Are ther no nice guys with lots of cash?
This seems like a game of leap-twat.
Zuckerberg leapfrogs Jobs on Americans' rich list
Facebook boydroid Mark Zuckerberg has more pennies in his piggy bank than Apple boss Steve Jobs, according to the latest Forbes rich list. According to Forbes 2010 rich list of the wealthiest Americans, 26-year-old Zuckerberg now has a net worth of $6.9bn. Of which $4bn was added to his personal treasury this year, pushing him …
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Thursday 23rd September 2010 19:29 GMT Chris Miller
What about #1 & #2?
You may not like the way Bill Gates made his billions, but with his decision to give away the vast bulk of his fortune (and devote considerable amounts of his time to ensuring it's spent effectively) as well as persuading his pal Warren Buffett to follow suite, he's almost certainly done more good for more people than all the assorted commentards on ElReg.
Makes him a good guy in my book - certainly better than those who spunk it away on MiGs, ocean-going yachts and Japanese-style mansions.
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Monday 27th September 2010 11:30 GMT Paul 129
@Chris Miller
Where did he get his money?
If the money was earned fairly I would have less of an issue. With the number of other businesses MS has cheated, ripped off, and locked out, well we have all had to pay more for less. Governments reduce the services they provide, healthcare, public transport etc and increase taxes, whilst other businesses simply charge more to the end consumer.
We would all be better off if there MS played fair, but they havn't. Even knowing you may not use a single bit of MS software, you are still paying for their state sanctioned criminal activities.
SUCKER!
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Friday 24th September 2010 08:19 GMT Mark 65
Valuations
Yep, it's the same old shit and always happens with illiquid assets - your superannuation/pension fund will be doing the same thing. Some assets get an independent valuation based on cashflows/profits and/or similar sales of like assets (direct property such as office blocks or shopping malls) and shit like this gets valued by the last buy-in.
So if some prick buys 1% of Facebook for $1bn then they say it's worth $100bn. It's utter shit, but that's what happens.
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Thursday 23rd September 2010 19:28 GMT Restricted Access
Animals have money too...
The World's Ten Richest Pets are as follows:
10. Brownie, cat, $4.1 million
9. Hellcat, cat, $4.1 million
8. Pepe Le Pew, cat, $6.2 million
7. Ani, cat, $6.2 million
6. Frankie, dog, $6.2 million
5. Gigoo, chicken, $10 million
4. Trouble, dog $12 million
3. Tobey Rimes, dog, $92 million
2. Kalu the chimp, $109 million
1. Gunther IV, dog, $372 million
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Thursday 23rd September 2010 17:13 GMT Anonymous Coward
Yes, but who is the one that actually produces anything worthwhile?
I don't like Steve Jobs public persona very much. Don't know a thing about the guy personally. I think Apple make a very fine operating system and they have a willingness to push technology forward. If they fail, they'll keep trying. I don't own any Apple products, though, and haven't in years. I am not sure whether this is sadly or not, as I enjoy what I do use just fine. What I'm saying is, Steve Jobs runs a company that is responsible for releasing extremely useful products, in a very real and tangible sense. Sure, they've made some setbacks, but all companies led by draconian figureheads do - it's also why they're worth billions of dollars. This despite the fact that their stock is grossly overvalued and their market capitalization grossly overestimated. In the end, a fantastic company led by a guy who shouldn't really be allowed to interact with the public unless he's on the short end of PR's leash.
On the other hand, Mark Zuckerberg is worth $6.9 theoretical internet dollars. Money earned by stealing someone else's ideas and turning it into a company that COULD, MAYBE make money SOMEDAY, by DUPING half a billion idiots into turning themselves into ADVERTISING CONTENT. It is quite possibly the greatest sell of the last decade, as Zuck has managed to trick nearly a tenth of the world's population (just over a third of the internet using populace, right?) into using and thousands of programmers into developing for a product made by a company which produces absolutely fuckall. Not only that, but he's managed to trick investors out of billions upon billions of dollars simply because they're either naive, stupid twats or hoping to get lucky off the one internet payday and Zuck's more than willing to help them part with their money. The guy's probably not all that smart and he's definitely more than a little lucky, but he (or, at least, the people he's surrounded himself with) knows what it takes to make money (this is far different than succeeding, mind you) in Web 2.0. Lastly, he's a god awful and insufferable jackass that is probably doing far more harm than he is good at this point to his own company and should probably be stuffed in a hole and not let back out until he learns that he's only popular (and, thereby, rich) until the next best thing comes along and insulting everybody from the investors to the userbase is not the best way to ingratiate yourself to an extremely fickle audience.
Now, with all that having been said, Steve Jobs has long since made his mark on the world. You could probably blame his ego for the fact that he hasn't, and likely won't until he's dead, stop, but I'm willing to bet he's got one or two more iPods or iPhones up his sleeve (cue teeth gnashing and grimaces). Had he stopped when he was ejected from Apple he'd still be remembered fondly - maybe even have a BBC special made about him. The fact that he came back and not only turned the company around but made it far more successful (real or imaginary, you choose) than any of its competitors has cemented his place in history.
Mark Zuckerberg has only been around long enough to prove that he knows how to manipulate what is quite possibly the most easily manipulated of all bubbles in this country. When it - and with it Facebook - goes pop, Zuck won't be anymore memorable than Tom Anderson or Jonathan Abrams. He'll be even less memorable should Facebook find itself playing catchup to a competitor (like Myspace is now) or, what I hope is far, far more likely, the vast internet using populace together grow out of the social network novelty. In the end, when your product is merely a platform or vehicle for advertising, and not really a product at all, odds are you'll face failure far sooner than you'd like.
Money can buy a lot of things, but one thing it can't buy is a legacy. Hope your billions comfort you, Zuck, because all your supposed friends won't (do you actually think you've made any REAL ones since Harvard?). At least, they won't any farther than the short reach to your wallet, bitch.
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Friday 24th September 2010 08:20 GMT Mark 65
Investors
For those that got in early it's like buying a call option with no expiry - it won't have cost them that much compared to what future investors may need to pay for a similar stake and it could either make them very rich or expire worthless. For venture capitalists you can bet there's big tax breaks on the sunken funds.
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Friday 24th September 2010 13:27 GMT Ted Dannington
Oh Noes A Comedy Title
This is not a bubble. This is how life as we know it is going to continue. Nobody is going to do to Facebook what Facebook "did" to MySpace because the people now using Facebook and giving it the bigger status were never using MySpace in the first place. They have a platform which works for them, and aren't jumpship sorts, always looknig for what's next. They are everyday tech-un-savvy sorts. Unless Facebook does something to turn its audience off, its audience will stay there indefinitely. The in-crown and focus of attention may shift to some bright new darlings but Facebook is the defacto social network for your average normo.
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Friday 24th September 2010 08:16 GMT Anonymous Coward
Ummm
"private equity firms valued Facebook at around $23bn"
!=
"pennies in his piggy bank"
For me a rich person is someone with loads of physical cash (either in a too-big-to-fail bank or stuffed in a very large mattress) - i.e. as liquid as you can get.
The fact that all of these peoples worth swing around like yoyo's JUST with the market says it all. It's not 'real' until you cash out.
And if you do want to cash out? For these big players with monolithic holdings (e.g. Zuckerberg) trying to offload that holding will be a significant market event, and you won't actually get back what it was 'worth', as supply will temporarily match or beat demand, and the market will see such a withdrawal as a sign of lack of confidence in the company, and thus beat the stock down etc.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
