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Good story. And I bet you there are lawyers in Europe sharpening their teeth right now waiting for GDPR to kick in to send Facebook discovery letters just a min

Good story. And I bet you there are lawyers in Europe sharpening their teeth right now waiting for GDPR to kick in to send Facebook discovery letters just a minute after April 1st pass. Need popcorn and comfortable chair, as the stock is down 10%, and we've just started!! Edit: May 25, of course.

hawaiianbrah 9y ago
Doesn’t it go into effect May 25?
jakeogh 9y ago
I'm more than happy to see FB go down the tubes, but legislating away memory is foolish. It's part of the war on general purpose computing. The way things are framed to make them seem good is very interesting. What if I proposed we make keeping records of past information and actors encountered illegal if they don't want you to remember, while at the same time make it trivial for the same people to waste your time by demanding free consulting?
adventured 9y ago
I understand the blow-back against their privacy abuses, it's well deserved (as it was in the past). However, this kind of response is just funny. The stock is back to where it was in July. Up 100% in less than three years. $464 billion market cap. Things are really dire. They'll only earn $20 billion this year, growth will only be 30%+. They only have ~$43 billion in cash right now with zero debt. That's barely enough to keep the lights on. They should shut down the business right now before they run out of money. The speeding tickets they might one day get from the EU, could cost them hundreds of millions of dollars. But just imagine, what if it's $3 billion. I mean, it's not like Facebook can reluctantly change several of its policies while maintaining its massive 2+ billion userbase and keep right on printing money at their 50% operating income margins. Yeah, but just imagine if their operating income margins decline to only 40% because it crimps their business model by reducing the value of their ad targeting. And what if it cuts their growth rate in half? Under that scenario they might only earn $30 billion in net income in 2021. It's a rough road ahead. The other fun part? They'll still net add global users in 2018. None of this is going to matter for the survival of their business, although it might improve user privacy around the globe and that'll be a big win.
- joering2 9y ago
  Unless another social network comes along and FB will die out loud like Friendster and MySpace did. If you think solid $ numbers are everything to keep "printing money" then see what happened to Kodak or Sony.
  - empath75 9y ago
    Or blackberry or Nokia.
  - Bahamut 9y ago
    Many have tried to take a slice of FB’s pie - almost all failed to make a serious dent, and the main social media alternatives are also generally struggling (or have serious fundamental issues of their own). At this point, I’m very skeptical another company will unseat FB’s dominance for quite a while, if ever.
    - alecco 9y ago
      And FB buys the competition or throws money at disarming it by buying its competition and putting it on steroids.
  - beagle3 9y ago
    That's true, but there's a difference between FB and Friendster/MySpace: Zuck is apparently trying (and succeeding) at managing that risk. Instagram was growing quickly and could seed the next big FB competitor. So FB bought them for a $1B valuation almost everyone thought was crazy at the time. WhatsApp could seed the next big FB competitor. So FB bought them for $20B or so, which again was mostly considered crazy at the time. Neither of these is crazy in retrospect: FB's dominant position is easily worth what DB paid for these and more. FB didn't manage to buy Snap, so they started waging war, adding Snap's features 3 times (to FB, WhatsApp and Instagram). FB management is actively trying to stay dominant. MySpace was, in comparison, passive; and friendster was never as dominant.
    - joering2 9y ago

hawaiianbrah 9y ago

Doesn’t it go into effect May 25?

jakeogh 9y ago

I'm more than happy to see FB go down the tubes, but legislating away memory is foolish. It's part of the war on general purpose computing. The way things are framed to make them seem good is very interesting. What if I proposed we make keeping records of past information and actors encountered illegal if they don't want you to remember, while at the same time make it trivial for the same people to waste your time by demanding free consulting?

adventured 9y ago

I understand the blow-back against their privacy abuses, it's well deserved (as it was in the past). However, this kind of response is just funny. The stock is back to where it was in July. Up 100% in less than three years. $464 billion market cap. Things are really dire. They'll only earn $20 billion this year, growth will only be 30%+. They only have ~$43 billion in cash right now with zero debt. That's barely enough to keep the lights on. They should shut down the business right now before they run out of money. The speeding tickets they might one day get from the EU, could cost them hundreds of millions of dollars. But just imagine, what if it's $3 billion. I mean, it's not like Facebook can reluctantly change several of its policies while maintaining its massive 2+ billion userbase and keep right on printing money at their 50% operating income margins. Yeah, but just imagine if their operating income margins decline to only 40% because it crimps their business model by reducing the value of their ad targeting. And what if it cuts their growth rate in half? Under that scenario they might only earn $30 billion in net income in 2021. It's a rough road ahead. The other fun part? They'll still net add global users in 2018. None of this is going to matter for the survival of their business, although it might improve user privacy around the globe and that'll be a big win.

joering2 9y ago
Unless another social network comes along and FB will die out loud like Friendster and MySpace did. If you think solid $ numbers are everything to keep "printing money" then see what happened to Kodak or Sony.
- empath75 9y ago
  Or blackberry or Nokia.
- Bahamut 9y ago
  Many have tried to take a slice of FB’s pie - almost all failed to make a serious dent, and the main social media alternatives are also generally struggling (or have serious fundamental issues of their own). At this point, I’m very skeptical another company will unseat FB’s dominance for quite a while, if ever.
  - alecco 9y ago
    And FB buys the competition or throws money at disarming it by buying its competition and putting it on steroids.
- beagle3 9y ago
  That's true, but there's a difference between FB and Friendster/MySpace: Zuck is apparently trying (and succeeding) at managing that risk. Instagram was growing quickly and could seed the next big FB competitor. So FB bought them for a $1B valuation almost everyone thought was crazy at the time. WhatsApp could seed the next big FB competitor. So FB bought them for $20B or so, which again was mostly considered crazy at the time. Neither of these is crazy in retrospect: FB's dominant position is easily worth what DB paid for these and more. FB didn't manage to buy Snap, so they started waging war, adding Snap's features 3 times (to FB, WhatsApp and Instagram). FB management is actively trying to stay dominant. MySpace was, in comparison, passive; and friendster was never as dominant.
  - joering2 9y ago