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At risk of criticizing an industry legend, "If they don't make money today, they easily could," rings false. My guess would be that Facebook will acquire Ning l
by thinkcomp 18y ago
At risk of criticizing an industry legend, "If they don't make money today, they easily could," rings false. My guess would be that Facebook will acquire Ning long before this happens.
- josefresco 18y agoAndreesen lives in a billionaire fantasy world where the normal rules that apply to you and I when accepting VC money just don't apply. They can look 'to the horizon' for their revenue model while we have to have it baked in from day 1. He's earned it, so good for him, but I wouldn't start taking any lessons from what he says to Charlie for your own startup. The fact that Facebook doesn't consider 175 million users to be a sufficient audience for revenu should tell you something about the scale of company they (believe) are running and funding.
- volida 18y agoYou really believe that "Facebook doesn't consider 175 million users"?
- access_denied 18y agoHe said (paraphrasing) they could make money today, but they are opting for building a longterm-business (read: big thing like Intel, not somewhat big thing like Blogger). If you take his qualifier into account, yeah, maybe he could be right.
- prakash 18y agowhy does it have to be mutually exclusive? why can't they do both?
- lacker 18y agoThey could easily be profitable immediately if they put big ads on the homepage. But that would hurt the experience. As long as they don't need the money, they want to keep the user experience as good as possible. The hope is that they will develop a less intrusive, more targeted form of advertising that is still effective.
- lacker 18y agoHe's not making an aggressive claim here. He's just saying, if they sold ads on the home page they would be profitable. That's a pretty straightforward calculation.