Is this going to be dot com bust all over again?

[OwlHoot]

WAS.

Not sure how they can deal with this. As the prevalence of tablets/phone surfing via apps grows, where they gonna stick the ads?

Text messages? Mind you, the nuisance factor of those might drive users away.

I suppose single-line marquee (ticker tape banner) ads would be less intrusive and not occupy too much screen space.

[Spacecadet]

Google +1 is as dead as a dodo. The real problem is the only market for Facebook is low value marketing. Google's advertising is just before the point of sale and is worth money because it attracts customers when they are interested. On facebook you are advertising to people looking at other things its good for branding purposes but not for anything else.

There is a lot of power in the social network with respect to advertising which is only just starting to be realised.

[administrator]

Not a bright orange frisbee I have hundreds of those ignoring the bits of my wardrobe which are still in use (North Face Jacket retail £200 to me 140 danish krona due to flaw in website).

Not sure, will dig it out later. Think it is in the shed, hope the roof not leaked too much in the rain as it is a nice little bit of internet history.

Google +1 is as dead as a dodo. The real problem is the only market for Facebook is low value marketing. Google's advertising is just before the point of sale and is worth money because it attracts customers when they are interested. On facebook you are advertising to people looking at other things its good for branding purposes but not for anything else.

Finally there is a reason why Instagram was offered a billion. MZ almost sold Facebook to Yahoo for that magic figure. The following week Yahoo announced a profit warning reduced the offer down to $850m and he walked away.

I am not sure G+1 is dead, certain sectors are still using it very heavily and Google will gradually push the system and offer new bits and if it gets traction then it could easily get as big as FB. I totally agree with Google hitting people at the point of spend and therefore they can command high as sales but that is my point with FB, they will never be able to make huge amounts of cash due to this - so why is it valued so high and why did MZ think that buying some crappy image processing system (sorry but that is all I know about Instagram) for $1 Billion! G have a hell of a lot of cash in reserve and are still making it hand over fist, FB have the potential (in some people's eyes) and that is all. So Google can afford to play the long game on this, there is no doubt that G will be be here in 10 years, can the same be said of FB? Mind you - 10 years is a heck of a long time in the internet world!

Yahoo offering 1 Billion just before issuing a profit warning - that sums Yahoo up to me

So why does the fact that MZ almost sold the biggest social network for the same price he has paid for some crappy image processing system have any relevance, that point is lost on me.

[Scoobos]

There is a lot of power in the social network with respect to advertising which is only just starting to be realised.

Personally, I think that the advertising power isn't all that - how many people do click through and purchase?

I think the marketing side of it is very powerful , especially with the yoof; its normal for children as young as 5 to be registered with the current generation ; and if FB can manage to wangle the "zero privacy" approach and get these users to freely share everything - thats one heck of a market research tool.

It scares me to be honest.. I don't like to think how easily led children are and how conditioned they can become by this sort of thing. It's peer pressure multiplied by a zillion.

Finally, with WP7 I learnt how much facebook can't deal with the remote access as it bypasses their current revenue streams, I can't help but think its all a bit of a flash in the pan and would agree that the projections are as loopy as the .COM ones were back in the day.

[NickFitz]

There's no need to assume that advertising is the only way Facebook can make money in the future.

Take something like http://www.wrapp.com/ which allows one to send gift vouchers to Facebook friends, say as a birthday present - that seems like a clever way of making money from Facebook's platform which doesn't merely rely on passively showing ads to users, and which can easily be integrated on any platform including mobile. There must be a load of other ways of generating income from Facebook's vast social graph, all of which I'm sadly not bright enough to think of

I reckon Wrapp has a good chance of being the next company bought up by Facebook. In fact, aiming for a FB buyout may become a business "plan" as common as a Yahoo! or Google buyout was at various times over the last fifteen years. (It's still just as poor a plan as it always was, but there'll be a few high-profile winners.)

[eek]

There is a lot of power in the social network with respect to advertising which is only just starting to be realised.

There is a lot of power in social networks but that's within the network itself not the provider of the network.

It does look like FB know how to monetorise itself see the uproar that appeared with "highlight" feature that appeared on thursday.

So why does the fact that MZ almost sold the biggest social network for the same price he has paid for some crappy image processing system have any relevance, that point is lost on me.

Instagram was bought because it allowed photo sharing to bypass Facebook and if part of what you share is bypassing FB it encourages other bits to bypass FB.

[MarillionFan]

Always a good idea to get employed with a big American company pre-IPO.

[OwlHoot]

.. In fact, aiming for a FB buyout may become a business "plan" as common as a Yahoo! or Google buyout was at various times over the last fifteen years. (It's still just as poor a plan as it always was, but there'll be a few high-profile winners.)

Yes, AtW never had much luck with the Google buyout plan.

[d000hg]

LinkedIn might be a better modern-day comparison, they are not doing too badly... https://www.google.co.uk/finance?client=ob&q=NYSE:LNKD

I agree FB is stupidly overvalued but if I had the spare money I would be quite tempted to buy, with the proviso that I'd be watching like a hawk and expecting only to invest short-term, on the basis that how I value FB isn't the important factor!

[Sysman]

boo.com was mental beyond belief though. Still have a couple of boxes from them from when Mrs Admin ordered some clothes. Was insane in terms of the packaging, all branded and also contained some fold-away rain jacket or something like that for free.

Wiki: Boo.com is an interesting read.

Based in London, but a Dutch NV, operated by Swedish, logistics supplier Deutsche Post. A somewhat strange mix.

Timing

Although there were several months of delays prior to launch and problems with the user experience when boo.com first launched, these had been largely cured by the time the company entered receivership. Indeed sales had grown rapidly and were around $500,000 for the fortnight prior to the site being shut down.

But that's only 13 million a year...

Boo.com spent £125 million ($188 million) in just six months.

Yikes.

One good thing about FB is the volume of users, the only real threat from that direction is Google's +1. Google have the money to keep going at their social media offering where FB only has the promise of money. Had never thought about the threat to FB being mobile but of course, the smaller interfaces leave no room for ads and therefore revenue. They are fux'd.

I came across a suggestion by someone a year or two ago that FB could form a bank with that number of customers. Dunno if that's viable or not. I honestly don't see the rest of the world wanting US banking, so it would have to be something else, and FB are probably too US-centric in their way of thinking.

In response to your question though sysman, I am not sure if we are about to hit another major bust or not. I am not sure we have the volume of terribly over-valued companies that we had then, the glut of cash is in other markets. But in terms of FB crashing, I do hope so - MZ looks like a complete c0ck IMO. Can he see that his company is vastly over-valued? Seeing how much he thought he could buy Instagram for, probably not - he believes his own BS.

According to Facebook coughs up details on its mobile problem FB has 901 million active users and growing. 500 million active mobile users in the first 3 weeks of April. I can definitely see some potential, but they need revenue of over 100 bucks for each and every user to match the touted figure of 100 billion for the IPO. That is unlikely to happen soon, though that could change with yet more users.

The Instagram story alone gives me cold feet. As someone wielding that amount of cash, I'd actually like to see him wearing smarter clothes rather than that student style T shirt, but mebbe that's just me showing my age