8 ms·

Why I'm not buying Facebook

163 points by arman0 16y ago

far33d 16y ago
Reason #3 shows that the author does not understand even the basics of virtual goods and facebook platform monetization. The other points are nearly as non-sensical.
- chailatte 16y ago
  Please elaborate then, guy who works at Zynga.
  - brown9-2 16y ago
    I'll take a crack at it. Here the author seems to be claiming that to remain popular and grow, Zynga and other Facebook-platform-users will need to have razor thin profit margins like Walmart in order to reach as many people with the lowest-common-denominator: But here's the disconnect: if Facebook's future success depends on aiming for the lowest common denominator with the most people possible, that implies pretty slim margins a la Wal-Mart. You think they're going to justify a $50 billion market capitalization through banner ads? Are you kidding me? How does selling virtual goods - which are all profit - relate at all to selling actual physical goods to consumers? Walmart drives the price down on what it sells based on it's huge presence in the market. This analogy barely makes any sense, and I have no idea what banner ads have to do with the comparison. Frankly I would say that Reason #3 reveals that the author has a hard time making an argument in a concise or clear way.
    - mynameishere 16y ago
      He's clearly talking about the software and not the "virtual goods". Zynga's games require all the engineering expertise required from WalMart's 2.99 gallon jars of pickles. Any other company that can deliver pickles in an acceptable way can get right into that market. By contrast, try making a WoW or Call of Duty clone. Huge, huge undertakings. If you don't believe me, actually play some of Zynga's games. 50 percent of the random shit on Kongregate is better by far. The difference is marketing only.
      - lbrandy 16y ago
        Eh. Zynga is social games at scale. The engineering talent isn't in the games part, it's in the scale part. Getting to that scale isn't any easy feat either. What you've basically just said is that any idiot could clone facebook. Yes, they could. Except they still have everything to do.
        bad_user 16y ago
        World of Warcraft has 12 million subscribers. Any idiot can clone Facebook, getting users to use Facebook was the hard part. Scaling is vastly overrated. Yes it requires knowledge, but (a) you don't have to do it from the start (unless you're Blizzard and everything you do is an instant hit) and (b) users don't fucking care about your infrastructure that scales (that's not why they are playing your game).
      - brown9-2 16y ago
        So is he saying that he is unsure of the capability and valuation of Facebook based on Zynga's business model? This point still doesn't make sense in regards to investing in Facebook if he is talking about the product being sold is software rather than virtual goods. One company that uses the platform has an unsustainable (according to the author) business model - therefore the company hosting the platform has a problem as well? And if the point does make sense, the author is certainly leaving a whole lot of his reasoning and explanation out of the actual article.
      - adestefan 16y ago
        Don't underestimate the engineering and financial expertise needed to produce gallon jars of pickles for $2.99 and still make a profit.
        jonknee 16y ago
        It's harder than it appears... http://www.fastcompany.com/node/47593/print http://www.fastcompany.com/node/47593/print "The gallon jar reshaped Vlasic's pickle business: It chewed up the profit margin of the business with Wal-Mart, and of pickles generally. Procurement had to scramble to find enough pickles to fill the gallons, but the volume gave Vlasic strong sales numbers, strong growth numbers, and a powerful place in the world of pickles at Wal-Mart. Which accounted for 30% of Vlasic's business. But the company's profits from pickles had shriveled 25% or more, Young says--millions of dollars. Young remembers begging Wal-Mart for relief. "They said, 'No way,' " says Young. "We said we'll increase the price"--even $3.49 would have helped tremendously--"and they said, 'If you do that, all the other products of yours we buy, we'll stop buying.' It was a clear threat." Hunn recalls things a little differently, if just as ominously: "They said, 'We want the $2.97 gallon of pickles. If you don't do it, we'll see if someone else might.' I knew our competitors were saying to Wal-Mart, 'We'll do the $2.97 gallons if you give us your other business.' " Wal-Mart's business was so indispensable to Vlasic, and the gallon so central to the Wal-Mart relationship, that decisions about the future of the gallon were made at the CEO level. Finally, Wal-Mart let Vlasic up for air. "The Wal-Mart guy's response was classic," Young recalls. "He said, 'Well, we've done to pickles what we did to orange juice. We've killed it. We can back off.' " Vlasic got to take it down to just over half a gallon of pickles, for $2.79. Not long after that, in January 2001, Vlasic filed for bankruptcy--although the gallon jar of pickles, everyone agrees, wasn't a critical factor." (Fascinating article over all, well worth the full read.)
  - far33d 16y ago
    There is no reason, in a virtual goods model, that larger audience sizes require thinner margins. Players choose games based on how much fun they are having and what they can play socially with their friends - not the pricing on individual items. Also, the author states "You think they're going to justify a $50 billion market capitalization through banner ads? Are you kidding me?". This has nothing to do with Zynga and ignores Facebook Credits, which give Facebook a 30% cut of all the revenue on the platform. I'm pretty sure this author has never heard of them.
portman 16y ago
"And don't give me that crap about VCs being "early stage" and wanting to cash out of a "mature" investment. These people are as money hungry as any other institutional investor, and would let it ride unless….they saw something that suggested that the era of stupendous growth was over." The author doesn't seem to understand how the venture asset class works. Venture funds are owned by their limited partners (LPs), and typically have a fixed, 10-year life. After 10 years, the fund liquidates and the LPs (hopefully) get a nice return on their investment. It's been 6.5 years since Facebook's first venture investments. If the investment vehicle was already 2-3 years old at that time, then they have to liquidate soon, even if the managing partners believe Facebook will continue to appreciate in value. The author seems to think that anytime an investor wants to cash out, it's because they don't "believe" in the investment.
- aston 16y ago
  In fact, Accel, Facebook's earliest venture investment firm, has already cashed out a fair chunk of stock. http://venturebeat.com/2010/11/19/facebook-accel-34-billion/ http://venturebeat.com/2010/11/19/facebook-accel-34-billion/
- rogupta 16y ago
  Many VC funds have 1-2 years they can tack on in addition to the 10-year life in cases where one or more of their investments have not exited. That said, it's not the return multiple that matters for VCs, it's the IRR (i.e. time is a factor).
mootothemax 16y ago
The market value of Goldman Sachs is just $88 billion. I'd take more than half that company over the whole of Facebook any day of the week. It's a fair point: if you had $50 billion lying around the place, which of the two would you choose to invest in?
- polynomial 16y ago
  Seems like a merger would solve the whole problem.
- portman 16y ago
  I remember when Goldman Sachs went public in 1999, only 12% of their shares went public. The remainder stayed with the partnership. I'm not sure (or able to quickly find) the current ownership, but it's certainly not ALL publicly traded. So $50 billion would get you about one-fourteenth of Goldman. Not half. Edit: grossly mis-remembered my facts. 511M shares include both stockholders and the shares of the former partners.
  - krschultz 16y ago
    If I had $50 billion on this day to buy part of 1 company, I'd take Goldman no question. A few years ago if you got Facebook stock at a lower valuation, sure that would make you a lot of money. But if Facebook makes $2 billion now, and they already have 25% of the internet users as members, where does the growth come from? 50b valuation is right given their current revenues, but they're not going to go from 25% to 100% of total internet users. And their cost structure will not go down to 0. So we're basically betting on how much more money Facebook can squeeze out of each active user. I just don't see it being a huge amount. Where as GS has a lot of ways to make money, and has proven their ability to make money over and over and over again through a lot of markets and a lot of times. Facebook could peak at $100b and you only doubled your money. (Which isn't that good for this kind of investment).
    - phreanix 16y ago
      While I'm sure it's a factor, I'm not convinced that Facebook's growth needs involve having to increase their userbase in that manner. There are still many ways to monetize the existing one since I don't believe they've done that very efficiently yet.
sdh 16y ago
1. because this article is on CNN and our formula for getting visitors is to find a popular current event and take a controversial or contrary point of view on it. 2-5. see #1
- user24 16y ago
  That's a rather simplistic view of the article, don't you think? You really think that none of the reasons are genuine, all just made up as linkbait?
Swannie 16y ago
One reason why I'm not buying Facebook: I don't have $2mil lying around. Another one; Why is Mark so reticent to IPO? Because he loses control? Or because that means making the numbers public, and people will see just where the money is going. Either way, if the CEO doesn't want to go public and may be forced to, that is not good.
- mjuhl24 16y ago
  Not good for whom? Potential investors or Facebook (the company)? In any case, I think it will be quite interesting to see just how much revenue facebook is generating from it's various sources.
- SteveC 16y ago
  Bill Gates was another person who didn't want to do an IPO. He almost cancelled it a number of times during the process as he felt it would just be a distraction to actually getting real business done. Mark Zuckerberg could have similar concerns.
  - Swannie 16y ago
    I didn't know that. It certainly sounds reasonable, but is that what happened at Microsoft, after their IPO?
- gfodor 16y ago
  He's said (maybe at Davos?) that the main reason is because Facebook has a lot of stuff they want to launch that is high risk and might not be acceptable to see come from a public company. (For example, could you imagine what would have happened the stock when Beacon came out?)
  - jonknee 16y ago
    Well if he wants to pull more stunts like Beacon, being a public company may well be the best thing for Facebook.
- sliverstorm 16y ago
kia 16y ago
"The market value of Goldman Sachs is just $88 billion. I'd take more than half that company over the whole of Facebook any day of the week." GS was founded in 1869; Facebook in 2004.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- nir 16y ago
  GS has sustained its business over 140 years, consistently making a lot of money. (Also we recently found they are now, in effect, insured by the US government in a way FB can only dream of)
frederickcook 16y ago
"It's hard to see why, though: DST got in at a $10 billion valuation in May 2009. Facebook's user base has more than doubled since then. So its valuation should…quintuple?" Good point, according to Metcalfe's Law [1], it should actually only have quadrupled. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfes_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfes_law
nostromo 16y ago
I remember how excited average investors were at the prospect of a new way of going public when Google announced its innovative auction IPO. "Finally, Wall Street banks wouldn't be able to crowd to the front of the line!" Their public auction, their "don't be evil", and their continued use of their power for good -- like their trick to get openness principles adopted during the wireless spectrum auction -- all exemplified a company thinking and acting like a good corporate citizen at all levels. Contrast this to FB. They are actually cozying up to Wall Street rather than eschewing them. "Don't be evil" was replaced with a series of privacy gaffes, a flurry of lawsuits surrounding the company's founding, and a CEO who has called early users dumb fucks. It's sad to see how Google's pioneering isn't being emulated by the next big tech company.
- code_duck 16y ago
  The behavior and culture of a company is often a direct reflection of the character of the people who founded it. Unfortunately, very few 24 year olds are mature enough to handle the responsibility and decisions that come with a large corporation - even though the corporation may be successful, other problems become evident. Take Etsy, for instance, another company founded by a 24 year old. While they have been successful overall, the company culture is atrocious. It's not just youth that is the problem, of course.
  - noahc 16y ago
    Can you explain further about Etsy? Is this documented somewhere?
    - daveed 16y ago
      Yes, I would like to hear more about this (as well as other examples of "companies gone wrong")
    - code_duck 16y ago
      There is plenty of discontent documented on the web, in blogs, on Etsy's forums (which are difficult to penetrate, since the search and navigation features are poor), on the forums of other marketplace sites, on Twitter, and so on. They have a knack for turning away people who should be their biggest supporters. I can think of many successful shop owners have left after 2-3 years, disappointed by the way the site is administrated.
palewery 16y ago
Facebook is very similar to vmware. I expect it would follow a similar path in stock price. Currently vmware is trading at 140 p/e ratio. People are afraid to miss the next Google, Microsoft, etc.. SO they are willing to buy the latest trend. If facebook made $2 a year off 300M users they would have a market cap of 60B with a 100 P/E ratio.
- nas 16y ago
  > People are afraid to miss the next Google, Microsoft, etc Yup, and they don't realize that it's not a winning strategy. Of course I would love to get in on the "ground floor" of the next Microsoft or Intel. Unfortunately it's like trying to get rich by buying enough lottery tickets. Sure one of them is going to be a big winner but the EV of your investment is negative.
InclinedPlane 16y ago
Facebook has... twice myspace's revenue. Just let that sink in for a while.
- roadnottaken 16y ago
  Wait... is that good or bad?
  - code_duck 16y ago
    Psst, want to buy 50% of Bebo for $200 million? At 2008 prices, this is a steal!
  - eavc 16y ago
    Up to you, I suppose. It's not a point I'd ever raise in trying to sell Facebook stock, though.
  - kqr2 16y ago
    MySpace is probably only worth about $500 million. It generated about $500 million in revenue for 2009, but operated at a lost. On the other hand, Facebook revenue is around $1-2 billion but valued now at around $50 billion. In other words, Facebook commands a huge premium, largely based on its expectation for growth and future revenue. http://www.businessinsider.com/henry-blodget-myspace-worth-zero-2010-2 http://www.businessinsider.com/henry-blodget-myspace-worth-z... http://mashable.com/2010/12/16/facebook-2-billion-revenue/ http://mashable.com/2010/12/16/facebook-2-billion-revenue/
  - InclinedPlane 16y ago
    It's troublesome if you want to invest in facebook. Facebook has 10x as many users as myspace, and they've translated that into a great deal of hype. But they've yet to translate it into sizable revenue, let alone into profit.
    - phreanix 16y ago
      Wait, let me get this straight. $2B in revenue is not 'sizeable' ?
nhangen 16y ago
"And any advertiser who is trying to target me on the social network is wasting their money." He ruined a perfectly objective point with this subjective generalization. That being said, I'm with him for on most points, and I agree on the bigger picture.
- matthewcford 16y ago
  The future of Facebook is not targeting you on 'a social network', its opening up an ad-sense competitor and targeting you on any website - with your personal information. The like and connect buttons are just the first step. With that in mind it sounds like a good deal to me.
  - yesbabyyes 16y ago
    I'm surprised how few people seem to see this opportunity. They should be able to grab a huge part of online advertising. Also, I have a feeling that a lot of big media would like to stick it to Google, and would rather get their ads from Facebook instead.
    - matthewcford 16y ago
      Considering their TOS for the graph data - summary don't use the data to target ads, its just a matter of time before they launch this.
  - nas 16y ago
    So why would people want to be Facebook users? What value are they getting besides targeted ads? I find it amusing to see people trying to imagine theoretical ways Facebook could earn income to justify their insane valuation. It is essentially the very definition of speculation. A prudent investor wouldn't touch that shit with a ten foot pole.
    - ericd 16y ago
      So why would people want to be Facebook users? What value are they getting besides targeted ads? Erm... people like talking and interacting with their friends, and facebook makes that extremely easy? Ways it could make money in the future - since it could act as the online identity of a substantial portion of internet users, and gets the attention of a significant portion of those daily or weekly, there are a hell of a lot of ways.
nivertech 16y ago
The only people what can make money on Facebook stock, is Chinese government officials. All they need to do, is to accumulate $FCBK stock and then allow Facebook.com to be used in China. Number of Facebook users will jump from 0.5B to 1.5B, same with the valuation from $50B to $150B ;)
- garply 16y ago
  They could do it twice. Buy before unblocking it and then short before blocking it again.
  - nivertech 16y ago
    Then they should do many round-trips: 1. Long $FCBK 2. Unblock facebook.com 3. Sell $FCBK 4. Short $FCBK 5. Block facebook.com 6. Cover $FCBK 7. go to #1
- pbhjpbhj 16y ago
  This makes me wonder about net neutrality. If you had the jump on the announcement by a huge data carrier of site specific charging then wouldn't that give you a similar albeit smaller advantage?
kylelibra 16y ago
Another reason I'm not buying Facebook: I don't have the $10 million required by Goldman Sachs to be involved.
bemmu 16y ago
On Zynga: You think they're going to justify a $50 billion market capitalization through banner ads? These games actually do really well, not from banner ads but from virtual currency. Now that FB is pushing devs to use FB credits, they should be in for a healthy cut of the action.
- nas 16y ago
  Games like Farmville are a fad, like Rubix cube and Cabbage Patch Kids. That's not to say that casual games won't continue to an important segment of gaming, just that they will not provide an income stream that justifies a 50 billion company valuation. If it wasn't for the fact that "the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent", I would short a Facebook IPO in a heartbeat. Facebook's core value is that (nearly) everyone is on it and it is considered to be "cool". The cool aspect will not last. I'd be amused to hear any arguments as to how it possibly can. Young people will move on to something else. I also think it's very likely that their power as a centralized manager of personal contacts will be eroded over time. Really, it's not that hard of a problem and some other applications will end up being compelling enough for people to switch. They will try to prevent it (e.g. like trying to prevent GMail from exporting email addresses) but ultimately will fail. The history of the Internet is filled with the corpses of technologies that were supposed to be "the future". Who remembers PointCast? How about Orkut? For a while RSS was touted as the solution to all of mankind's problems. ;-)
  - meric 16y ago
    Perhaps if facebook could move beyond the website facebook.com... Like a piece of facebook branded communication device.
  - blader 16y ago
    "Games like Farmville are a fad, like Rubix cube and Cabbage Patch Kids." Well, sure they're fads. But toys aren't a fad. LOST might be a fad, but entertaining content aren't a fad. Farmville might be a fad, but Zynga is in the content business, not the Farmville business.
apriori 16y ago
Bernanke -> Goldman -> Facebubble
draz 16y ago
I was an early adopter of Facebook back in the day it was only open to a handful of school (VERY early 2004). It was nice and exciting and whatnot. But I've lost interest in it completely. I speculate that it's only newcomers that find it interesting. I now use FB only as a means of sending someone a quick note, getting invitations to events (a la evite -- remember that?), or maybe looking up a picture I was tagged in by a friend. If back in the day people put in their hobbies, activities, interests, and list of classes (yup, that was available. Great stalking tool...!), I find people's profiles completely empty. Anybody with a different experience? Do you ACTUALLY use FB, or are you only drawn to it because of the reasons I outlined above? Please note that I'm not hating on FB. They do what they do well. Just sharing my experience (and at this point, I will never ever be able to get a job at FB... ;-) ).
- abstractbill 16y ago
  Do you ACTUALLY use FB? Yes. It probably helps that my family, and my wife's family, are all several thousand miles away and we just had our first child. We spend a lot of time on both FB and Skype, keeping everyone up to date.
  - draz 16y ago
    so why FB and not Twitter, for example? Is it the simplicity of having your photo album and messaging under the same platform?
    - abstractbill 16y ago
      Integration of photos, videos and messaging is definitely useful, as is the fact that all of our relatives have actually heard of facebook as opposed to twitter ;) I guess the other consideration is that facebook at least has some semblance of privacy, which is reassuring when posting photos and videos of someone too young to consent (or talk, for that matter).
      - pilif 16y ago
lionhearted 16y ago
> Let's just say for argument's sake that it is early stage investors who are selling. Why would they sell? Because they're in need of cash to invest somewhere else? The way the social network is talked about these days, it's the best investment opportunity in town. So why would anyone want to forsake it? What a silly argument. Diversification. Duh. Even if you've got a hold of what you're certain is the biggest, bestest, most badass-est investment ever that's already gone up 20x, you'd do well to cash out a bit of it and spread that around. On the off chance something crazy happens, you're not up the creek. I mean, that's not exactly revolutionary right? Diversify? If I owned Facebook equity now, I'd really happily cash some of it in and invest in something as uncorrelated to FB as I possibly could. Like, real estate in Bulgaria or something.
malloreon 16y ago
Question: what is the point of Facebook? Answer: monetizing friendships
- cincinnatus 16y ago
  'friendships' FTFY.
cincinnatus 16y ago
If these guys precipitate a bubble burst we should all hate them. 2011 is the year Facebook growth (users, hours, page views, pick one) plateaus, it is inevitable it will happen as some point, and this is very likely the year.
- lsc 16y ago
  we shouldn't, really. I mean, they practically /made/ the bubble, and I think we've all profited from that, even those of us who don't work for google. Demand for webapp dudes (and infrastructure) is way up because of this bubble. Hell, my own biggest account does some kind of facebook app thing.
Loic 16y ago
I do not have a FB account. You do not need FB to simply take benefit of the web at large. But you do need a good search engine. For me, FB is the future Second Life. Making money now and hyped, but at the end, it will just be a simple good business, but not a stratospheric one.
- arethuza 16y ago
  I don't use FB either (although I do have an account). However, my kids use it all the time and it's a vital part of their social life. I can sort of understand the valuation of FB - the people who use it regularly really depend on it and in a way that is much stickier than things like Google search. The only thing that I can see that might hurt FB is if it becomes too popular and there is a mass switch by the "cool" people to use some other service - given that it is based on socializing rather than hard features this could well happen. However, I don't see any risk of this at the moment.
patd 16y ago
"Reason 2 : Goldman has likely earned the lead book runner slot in any initial public offering." When Microsoft valued Facebook at 15 billion, it was the same thing : they paid 240 million for 1.6% of the company AND running ads on Facebook (while excluding Google) AND some other things we may not know. But people just said 1.6% for 240 million = 15 billion without taking other parts of the deal into account.
tpatke 16y ago
Nobody has mentioned acquisition. I think it is safe to say that MSFT would be interested in FB at 50B. 100B starts to look like real money and it is hard to know who would be interested...
known 16y ago
Facebook will fade away like Hotmail.

163 points by arman0 16y ago

Reason #3 shows that the author does not understand even the basics of virtual goods and facebook platform monetization. The other points are nearly as non-sensical.

chailatte 16y ago
Please elaborate then, guy who works at Zynga.
- brown9-2 16y ago
  I'll take a crack at it. Here the author seems to be claiming that to remain popular and grow, Zynga and other Facebook-platform-users will need to have razor thin profit margins like Walmart in order to reach as many people with the lowest-common-denominator: But here's the disconnect: if Facebook's future success depends on aiming for the lowest common denominator with the most people possible, that implies pretty slim margins a la Wal-Mart. You think they're going to justify a $50 billion market capitalization through banner ads? Are you kidding me? How does selling virtual goods - which are all profit - relate at all to selling actual physical goods to consumers? Walmart drives the price down on what it sells based on it's huge presence in the market. This analogy barely makes any sense, and I have no idea what banner ads have to do with the comparison. Frankly I would say that Reason #3 reveals that the author has a hard time making an argument in a concise or clear way.
  - mynameishere 16y ago
    He's clearly talking about the software and not the "virtual goods". Zynga's games require all the engineering expertise required from WalMart's 2.99 gallon jars of pickles. Any other company that can deliver pickles in an acceptable way can get right into that market. By contrast, try making a WoW or Call of Duty clone. Huge, huge undertakings. If you don't believe me, actually play some of Zynga's games. 50 percent of the random shit on Kongregate is better by far. The difference is marketing only.
    - lbrandy 16y ago
      Eh. Zynga is social games at scale. The engineering talent isn't in the games part, it's in the scale part. Getting to that scale isn't any easy feat either. What you've basically just said is that any idiot could clone facebook. Yes, they could. Except they still have everything to do.
      - bad_user 16y ago
        World of Warcraft has 12 million subscribers. Any idiot can clone Facebook, getting users to use Facebook was the hard part. Scaling is vastly overrated. Yes it requires knowledge, but (a) you don't have to do it from the start (unless you're Blizzard and everything you do is an instant hit) and (b) users don't fucking care about your infrastructure that scales (that's not why they are playing your game).
    - brown9-2 16y ago
      So is he saying that he is unsure of the capability and valuation of Facebook based on Zynga's business model? This point still doesn't make sense in regards to investing in Facebook if he is talking about the product being sold is software rather than virtual goods. One company that uses the platform has an unsustainable (according to the author) business model - therefore the company hosting the platform has a problem as well? And if the point does make sense, the author is certainly leaving a whole lot of his reasoning and explanation out of the actual article.
    - adestefan 16y ago
      Don't underestimate the engineering and financial expertise needed to produce gallon jars of pickles for $2.99 and still make a profit.
      - jonknee 16y ago
        It's harder than it appears... http://www.fastcompany.com/node/47593/print http://www.fastcompany.com/node/47593/print "The gallon jar reshaped Vlasic's pickle business: It chewed up the profit margin of the business with Wal-Mart, and of pickles generally. Procurement had to scramble to find enough pickles to fill the gallons, but the volume gave Vlasic strong sales numbers, strong growth numbers, and a powerful place in the world of pickles at Wal-Mart. Which accounted for 30% of Vlasic's business. But the company's profits from pickles had shriveled 25% or more, Young says--millions of dollars. Young remembers begging Wal-Mart for relief. "They said, 'No way,' " says Young. "We said we'll increase the price"--even $3.49 would have helped tremendously--"and they said, 'If you do that, all the other products of yours we buy, we'll stop buying.' It was a clear threat." Hunn recalls things a little differently, if just as ominously: "They said, 'We want the $2.97 gallon of pickles. If you don't do it, we'll see if someone else might.' I knew our competitors were saying to Wal-Mart, 'We'll do the $2.97 gallons if you give us your other business.' " Wal-Mart's business was so indispensable to Vlasic, and the gallon so central to the Wal-Mart relationship, that decisions about the future of the gallon were made at the CEO level. Finally, Wal-Mart let Vlasic up for air. "The Wal-Mart guy's response was classic," Young recalls. "He said, 'Well, we've done to pickles what we did to orange juice. We've killed it. We can back off.' " Vlasic got to take it down to just over half a gallon of pickles, for $2.79. Not long after that, in January 2001, Vlasic filed for bankruptcy--although the gallon jar of pickles, everyone agrees, wasn't a critical factor." (Fascinating article over all, well worth the full read.)
- far33d 16y ago
  There is no reason, in a virtual goods model, that larger audience sizes require thinner margins. Players choose games based on how much fun they are having and what they can play socially with their friends - not the pricing on individual items. Also, the author states "You think they're going to justify a $50 billion market capitalization through banner ads? Are you kidding me?". This has nothing to do with Zynga and ignores Facebook Credits, which give Facebook a 30% cut of all the revenue on the platform. I'm pretty sure this author has never heard of them.

portman 16y ago

"And don't give me that crap about VCs being "early stage" and wanting to cash out of a "mature" investment. These people are as money hungry as any other institutional investor, and would let it ride unless….they saw something that suggested that the era of stupendous growth was over." The author doesn't seem to understand how the venture asset class works. Venture funds are owned by their limited partners (LPs), and typically have a fixed, 10-year life. After 10 years, the fund liquidates and the LPs (hopefully) get a nice return on their investment. It's been 6.5 years since Facebook's first venture investments. If the investment vehicle was already 2-3 years old at that time, then they have to liquidate soon, even if the managing partners believe Facebook will continue to appreciate in value. The author seems to think that anytime an investor wants to cash out, it's because they don't "believe" in the investment.

aston 16y ago
In fact, Accel, Facebook's earliest venture investment firm, has already cashed out a fair chunk of stock. http://venturebeat.com/2010/11/19/facebook-accel-34-billion/ http://venturebeat.com/2010/11/19/facebook-accel-34-billion/
rogupta 16y ago
Many VC funds have 1-2 years they can tack on in addition to the 10-year life in cases where one or more of their investments have not exited. That said, it's not the return multiple that matters for VCs, it's the IRR (i.e. time is a factor).

mootothemax 16y ago

The market value of Goldman Sachs is just $88 billion. I'd take more than half that company over the whole of Facebook any day of the week. It's a fair point: if you had $50 billion lying around the place, which of the two would you choose to invest in?

polynomial 16y ago
Seems like a merger would solve the whole problem.
portman 16y ago
I remember when Goldman Sachs went public in 1999, only 12% of their shares went public. The remainder stayed with the partnership. I'm not sure (or able to quickly find) the current ownership, but it's certainly not ALL publicly traded. So $50 billion would get you about one-fourteenth of Goldman. Not half. Edit: grossly mis-remembered my facts. 511M shares include both stockholders and the shares of the former partners.
- krschultz 16y ago
  If I had $50 billion on this day to buy part of 1 company, I'd take Goldman no question. A few years ago if you got Facebook stock at a lower valuation, sure that would make you a lot of money. But if Facebook makes $2 billion now, and they already have 25% of the internet users as members, where does the growth come from? 50b valuation is right given their current revenues, but they're not going to go from 25% to 100% of total internet users. And their cost structure will not go down to 0. So we're basically betting on how much more money Facebook can squeeze out of each active user. I just don't see it being a huge amount. Where as GS has a lot of ways to make money, and has proven their ability to make money over and over and over again through a lot of markets and a lot of times. Facebook could peak at $100b and you only doubled your money. (Which isn't that good for this kind of investment).
  - phreanix 16y ago
    While I'm sure it's a factor, I'm not convinced that Facebook's growth needs involve having to increase their userbase in that manner. There are still many ways to monetize the existing one since I don't believe they've done that very efficiently yet.

sdh 16y ago

1. because this article is on CNN and our formula for getting visitors is to find a popular current event and take a controversial or contrary point of view on it. 2-5. see #1

user24 16y ago
That's a rather simplistic view of the article, don't you think? You really think that none of the reasons are genuine, all just made up as linkbait?

Swannie 16y ago

One reason why I'm not buying Facebook: I don't have $2mil lying around. Another one; Why is Mark so reticent to IPO? Because he loses control? Or because that means making the numbers public, and people will see just where the money is going. Either way, if the CEO doesn't want to go public and may be forced to, that is not good.

mjuhl24 16y ago
Not good for whom? Potential investors or Facebook (the company)? In any case, I think it will be quite interesting to see just how much revenue facebook is generating from it's various sources.
SteveC 16y ago
Bill Gates was another person who didn't want to do an IPO. He almost cancelled it a number of times during the process as he felt it would just be a distraction to actually getting real business done. Mark Zuckerberg could have similar concerns.
- Swannie 16y ago
  I didn't know that. It certainly sounds reasonable, but is that what happened at Microsoft, after their IPO?
gfodor 16y ago
He's said (maybe at Davos?) that the main reason is because Facebook has a lot of stuff they want to launch that is high risk and might not be acceptable to see come from a public company. (For example, could you imagine what would have happened the stock when Beacon came out?)
- jonknee 16y ago
  Well if he wants to pull more stunts like Beacon, being a public company may well be the best thing for Facebook.
sliverstorm 16y ago

kia 16y ago

"The market value of Goldman Sachs is just $88 billion. I'd take more than half that company over the whole of Facebook any day of the week." GS was founded in 1869; Facebook in 2004.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
nir 16y ago
GS has sustained its business over 140 years, consistently making a lot of money. (Also we recently found they are now, in effect, insured by the US government in a way FB can only dream of)

frederickcook 16y ago

"It's hard to see why, though: DST got in at a $10 billion valuation in May 2009. Facebook's user base has more than doubled since then. So its valuation should…quintuple?" Good point, according to Metcalfe's Law [1], it should actually only have quadrupled. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfes_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfes_law

nostromo 16y ago

I remember how excited average investors were at the prospect of a new way of going public when Google announced its innovative auction IPO. "Finally, Wall Street banks wouldn't be able to crowd to the front of the line!" Their public auction, their "don't be evil", and their continued use of their power for good -- like their trick to get openness principles adopted during the wireless spectrum auction -- all exemplified a company thinking and acting like a good corporate citizen at all levels. Contrast this to FB. They are actually cozying up to Wall Street rather than eschewing them. "Don't be evil" was replaced with a series of privacy gaffes, a flurry of lawsuits surrounding the company's founding, and a CEO who has called early users dumb fucks. It's sad to see how Google's pioneering isn't being emulated by the next big tech company.

code_duck 16y ago
The behavior and culture of a company is often a direct reflection of the character of the people who founded it. Unfortunately, very few 24 year olds are mature enough to handle the responsibility and decisions that come with a large corporation - even though the corporation may be successful, other problems become evident. Take Etsy, for instance, another company founded by a 24 year old. While they have been successful overall, the company culture is atrocious. It's not just youth that is the problem, of course.
- noahc 16y ago
  Can you explain further about Etsy? Is this documented somewhere?
  - daveed 16y ago
    Yes, I would like to hear more about this (as well as other examples of "companies gone wrong")
  - code_duck 16y ago
    There is plenty of discontent documented on the web, in blogs, on Etsy's forums (which are difficult to penetrate, since the search and navigation features are poor), on the forums of other marketplace sites, on Twitter, and so on. They have a knack for turning away people who should be their biggest supporters. I can think of many successful shop owners have left after 2-3 years, disappointed by the way the site is administrated.

palewery 16y ago

Facebook is very similar to vmware. I expect it would follow a similar path in stock price. Currently vmware is trading at 140 p/e ratio. People are afraid to miss the next Google, Microsoft, etc.. SO they are willing to buy the latest trend. If facebook made $2 a year off 300M users they would have a market cap of 60B with a 100 P/E ratio.

nas 16y ago
> People are afraid to miss the next Google, Microsoft, etc Yup, and they don't realize that it's not a winning strategy. Of course I would love to get in on the "ground floor" of the next Microsoft or Intel. Unfortunately it's like trying to get rich by buying enough lottery tickets. Sure one of them is going to be a big winner but the EV of your investment is negative.

InclinedPlane 16y ago

Facebook has... twice myspace's revenue. Just let that sink in for a while.

roadnottaken 16y ago
Wait... is that good or bad?
- code_duck 16y ago
  Psst, want to buy 50% of Bebo for $200 million? At 2008 prices, this is a steal!
- eavc 16y ago
  Up to you, I suppose. It's not a point I'd ever raise in trying to sell Facebook stock, though.
- kqr2 16y ago
  MySpace is probably only worth about $500 million. It generated about $500 million in revenue for 2009, but operated at a lost. On the other hand, Facebook revenue is around $1-2 billion but valued now at around $50 billion. In other words, Facebook commands a huge premium, largely based on its expectation for growth and future revenue. http://www.businessinsider.com/henry-blodget-myspace-worth-zero-2010-2 http://www.businessinsider.com/henry-blodget-myspace-worth-z... http://mashable.com/2010/12/16/facebook-2-billion-revenue/ http://mashable.com/2010/12/16/facebook-2-billion-revenue/
- InclinedPlane 16y ago
  It's troublesome if you want to invest in facebook. Facebook has 10x as many users as myspace, and they've translated that into a great deal of hype. But they've yet to translate it into sizable revenue, let alone into profit.
  - phreanix 16y ago
    Wait, let me get this straight. $2B in revenue is not 'sizeable' ?

nhangen 16y ago

"And any advertiser who is trying to target me on the social network is wasting their money." He ruined a perfectly objective point with this subjective generalization. That being said, I'm with him for on most points, and I agree on the bigger picture.

matthewcford 16y ago
The future of Facebook is not targeting you on 'a social network', its opening up an ad-sense competitor and targeting you on any website - with your personal information. The like and connect buttons are just the first step. With that in mind it sounds like a good deal to me.
- yesbabyyes 16y ago
  I'm surprised how few people seem to see this opportunity. They should be able to grab a huge part of online advertising. Also, I have a feeling that a lot of big media would like to stick it to Google, and would rather get their ads from Facebook instead.
  - matthewcford 16y ago
    Considering their TOS for the graph data - summary don't use the data to target ads, its just a matter of time before they launch this.
- nas 16y ago
  So why would people want to be Facebook users? What value are they getting besides targeted ads? I find it amusing to see people trying to imagine theoretical ways Facebook could earn income to justify their insane valuation. It is essentially the very definition of speculation. A prudent investor wouldn't touch that shit with a ten foot pole.
  - ericd 16y ago
    So why would people want to be Facebook users? What value are they getting besides targeted ads? Erm... people like talking and interacting with their friends, and facebook makes that extremely easy? Ways it could make money in the future - since it could act as the online identity of a substantial portion of internet users, and gets the attention of a significant portion of those daily or weekly, there are a hell of a lot of ways.

nivertech 16y ago

The only people what can make money on Facebook stock, is Chinese government officials. All they need to do, is to accumulate $FCBK stock and then allow Facebook.com to be used in China. Number of Facebook users will jump from 0.5B to 1.5B, same with the valuation from $50B to $150B ;)

garply 16y ago
They could do it twice. Buy before unblocking it and then short before blocking it again.
- nivertech 16y ago
  Then they should do many round-trips: 1. Long $FCBK 2. Unblock facebook.com 3. Sell $FCBK 4. Short $FCBK 5. Block facebook.com 6. Cover $FCBK 7. go to #1
pbhjpbhj 16y ago
This makes me wonder about net neutrality. If you had the jump on the announcement by a huge data carrier of site specific charging then wouldn't that give you a similar albeit smaller advantage?

kylelibra 16y ago

Another reason I'm not buying Facebook: I don't have the $10 million required by Goldman Sachs to be involved.

bemmu 16y ago

On Zynga: You think they're going to justify a $50 billion market capitalization through banner ads? These games actually do really well, not from banner ads but from virtual currency. Now that FB is pushing devs to use FB credits, they should be in for a healthy cut of the action.

nas 16y ago
Games like Farmville are a fad, like Rubix cube and Cabbage Patch Kids. That's not to say that casual games won't continue to an important segment of gaming, just that they will not provide an income stream that justifies a 50 billion company valuation. If it wasn't for the fact that "the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent", I would short a Facebook IPO in a heartbeat. Facebook's core value is that (nearly) everyone is on it and it is considered to be "cool". The cool aspect will not last. I'd be amused to hear any arguments as to how it possibly can. Young people will move on to something else. I also think it's very likely that their power as a centralized manager of personal contacts will be eroded over time. Really, it's not that hard of a problem and some other applications will end up being compelling enough for people to switch. They will try to prevent it (e.g. like trying to prevent GMail from exporting email addresses) but ultimately will fail. The history of the Internet is filled with the corpses of technologies that were supposed to be "the future". Who remembers PointCast? How about Orkut? For a while RSS was touted as the solution to all of mankind's problems. ;-)
- meric 16y ago
  Perhaps if facebook could move beyond the website facebook.com... Like a piece of facebook branded communication device.
- blader 16y ago
  "Games like Farmville are a fad, like Rubix cube and Cabbage Patch Kids." Well, sure they're fads. But toys aren't a fad. LOST might be a fad, but entertaining content aren't a fad. Farmville might be a fad, but Zynga is in the content business, not the Farmville business.

apriori 16y ago

Bernanke -> Goldman -> Facebubble

draz 16y ago

I was an early adopter of Facebook back in the day it was only open to a handful of school (VERY early 2004). It was nice and exciting and whatnot. But I've lost interest in it completely. I speculate that it's only newcomers that find it interesting. I now use FB only as a means of sending someone a quick note, getting invitations to events (a la evite -- remember that?), or maybe looking up a picture I was tagged in by a friend. If back in the day people put in their hobbies, activities, interests, and list of classes (yup, that was available. Great stalking tool...!), I find people's profiles completely empty. Anybody with a different experience? Do you ACTUALLY use FB, or are you only drawn to it because of the reasons I outlined above? Please note that I'm not hating on FB. They do what they do well. Just sharing my experience (and at this point, I will never ever be able to get a job at FB... ;-) ).

abstractbill 16y ago
Do you ACTUALLY use FB? Yes. It probably helps that my family, and my wife's family, are all several thousand miles away and we just had our first child. We spend a lot of time on both FB and Skype, keeping everyone up to date.
- draz 16y ago
  so why FB and not Twitter, for example? Is it the simplicity of having your photo album and messaging under the same platform?
  - abstractbill 16y ago
    Integration of photos, videos and messaging is definitely useful, as is the fact that all of our relatives have actually heard of facebook as opposed to twitter ;) I guess the other consideration is that facebook at least has some semblance of privacy, which is reassuring when posting photos and videos of someone too young to consent (or talk, for that matter).
    - pilif 16y ago

lionhearted 16y ago

> Let's just say for argument's sake that it is early stage investors who are selling. Why would they sell? Because they're in need of cash to invest somewhere else? The way the social network is talked about these days, it's the best investment opportunity in town. So why would anyone want to forsake it? What a silly argument. Diversification. Duh. Even if you've got a hold of what you're certain is the biggest, bestest, most badass-est investment ever that's already gone up 20x, you'd do well to cash out a bit of it and spread that around. On the off chance something crazy happens, you're not up the creek. I mean, that's not exactly revolutionary right? Diversify? If I owned Facebook equity now, I'd really happily cash some of it in and invest in something as uncorrelated to FB as I possibly could. Like, real estate in Bulgaria or something.

malloreon 16y ago

Question: what is the point of Facebook? Answer: monetizing friendships

cincinnatus 16y ago
'friendships' FTFY.

cincinnatus 16y ago

If these guys precipitate a bubble burst we should all hate them. 2011 is the year Facebook growth (users, hours, page views, pick one) plateaus, it is inevitable it will happen as some point, and this is very likely the year.

lsc 16y ago
we shouldn't, really. I mean, they practically /made/ the bubble, and I think we've all profited from that, even those of us who don't work for google. Demand for webapp dudes (and infrastructure) is way up because of this bubble. Hell, my own biggest account does some kind of facebook app thing.

Loic 16y ago

I do not have a FB account. You do not need FB to simply take benefit of the web at large. But you do need a good search engine. For me, FB is the future Second Life. Making money now and hyped, but at the end, it will just be a simple good business, but not a stratospheric one.

arethuza 16y ago
I don't use FB either (although I do have an account). However, my kids use it all the time and it's a vital part of their social life. I can sort of understand the valuation of FB - the people who use it regularly really depend on it and in a way that is much stickier than things like Google search. The only thing that I can see that might hurt FB is if it becomes too popular and there is a mass switch by the "cool" people to use some other service - given that it is based on socializing rather than hard features this could well happen. However, I don't see any risk of this at the moment.

patd 16y ago

"Reason 2 : Goldman has likely earned the lead book runner slot in any initial public offering." When Microsoft valued Facebook at 15 billion, it was the same thing : they paid 240 million for 1.6% of the company AND running ads on Facebook (while excluding Google) AND some other things we may not know. But people just said 1.6% for 240 million = 15 billion without taking other parts of the deal into account.

tpatke 16y ago

Nobody has mentioned acquisition. I think it is safe to say that MSFT would be interested in FB at 50B. 100B starts to look like real money and it is hard to know who would be interested...

known 16y ago

Facebook will fade away like Hotmail.