What that I hear
Pop op op op op op op op
Facebook has reportedly raised the price range on its IPO shares from the $28-$35 range to $34-$38 each, as the growing interest of investors has boosted the valuation of the firm to up to an eye-watering $104bn. By the end of last week, reports abounded that the initial public offering was oversubscribed, and the demand for …
Companies do IPOs for 4 reasons:
1)To raise capital for investment and expansion (traditional - build new factories, etc)
2)To reward it's owners for building a successful company (Google, Microsoft, Apple)
3)To grab the cash before people realise they're in trouble (think Ocado...)
4)Because they have no choice but to do so for regulatory reasons (that'd be Facebook)
Basically, Facebook has over 500 shareholders (not shares, but people who hold Facebook shares). Once you breach the 500 shareholder limit SEC starts putting pressure on the company to float and allow its shareholders to trade their shares on the market..
It's 6 (2+4). MZ and co get so many shares, they'll have to keep a good wadge of them for regulatory reasons, but given the inevitable jump when trading opens they can sell a sufficiently large number of shares to get some *real* cash and stick it in the (offshore) bank so that when the shares you're obliged to keep become rather less valuable you're still filthy rich.
Original? Of course not. But well tested :)
... must come down.
Sooner or later someone's going to ask the embarrassing question: what's their intrinsic value? That can only be quantified by the amount of living, typing product they have available - the number of actual people who use the site regularly. Unlike Google, which doesn't have "users" in the conventional sense: people who have created an account and visit the site frequently, FB is dependent on the number of people who actively partake of the site and receive their advertisements. It doesn't take much (ref: every other social website that's floated) to realise that users are a fickle bunch. Just because a site is popular, now, with todays generation of teenage web users, that doesn't mean that todays 8 year-olds will necessarily want to use such an "old" technology in 5 or 6 years time. If that does come to pass, then the shelf-life of FB and its stock value could be about as perishable as a piece of fish.
And, here's why:
FACEBOOK DOES ****NOT***** VALUE YOUR PRIVACY IN THIS REGARD: When users are on facebook in the public, such as in an elevator or on a train or on a bus, all a snoop needs to do is glance long enough at the handset or tablet to find out enough information to begin stalking or investigating someone. I have, in the past, commented about this and maybe even asked facebook to FIX THIS by allowing users to substitute monikers for the real names. This is NOT a patent-worthy item since databases allow users to use aliases for long or confusing names. FACEBOOK! If you CARE, you will once and for all ACT ON THIS!
I could be mistaken somewhere, but i do NOT think so.
Wall Street needs to take fbs ass to task on this, and NOW!
Of course, there'll be pressure from SOMEwhere to just leave the names as they are: visible, vulnerable.
Why cannot facebook just truncate it to the initials? I can do this in Lotus Approach, and others can do it in spreadsheets or other databases. It can be as simple as using aliases, if-then statements, or user-populated grid tables in their privacy settings. The user should even be able to blank out the name and to use substitute photos or to use standard face-replacing widgets.