Is there life after ads for St Zuck? As we reported today, the third-largest advertiser in the United States says it's going to stop advertising on Facebook, citing lack of engagement. General Motors is taking the $10m it spunks on Facebook ads somewhere else. This is a tiny proportion of GM's $1.1bn annual advertising budget, but it's hardly a vote of confidence …
they have just bought instagram for 1bn
so do the baord of FB atually have the compentacy to expand and grow fb into something worth anything?
either way, im planning on starting numerous web services and touting myself to the board. i may get lucky and get a slice of that lovely ipo money!
Facebook is full of self centred unimportant boring people who actually thing their tedious boring lives are of interest to others.
Its full of the look at me arnt I fantastic and wonderful crowd. Personally I find them and Facebook tedious boring and unimportant.
Oh I've already said that.
"1) You've never actually used Facebook. This makes you look a bit weird, frankly."
Or sane
"2) All your friends are tedious, bores. You don't come out of this very well either"
No, only FB users are tedious bores - some of us have friends who, like us, don't use FB.
From you reply it is obvious that your only friends are on FB, and you think everybody should have used it - THAT is weird - and to be honest a bit sad also.
You misunderstand me.
1) I didn't mean that people are weird for not using Facebook (that would raise a sort of hypocrisy paradox), I meant that you're weird if you don't use Facebook but felt you had sufficient experience to make this post anyway.
2) OTOH, if you have used Facebook, and this was your experience of it, then you've just stated that all your friends are bores. I suppose there is an alternative in which you've been flicking through Facebook reading public profiles but that seems such an odd thing to do as be discountable.
I hope this is makes more clear.
Quite.
Given that Facebook only really gives you visibility of people you already know well enough to connect to, any blanket statement about:
"The people on facebook are all _____ "
is really
"The people I know on facebook are all ______"
Which boils down to:
"My friends and acquaintances are all ______"
So you should probably think a little harder about what you're really saying. Or ... you know, get new friends.
I whole heartedly agree.
The cracks are showing up at a inconvinent time for Facebook, and Zuck knows this that's why the IPO is happening now so he is still able to cash out before this bubble starts to burst an FB becomes the next Friends reunited, MySpace, Bebo etc.
Also when it does go tit's up Rory on the BBC tech blog might have to find something new to blog about...
Personally, I don't understand the negativity about Facebook, it killed friends reunited, myspace, bebo (even most webmail systems now get far less traffic) etc. because it does what the rest do in a cleaner, more integrated way, there is definitely a need/market/customer base for such a thing, Facebook will only go tits up if something comes along that does it better.
Is Facebook massively overvalued? yes, almost certainly, but that's the capitalist system ascribing value to things of no substance, it's just like widgets, packaged mortgage books and other such financial trickery which is the magical stocks, shares and corporations.
Seriously, these "it's cool to diss <popular site>" and "if I don't like it then it shouldn't exist" bandwagons are really getting old. How childish can you possibly be to suggest that anything you don't want to use should cease to exist? Especially ironic/pathetic when the same people posting such drivel are lambasting the quality of information posted on FB - what my friend's cat did yesterday is FAR less dull than hearing IT geeks continually posting the exact same opinionated dross every 5min. I think the "world would be better" if you grew up and accepted different people like different things. Clearly being able to write your thoughts on a site where the world can see them has gone to your head and made you think your opinions are worth sharing.
They're not.
"Clearly being able to write your thoughts on a site where the world can see them has gone to your head and made you think your opinions are worth sharing.
They're not."
But, But, But that's the criticism the "you're not allowed to have it because I don't like it" crowd are levelling against facebook... this is some kind of infinitely recursive argument loop ... arrrggh.
But I agree with your POV, FWIW. The endless repetition of vacuous over-simplification and sweeping generalisations about stuff that is completely subjective is hugely tedious. In the case of FB, I suspect the nay-sayers are motivated by jealousy - of the money its originators are shortly going to make, of the tech kudos earned by those that work there and of the simple pleasure felt by the people who use it unashamedly because they enjoy doing so.
It seems that Facebook is fundamentally opposed to the interests of the user... I just don't see what it is that they do to add value, other than provide a infrastructure. The cost of developing and maintaining said infrastructure is tiny compared to FB's supposed value, and if each FB user were to chip in a quid the developers of alternative system could be handsomely rewarded (per hour) and the remainder go to charity. It is only the users and the information that users have voluntarily given FB that gives it any financial value at all.
The idea that FB might make money out of telephony (when the user would want mobile network operators to act as 'dumb pipes' and Arthur C Clarke's dream of almost free -as in beer- worldwide communication to become reality) is almost offensive.
@AC > 'Facebook is full of self centred unimportant boring people'
WTF? Amongst my friends and acquaintances self-centred people are the minority, but any healthy (real-life) social group contains a variety of souls. Unimportant? If your real-life friends who are on FB are unimportant to you, then you have some hard thinking to do. Some people might use FB to post their pettiest thoughts, some just use it (as I do) as a messaging system.
I genuinely give all respect to my friends who don't have a FB account, but knocking the average person doesn't make you cool.
All Facebook is interested in is making money off the private data provided willingly or otherwise by its users. They don't have the users interest at heart at all and will continue to take liberties with privacy to squeeze every last penny out of them.
The sooner a proper user-centric privacy oriented social media infrastructure is established the better.
Hopefully the vampiric and intrusive "services" like facebook will soon be a thing of the past.
All credit to the creators though, for exploiting the moment and making their fortune.
"The sooner a proper user-centric privacy oriented social media infrastructure is established the better."
Who is going to pay for it? The masses want stuff "Free" (for a given value of their souls!)
Facebook is a company, users are the product, if people really understood that (or even cared to some great extent) then facebook would be in trouble. The reason these things gain critical mass is because they are free and everyone uses them without realising they are the product.
"Who is going to pay for it? The masses want stuff "Free" "
There are people who create an maintain complex code for free several of my PCs run entirely on free software.
I'm keeping an eye on the freedombox foundation and have my dreamplug ready and waiting. It may be years before something comes along that free, secure and gains critical mass, but the world is not entirely devoid of skilled and dedicated people working towards that end. Likewise the number of people who are finally "getting" what the likes of facebook are about and are disengaging from them, is growing all the time.
FB worth a 100 Billion, I'd like to see a break down of how that figures worked out, Assets?, property rights? produced goods? or is it because they have access to 1 billion users for adverts only?
If lady Gaga wanted to could she sell advert space on yer wacky outfits for 100 billion and they would probably get more coverage than FB.
Although I do like the modern day economics of producing nothing and getting paid Billions, genius.
He comes across as a proper nerd, not really interested in the money that much. He could have sold FB for $billions in the past.
So what is his ambition? Does he really want to unite the world under FB or what? Is he wanting FB to make money, or sticking ads in reluctantly as a way to generate money so the site can survive?
Are there answers to these questions out there or only speculation?
Facebook seems to be slowly dieing. The last 6 months or so I have noticed a lot less use of Facebook by my 'friends'. There used to be a constant stream of regular crap in the news feed, now, there is a lot less. It's not being used like it used too. People are jumping ship to Twitter* and similar places Tweeting shite every two minutes it seems (why the fuck can't some people go 2 minutes without Tweeting random shit?).
My opinion is purely based on what I see on my Facebook, but these things seem to trend amongst the general populous so I can't imagine I am the only once noticing it.
* I am fed up of explaining to people that Twitter and Facebook are not the same thing, and really are intended for different uses. Very few people use Twitter how it was regularly intended it seems - again based upon what I see, anyway.
Anyway, so it should hardly be surprising really that their ad revenue is falling, right?
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