FaceBook now 'worth' 50 billion dollars.....???
FaceBook now 'worth' 50 billion dollars.....???
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Discussion

Corsair7

Original Poster:

20,911 posts

277 months

Tuesday 4th January 2011
quotequote all
New investment levels in FaceBook now values the company at $50 billion. Can anyone explain why this is? They dont even have many adverts on their pages. I fail to see where their income revenue leads to a valuation of $50 billion. I know its not a listed company, therefore not on the stockmarket, but why does anyone think this company has such value?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12106652


oooops title typo


Edited by Corsair7 on Tuesday 4th January 12:43

theaxe

3,571 posts

252 months

Tuesday 4th January 2011
quotequote all
No idea, social network sites are the definition of boom and bust. Give it 3 years before the next new and shiny site comes along and FB collapses.

anonymous-user

84 months

Tuesday 4th January 2011
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There's a Zucker born every minute.........

Halb

53,012 posts

213 months

Tuesday 4th January 2011
quotequote all
theaxe said:
No idea, social network sites are the definition of boom and bust. Give it 3 years before the next new and shiny site comes along and FB collapses.
Will it? I doubt it, fb has now entrenched itself more than any other, even mychav falls a long way behind in this country, though it was more popular in the US last time I looked AIR.

judas

6,241 posts

289 months

Tuesday 4th January 2011
quotequote all
Much of the 'value' lies in the sheer volume of users and the data this generates for interested parties.

EDLT

15,421 posts

236 months

Tuesday 4th January 2011
quotequote all
Halb said:
theaxe said:
No idea, social network sites are the definition of boom and bust. Give it 3 years before the next new and shiny site comes along and FB collapses.
Will it? I doubt it, fb has now entrenched itself more than any other, even mychav falls a long way behind in this country, though it was more popular in the US last time I looked AIR.
It wasn't so long ago that Friendsreunited.com was massive, Facebook/Myspace killed it. The next big thing will kill them off too.

theaxe

3,571 posts

252 months

Tuesday 4th January 2011
quotequote all
See this article for the phases that FB will pass through. Geocities, Bebo, MySpace, Friends Reunited all went through it.

Article said:
1) Seeding - people, dissatisfied with a given networking site, create a new "space" designed for targeting a specific niche community.

2) The pioneers arrive into the new space, often brought in by a friend of a friend.

3) This process continues until resource pressures reach a critical point, at which point the space has to start acting more like a business (which in turn imposes an overhead which requires more people to feed the mill).

4) The site experiences rapid growth, but at the expense of losing the sense of community that had brought the early adopters in. At this stage, seeders and pioneers begin to defect to other sites.

5) The site can continue as in #4 for some time, but as it does, it begins to seek ever more intrusive forms of renumeration (taxes or advertising) on the members. This attracts outside money, which of course is seeking its own replication.

5a) Many social networking companies are typically bought out at this point, often by companies that have SN sites that are at #6 and are hoping to "revitalize" their offerings. The fresh infusion of capital usually sustains an SN site for a while, but it won't make it any younger.

6) The site decays, and human beings are replaced by virids - spam, bots, and so forth. Advertising revenue drops, slowly at first, but picking up the tempo as the virid rates rise.

7) The site eventually dies, suffocated in its own waste. Its brand name becomes toxic. The company built around the site in turn usually morphs into some form of services company, often of a fairly dubious nature (such as creating virids).
FB is now around stages 4 and 5.

Edited by theaxe on Tuesday 4th January 12:50

Halb

53,012 posts

213 months

Tuesday 4th January 2011
quotequote all
EDLT said:
Halb said:
theaxe said:
No idea, social network sites are the definition of boom and bust. Give it 3 years before the next new and shiny site comes along and FB collapses.
Will it? I doubt it, fb has now entrenched itself more than any other, even mychav falls a long way behind in this country, though it was more popular in the US last time I looked AIR.
It wasn't so long ago that Friendsreunited.com was massive, Facebook/Myspace killed it. The next big thing will kill them off too.
Freidnreunited didn't tie in with evetything else though (I think, never used it), fb like a spiders web links to the rest of the net, esp google and the others have now caught up so that you can read something and instantly 'like ' it on fb.

Corsair7

Original Poster:

20,911 posts

277 months

Tuesday 4th January 2011
quotequote all
theaxe said:
See this article for the phases that FB will pass through. Geocities, Bebo, MySpace, Friends Reunited all went through it.

Article said:
1) Seeding - people, dissatisfied with a given networking site, create a new "space" designed for targeting a specific niche community.

2) The pioneers arrive into the new space, often brought in by a friend of a friend.

3) This process continues until resource pressures reach a critical point, at which point the space has to start acting more like a business (which in turn imposes an overhead which requires more people to feed the mill).

4) The site experiences rapid growth, but at the expense of losing the sense of community that had brought the early adopters in. At this stage, seeders and pioneers begin to defect to other sites.

5) The site can continue as in #4 for some time, but as it does, it begins to seek ever more intrusive forms of renumeration (taxes or advertising) on the members. This attracts outside money, which of course is seeking its own replication.

5a) Many social networking companies are typically bought out at this point, often by companies that have SN sites that are at #6 and are hoping to "revitalize" their offerings. The fresh infusion of capital usually sustains an SN site for a while, but it won't make it any younger.

6) The site decays, and human beings are replaced by virids - spam, bots, and so forth. Advertising revenue drops, slowly at first, but picking up the tempo as the virid rates rise.

7) The site eventually dies, suffocated in its own waste. Its brand name becomes toxic. The company built around the site in turn usually morphs into some form of services company, often of a fairly dubious nature (such as creating virids).
FB is now around stages 4 and 5.

Edited by theaxe on Tuesday 4th January 12:50
Sounds like PistonHeads is somewhere around 5/6.... smile

anonymous-user

84 months

Tuesday 4th January 2011
quotequote all
Corsair7 said:
Sounds like PistonHeads is somewhere around 5/6.... smile
That's what I thought.

Pints

18,451 posts

224 months

Tuesday 4th January 2011
quotequote all
el stovey said:
Corsair7 said:
Sounds like PistonHeads is somewhere around 5/6.... smile
That's what I thought.
But PistonHeads have been around a damn site longer than FB. wink

fido

18,918 posts

285 months

Tuesday 4th January 2011
quotequote all
Halb said:
Freidnreunited didn't tie in with evetything else though (I think, never used it), fb like a spiders web links to the rest of the net, esp google and the others have now caught up so that you can read something and instantly 'like ' it on fb.
That. I think Google, FB, Microsoft Windows will take some trumping. FriendsReunited was fatally flawed in the assumption that you wanted to be Friends with someone from school! Facebook is incredibly generic and as long as they stick to that formula they will be around for a long time. Famous last words i know. The closest thing is Twitter but even that is a bit more specialised, so unless someone comes up with a hybrid i.e. ttBook ...

Edited by fido on Tuesday 4th January 13:26

Spiritual_Beggar

4,833 posts

224 months

Tuesday 4th January 2011
quotequote all
Pints said:
el stovey said:
Corsair7 said:
Sounds like PistonHeads is somewhere around 5/6.... smile
That's what I thought.
But PistonHeads have been around a damn site longer than FB. wink
And it's a forum & online magazine...not a social network site.

superkartracer

8,959 posts

252 months

Tuesday 4th January 2011
quotequote all
Pints said:
el stovey said:
Corsair7 said:
Sounds like PistonHeads is somewhere around 5/6.... smile
That's what I thought.
But PistonHeads have been around a damn site longer than FB. wink
Pistonheads does not have over 500 Million users! maybe these days 10,000? and around 500 regulars?

Google/Ebay are still around and i think FB will be here to stay, hence the 50bn tag

FB is a monster

Manee

5,299 posts

223 months

Tuesday 4th January 2011
quotequote all
facebook i think has learnt from bebo etc and not allowed too much customisation

what may bring facebook down is its own success as its own rules clash with privacy laws

personally people dont like their stuff on facebook? avoid it.

the fact so many websites etc have gone a great deal to incorporate FB into its features shows its here to stay.

superkartracer

8,959 posts

252 months

Tuesday 4th January 2011
quotequote all
Setup a biz page on a profile selling tat/service and it's a great way to skim some serious trade, but i guess most people fail to see the potential hence they never get the Lambo..

Even .01% of that amount of traffic is a lot of customers

All good

Edited by superkartracer on Tuesday 4th January 13:47

Chris_w666

22,655 posts

229 months

Tuesday 4th January 2011
quotequote all
I have no idea how to use facebook properly, I am sure that as a marketing tool it has mileage, and that as a way of keeping in touch with people all over the world for free it is fantastic, but I just seem to see vacuous fools using it to tell the world how much they love their kids, or that they are tired.

I am sure it has some value for the former but will always keep people away because the chavs seem to have jumped in first and destroyed it.

Corsair7

Original Poster:

20,911 posts

277 months

Tuesday 4th January 2011
quotequote all
Chris_w666 said:
I have no idea how to use facebook properly, I am sure that as a marketing tool it has mileage, and that as a way of keeping in touch with people all over the world for free it is fantastic, but I just seem to see vacuous fools using it to tell the world how much they love their kids, or that they are tired.

I am sure it has some value for the former but will always keep people away because the chavs seem to have jumped in first and destroyed it.
Agreed. I dont see a valid income stream. I wasnt even aware of adverts. No one pays to use it. A friend of mine promotes her company on it, yet doesnt have to pay even for this service.

So if theres no real income apart from a few adverts (which most people ignore anyway), (income which would be needed to pay wages and provide services) then how come its worth '$50 billion'?

Huge popularity doesnt equate to actual worth.

theaxe

3,571 posts

252 months

Tuesday 4th January 2011
quotequote all
Indeed, soon they'll start charging a fiver a month to use it and people will leave in droves.

turbobloke

117,320 posts

290 months

Tuesday 4th January 2011
quotequote all
Think of a number.