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Well, honestly I think that buying Facebook shares right now is a high risk move. While it is possible maybe to forecast some ups and downs in the immediate fol
by RuggeroAltair 15y ago
Well, honestly I think that buying Facebook shares right now is a high risk move. While it is possible maybe to forecast some ups and downs in the immediate following days, if the evaluation actually goes to 100 billions it'd look scary to me.
I'm not saying that Facebook is dying or that it's gonna die anytime soon, but I am not able to foresee any significant growth.
The article compared, with sort of negative terms, Facebook's IPO to Google's, saying that google didn't even impress that much when it went public.
But we all know here, that Wall Street made a mistake with Google, since now their shares now are worth 5 times as much as they were at the opening.
So, my question is, how can Facebook ever be worth half a trillion dollars? What should the company do to get evaluated 5 times as much as it is now?
At least with the number of users, it seems to me that they can't be too far from their natural limits.
Facebook is a company certainly with great minds and ideas, but after all it's a website, and I'm not sure people will want to stick around for so much longer on just a website. It seems unfeasible to me that people will stop using the rest of internet, just doing everything on Facebook.
Sure, they can improve a million things (like a real search in Facebook posts, or ways of sharing more complicated things, or better off site integration (which is already pretty good though), but at the same time they can't just open too much, or people will just start migrating. Yet, if they stay too close, people will get bored and start migrating anyways.
Sure, they can start having actual physical products and increase their presence on different markets, but there are lots of tradeoffs for that too. People won't eventually be happy to have a anything-Facebook.
So, maybe I'm wrong, but I tend to believe that this might be one of the highest points that Facebook can reach. I'm sure it can still grow, but I can't expect a growth of orders of magnitudes, it just seems unreasonable.
Maybe it's just that I got bored of Facebook's social life a long time ago and ended up spending very little time on it, almost using it as an email server for certain friends. But I certainly don't think that things like timeline can do this huge difference. To me, timeline is just another improvement (maybe) to avoid people to get bored after a while. One of the constant and frequent improvements and changes that every feature/product has to do to feel alive, but can anyone see any change that could make this company much bigger than what it already is?
If I were Zuckerberg I would probably sell a bunch of my shares and buy a bunch of companies, without necessarily integrating them into Facebook, you never know...
- ryanklee 15y agoSome decent reasons here along those lines to be hesitant about the IPO http://www.wallstreetdaily.com/2012/01/18/three-reasons-to-avoid-the-facebook-ipo/ http://www.wallstreetdaily.com/2012/01/18/three-reasons-to-a...
- samstave 15y agoMy (sure to be wrong) Facebook predictions: * The Facebook Phone * The Facebook Netbook * Major user datamining product sales to global governments * Acquiring binge (gaming, education (I think they will go for Khan Academy) * video hosting * Their own voip platform Facebook still has a lot of room to innovate, not that they would necessarily be successful in each iteration. But I would say that the number one thing FB could do right now to have a major impact is to create an education platform. If their nearly billion users can all take education throgh the platform that would be very game changing. Allow users to sign up for classes, watch them, participate on them and collaborate with other students directly through facebook - plus have their progress and status tracked and gamefied then we could see real growth. As facebook could start absorbing every person on the planet that is newly born. Seriously, if facebook didnt buy KhanAcademy and integrate it for this reason, then I would say they lack vision and are simply the worlds most bloated PHP website.
- pepdek 15y agoI'd like to add to your list of Facebook products. * Facebook Search Engine.
- hackinthebochs 15y agoI don't get why people seem to ignore this. If facebook added internet search to their site they would instantly become the second biggest provider. I would be very surprised if they weren't already working on this.
- aurelianito 15y agoFacebook does provide Bing searches integrated into the platform.