Is it worth buying shares in facebook?

Hatter The Mad said:
Did you really just call something the 'rich investment sector'? Are you having a joke?
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Yes. Flight to liquidity has left lots of capital in cash equivalents. What does rich 'rich' even mean? I said 'cash rich', you should read better.
You haven't got a clue what you're talking about.

They don't have a clue, either.
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A bubble is about irrationality caused by self fullfilling actions. A single ipo cannot be judged to be a bubble.
 
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Time will tell where the share price goes on this - I'm sitting on the fence and not buying / going short, risk adverse :p But best of luck to everyone who is.

I'm guessing will see a nice rise initially, but who knows :)
 
Basher said:
They have a big problem with their advertising platform at present though: it doesn't work as effectively as Google ads, mainly because people aren't on FB with the mindset of buying stuff.
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It doesn't matter - they're still working it out. They have the data, though. And even though signups to the site itself are slowing (mainly due to saturation), it is the data that is valuable. Not only that, but we're piling other website's data into Facebook too (news websites, video websites, any website we login to via Facebook, any website we comment on using Facebook, any website we visit which has a Facebook button or is connected to open graph).
 
Hatter The Mad said:
It doesn't matter - they're still working it out.
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Are they? How long will it take them? Clearly too long for serious a very serious ad customer to pull out this week. That data is only valuable if they can do something with it to monetise it, which so far they've failed to do effectively.
 
Hatter The Mad said:
$1bn profit 2010, 53% profit growth 2011. Aggressively working in a new and super-lucrative market (targeted advertising platforms).
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Aggressively working in a new and super dangerous market. Adverts on google work because people are often shopping / searching for products.

People go on facebook to catch up with friends not buy things or be bombarded by adverts. You seem to think that their previous profits and growth is going to be a good indicator that they can change the way they generate revenue and maintain that growth.

It hasn't broken into the most populous and future affluent regions of the world. China and India are not large users of facebook. I think that in 10 years facebook will be a shadow if itself but thats just my view.

Like both sides of this, no one actually knows how facebooks future will pan out.
 
Basher said:
Are they? How long will it take them? Clearly too long for serious a very serious ad customer to pull out this week. That data is only valuable if they can do something with it to monetise it, which so far they've failed to do effectively.
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I don't know. How long did it take Amazon to break even? How long did it take Google to iron out their ad platform?
 
fez said:
People go on facebook to catch up with friends not buy things or be bombarded by adverts. You seem to think that their previous profits and growth is going to be a good indicator that they can change the way they generate revenue and maintain that growth.
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You seem to think that the ads have to be on Facebook in order for Facebook to monetise their profiles. That's a fundamental error, and why you've seen little by the way of ads on Facebook itself so far.
 
Hatter The Mad said:
You seem to think that the ads have to be on Facebook in order for Facebook to monetise their profiles. That's a fundamental error, and why you've seen little by the way of ads on Facebook itself so far.
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Where else are they going to put them?


Hatter The Mad said:
I don't know. How long did it take Amazon to break even? How long did it take Google to iron out their ad platform?
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How can you not accept that neither of those has any real relation to facebook. If it took google a long time to get it right (when it is much much much easier monatising a search engine) why would facebook manage it in a reasonable time. You can't just develop a new ad platform, push it out, **** people off and then rinse / repeat. Failed attempts will damage the company and make future tests even harder as peoples backs will be up.
 
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Hatter The Mad said:
You seem to think that the ads have to be on Facebook in order for Facebook to monetise their profiles. That's a fundamental error, and why you've seen little by the way of ads on Facebook itself so far.
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This is the key. Once they can nail a 3rd paty system whereby the data comes from FB to target but the ads sit somewhere else, they are onto a winner.
 
Hatter The Mad said:
It doesn't matter - they're still working it out. They have the data, though. And even though signups to the site itself are slowing (mainly due to saturation), it is the data that is valuable. Not only that, but we're piling other website's data into Facebook too (news websites, video websites, any website we login to via Facebook, any website we comment on using Facebook, any website we visit which has a Facebook button or is connected to open graph).
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Problem is that people are moving away from using a computer to log into FB and using mobiles. The current type of adverts FB use does not lend itself well to mobiles.

Time will tell if they have the solution otherwise I can see revenues dropping, not increasing.
 
Greebo said:
Problem is that people are moving away from using a computer to log into FB and using mobiles. The current type of adverts FB use does not lend itself well to mobiles.

Time will tell if they have the solution otherwise I can see revenues dropping, not increasing.
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Again, future ad revenue won't be from ads on the FB site ...
 
Basher said:
This is the key. Once they can nail a 3rd paty system whereby the data comes from FB to target but the ads sit somewhere else, they are onto a winner.
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Exactly. And you have to be blind if you haven't seen that has been their intention ever sense Sandberg (the master of Google's ad platform) joined, and they started working on OpenGraph. Sandberg joined Facebook because she saw really how to dominate marketing in this world - using social data - something she couldn't do with Google because Google is late to the social party.
 
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I must be thick because I still can't see how this is going to make them lots of money. People can already put adverts that are targeted on their sites. How will facebook make a fortune out of this.
 
They are just gonna do the same as google but instead of harvesting your browser history theyll use your facebook details and strike deals with other websites to utilise this information to allow them to further target the person browsing the website

ps3ud0 :cool:
 
ps3ud0 said:
They are just gonna do the same as google but instead of harvesting your browser history theyll use your facebook details and strike deals with other websites to utilise this information to allow them to further target the person browsing the website

ps3ud0 :cool:
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Its no-where near that simple though. The amount of information on facebook is amazing but how do you decide what is actually important.

If you went back over all my facebook posts, friends and info you would advertise 90% of stuff that I wouldn't bother with. Peoples lives are not so simple to analyse. I have played hockey since I was 5 but I only ever use the net to buy a new stick every few years.
 
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