Facebook announced today that it was splitting its shares 5 for 1.
Although the company’s shares are not yet publicly traded they have been selling privately though sites like SharesPost and SecondMarket.com.
Spiting the shares increases the amount of share the company has available for employees and investors.
The last shares I have seen trade privately have been at $75.
Sharespost.com pegs Facebook’s valuation at $26 billion
is it because of the movie coming out today?
Why not?
Simple question….
Is facebook profitable?
Josh
I believe yes it is
“Is facebook profitable?”
FB earns $1 billion per year but it needs to sell more ads and to offer a SE to fight Google
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“Facebook’s valuation at $26 billion”
that’s why not even MS, Apple, HP or Google have enough cash to buy FB
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i read an article linked from this site about major brands focusing on facebook instead of their own websites. i nearly laughed out loud.
it made repeated mentions of how many “fans” different companies each had on the facebook site.
what difference does that make?
the question to ask is has facebook increased _sales_?
i wouldn’t be surprised if no one knows. but the site is free so who cares. the value of putting ads on that site is *speculative* (you know, that concept people criticise when they write about domaining). the money they have came from microsoft, a company with money to burn on whatever they choose, even on a fad website.
there’s at least one domainer who has posted how it _is_ possible to *prove* that ads lead to sales, but hey, we’re just dumb “domainers”. all those brilliant facebook engineers are too busy writing spaghetti code… i.e. “extending PHP”. wow, really impressive. but hardly a business.
i’m afraid that marketing, no matter how clever, and hype, no matter how big, must take a back seat to sales. sales is the bottom line and the reason that marketing exists.
i dare facebook to go public. i sincerely doubt they would survive with the mgmt (i.e. the lack of) they’ve got. and i think they know this- it’s a bunch of kids. of course if they go public while on a high, some of their shareholders will get become millionaires. a 5-1 split fuels that idea for their shareholders. but it’s just an idea. they still have to go public… or it’s all just fluff. and if they IPO then we’re going to see inside a house of cards. the kid running this operation “does not care about money”. if that’s true he’s in for a rude awakening once his little website project has to start filing SEC disclosures.
but, we’ll see… hype does work, in the short term… if he’s smart he’ll cash out while he’s ahead… and he’d better be able to pay out… or he’ll be in court for many years
@purehype…google, apple and msft were also started by kids. Who the hell do those punks think they are!
😉
FB uses a (relatively) small part of pages for ads,so, they can increase very much their revenue using more space for ads and/or higher prices
Who is “SPITING” on the shares? I would rather they just SPLIT them.
Actually some people are making money from the ads, but I think the marketers using their ads are making the lion’s share of the profit that comes from advertising on the site, instead of FB. FB is probably not that profitable.
“some people are making money from the ads”
the nearly entire Google’s cash comes from ads!
FB just needs to do the same on a larger scale
Saw the movie Social Network last night.
Definitely a movie for the business folks, not so much for teenagers at all. More talk about the business model and capital than I expected. Some parties but all ideas, coding, partners, VC and ramp up.
Good mix of what appears to be fact along with some Hollywood. So a nice mix between a documentary and a great Hollywood movie.
Oh yeah, make sure you have a good lawyer to represent you before you sign any papers. Yikes. The CFO (according to the movie anyway) gets SCREWED hard!
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an interesting TC article about FB value and the FB future:
techcrunch.com/2010/10/02/facebook-bigger-google/
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“You are not FB’s customer. You are its inventory — you are the product that FB is selling”
Source:
@Sticky_Mommy RT @rmack: RT @smpl5: “You are not FB’s customer. You are its inventory — you are the product that FB is selling” #tprc
“You are not FB’s customer. You are its inventory — you are the product that FB is selling”
unfortunately, nearly ALL free and non-free Web services “sell” their customers in one way or another… FB or Google just have the largest “inventories” of customers to sell… 😐
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“… FB or Google just have the largest “inventories” of customers to sell…”
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OPC – Other People’s Content
As long as people continue to [work for FREE] they will be exploited.
it’s impossible to use services like FB without give them some kind of personal info
the right way to use these services is to AVOID to post/publish/upload TOO personal info and images (like e.g. nude photos)
“it’s impossible to use services like FB without…”
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What goes on in VEGAS stays in Vegas…
The people that visit… ARE the show – Without those people, there is no Vegas.
Those are not .CASINO customers, they are “inventory” being showcased.
They work for free.
What if you created a “social network” of Bots with content generated by computers ?
[LOL I am so bored today I think I will head over to Paris’ for the day]
Put it this way, I use FB all the time, to post pictures from my blackberry to remove them from my phone, and allow others to see them. I also post youtube videos, and they have been watched millions of times. I am a YouTube Partner, and make money on the videos, but for my facebook I can not do the same, cause they do NOT have the same deal there. I wish they did, cause I have uploaded 100’s in not x,000 photos there. If I could earn a revenue share for such photos it would help pay the phone bill. I don’t really want to work for free, but I will keep doing so cause I don’t want all my photos I take to stay in my phone.
“What if you created a “social network” of Bots with content generated by computers ?”
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What if you created a new Top Level Domain and claimed some people own 75,000 domains ?
What if you created some fictional guy, named FRANK. He lives the life in the Cayman Islands and makes $20,000,000 per year!!!
What if FB suckers bought domains in your new TLD… hoping to “be like Frank”?
What if lawyers created fictional disputes between “people” [bots] over FB names?
Are FB users networking with bots ?
“the nearly entire Google’s cash comes from ads!”
Id have to check again but I do not believe that to be entirely true, while it may make up a vast majority of revenue they are still a billion dollar company without it.
i think the facebook cfo actually had the right idea… he had the business mind. but that’s not the direction the founder took. he chose to ignore common sense. the money he’s “earned” has been from investment, initially from the paypal guys. we shall see where this leads…
consider the kid he idolised, the co-founder of napster. what happened to him? what happened to napster?
sure, they’ll be all right even if they ignore common sense, they’ll still make some coin, but i think kids like them willl never be “legitimate” in business- because of their attitude and behaviour when it’s time to be serious. and yet they’ll try to pretend they are legitimate.
i think that’s a little different from gates and the others who went on to lead the mainstream companies we know so well. gates, like many of them, and like zuckerberg, was socially inept, but that earlier generation still got serious when it came time to make money.
nothing wrong with starting a business as a kid, but if you’re gonna go mainstream, you have to play with adults. and i’m wondering if zuckerberg is mature enough to play. gates saw the potential of software in business applicatons when he started microsoft. that easily translates to revenues. what potential did zuckerberg see when he started facebook? a sociology experiment? and how does it translate to revenues? that film is somewhat fictional but i think it’s illuminating.
we’ll see… he’s got time to grow up still…