Sorry, Facebook haters: It's not going anywhere

Source.

Originally Posted by Neowin

Facebook’s IPO caused a divisive reaction from individuals in the tech community. Unfortunately for the company’s detractors, it’s not going anywhere for quite a while. Its stock debuted Friday at $38, making Facebook the highest-valued American company ever at the time of an IPO, with a market capitalization of $104.18 billion.

Read more: http://www.neowin.net/news/sorry-fac...going-anywhere

[dw426]

http://www.pcworld.com/article/25586...html#tk.hp_new

Not necessarily a counter-argument. However, I see the point on both sides. As I said in a different thread though, shareholders are involved now, and so are the various regulatory agencies around the world. Mark will have to make a lot of people happy now besides himself and his users, and he'll have to play by rules other than the ones he makes. Facebook also has the issue that most new gains are coming from foreign users, via mobile, and Facebook doesn't know how to monetize mobile yet. Bringing in money is now the main priority of Facebook, and with money, either more of less of it, comes problems.

As far as advertising dollars go, it will be a long time before it's anywhere near what Google has a hold on.

[berryracer]

Facebook was once a nice social site. Now its interface sucks, and is full of spam and ads

I don't see spam and ads in Facebook and I have more than 500 FB friends. Weird!*

* But I did some tweaking in FB settings and I use some nice Firefox's extensions...

[Daveski17]

Originally Posted by guest

I don't see spam and ads in Facebook and I have more than 500 FB friends. Weird!

Neither do I. There again, I've never actually used Facebook.

[acuariano]

i don't use fb..but i don't hate it..

[tgell]

The problem with the facebook IPO was Morgan Stanley had to spend quite a bit of money, more than they envisioned, to keep the stock from falling below the offer price of $38. Everybody thought the stock was going to take off, at least doubling in price, but at the end of the day was only up about 23 cents.

As a result, Morgan Stanley may have spent billions of dollars to support the stock price by buying shares in the market. Some market participants said that the underwriters had to absorb mountains of stock to defend the $38 level and keep the market from dipping below it.

Article

[Boost]

Originally Posted by berryracer

Facebook was once a nice social site. Now its interface sucks, and is full of spam and ads

No spam or ad issues with my facebook account.

[Hungry Man]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworst...facebooks-ipo/


The Failure of Facebook's IPO

It might sound a little strange claiming that a company which has just launched a huge IPO has in some way failed. Yet looking around at the the weekend’s details of Facebook‘s float on Friday it’s difficult not to come away with the feeling that something has gone wrong.

[Dark Shadow]

I dont hate face book,I just dont care to use it.That being said, facebook is probably a goodway for people to stay in touch with friends or family.

Originally Posted by Hungry Man

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworst...facebooks-ipo/


The Failure of Facebook's IPO

More food for thought:

... Misleading charts have also attempted to pit Facebook against Google in terms of success prior to their respective IPOs. A key piece of information missing from these discussions is that Facebook showed no real interest in monetizing its platform for the majority of its early years. It wasn’t until after Sheryl Sandberg joined the company as chief operating officer in 2008 that it had a legitimate business strategy. Its advertising platform was released later that year, and it took less than two years for the company to become profitable. Since then, its profits have skyrocketed.
When Google filed for its IPO, the company had a $961.8 million in revenues and $105.6 million in profits for the previous year. Facebook, by comparison, posted revenues of $3.71 billion and a profit of $1 billion for 2011, the year prior to its IPO. Google’s market valuation upon its IPO was $23 billion, while Facebook’s IPO gave it a market capitalization of $104 billion. Given the company’s annual profit compared to Google’s at the time of each company’s IPO, this seems a reasonable valuation. So, for all the cries of Facebook being massive overvalued: history disagrees...

[Hungry Man]

Don't know anything about Google's IPO.

I don't care much about Facebook but this topic is the first time I've seen anyone say it was good.

It opened at 42 dollars and dropped to 38. There's no way of knowing if it would continue to drop because the underwriting banks/companies would not allow that (they had pre-ordained purchases to keep it at 38 or above.)

edit: I have no strong feelings about this one way or the other. I'm just saying I've seen mixed reactions.

Originally Posted by Hungry Man

I don't care much about Facebook but this topic is the first time I've seen anyone say it was good.

From the article you quoted:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworst...facebooks-ipo/

...From the point of view of the company, Facebook itself, of course it was a roaring success. They were able to raise a good chunk of capital to develop and expand the business. That’s what an IPO is, at heart, about. Early investors in the company did well too: they were able to cash out some portion of their earlier investment at good prices...

[Hungry Man]

Not arguing that that isn't the case. They made a ton of money. Maybe that's all there is to it.

[dw426]

A lot of investors dropped out already after they made their banks of cash. I still don't know how good this will turn out for Mark, who has absolutely no experience with what he'll be getting into. He's got to make mountains of cash with Facebook user data..and that will get the government looking at them. Revenue growth has already slowed down.

Well, I'm not Nostradamus nor Donald Trump, but I'm not looking at Facebook right now like some are. I think the enthusiasm is a bit too high. We'll see what it looks like in a few months. It could blow up in a good way or a bad way, and unless we have our money in it, we can just sit back and watch the show.

[Osaban]

Originally Posted by Boost

No spam or ad issues with my facebook account.

Same here. I used to be quite reluctant even at the idea of creating a FB account, but then a friend convinced me, and in a matter of weeks I could connect with people whom I haven't seen for more than 40 years! In a pre-internet era that would have been impossible.

Obviously there are privacy issues, but one can really calibrate the amount of information which flows in and out of the account. FB is not for everyone, but I can understand why it is so popular.

[allizomeniz]

Any thoughts I had of joining Facebook were quickly squashed when I learned they keep a facial recognition database of every picture posted on the site, unless you turn it off. It's on by default. I couldn't, in good conscience, support a site that plays those kind of games.

I've never been to FB, but I do know the majority of their income is from ads. If you aren't seeing ads it must be because you're blocking them somehow. You can't go to any site on the Web these days without connecting to something from Facebook. They're as bad as Google in that respect.

I don't hate FB. The herd is crazy about it apparently. Nothing the herd does surprises me anymore.

[tgell]

Facebook faces crucial week after modest debut

Newly issued shares in Facebook Inc may have a hard time in the coming week if lead underwriter Morgan Stanley stops supporting the stock and managers lower down in the IPO book who were hoping for an early surge decide to get out before going underwater.

Article

[vasa1]

Originally Posted by tgell

Facebook faces crucial week after modest debut

... lead underwriter Morgan Stanley ...

Any idea what exactly does the underwriter commit to? I think that in the case of debt instruments, they agree to buy any unsold portion of the offering but when an equity IPO is oversubscribed aren't they home free?

[tgell]

It may be explained better here. Morgan Stanley gets out okay, but the lower down mutual funds and dealers that bought can get screwed.

Facebook and the Greenshoe option.

Also here.

[vasa1]

Originally Posted by tgell

It may be explained better here. Morgan Stanley gets out okay, but the lower down mutual funds and dealers that bought can get screwed.

Facebook and the Greenshoe option.

Also here.

Thanks! From the first link:

But on Monday it will be a different story. Once the underwriters have exhausted the 15% that they shorted, they will be unlikely to take one for the team and continue to provide support.

The second link is too technical for me

[acuariano]

"Facebook stock falls below IPO price"


htxp://money.cnn.com/2012/05/21/markets/facebook-stock/index.htm?hpt=hp_t1

[dw426]

While not spelling out doom, that news certainly doesn't make things any easier for FB. The whole thing was completely botched, but it's too early to deem anything a failure. The problem with the "wait and see" attitude though is that most people playing the game don't have that attitude.

Facebook stock down almost 11 percent in second day

Originally Posted by Neowin

...The kicker is that Facebook, even with its loss, was still the most heavily traded stock on the NASDAQ market Monday with nearly 168 million shares trading hands. Also, the overall NASDAQ market was up 2.46 percent today, its best day of 2012 so far. Meanwhile, the NASDAQ stock market itself its getting slammed with criticism from stock traders who feel the market was not prepared to handle the massive amount of interest and activity surrounding Facebook's IPO launch. NASDAQ delayed the launch by 30 minutes before it allowed trading to begin and technical glitches continued throughout the day...

Read more: http://www.neowin.net/news/facebook-...-in-second-day

[dw426]

The underwriters, NASDAQ, it was all one big ball of fail. For NASDAQ, it could be a very, very expensive fail. Not to mention Mark is now worth 2 billion less. Fine by him I'm sure, lol, but not fine by the people he answers to now.