Facebook preps for public showtime with $100bn price tag

It's difficult not to mention Google in the same breath as Facebook these days – and that's especially true when one considers the initial public offering the dominant social network is reportedly planning later this week. According to Bloomberg, which cites two anonymous sources familiar with the plans, Facebook's much- …

[Jemma]

Oh, the irony

Oh goodie!!

Not only are they stealing and scarfing your personal information, and ignoring your privacy, and generally being as morally reprehensible and bankrupt as is possible outside the Sudanese government - they're making millions on it.

Or

stealing Gigabytes of personal data - Free

Selling Gigabytes of personal data - $millions

Selling shares based on theft from your own victims - PRICELESS

For everything else, theres PRIVACY*...

* remember this word, because it'll soon be critically endangered. Your grandkids seeing privacy will be like your kids curling up with a white tiger.

[Danny 14]

obvious really

STOP FUCKING USING IT THEN. Easy really.

[JDX]

Worth a punt?

LinkedIn and Groupon both saw big initial jumps in prices, IIRC... I wouldn't want to buy FB shares long term but I wonder about buying them just to sell after a couple of days.

[Dazed and Confused]

Maybe...

Apple should buy them, they'd be able to just offer cash.

[Ian Rogers]

50 bucks per eye

$100 per user!!

This is either a lastminute.com moment (which will be very funny) or a sad bubble moment...

[Gary F]

Very dubious

1) It's just a web site and a (long) fad. It will be over in a few years when something better arrives.

2) I'm sure they count "users" as accounts that haven't been closed. e.g. my mum set up an account a year ago to see what the fuss was about and hasn't logged in since.

3) $100bn is stupid money for something that doesn't have a fraction of that in assets or revenue.

4) It's a bubble and many people will get their fingers burnt (again).

5) Maybe I'm a little green because I came up with a similar idea years earlier in 1998 but decided I couldn't afford to risk the £20K start-up cost for the servers at launch. My second most regrettable decision ever!

[Neill Mitchell]

@Gary F

Was your most regrettable decision the one about posting 140 character text messages (let's call them tweets) out to the world? :)

[Danny 14]

No, it was when he turned down a proposal from madonna in high school. He called her a swamp sucking hag.

[Gary F]

@Neil

Haha, no. :-) I don't like Twitter and wouldn't have thought of something that can get as chaotic as that.

[NoneSuch]

If anyone wonders why the economy is is such dire straights, read this article.

100 Billion for a collection of LOL's, smiley faces and Mafia Wars high scores? Right.

My coat is the one with the disbelief in the pocket.

[Admiral Ackbar]

It's a trap!

And I'm quite the specialist...

[Anonymous Coward]

Goldman Sachs Pump and Dump Scam

You have been warned!

[Zog The Undeniable]

A fool and his money

I'm not on FB, so I really don't care what happens to it, but this does sound like silly money. How is FB going to seriously monetise all those users without annoying them so that they leave? My wife uses it and says she doesn't even look at the adverts. Their profits and revenues are tiny compared with $100bn.

What does annoy me is the increasing number of other websites that want you to sign in using Facebook. It's like the Microshaft Passport all over again, and where is that now?

Good luck to the stags though; I don't think ANY Web 2.0 share is a long-term hold.

[John Smith 19]

Once again it's that old Price/Earnings ratio

Which begs 2 questions.

1) What *are* its earnings? Not its income, the profit after taxes and interest has been paid that it *could* dish out to the "investors" taking advantage of this offer.

2) How much further can it *grow*? IE How close to saturation is North America? Europe? And of course the biggies, China and India.

A P/E of for example 200 (2 *centuries to get back your investment at *present* earnings) *could* be justified if their market share cold grow a hell of a lot EG 10x. Hence the question is there still 90% of the market untapped?

Both India and China may have strong local competitors which people elsewhere do not really know about.

I'm nowhere convinced this is going to be the money spinner some people think it is. I suspect the long term winners will be the "buy early, sell fast" brigade. When that "I-own-a-piece-of-Facebook" glow wears off I thing people will realize FB has to grow *lots* (while at least retaining its revenue per account) or they are holding an overpriced lemon.

Icon would be sucking that lemon.

[Yag]

When life gives you lemons...

sell them as an IPO.

[PyLETS]

What next ? The next Geocities web 2.0 fad IPO ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeoCities :

Gives me that Deja Vu feeling.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeoCities

"In January 1999, near the peak of the dot-com bubble, GeoCities was purchased by Yahoo! for $3.57 billion in stock"

"In late June 2009, Yahoo! updated the GeoCities home page to indicate: "GeoCities is closing on October 26, 2009."[2] On that day, files on GeoCities servers became inaccessible"

So what might come next after Facebook for social networking ? How about a protocol you can run on your own server, a box you can buy for $20 and plug into your broadband router, and which you will federate only with those you have reason to trust as having some respect for the data protection of your users. ? Bet I'll be able to do a lot more social networking on such a platform than I'll ever be able to do on Farcebook.

[Estariel]

How do you monetise Facebook?

At last an answer to the tricky question of how to monetise Facebook.

IPO, cash out, run.....

My guess is that FB is already at around its max usage ever.

P.S. A thought for the "If you dont like FB, dont use it" brigade.....

Just because you are not on FB, doesn't prevent your "friends" posting pictures of you, or quoting you, or generally adding your personal information to the stalkerbase. And if you are not on FB, then you cannot see what others have posted about you. Insidious isnt it? You kind of have to be there, even if its just to moderate what others put there.