| I still don't understand why Facebook has such an overblown valuation to begin with. The entire business is a house of cards based on the possibility that it might make someone else some money someday. Sure, there are some vultures like Zynga that make out like bandits preying on people with addictive personalities who shell out cash, and I'm sure there are a few success stories regarding successful social media advertizing campaigns, but I count the former as resulting from a lack of morals and the latter as unpredictable anomalies that happened to tweak something in the hivemind. I don't perceive any value in Facebook. It is an enormous time sink with rapidly diminishing returns on time investment, and I feel it is only a matter of time before the average user experience is more noise than signal. As soon as that point hits, I can easily see Facebook going the way of MySpace and its ilk. Facebook has some amazing talent on their team, so maybe someone there can see a way forward, but as far as I can tell the end game for all social <insert something here>s appears to be an exodus to a more specialized or sparsely populated network. As an outsider my opinion is of limited utility, but I also think that Facebook is a poison on the tech industry as a whole. I don't see that they have created anything innovative, useful, or even substantial aside from this enormous echo chamber. I'm very glad to see that Wall Street isn't gorging on this IPO, even if it was an accidental fuckup that has spoiled the appetite. With any luck, this flop will convince investors to put their money onto things that create something useful. If anyone has counterpoints, please post them. I write this in frustration, since I just really don't see where this "105 billion" valuation is coming from. Where is the potential in Facebook? What is being produced? Why should I give a damn? - They missed the boat if they are trying to compete with the Google advertizing empire, so that can't be it. - They admit that they aren't having the success they hoped for in the mobile arena. - The only thing going for it is that it is the single largest repository on information about individuals, but that information cannot be ethically or legally used to its full utility, and most of it is white noise anyhow. - The company has repeatedly shown that it doesn't give a damn about its users or small developers. What makes this a sound investment? |
Facebook has not even begun to do the things they could with the knowledge they collect every day. In theory you should be able to go to one of Facebook's ad sales pages and order an ad that will be shown exactly three times to every left-handed piano player in Ohio. That you can't do that in the next ten minutes means that Facebook is leaving money on the table. They don't need to compete with Google, they need to compete with Experian and Transunion, or they need to come up with a way to provide a compelling "We manage your online data for you." offering that a majority of their users would pay for.
Facebook is, right now in a fairly enviable position; there are many things that they could potentially become, they are not hamstrung by the need to keep a cash cow fed and they have enough resources to try multiple experiments at scale.
I wouldn't count them out as a driving force on the web just yet.