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Peter Thiel sells most of remaining Facebook stake
- post_break 9y agoHas anyone else noticed the shift in their use of Facebook? I'm starting to use it more and more for selling and buying things hyper local than craigslist. I've had so much better luck selling people who don't show up and try to haggle you down further with facebook than craigslist. It's become my one stop shop to offload junk I don't need, vs use it as a social network.
- firepoet 9y agoI have recently begun a campaign to unfollow everyone on my Facebook feed to reclaim my attention. Removing the addiction to seeing what I've missed in my news feed has given me back an hour a day. Haven't used it to buy and sell things, though.
- anindha 9y agoI don’t like the idea of my Facebook friends knowing what I’m selling.
- seattle_spring 9y agoIs selling a cabinet or a pair of skiing gloves a pretty major privacy violation for you?
- bstamour 9y agoWhat if you're selling something that they gave to you as a gift?
- JangoSteve 9y ago"Oh, you're selling an old kitchen cabinet? Sounds like you're doing pretty well to be able to afford a kitchen remodel. Must be nice." "Wait, you don't have time to come to my kid's birthday party, but you're out skiing so much that you had to upgrade your skiing gloves?" I'm not saying it's right or makes sense, but there are a lot of contextual layers and subtle subtext inherent in other people's relationships that may not affect your own.
- anindha 9y agoI don't like spamming people that aren't specifically looking to buy something. How much or how little I spend on something feels a little private. There are lots of things I wouldn't care about as much.
- eat_veggies 9y agoI've been mostly using it for their oauth because I don't feel like making a million accounts for every website I go on. I've been using it less and less now that I've installed a password manager and registering is essentially 0 cost.
- myth_drannon 9y agoYes, we tend to sell things on Facebook than on Kijiji nowdays. At least try to sell on FB first. It's safer because you already validated the person's profile instead of weirdos calling you from Kijiji/Craigslist.
- cuckcuckspruce 9y agoGood time to get as much out as possible before the FCC allows ISPs to start shaking down Facebook.
- blocked_again 9y ago(deleted)
- MadSudaca 9y agoHow does $525.34B market cap translate to being more powerful than most countries?
- sulam 9y agoNet neutrality is likely to help Facebook more than it hurts them, because they can pay for access, which startups probably cannot. All the social companies FB bought (plus the one they couldn't, SnapChat), would have had a much harder time of it if they needed to pay a per-subscriber fee.
- jack9 9y agoWhy would FB want to shoulder an additional cost?
- jedberg 9y agoBecause it's cheaper than out-innovating your competitors. But I'm pretty sure FB still supports NN anyway, since a lot of the value to users of Facebook are the articles their friends link to, and that gets hurt if some links are more expensive for some people to click on.
- cuckcuckspruce 9y agoThis assumes that Facebook could afford to pay that cost, as ISPs know that Facebook is highly valuated, and that Facebook is willing to pay that cost, knowing that an ISP without access to Facebook is currently useless to the majority of their users.
- 2close4comfort 9y agoOr when forced to pay for access to Facebook that is not rate limited people may not use Facebook as much....
- agumonkey 9y agoI'm still betting amazon and fb will start making their own pipes
- toomuchtodo 9y agoHow will they succeed where Google couldn't? https://gizmodo.com/what-happened-to-google-fiber-1792440779 https://gizmodo.com/what-happened-to-google-fiber-1792440779 http://www.sacbee.com/news/nation-world/national/article110655177.html http://www.sacbee.com/news/nation-world/national/article1106... https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/10/google-fiber-laying-off-9-of-staff-will-pause-plans-for-10-cities/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/10/googl... https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/26/google-fiber-internet-stops-alphabet-layoffs https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/26/google-fi...
- lallysingh 9y agoThe stakes are going to be higher, so perhaps they're willing to put up the $$ (in shameless bribes to local councilmembers, etc.) to do it.
- 2close4comfort 9y agoThey were just waiting until they needed it. They didn't fail they were just playing a different game. Now there is money to be made in sniffing all that additional traffic. Plus the last administration was on their side and that seems to have changed.
- agumonkey 9y agoBecause people still had a bit of faith in the system. Now they might get a little more wind blowing their way
- mtgx 9y agoCould this be the begining of the end for Facebook? Is 2017 for Facebook what 2009 was for BlackBerry and Nokia (when they were still getting record profits and revenues - they were already toast, they just didn't know it yet)? https://www.emarketer.com/content/snapchat-snags-second-place-in-social-media-stickiness https://www.emarketer.com/content/snapchat-snags-second-plac... The significant drop in engagement may also be why Facebook is dumping the media sites from the news (ha!) feed like a hot potato. Although that was a very Facebook thing to do, it still seemed a little desperate and like it was happening sooner than expected.
- slouch 9y agoWhat is a better source of local events than facebook?
- stevenwoo 9y agoNextdoor is much better for me, but most of my Facebook friends live farther than 15 miles from me.
- slouch 9y agoI will look into it, but I would bet that zero of the local bands I regularly go see are putting their gigs on Nextdoor. I wonder if they scrape events from facebook or elsewhere.
- stevenwoo 9y agoIt's probably no good for your use case, I live in a boring suburban neighborhood and most of the news is about stuff happening on my block and across the street where downtown is in my small town. Where do the bands otherwise advertise? It seems like this is a missed (but small market) opportunity.
- slouch 9y agobandsintown & songkick, but they're a bit of an echo chamber because mostly other musicians use them edit: forgot reverbnation
- osrec 9y agoPeter is a smart guy, and this does suggest Facebook is not worth holding long term. Sean Parker's comments a few days ago were not positive either. Anecdata-wise, things are not looking too rosy; many of my more intellectual and interesting friends have abandoned the platform, barring the occasional message (e.g. if they lost their phone and had to change numbers) - the less interesting people I know (not friends, but acquaintances) seem to be fully immersed in Facebook still. Not sure Facebook can even hold the attention of those people much longer, as the platform is simply feels noisy, boring and out of date!
- utopcell 9y agoWhich platform did your more interesting friends move to ?
- skj 9y agoMy experience (I am not the OP) is that the facebook leavers are abandoning social media platforms altogether rather than simply moving to a different one.
- osrec 9y agoThey did not move to any platform. You ask the question as if being associated with a platform is a basic necessity!
- kinkrtyavimoodh 9y agoWell, unless they are purely communicating in person or by phone, SMS, or email (or snail mail) they ARE on some platform.
- osrec 9y agoYes, if you're being pedantic about it, but they did not go from one Facebook-like platform to another. I think people just don't see much value in Facebook-esque platforms like before, because they recognise them as places filled with all sorts of irrelevant junk that can usurp copious amounts of valuable time.
- felipemnoa 9y agoHoly Cow! That is Insane. Facebook's market cap is half a trillion. As somebody that knows nothing I cannot believe that it is that high. It is on par with Amazon. Anybody thinks we really are in a bubble? Relevant Market Caps: Facebook: 525.34B, PE Ratio: 33.61 Alphabet: 727.00B, PE Ratio: 35.12 Amazon: 558.65B, PE Ratio: 292.63 Apple: 895.91B, PE Ratio: 18.99 Tesla: 52.64B Ford: 48.08B, PE Ratio: 10.98 IBM: 140.35B, PE Ratio: 12.65 Microsoft: 641.20B, P/E Ratio: 28.12
- askafriend 9y agoIt's a well-deserved market cap. It's an incredible business and they've been firing on all cylinders for years now. The business model itself is so solid, it's scary. It's on better footing than Amazon in my opinion.
- nightski 9y agoDeserved? A market cap is based on investor sentiment, not how hard you work or even necessarily how sound your business is. For the downvotes - are you implying that stock price is directly correlated with business performance and that the market is completely rational?
- icebraining 9y agoWhat askafriend is saying is that in this case the investor sentiment is appropriate for the soundness of the business. If anything, it's implying the stock price is not always correlated with business performance, otherwise the statement would be redundant.
- askafriend 9y agoThis is exactly what I'm saying. My opinion of their business model and their performance is independent of my opinion of the product.
- 2close4comfort 9y ago
- techman9 9y agoI have a feeling that something scandalous is going to drop about Peter Thiel in the near future. This news comes on the heels of YC cutting ties with him [0]. [0] https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/19/y-combinator-severs-ties-with-peter-thiel/ https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/19/y-combinator-severs-ties...
- tyingq 9y agoInteresting, but why would that prompt him to dump his FB ownership?
- british_india 9y agoThe FA said it was a scheduled sale of his stock--not one driven by recent events.
- adventured 9y agoOne scenario would be if he's about to be removed from the Facebook board (politely or otherwise). So he's beginning to clear his remaining investment ties to the company. Given his increasingly outside position in Silicon Valley, he may be looking at liquidating his ties to the area in general.
- jacksmith21006 9y agoLike giving some Senate candidate in Missouri a bunch of money to go after Google?
- sova 9y agoFacebook has been slow to realize that ads that they show are effectively messages from Facebook. Which is why they are culpable in so much gunk, they don't screen ads well enough and they let absolute nonsense rule the feeds. It's really a poor case of selling out to attractive bids. Now that they started camouflaging ads as regular posts from your friends, it's even worse. Now they exert influence and pretend they don't.
- vanattab 9y agoI am not a facebook user, how do they camouflage ads as posts from friends?
- seattle_spring 9y agoThey don't. Every ad is clearly marked as "Sponsored post," and it definitely never shows up as being posted from one of your friends.
- wlesieutre 9y agoBut they do slip ads into your newsfeed with a "Bob likes Soylent" header at the top. It's deliberately similar to how they display "Bob shared Soylent's post" or "Bob commented on this." Bob liked Soylent a year ago and has had no recent interaction with it that would merit showing up in the newsfeed. That particular one is funny because Bob swore off Soylent after a few months and just didn't bother to unlike their page.
- ensignavenger 9y agoThat could actually be a negative for the advertiser, and positive for consumers.. hey Bob, I noticed on Facebook that you "liked" soylent- I am thinking abut trying it too! Do you have any thoughts? Bob: Umm, don't, Soylent is terrible! Thanks for letting me know, I will unlike them!" Of course, not everyone will actually ask Bob for his opinion, but if I really cared about the fact that Bob liked something, and that was a factor in my purchasing decision, I would probably ask him about it, myself.
- vm 9y agoThis is non-news. The sale was "part of a previously established trading plan" -- VCs set these up all the time to slowly sell off shares in a way that's not disruptive to companies. If you owned 10% of a company and sold all that stock in one swoop, you would crater the stock price and piss off employees. Thiel had already sold over a $1B worth of shares by 2016 and FB stock is up 60%+ this year.
- jonknee 9y agoThe first sentence of the story notes that fact, but it is still news since Thiel is a board member. Regardless of when the plan was initiated, it's interesting that Thiel owns so little of FB.
- gscott 9y agoAs a board member he is going to granted a lot of free FB stock in the future. A good problem to have.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- hristov 9y agoBy the way, Peter Thiel already sold the majority of his FB shares around the time of the IPO. See: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/peter-thiel-facebook-stock-sale-billion-dollars-364152 https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/peter-thiel-facebook-... Notice that at the time the article was written he had sold about 37 million shares and had only 5.6 million left. The prices he got were absolute peanuts compared to the current price -- he sold 17 mln shares for $38, and another 20 million for about $20. The current price is $180. I am not writing this to criticize Peter Thiel, obviously the stock market is very difficult to predict. And, unfortunately, I did not buy FB at $20, so I cannot say I had a better mastery of the market than him. The point I want to make is that is downright silly to make any conclusions about FBs valuation based on this sale.
- claudiulodro 9y agoHindsight is 20:20. I think the most likely prediction for a social media IPO is similar to TWTR or SNAP where it just keeps dropping and dropping. FB is an outlier in my opinion.
- api 9y ago... for now. We just tried to use it to advertise and had exactly this experience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag Pulled the plug. Nothing but worthless traffic, no engagement.
- siquick 9y agoThis sounds more like an issue with your ad targetting than with Facebook. First step: only target users in countries that you care about and (sadly) do not target Indonesia, India, Pakistan or anywhere in Africa as these are mostly where the fake profiles are.
- npkarnik 9y agoI disagree that any specific advice will help an individual marketer...I think the biggest issue is that the economics of acquisition on social (factoring in internet marketing budgets and customer LTV) doesn't work well for brands that aren't already operating at significant scale. Otherwise, Teespring would be a billion dollar company by now ;) My guess is that social marketing works ok for brands that have a strong competitive position AND healthy margins.
- sf0i 9y agoPeter Thiel was a terrible hedge fund manager who lost his clients money. I would not read too much into his stock market investing tactics.
- bob_theslob646 9y agoWas he ?
- postramus 9y agoPlease flee to New Zealand, Peter-poo! There is nothing defective about your NZ citizenship...and why would there be, given that it was acquired in a scrupulous, perfectly above-board way? Don’t take a chance on that seductive St Kitts!
- gamechangr 9y agoI don't think this has to do with politics (or Presidential Candidates). It's too big of a business decision. I don't know enough, but I am curious if someone who has spent the time and effort researching this...Is Facebook's future limited? Is there a new challenger? Thiel continues to swim against the current and win. Is the writing on the wall?
- rblion 9y agoWhy do you think he did that?
- MarkMc 9y agoI recently bought Facebook shares at $1.79 each, so my view is the polar opposite of Peter Thiel. Here's my estimate of what will happen to the components of Facebook revenue over next 10 years: 1. Number of Facebook users * average user income grows 50% (keep in mind that new Facebook users are mostly in developing countries) 2. Amount of time on internet spent by average user grows 100% 3. Number of ads served to an average user per hour of internet time grows 30% 4. Effectiveness of an average Facebook ad grows 160% (ie. 10% per year) Now 1.5 * 2 * 1.3 * 2.6 = 10.14, so I'm guessing Facebook's revenue will grow tenfold in a decade. Their profit will likely grow even faster because expenses will grow more slowly than revenue.
- chroem- 9y agoWhat are these estimates based on? They seem to be the exact opposite of all the major trends that are beginning to affect Facebook.
- MarkMc 9y agoJust an educated guess, plus personal experience. For example, consider how much "Number of Facebook users * average user income" will grow over the next 10 years. Over the past 40 years world GDP per capita has risen about 4.5% per year [1]. A portion of this growth was due to China's economic boom so outside of China we might expect GDP per capita to grow a little less over the next decade - let's say 3.5% per year ie. 41% in total. But world population is growing and Facebook's penetration is growing on top of that (albeit mostly into poorer countries) so it's reasonable to push that estimate from 41% to 50% or 60%. Regarding "Effectiveness of an average Facebook ad" here's my experience: In April 2017, Apple released a new Macbook Pro. It looked great - fast, sleek, beautiful. So I visited the Apple website, clicked 'Buy Now' and chose my configuration options. But when I got to the credit card payment screen I had second thoughts - it's very expensive and my old computer was still working fine. Plus I wasn't really sure if I wanted the one with the Touch Bar or regular keys. So I decided to think about it a bit more. And for the next 6 months I was undecided - occasionally going back to Apple's website to drool over the specs - until I finally bought it a few weeks ago. Within those 6 months I didn't see a single Facebook ad for a Macbook. So there is still some low hanging fruit for Facebook to pluck. [1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD