A Fool And Ur Money R Soon Parted.

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Later today your pension fund is gonna be stuffed with FACEBOOK stock. Only buyers with deep pockets are invited to participate in the IPO.

Was it only 5 years ago that MYSPACE was too hot to rot? Then Rupert Murdock hadda give it away to be rid of it.

 

[JohnnySavage]

Later today your pension fund is gonna be stuffed with FACEBOOK stock. Only buyers with deep pockets are invited to participate in the IPO.

Was it only 5 years ago that MYSPACE was too hot to rot? Then Rupert Murdock hadda give it away to be rid of it.

You finally said something smart. You must be following my posts.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Everything I say is smart, you simply dont understand Vulcan.

 

[off2bed]

Yeah, I predict Facebook stock will crash and burn, then be purchased by Warren Buffet.

 

[Shagly]

Later today your pension fund is gonna be stuffed with FACEBOOK stock. Only buyers with deep pockets are invited to participate in the IPO.

Was it only 5 years ago that MYSPACE was too hot to rot? Then Rupert Murdock hadda give it away to be rid of it.

...And I never thought that Apple stocks would never cost more then Microsoft stocks.

 

[Shagly]

Yeah, I predict Facebook stock will crash and burn, then be purchased by Warren Buffet.

That sounds about right.

 

[unregistered]

 

[JohnnySavage]

It basically sells advertising to earn revenue. It earns 200 mil a quarter. We'll be entering a new recession, advertising will no doubt drop off, companies are pulling out of Facebook citing a lack of return on their advertising dollar. I'm not sure it's worth the trouble. Hank Greenburg says he isn't buying.

Facebook is a data mining company and the advertisements are an end product of the data mining. One act of Congress and collection of information could be restricted or made illegal, which would kill Facebook's business model.

We aren't entering a recession, and Facebook's revenue won't drop off. The risk is backlash by its users, not abandonment by its customers. It's a terrible investment, but not for the reasons you think (or for the reasons people you plagiarize from think).

 

[Adre]

One company pulled out, GM, stating they did not think it was worth it. Ford, on the other hand, is staying in because they think it's a good place to be. At this point, I'd put more stock in Ford 's business judgment. People chuckled at Google a few years ago too. Time will tell.

 

[Adre]

It basically sells advertising to earn revenue. It earns 200 mil a quarter. We'll be entering a new recession, advertising will no doubt drop off, companies are pulling out of Facebook citing a lack of return on their advertising dollar. I'm not sure it's worth the trouble. Hank Greenburg says he isn't buying.

Their earnings topped 2 billion last year.

 

[JohnnySavage]

Their earnings topped 2 billion last year.

Profit in the first quarter fell 12 percent, to $205 million. Its revenue was $1.058 billion, up 46 percent for the year, but down 6 percent from the previous quarter.

 

[unregistered]

 

[Adre]

Their valuation is said to be 104 billion, but the truth is independent analysts are having a hard time reaching 80 billion.

For good reason most likely. But they do have 800 million sets of eyeballs, and if they can monetize them, watch out!

 

[chillywilly2]

What gets me is they really don't have a tangible product. They don't make anything real.
All they have is information and advertising space.
If they go down they have no real equipment to sell.
It all disapears in a puff of smoke, and not even real smoke...cyber smoke.

 

[koalabear]

Stocks mixed on Facebook debut

 

[unregistered]

 

[Adre]

If you want to buy this stock it might be wise to wait awhile.

I have no plans to buy it, but the demand being 30 times supply indicates they don't need me. We'll see, it opens in ten minutes. Bill Gross takes care of my money. UsuallyX

 

[trysail]

In the midst of THE GREAT INTERNET BUBBLE of the late 1990s, Warren Buffett suggested a final examination in investment analysis in which respondents would be asked to value an Internet company.


He then went on to say that ( and here I paraphrase), "Anyone who gives an answer automatically flunks the test."


This company cannot be valued with any degree of confidence. That makes it a rank speculation— the antithesis of investing.

 

[Adre]

To a degree, all investment is speculation. There are no guarantees.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

FACEBOOK isnt Google. FACEBOOK is a social network like MYSPACE. Remember MYSPACE, King of the Hill a few years ago?

 

[trysail]

To a degree, all investment is speculation. There are no guarantees.

That is, of course, true. But it is a matter of degree. The range of valuations for seasoned, stable companies providing essential goods and services not subject to obsolescence or the whims of taste can be reasonably determined using historically observable data for assumptions to produce informed estimates.


When engaging in the wholly useless effort to "value" unseasoned companies with unknown and unknowable markets and technologies, the range of outcomes of value will be bounded by Ø and ∞. In short, when you complete the analysis, you won't be any better informed than you were when you started.

 

[ChinaBandit]

What gets me is they really don't have a tangible product. They don't make anything real.
All they have is information and advertising space.
If they go down they have no real equipment to sell.
It all disapears in a puff of smoke, and not even real smoke...cyber smoke.

I can't agree with this having been involved within the information industry for 20 plus years. It is a very tangible product if packaged for delivery to the appropriate market/s AND offers easy to use search functionality, retrieval, storage and sharing. What my company does is so valuable that the packaged information (databases) is/are sold on a subscription basis. Ad revenue is also tangible provided what is offered has traffic. We encourage our primary customers, libraries of all types, to brand what we offer in a way that promots their own aims. So, such self branding has revenue attraction.

I disagree from an equipment vantage too. Facebook, as do others, employs a wide array of servers, routers and disc storage devices to support the information collected, stored and eventually accessed. The band width they've leased, or perhaps VPN connections, also represent significant structural investment. This investment on such infrastructure is in the millions. Now, cloud computing takes much of this activity off site but they still have to pay for it.

Finally, the human resources involved in development, techincal support, sales, customer satisfaction, content licensing, etc., is a staggering positive asset.

This is a VERY real business.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I can't agree with this having been involved within the information industry for 20 plus years. It is a very tangible product if packaged for delivery to the appropriate market/s AND offers easy to use search functionality, retrieval, storage and sharing. What my company does is so valuable that the packaged information (databases) is/are sold on a subscription basis. Ad revenue is also tangible provided what is offered has traffic. We encourage our primary customers, libraries of all types, to brand what we offer in a way that promots their own aims. So, such self branding has revenue attraction.

I disagree from an equipment vantage too. Facebook, as do others, employs a wide array of servers, routers and disc storage devices to support the information collected, stored and eventually accessed. The band width they've leased, or perhaps VPN connections, also represent significant structural investment. This investment on such infrastructure is in the millions. Now, cloud computing takes much of this activity off site but they still have to pay for it.

Finally, the human resources involved in development, techincal support, sales, customer satisfaction, content licensing, etc., is a staggering positive asset.

This is a VERY real business.

Its a fad.

 

[ChinaBandit]

Social networking is not a fad.

The challenge, and danger, is to keep delivering via ever changing platforms. Four years ago, none of the players in this industry were thinking too far beyond the PC. Today, you had better already be compatiable with iPhone, Android and have easy to load Apps. As I said, my company sells to libraries. Guess what, the majority of library database users never enter the building. They want to access in a remote way by smartphone. What technology is going to bring information to the user easier and more effectually in the future? How Facebook and others answer this question is the essential point.

Google has a decided advantage because of the prevelance, and preference, for their search engine. They will still need to deliver according to user desires. If you notice, Chrome is a much more effectual smartphone browser than Explorer. That is not by accident.

 

[koalabear]

Facebook shares disappoint in early trading