on facebook. If that were really effective, they could just say go find our web page and lose less eyeballs in the translation. Then there's the school of though based on FB stats that people only relaly friend businesses for discounts and contests. So you have to spend real money to drive people to facebook, and to keep their attention there, you have to commit to less margin per sale for each fadcebook customer. Sounds awesome.

 

5) ALL ad based businesses are screwed long term, just ask CBS, NBC, and ABC how ad buys are going. The spaces to put ads has grown so much in the last 20 years, and the dollars to buy ads has not kept up. Traditional advertising channels get pilloried for not being able to provide the detailed stats of internet advertising. Internet advertising shoots itself in the foot by pointing out how effective advertising really isn't. Shove too many ads in someone's face and there is backlash on top of a bunch of other known effects that basically boil down to advertising's only net positive effect is to keep an item in their memory for when they say "hmm I need and X, what ones are out there to buy." We are reaching the point where to not be lost in the white noise of ads, you have to annoy your potential customer into hating you. It's pretty broken.

 

Even if facebook ups it's subscriber numbers, they just created more slots for ads. They have to also make it better to pull ad dollars form other ad channels, or they are just devaluing the price of each ad placement.

[leahcim 680]

Pissing off users of his own site isn't too bright of an idea, and then to go public after this miscalculated mess? I got the impression that this was not thought out correctly. Which leads one to wonder what else are they missing the boat on? My administrator of our IT department says we should shut our Facebook accounts off due to the privacy issues, spam and malware threats. I think he is right. I mainly keep Facebook to keep in touch with friends and family through the country. But then again I can do that through email or through the phone. I believe next one who overtakes Facebook, (whoever) they may be, might be the ones to worth investing in. They will hopefully learn from Facebook's mistakes and growing pains and run with it. Remember how big AOL was at one time? Everyone had it, used it and 'we couldn't live without it'. Disclaimer: It was just an opinion, not a stock recommendation...

The IPO will prove to be profitable to Zuckerberg, Moskovitz, Parker, Thiel, Saverin, etc--and all the employees...and anyone who was short at the end of Friday. I am not saying it won't go up, but I just don't see the big growth going forward.

While I have not shut my account off, I have dialed way back on what is shared and available. I like what an opinion piece from WSJ said, something like If you are not paying for a product, then you are not the customer, you are the product.

[DirtyDigz 1,812]

~50% loss from IPO as of today.

[reloaderguy 30]

~50% loss from IPO as of today.

 

Sorry suckers. You were taken!

[Duppie 73]

I recall several conservative annalist and brokers warning about the frenzy such an offering would produce. I also recall a question they all asked possible investors to consider....do you believe FB to have potential for enough growth for the share price to make sense? and if so, what are the possible growth sectors?

I have neither the resources,imagination nor experience to answer such a question but still considered it a valid one.

[Maksim 1,504]

Covered this a few times on my blog. WWW.maksfs.com

 

Wait till December.

 

Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk 2

[raz-0 1,259]

Covered this a few times on my blog. WWW.maksfs.com

 

Wait till December.

 

Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk 2

 

Why? They don't issue actual certificates anymore, so it's not like you can even wipe your butt with it. Once the holding period is over for the employees in Nov, that stuff is toast.

[Maksim 1,504]

The company has value, at around $15 in my opinion. The revenue is there, unlike say Pandora. The issue is, overhyped retail investors and the rediculous valuations they are supporting. Every hedge fund and mutual fund that I deal with on a regular basis, was out of Facebook the day of IPO.

 

(and yes, you can request actual stock certificates... at a fee)

[raz-0 1,259]

The company has value, at around $15 in my opinion. The revenue is there, unlike say Pandora. The issue is, overhyped retail investors and the rediculous valuations they are supporting. Every hedge fund and mutual fund that I deal with on a regular basis, was out of Facebook the day of IPO.

 

(and yes, you can request actual stock certificates... at a fee)

 

Hate to disagree with you, but I have to on this one. I see the $14-16 number tossed about often. Zynga has about 1/20 of the market cap, represents 1/8 of their revenue, and everyone thinks they are doomed. The employee selloff at the end of the first lockout has exceeded expectations. They have yet to find a product they can push through their service that makes money for them that does not just become spam when you apply quarter on quarter growth to it. The teenagers are shifting to twitter, and the percentage of fake accounts is growing by about 1.7% per annum by facebooks metrics much less third parties. Their log in rate and click through rate is dropping, and they need to get about $38 of revenue per account to support a $15 price. On top of that, a year ago the majority of tv ads were, for some idiotic reason, 5-15 seconds of Facebook promotion per 30 second ad buy from hundreds of companies that were not Facebook. That gravy train if subsidized promotion is over. On top of that, they only generated about 10 billion in cash, they are carrying how much debt from the instagram acquisition? Plus just borrowed $3 billion more to cover employee taxes.

 

That $10 billion will last the company through year two of being public? Year three at best? How much debt will they have by then? Their only product to date has a shelf life to boot and is getting funky around the edges and flaking off already.

 

A year from now I expect $4.25 to $7.95 value, and that is without any unexpected bad news and sustaining revenue at about the same numbers by any means necessary.

 

At best Facebook sells online entertainment. It has less than $4 billion in revenues and 4000 employees. In 1987 NBC had a bit over $4 billion in revenues and 4000 employees. By the standards of the day, ge seemed to think that needed the house cleaned by neutron jack.

[Maksim 1,504]

Matt,

 

Great analysis. I do not really pay attention to CNBC or other networks, the 14-16 number is from my communication with institutional fund managers and this was from the IPO time... actually day of.

 

The $15 mark will be a decent entry point for most, and while the multiple is still large, comparatively speaking, there is plenty of value that can be unlocked. Even factoring in the fake accounts and all, it is still page views.

 

Let me put it this way... google was still expensive at $100 a share at IPO price. I hate facebook as much as the next hater, but at $15, there is both a mental floor, and an attractive entry point from the institutional side... (from guys who actually manage billions).

 

Zynga is a complete pump and dump, and has absolutely ZERO value... as much as Pandora. Zynga's success was merely because it was the closest proxy to actually owning facebook. Now that facebook is trading, there is zero reason to own Zynga, unless you believe in Zynga's success. Zynga is all risk, very little reward.

 

Right now, the social media space is in a bit of a bubble, is there value? sure.... is $15 the bottom of Facebook? Probably not, but it is where value starts coming in. You can never pick the very bottom.

[Recon Racoon 49]

I knew the facebook IPO would crash like this. Its not hard to see that a company with nothing to sell besides 'information' is going to lose value faster than I could eat hot wings. In three months its already lost over 50% of its initial price, and I see it going even lower. By November I'm calling around $10 a share. And that'll probably be where it'll stay for a while, not counting random fluctuation.

 

But I'm not even close to an amateur on this subject. And haven't don't anything involving investing or trading since I was taught the basics years ago. So what I just said could be absolute bollocks.

[Maksim 1,504]

More than half of our economy is now "information". Problem specifically to Facebook is absurd projected growth and sky high valuations.

 

Biggest issue, in a year it could be the next MySpace. Only difference, average age of Facebook user is now in their 40s.

 

Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk 2

[Recon Racoon 49]

More than half of our economy is now "information". Problem specifically to Facebook is absurd projected growth and sky high valuations.

 

Biggest issue, in a year it could be the next MySpace. Only difference, average age of Facebook user is now in their 40s.

 

Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk 2

 

And this is why I'm hesitant about getting into investing when the majority of the economy is based in information. I don't have a lot of money, and the way things are now, I may not even get a lot of money eventually. As much as I want to invest, I'm afraid to simply because of how volatile things are.

 

And I'm sure this is the reason more people don't invest as well.

[Maksim 1,504]

Over thinking it. Plenty of ways to invest and avoid company specific risk. You can't compare a company like Facebook and an IBM, most of which now is service consulting.

 

Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk 2

[Recon Racoon 49]

When I get money to invest with, I'm so going to you to tell me what to do.

[DTtuner 21]

When I get money to invest with, I'm so going to you to tell me what to do.

And THAT's how people lose their money to Madoff and all the other "financial advisors" out there.

Do your own research, form your own investment strategy.