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Facebook Files IPO Prospectus
The most eagerly awaited IPO of the decade has just filed its S-1 statement (link). Some real time observations:
- Symbol: FB
- Proposed maximum aggregate offering price: $5 Billion
- 845 million monthly active users (MAU)
- 483 million daily active users (DAU)
- Users generated on average 2.7 billion Likes and Comments per day in Q4 2011. Er..."liking" is monetizable?
- 100 billion friendships
- 250 million photos uploaded per day
- FB generated $3.7 billion in Revenue in 2011, up from $2 billion in 2010
- FB generated $1 billion in net income in 2011, up from $606 billion in 2010, a 40% growth rate, compared to the 165% growth rate from 2009's $229MM.
- EBIT margin peaked at 52.3% in 2010 ($1MM in EBIT on $2 billion in revenue), has since declined to 47.3% or $1.756Bn on $3.711Bn in Revenue
- $3.9 billion in cash and marketable securities
- Effective January 1, 2013, Mr. Zuckerberg’s annual base salary will be reduced to $1.
- Entities affiliated with Goldman Sachs own 65.9 million Class A shares or 56.3% of total, Zuckerberg owns 36.1% of Class A, and 57.1% of Class B (all pre offering)
- Peaked model? - MAU additions peaked in 2010 when FB added 248MM to a total of 608MM; in 2011 it added 237MM to 845MM
- What happens when Zynga goes: "Revenue from one customer, Zynga, represented 12% of total revenue for the year ended December 31, 2011"
- Some revent valuation data points: In December 2010, we sold an aggregate of 2,398,081 shares of our Class A common stock to DST Global Limited at a purchase price per share of $20.85, for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $50 million.
Mark Zuckerberg's letter:
Facebook was not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission — to make the world more open and connected.
We think it’s important that everyone who invests in Facebook understands what this mission means to us, how we make decisions and why we do the things we do. I will try to outline our approach in this letter.
At Facebook, we’re inspired by technologies that have revolutionized how people spread and consume information. We often talk about inventions like the printing press and the television — by simply making communication more efficient, they led to a complete transformation of many important parts of society. They gave more people a voice. They encouraged progress. They changed the way society was organized. They brought us closer together.
Today, our society has reached another tipping point. We live at a moment when the majority of people in the world have access to the internet or mobile phones — the raw tools necessary to start sharing what they’re thinking, feeling and doing with whomever they want. Facebook aspires to build the services that give people the power to share and help them once again transform many of our core institutions and industries.
There is a huge need and a huge opportunity to get everyone in the world connected, to give everyone a voice and to help transform society for the future. The scale of the technology and infrastructure that must be built is unprecedented, and we believe this is the most important problem we can focus on.
We hope to strengthen how people relate to each other.
Even if our mission sounds big, it starts small — with the relationship between two people.
Personal relationships are the fundamental unit of our society. Relationships are how we discover new ideas, understand our world and ultimately derive long-term happiness.
At Facebook, we build tools to help people connect with the people they want and share what they want, and by doing this we are extending people’s capacity to build and maintain relationships.
People sharing more — even if just with their close friends or families — creates a more open culture and leads to a better understanding of the lives and perspectives of others. We believe that this creates a greater number of stronger relationships between people, and that it helps people get exposed to a greater number of diverse perspectives.
By helping people form these connections, we hope to rewire the way people spread and consume information. We think the world’s information infrastructure should resemble the social graph — a network built from the bottom up or peer-to-peer, rather than the monolithic, top-down structure that has existed to date. We also believe that giving people control over what they share is a fundamental principle of this rewiring.
We have already helped more than 800 million people map out more than 100 billion connections so far, and our goal is to help this rewiring accelerate.
We hope to improve how people connect to businesses and the economy.
We think a more open and connected world will help create a stronger economy with more authentic businesses that build better products and services.
As people share more, they have access to more opinions from the people they trust about the products and services they use. This makes it easier to discover the best products and improve the quality and efficiency of their lives.
One result of making it easier to find better products is that businesses will be rewarded for building better products — ones that are personalized and designed around people. We have found that products that are “social by design” tend to be more engaging than their traditional counterparts, and we look forward to seeing more of the world’s products move in this direction.
Our developer platform has already enabled hundreds of thousands of businesses to build higher-quality and more social products. We have seen disruptive new approaches in industries like games, music and news, and we expect to see similar disruption in more industries by new approaches that are social by design.
In addition to building better products, a more open world will also encourage businesses to engage with their customers directly and authentically. More than four million businesses have Pages on Facebook that they use to have a dialogue with their customers. We expect this trend to grow as well.
We hope to change how people relate to their governments and social institutions.
We believe building tools to help people share can bring a more honest and transparent dialogue around government that could lead to more direct empowerment of people, more accountability for officials and better solutions to some of the biggest problems of our time.
By giving people the power to share, we are starting to see people make their voices heard on a different scale from what has historically been possible. These voices will increase in number and volume. They cannot be ignored. Over time, we expect governments will become more responsive to issues and concerns raised directly by all their people rather than through intermediaries controlled by a select few.
Through this process, we believe that leaders will emerge across all countries who are pro-internet and fight for the rights of their people, including the right to share what they want and the right to access all information that people want to share with them.
Finally, as more of the economy moves towards higher-quality products that are personalized, we also expect to see the emergence of new services that are social by design to address the large worldwide problems we face in job creation, education and health care. We look forward to doing what we can to help this progress.
Our Mission and Our Business
As I said above, Facebook was not originally founded to be a company. We’ve always cared primarily about our social mission, the services we’re building and the people who use them. This is a different approach for a public company to take, so I want to explain why I think it works.
I started off by writing the first version of Facebook myself because it was something I wanted to exist. Since then, most of the ideas and code that have gone into Facebook have come from the great people we’ve attracted to our team.
Most great people care primarily about building and being a part of great things, but they also want to make money. Through the process of building a team — and also building a developer community, advertising market and investor base — I’ve developed a deep appreciation for how building a strong company with a strong economic engine and strong growth can be the best way to align many people to solve important problems.
Simply put: we don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services.
And we think this is a good way to build something. These days I think more and more people want to use services from companies that believe in something beyond simply maximizing profits.
By focusing on our mission and building great services, we believe we will create the most value for our shareholders and partners over the long term — and this in turn will enable us to keep attracting the best people and building more great services. We don’t wake up in the morning with the primary goal of making money, but we understand that the best way to achieve our mission is to build a strong and valuable company.
This is how we think about our IPO as well. We’re going public for our employees and our investors. We made a commitment to them when we gave them equity that we’d work hard to make it worth a lot and make it liquid, and this IPO is fulfilling our commitment. As we become a public company, we’re making a similar commitment to our new investors and we will work just as hard to fulfill it.
The Hacker Way
As part of building a strong company, we work hard at making Facebook the best place for great people to have a big impact on the world and learn from other great people. We have cultivated a unique culture and management approach that we call the Hacker Way.
The word “hacker” has an unfairly negative connotation from being portrayed in the media as people who break into computers. In reality, hacking just means building something quickly or testing the boundaries of what can be done. Like most things, it can be used for good or bad, but the vast majority of hackers I’ve met tend to be idealistic people who want to have a positive impact on the world.
The Hacker Way is an approach to building that involves continuous improvement and iteration. Hackers believe that something can always be better, and that nothing is ever complete. They just have to go fix it — often in the face of people who say it’s impossible or are content with the status quo.
Hackers try to build the best services over the long term by quickly releasing and learning from smaller iterations rather than trying to get everything right all at once. To support this, we have built a testing framework that at any given time can try out thousands of versions of Facebook. We have the words “Done is better than perfect” painted on our walls to remind ourselves to always keep shipping.
Hacking is also an inherently hands-on and active discipline. Instead of debating for days whether a new idea is possible or what the best way to build something is, hackers would rather just prototype something and see what works. There’s a hacker mantra that you’ll hear a lot around Facebook offices: “Code wins arguments.”
Hacker culture is also extremely open and meritocratic. Hackers believe that the best idea and implementation should always win — not the person who is best at lobbying for an idea or the person who manages the most people.
To encourage this approach, every few months we have a hackathon, where everyone builds prototypes for new ideas they have. At the end, the whole team gets together and looks at everything that has been built. Many of our most successful products came out of hackathons, including Timeline, chat, video, our mobile development framework and some of our most important infrastructure like the HipHop compiler.
To make sure all our engineers share this approach, we require all new engineers — even managers whose primary job will not be to write code — to go through a program called Bootcamp where they learn our codebase, our tools and our approach. There are a lot of folks in the industry who manage engineers and don’t want to code themselves, but the type of hands-on people we’re looking for are willing and able to go through Bootcamp.
The examples above all relate to engineering, but we have distilled these principles into five core values for how we run Facebook:
Focus on Impact
If we want to have the biggest impact, the best way to do this is to make sure we always focus on solving the most important problems. It sounds simple, but we think most companies do this poorly and waste a lot of time. We expect everyone at Facebook to be good at finding the biggest problems to work on.
Move Fast
Moving fast enables us to build more things and learn faster. However, as most companies grow, they slow down too much because they’re more afraid of making mistakes than they are of losing opportunities by moving too slowly. We have a saying: “Move fast and break things.” The idea is that if you never break anything, you’re probably not moving fast enough.
Be Bold
Building great things means taking risks. This can be scary and prevents most companies from doing the bold things they should. However, in a world that’s changing so quickly, you’re guaranteed to fail if you don’t take any risks. We have another saying: “The riskiest thing is to take no risks.” We encourage everyone to make bold decisions, even if that means being wrong some of the time.
Be Open
We believe that a more open world is a better world because people with more information can make better decisions and have a greater impact. That goes for running our company as well. We work hard to make sure everyone at Facebook has access to as much information as possible about every part of the company so they can make the best decisions and have the greatest impact.
Build Social Value
Once again, Facebook exists to make the world more open and connected, and not just to build a company. We expect everyone at Facebook to focus every day on how to build real value for the world in everything they do.
Thanks for taking the time to read this letter. We believe that we have an opportunity to have an important impact on the world and build a lasting company in the process. I look forward to building something great together.
Legal Proceedings:
Paul D. Ceglia filed suit against us and Mark Zuckerberg on or about June 30, 2010, in the Supreme Court of the State of New York for the County of Allegheny claiming substantial ownership of our company based on a purported contract between Mr. Ceglia and Mr. Zuckerberg allegedly entered into in April 2003. We removed the case to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York, where the case is now pending. In his first amended complaint, filed on April 11, 2011, Mr. Ceglia revised his claims to include an alleged partnership with Mr. Zuckerberg, he revised his claims for relief to seek a substantial share of Mr. Zuckerberg’s ownership in us, and he included quotations from supposed emails that he claims to have exchanged with Mr. Zuckerberg in 2003 and 2004. On June 2, 2011, we filed a motion for expedited discovery based on evidence we submitted to the court showing that the alleged contract and emails upon which Mr. Ceglia bases his complaint are fraudulent. On July 1, 2011, the court granted our motion and ordered Mr. Ceglia to produce, among other things, all hard copy and electronic versions of the purported contract and emails. On January 10, 2012, the court granted our request for sanctions against Mr. Ceglia for his delay in compliance with that order. We continue to believe that Mr. Ceglia is attempting to perpetrate a fraud on the court and we intend to continue to defend the case vigorously.
The Enforcement Division of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has been conducting an inquiry into secondary transactions involving the sale of private company securities as well as the number of our stockholders of record. In connection with this inquiry, we have received both formal and informal requests for information from the staff of the SEC and we have been fully cooperating with the staff. We have provided all information requested and there are no requests for documents or information that remain outstanding. We believe that we have been in compliance with the provisions of the federal securities laws relating to these matters.
Although the results of claims, lawsuits, government investigations, and proceedings in which we are involved cannot be predicted with certainty, we do not believe that the final outcome of the matters discussed above will have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, or results of operations. However, defending these claims is costly and can impose a significant burden on management and employees, we may receive unfavorable preliminary or interim rulings in the course of litigation, and there can be no assurances that favorable final outcomes will be obtained.
On Goldman's share holdings:
Consists of (i) 14,214,807 shares of Class A common stock held of record by The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.; (ii) 2,598,652 shares of Class A common stock held of record by Goldman Sachs Investment Partners Master Fund, L.P.; (iii) 1,010,587 shares of Class A common stock held of record by Goldman Sachs Investment Partners Private Opportunities Holdings, L.P.; and (iv) 48,123,195 shares of Class A common stock held of record by FBDC Investors Offshore Holdings, L.P. Affiliates of The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. are the general partner, managing general partner or investment manager of each of Goldman Sachs Investment Partners Master Fund, L.P., Goldman Sachs Investment Partners Private Opportunities Holdings, L.P., and FBDC Investors Offshore Holdings, L.P., and each of these funds shares voting and investment power with certain of its respective affiliates. The address of The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., Goldman Sachs Investment Partners Master Fund, L.P., Goldman Sachs Investment Partners Private Opportunities Holdings, L.P., and FBDC Investors Offshore Holdings, L.P. is 200 West Street, New York, NY 10282.
Some valuation data points:
Class A Common Stock Financing
In December 2010, we sold an aggregate of 2,398,081 shares of our Class A common stock to DST Global Limited at a purchase price per share of $20.85, for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $50 million.
Commercial Agreements
During 2009, 2010, and 2011, The Washington Post Company and its related companies purchased $0.6 million, $4.8 million, and $4.2 million, respectively, of advertisements on our website. Mr. Graham, a member of our board of directors, is the Chief Executive Officer of The Washington Post Company. The purchases by The Washington Post Company and its related entities were made in the ordinary course of business on commercially reasonable terms. In addition, The Washington Post Company is affiliated with an advertising agency, Social Code LLC, that has advertising clients that do business with us.
During 2009, 2010, and 2011, Netflix purchased $1.9 million, $1.6 million, and $3.8 million, respectively, of advertisements on our website. Mr. Hastings, a member of our board of directors, is the Chief Executive Officer of Netflix. The purchases by Netflix were made in the ordinary course of business on commercially reasonable terms.
During 2010 and 2011, we made payments to GMG Lifestyle Entertainment Inc. (GMG) of $0.9 million and $0.7 million, respectively, for certain sales and marketing services. Rob Goldberg, the founder and Chief Executive Officer of GMG, is the brother-in-law of Ms. Sandberg, our Chief Operating Officer. The GMG relationship was entered into in the ordinary course of business and on commercially reasonable terms.
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A valuation of roughly 25 times revenue, with growth slowing? What's not to "like?"
Most hyped IPO ever. Why is this worth $100B and OWS worth nothing?
http://strikelawyer.wordpress.com/2012/01/29/occupy-oakland-fall-back-re...
Worth nothing? This is all about stirring up interest in politics for the next election, while operating as a safety-valve to prevent people from moving beyond politics (as they come to recognize its evil nature).
In other words, it's all about keeping people firmly within the political realm of "solutions" by giving them a pretend voice.
Besides, both OWS and FB are psyops serving the elite.
And yet the Facebook film shows how everybody involved in this company--including "Zuck" himself--are sub-moral, sociopathic criminal adolescents.
Zuckerberg, with his eat-shit grin and greasy, curlicue hair, is not fit to lick dog-poo from between the treads of my shoe.
It's a serious goddamn shame that that highly disagreeable 'person' stands to net $28 Billion from this IPO. A human being would be far more deserving of such crazy money.
He stole it from those two krauts. Holocaust payback. Seriously.
America, land of opportunity!
"sub-moral, sociopathic criminal adolescents."
I believe that's a prerequisite on Wall Street.
It is if you want to occupy it.
It was built to accomplish a social mission — to make the world more open and connected.
when can I short it?
Actually, it was created to give unfuckable shut-ins something to do on a Saturday night.
We have already helped more than 800 million people map out more than 100 billion connections so far...
7 out of 8 don't have connections? You might be right.
Quick...where's the f'ing puts on this pig?!?!
Maybe Banzai will grace you with his "Golden Turdball" graph.
It's a classic.
Some math doesn't add up. Shouldn't one entry on line #9 say 'million', and not 'billion'?
To wit:
"FB generated $1 billion in net income in 2011, up from $606 billion in 2010, a 40% growth rate, compared to the 165% growth rate from 2009's $229MM."
If you ask me, 1 billion is not a 40% increase over 606 billion... but that's just me. With all these number crunchers on here, no one else caught this? :)
No...ZH posts are so full of typos we automatically read them correctly first time thru. It's a learned skill.
sew trough
Facebook's doing a 5 billion (sneaky, sneaky...why only 5 billion?) IPO tomorrow!
Yaaaaa-hoooooo!
Facebook sucks now. When I was in college it was kinda' cool because you had to be attending a college recognized by facebook (it was some percentage of top schools, though I can't remember the number) to have an account. It was a relatively simple thing, but now it's just an ad machine with stupid shit like digital farming. I canceled my facebook account long ago. A lot of the people I know have done the same.
Maybe it creates 1,000 millionaires or whatever but from my perspective it turned into the Valero toilet near the San Ysidro crossing. It's cluttered with fake, duplicate or non-active accounts and just nonsense. Don't forget at one point myspace was the cat's meow...when was the last time you heard myspace mentioned in conversation? It's the craigslist of the social media sphere, I suspect facebook follows the same path.
Craigslist rocks dude!
No better place for buying cars None better.
Craigslist is THE market place. Has saved me thousands on good quality merchandise. The "free" stuff section is awesome. One man's trash is another man's treasure. Pickers love Craigslist!
When I was in college, facebook didn't exist...but it was a lot more fun to "poke" girls back then.
Poke this
http://norfolk.craigslist.org/w4m/2826258192.html
She's Spanish like my dick is 3 feet long.
Well, at least she "isn't asking for too much." LOL
As soon as my two kids left University they stopped using it. Their 1000+ friends still count though?
FB (I) is preserving your thoughts and leasing your soul. The shareholders and users will get what they deserve.
Any of the "F_ck Yeah! I'm 300% short!" crowd still left standing?
New lows on TZA, FAZ, TVIX, etc.
My condolences to the "Triple Whammy" bears.
Yea, I went short today
Man it must SUCK to be you.
You come across as a tragically pathetic creature.
Timing, Robo, timing. This bear is still standing proud.
Robotard's among the few not realizing the stock indices are where they were in 1999 in nominal terms (and about 60% lower in real terms), going all yo-yo for 13 years now, wiping out trillions and trillions of investor capital (hello, stop-loss), and that we've been in a secular bear stock market since 1988 with a wicked right shoulder on the chart (and even supported by actual, hard data, economic fundamentals, which are as terrible as they've been since at least 1936).
Robotard's favorite song: Turning Japanese (Nikkei)
My AMZN and CMG shorts worked out quite well, thanks for asking
Be careful what you wish for RoBoBoy!!!
Fighting the Fed is like World War I trench warfare: young, idealistic soldiers attack en masse and a superior technology, the machine gun, mows them down relentlessly and fills the trenches with bodies. Now substitute bearish traders and phalanxes of Epson printers. True, the war will end, and the machine guns will stop, but not until they are out of bullets. Or bodies to mow down.
Think like a criminal, and you'll get better insight into why you should stay out of the obviously rigged game, hoping a huge bear bet will pay off anyday now. Just my opinion.
2008-redux will arrive soon enough for The Bernank.
The 'Bernank Put' has as much credibility as the Alien Autopsy.
If I had a pre-1964 quarter for every time I heard "ya' can't fight the fed..."
Thing is, they control the timing of the ultimate demise, and will profit handsomely from it. Stay out of the middle and seek shelter in the edges. The FB offering is a joke. They don't build anything.
no matter how many negative headlines from this site, market has been up for how long? two months? bears are screwed baby!
cursing the market down is evil!
You're another one of those top/bottom (and ass) pickers.
You were a stock market virgin until you bought in back in 2009, around March, and heavily into Apple, at that point, right?
For the last 17 weeks he has been rooting for that fat new jersey governor. Why bother?
Would have been the money-making move, no? Just sayin' not defendin'
If you've been holding on to any of those over the past 2 months thinking the next collapse is just around the corner, you deserve all the RoboTaunts you get. Just accept it.
Mark Zuckerberg = Candidate for overdue bitch-slapping of the decade.
Wasn't he the Time Person of the Year last year? Does "zuck" have any charisma or is he just a wimpy illusion from some unwritten Philip K. Dick novel?
The few interviews I've seen him do, he comes across like a slimy, vengeful little motherfucker. He seems like the kind of guy you can easily imagine yourself taking great joy in beating the shit out of. Like Bernanke...or Robotrader.
Ideal pogrom: vast crowd of goyim chasing one little naked Zuck through the streets.
And that's putting it nicely. Ohhhh, I could spend hours trying to craft the most insulting & derogatory (and by extension, accurate & true) adjectives to fit him ... but I am left with the feeling that no printed (or spoken) word (in any language I am aware of) would properly do justice to just how truly foul of an entity "Zuck" is. Alas.
Please... Geithner, Summers, Robert Reich, Steve Ratner
Ratner makes the list but I disagree about Reich, although as a dwarf he has his moments. Unless you're saying his anti-Establishment banter is just a cover for his real, pro-TBTF allegiance that he hides rather well. I think he's OK. Ratner is the Keebler elf, we've decided - when we see him on Morning Joe, my wife exclaims, "who's making the cookies!" We imagine he has hairy, Hobbit feet.
Oh, and The Dude Abides.
My dream of a Farmville backed 401k is finally going to come true.
the latin word for 'close your eyes and open your mouth' is prospectus.....
How is this thing having net earnings of 1Billion to start with?? On a P/E ratio if these EPS are true that would be 100 P/E using 100 Billion wisper number ... Hello ???
Look at the other IPOs. Most come to market at their peak. Maximum gain. The trash they leave for us. I can think of one that went ballistic after it came out. GOOG at about 85. Languished for a while and then well, here we are. But that is an exception, most just whither and die on the vine.
But will not short it. Just do not do that anymore....for now.
GM under the offering price for almost 12 months now.
When is ZH going public?
ZH has real value to it. Economics, politics-- a long list of work produced by many authors.
FB will crash as soon as the next gimmick comes along.
Zero Hedge is the stream of consciousness of the enlightened, for the most part (*coughrobotardcough*)
Any wild-ass guesses as to what the initial common stock price might be on the first day of trading?
will depend on conversion rate of dollars to likes by time of ipo
i am thinking $50. Automatic 250% profit for the Squid (like they need it).
Run, Forrest, run!
FUCK FACEBOOK. enough said.
Imagine that 8 years ago a bunch of dorks trying to figure out how to get laid came up with "The Facebook".
Pretty sure given their net worth, getting laid will never be an issue again.
Even with their wealth, they are so obnoxious it's probably still a problem.
Ned dear, don't kid yourself. The female population of whole eastern european countries sell themselves for about 9 zeros less than these dudes are now worth.
Don't underestimate their obnoxiousness, either. I'm sure high numbers of said women would throw themselves at such money -- to find that, after having come into contact with 'Zuck' et al, each woman later sets herself on fire, to cleanse away the 'touches' -- with nary an exception.
I dunno. Verizon and AT&T have less than 200M subs combined; 1/4 the number of Facebook monthly users. You need to add someone like China Mobile with their 600M+ subs to equal the Facebook footprint.
Valuation is rich for sure, but we have never seen anything like Facebook in the history of telecom.
No one ever saw anything like Kodak either at one point. How are they doing?
We had never seen anything like Worldcom in the history of telecom.
Bernie was never in the club, but was good at the game. Well, until they cut him off at the knees, that is.
Zuck, meanwhile... just where did he go to school, again?
Zuck dropped out of -- did not graduate from -- Harvard.
Are you stupid?
Verizon and AT&T have paid subscriptions for SERVICES people NEED and will always PAY for unless they're broke.
Try getting just $12 a year from each FB subscriber and see the community go elsewhere..
FB is NOT important to your daily life. It's convenient for some. It's a good business tool to a few but most importantly IT IS FREE.
Once the exodus happens, the thrill is gone. The "friends" are disappearing to other services.. THE FACE BOOK is toast.
Bullshit, you obviously haven't been familiarized with our latest addition to socialism. Get your FREE phone with FREE minutes
http://www.assurancewireless.com/Public/Welcome.aspx
If you're getting UE, section 8, food stamps, free phone, WIC, you're not doing too badly.
And why this shit doesn't work and will make us bankrupt:
Wealthy couple who live in $1.2m home and drive a Jag have been claiming $2,000-a-month welfare for last eight years
http://lunaticoutpost.com/Topic-Seattle-Millionaire-Couple-Cuaght-Collecting-Welfare-For-the-Last-8-Years
Government is the worst manager of money.
Indeed, I may be stupid. But I've spent my career in wireless, and I can tell you the wireless operators have always been afraid of becoming a "dumb pipe". But their strategies and roll-outs of walled gardens of content ensured that next year was "the year of wireless data" for the better part of a decade.
Apple, Google's Android, and Facebook are precisely how the AT&T's and Verizon's DID NOT want the world to evolve.
Well, Brown maybe I'm not with the times. Maybe a web based "community" tool where people can socialize all day and night long is the cat's meow. I'm still paying for phone lines and cell phones and tried bundles and whatnot. At the end of the day, a paid service is a paid service. Thus we can measure the revenue from subscriptions and look at the cash flow. FB is a gimmick to sell advertisements. Just like so many other sites out there. A very competitive marketplace. I don't think there's growth when corporations are reducing their advertising budget.
What are you talking about? You've got the model backwards. The last thing FB would do would be to charge their content providers for access.
And while lots of people do leave, many others are wholly addicted and would go through serious withdrawal issues without having their virtual life.
For instance, I usually hear about it within seconds when our net connection has dropped.
Too bad facebook can't charge their subs $100+/month like VZ & T.
umm those subs you mentioned PAY... anyone can get free subs.. you do know some people make accounts for their cats right?? and their pipedream basement biz??
Verizon and ATT also have fees coming in from every subscriber.
I could use FB through their services, ( i dont ) but not vica versa.
Edit: had I read on, I might have abstained from making this point for the twentieth time.
Liposuction,
The Face needs it according to Goldman.
What, a friendship is worth only 1 Dollar?
FB will set the market on fire? hahahaha
The internet is a bubble, an ad invested bubble.
Can you say GROUPON???
You mean, the CIA loan-sharking scam?
http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/13/why-groupon-is-poised-for-collapse/
Sometimes, things aren't created to survive long-term, like a bomb, for instance.
Groupon is a classic burnrate beauty.. use it up while the tap still runs
$1 billion in earnings does not make $100 billion valuation
Advertising/media market is very crowded. Recession is coming and ad revenues will go down considerably. You think Greek people can PAY any attention to advertisments? They have a lot of time to be online and search for jobs but they have no money. Greek is just the beginning.
Maybe Schmuck Zuck can bailout the world after the IPO.
I for one don't plan on being Zuck's bag holder.
You are on the money.
The internet/ad market is crowded and a bubble.
Honestly, you need to stop looking at this from a market perspective (not that I'd argue with it, BTW) because it is MOOT.
FB is a tool of future political control. Market logic means nothing when the real goal is enslaving the masses by getting them to spy on themselves. FB may not "earn" money, but I bet they'll NEVER lack it. They'll take it back private first, after fleecing the suckers who still believe there's a market to invest in.
so when there are only fake accounts of people's cats then what?? no one HAS to use it even though a lot of sites only do their comment section with facebook accounts.. so big deal, less people commenting on the web
100% correct. When it started I was amazed how freely people would sign up and share their private lives. Something that you couldn't get out of people if you brought a crowbar. Now they're TRUSTING whatever the heck they're up to to their circle of friends.
Would be interesting to read who funded FB in the first place? The setup and the storage alone costs billions to operate. Is it CIA?
FB=Fucking Bored
IM selling all my gold, buying this for 1 day, sell, then buy back the gold
FB just a group hug where everyone tells each other how fucking awsome everyone is
actually everyone you know & maybe who you don't know will know everything about you. Sure they say only the people you put on your wall, but who really knows?
You think if Mr. Gov or the Rothchilds want to do a "sweep" we're safe??? LOL no way - Goog is partially owned by the gov & so will facebook. I'm not paranoid it just seems like a cool way of violating your privacy ... suprisingly EVERYONE'S ON BOARD!!!
I bet I've seen Google's "We're changing our privacy policy" message at least 200 times in the last week alone.
Why? 'Cuz you've been told, that's why!
Now, just what did I get told?
All your data are belong to us.
I'm waiting for the day it will be considered unpatriotic not to be on Facebook - you are too secretive, don't want to share all your life history with us.....why I think you must be a domestic terrorist......
Actually I've read about two articles now about that very subject, the technically enlightened facebook adopter tells everyone how society is changing to adapt to the web. And it's hinted at the end of the article that it will be construed as anti-social behavior to not immerse oneself into this Web 2.0 nightmare. One just came out and said "People will wonder what you've got to hide."
I guess I'll have to get that life-size cardboard cutout of Dick Van Patten I have in storage and create a facebook profile.
Hey, you're pretty fucking awesome, man. Hug?
My FB valuation: 300,000,000 citizens x 24 hours x 365 days = $2.6 Trillion
Hows this --- FUCK FACEBOOK! I hate what our dumbass brainless society is becoming. Start living life, people. P.S. - I don't care if your eating a fucking hamburger right now either or going to Costco for a new couch? WHO THE FUCK CARES!
According to Facebook, I am Nathan Rothschild, I am in the loanshark business, I work at New Court, St. Swithin's Lane, London, and here is my picture:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/Nathan_Rothschild.jpg
The printing press and television don't spy on their consumers, nor do they sell that information to be used for other purposes well beyond their "mission."
Enough said.
That being said, most TV programming is mindless crap these days, and mainstream print media isn't far behind.
Mindless crap = channel for ads, just like flyers over urinals.
If Facebook put muscle behind strengthening laws concerning digital privacy, data retention, etc. they might have some credibility.
Of course they won't -- it competes with business!!
Textbook short (after the pop).
You're mistaken if you believe that your TV tuner doesn't spy on you. Or that your mail carrier doesn't know about the subversive magazines you subscribe to.
Or you pay $5 a month extra per month (like I do) to DISH to keep the receiver untethered from the mothership.
I love that idea... your TV tuner spying on you. Only a facebook user could be THAT stupid.
Oh, I just realised, they secretly built transmitters into every TV. Bastards!!
How much shit can the kid let out in writing about him and his buddies laughing all the way to the bank, oh sorry "opening communication to the world.... yada yada"?
Attn: Sheeple2012
Must suck to be short CMG.
One of the greatest runs in consumer stock history.
Another all time record high.
http://bigcharts.marketwatch.com/kaavio.Webhost/charts/big.chart?nosetti...
We are heading into one of the most dangerous periods in stock buying in a long time, low volumes, marked up buying, speculation galore, leverage plays galore, tight ranges and dumb ass governments using words/fudged data to juice the market.
We have had four days of warning shots (selling into the close). Mix that with a market gone all optimistic and you have a recipe for a major dump. Short sellers are looking at top ranges now - on everything. Add also the FB float, which will flop and a market top heavy. You go long form here, you'll be fleeced and sent to hell.
Market is over-bought and momo driven...on nothing = pain
Fuckerberg
Oh !dear me ! Everyone I know bar moi and one friend have a FB page! Scary is TOO tame. I cannot come up with a modern day word that describes my total revulsion . any suggestions!
Recockulous?
I still don't see how me uploading a photo I found on the internet of Hitler in a pink uniform is making anyone any money. I don't see how me liking a picture of a woman with her tits out is making anyone any money. I have all of facebooks ad's blocked via "Better Facebook", google Chrome's Ad Block, and a host file on my PC and my Mac's... so they aren't getting any ad revenue from me. I don't play stupid spyware infected games. So, how are they profitable again?
As per my other posts in the thread.
It's not about profit. It's all about creating Big Brother.
(btw, I didn't down-vote you)
All a prospective investor really needs to know:
Should be very attractive to AAPL investors then.
It doesn't get any better than this (from news wires):
The Shanghai Composite closed down 1.07% with banks mostly in the firing line following a newspaper report that new loans growth would come in around CNY750bln much lower than the CNY900bln f'casted. Overnight the 1-yr NDF traded a 6.2750-6.2770 range; last in NY at 6.2730/70. Yesterdays official and unofficial PMI's showed divergence yesterday and did not help sentiment locally. The news that the stats bureau will increase the sample size in the official PMI data dramatically will help the veracity of the official data but also possibly bring it in line with unofficial HSBC release.
Ok, so EZ/US markets are in la la land (rallying on fudgy PMIs, till volatility hits) in the meantime...Asia is short.
I'm gonna pull all my money out of etoys and pets.com and bet it all on FB.
I'll sell my @Home, CDNOW and Boo.com... haven't gotten any dividens lately, time to check up on them
I really don't think most of the people on this site see the direction the new economy is heading. Competition between companies is becoming more fluid, the legacy companies with their bureaucratic structures are going to be left in the dust as younger, networked, flat structure companies emerge, much more nimble and adaptive. Slam Facebook as much as you want, its near-term success is uncertain, but in the long run these are the types of companies that create value, rather than extract it, going forward. As Zuck says, "we dont build services to make money; we make money to build better services." Twitter is similar in this, the goal isn't to maximize profits, but to maximize utility. Monetization is not nearly the most important aspect of the new economy; young people today are more concerned with being recognized for their work than compensated for it. The generation entering the workforce now has grown up networked. We have friends in Italy, Brazil, Hong Kong who we may or may not have met in person, but with whom we share a strong connection. We interact with them 100x more than our next door neighbors, hell they might even become our coworkers! It boggles my mind that you can't see the value in a service like Fb, even God-man Sachs owns it, and I dont think Stolper has rated it a buy yet....
You hit the nail on the head. New economy = we produce nothing and sell insurance to each other. The futures so bright, I've got to wear shades!
Business 101: Build a product to sell. Attract customers to buy your product. Make profits.
Mark and Google model: Offer a free service, lose your privacy. We don't care if you close your account, we have other revenue streams by selling your information to other firms. We get paid regardless. We have unlimited sources who want to know what you liked vs the competitors who want to change your buying behavior.
Another Edward Bernays attempt by a zit faced fuck, who stole the code.
OK, so it is a great service that adds value to your life. Are you willing to pay for it? If so, how much?
Has FB ever even floated the idea of a pay model? No, because they are terrified to find out how many people would bolt if you had to pay for it.
It is an advertising platform, nothing more. The goal is to get as many pageviews as possible; if even .01% of pageviews results in an ad click, they are doing ok.
FB/Google biz model : you are the product, not the customer.
Zuckerturd is going to get Facepalmed. Call it tit for tat.
buy facebook first months...whole FEDFACEBOOK world will collapse if not a succes. so GS + even FED will put a floor on the IPO...
Me: Negative world as from Q1 2013 ..Buying FEDFACEBOOK and stocks now....
Another Zionist Scam.
Fuckerburg.
Watch him around Barry Soetoro. He looks like he can't wait to get a Kenyan dick down his throat.
Facebook/Zuckerberg can sell a lot of useful private information to marketers.
Yeah, I have a facebook page. Not much info there but what is there is fake.
Tyler, How long does it take for the other 95 billion in shares to be accessable to the market. Is there a waiting period for the company insiders and zuckerburg, before they start unloading this piece of garbage on the retail sheep?
Good grief people, lighten up. I use facebook to share photos with close family and friends that are in the lower 48 (I'm in Alaska) and things like sharing Zerohedge articles and Ron Paul stuff. Shit, half the people I know who have gotten informed about Zerohedge and Ron Paul have done so through my facebook posts. It's a useful tool if you choose to use it that way.
As far as the other people who waste their lives away on it, well, they're retards anyway. As far as TPTB getting information on you from it, they will obtain that information one way or another if they really want to, facebook or not.
I for one am confident that they want to, and more so every day.
I agree. However, that is not going to stop me from using one of the many tools available that enable me to share things with people that need educating, people that I would otherwise never have contact with.
and, it's cheaper than skywriting, too!
at 100bb valuation, that would be 25x revs;100x ebidt, slowing growth rate, margin compression, revenue generated fom adv down. Relying on income increases from games like farmville. Hmmm sounds like a no-brainer for an investment. Oh wait, Goldman and affiliates own 56%. Wow....I guess the penny stock companies shouldnt worry now about their pump and dump schemes.
The 99% needs to boycott FB because of all the new millionaires
But then all they'd have left is Twitter.
You can't launch a revolution within 140 characters!
Fishbook is now co opted by the FBI and CIA
The funny thing is, I wouldn't be surprised if this is the one stock, the idiots will buy, because they have an account.
Myspace was huge, until it wasn't. The same will be for facebook. The future is decentralized and owned by the user, not facebook or another competitor. Even then, another competitor can knock them off easily, and in the end, people will easily be able to have control over their own content, relegating Facebook to the dustbin of monetary history.
They screw over their users, are pawns of the authorities, so on and so forth.
They produce nothing.
What are the barriers to entry for a website again? Especially one which creates no content but is about the interplay of individual users.
A few more wrong moves, and facebook will be shunned as the uncaring corporate whore it is. People are already figuring it out. Guess it was now or never to IPO. Too bad Greece couldn't default on the same day.
So many average Joes and Jills about to get fucked over hugely. I won't bet that it won't be up after day one, as this bizarro monetary system has made complete farces of everything, but no way in hell can they find the money to keep it Amazon'ed up....If they can, they'll have to let another one drop by removing support. Only so much fraud to go around. However hundreds of millions of dumbasses to offload stock to does give them a bit of a leg up compared to other tech ipo's.
Facebook is nothing but a (easily imitated) copycat, with wall street and gov't/intelligence support as its competitive advantage. They weren't even the first, yet they act like they are to the internet what AOL thought it was. How important is AOL to the internet today?
Because Facebook isn't really anything tangible, these are the companies that fall the hardest, fastest. I sure hope Average Joe realizes this. Something tells me....no. Surely those selling to them won't mention it.
As everyone else has said, this has the makings of an epic pump and dump. Potentially starting day 1.
Then again it would showcase the idiotic, fraudulent nature of the monetary system as a whole, if a company that did nothing, had the largest market cap. Remember, if we don't end monetarism, monetarism will end you.
Glass-Steagall
I think the FB IPO needs to be looked at in the context of how broken the capital markets have become.
- 20 years ago, VC's were still funding ideas, innovation, creation, and assumed/accepted a large amount of risk for the ability to really assist companies with executing business plans. IPO's were then used to bring in sorely needed capital to finance rapid expansions/growth.
- 7 years ago (plus or minus) VC's had begun to shift their focus towards funding rapid growth and market expansion rather than supporting innovation (this was left largely to the angles). And the IPO became basically a mechanism for owner/investor exits.
- Today, VC's have moved even further away from risk as they only want to fund "guaranteed" growth and have actually executed more founder/owner exits. As for IPOs, well this is now largely a tool to do nothing more than transfer wealth from the insiders (incuding the vulture investment bankers) to the masses via overhyped offerings with companies that are experiencing market saturation, increased competition, compressing margins, and maturing business models. So the insiders hype and dump while the masses eagerly consume over valued shares.
When IPOs are properly utilized with capital being secured to fund new opportunities and rapid growth, then the capital markets are functioning properly. But when the capital markets are used to dumped overvalued assets (in this case, stock), watch out below.
Really, this is no different than the global soverign debt markets as whether it's governments having to manipulate markets so that demand appears present for their crap offerings (e.g., strong arming central banks) or primary dealers promoting how "valuable" these investments are and must be included in your portfolio, in the end, the sheepie always end up taking "in the end". Just another mechanism to transfer wealth from the masses to the few.
Since IPOs are supposed to be about growth, and manic 300 P/E valuations are supposed to be about growth. Where is Facebook's growth going to come from?
Really??? valuing a corporation that brings in $3.7 billion in ad revenue in one year is valued at $100 billion!!! How many corporations are there that destroy Facebook in revenue and profit, yet are valued far less. Could it be that internet stocks are outlandishly overvalued???
Facebook could topple Apple and Exxon in market cap if the shares skyrocket out of the gate. I think someone drank too much Koolaid. Valuing Apple at $450 billion is insane let alone the $600 billion the company will be valued at if the shares go to the even more insane $600 level. I'm sure Zuckerfuck would LOVE to call himself the next Steve Jobs. He probably masturbates to a photo of him every night.
Stock market is bullshit. Facebook at $100 billion should correlate to $1500 Chipotle, $5000 Google. Maybe stocks aren't overvalued at all, why not just let every stock rise to the moon and make trillionaires out of everybody!!!
Also, just like the rest of the pigs Zuckerfuck is going to take $1 in salary so he only has to pay 18% in taxes on his $30 billion. How about we make sure we elect someone that will enact a retroactive capital gains tax rate of 99.9% on income generated from insider stock sales. I'm sorry for anyone that invests but the only way out of this mess is to stop people from playing the stock game. Enacting a massive increase in the capital gains rate is the only answer.
$5 billion seems pretty light for a "100 billion dollar company." Facebook? Facepalm? Faceplant? Hmmm. Let's observe the possibilities:
facepalm: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13eDfrMgFQM&feature=player_detailpage (double actually)
faceplant:http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=hfvHjuxcRBY
facebook: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=EO3YM0Z1d_g
"the government thanks you for your service."
Cool.
Zuckerberg's letter may be one of most arrogant things I've ever read. I want that time back.
If somebody can explain to me how facebook actually makes money, I'm all ears.
From the filing:
"Facebook (FB), a manufacturer of targeted customer lists as well as a self-contained advertising platform, along the lines of LinkedIn and Groupon, the brainchild of a typically self-absorbed and hormone-filled college student who would not know genuine human contact if it slapped him in the face, intends to raise $5 billion in this initial public offering with the express intention and goal of:
---creating at least a half dozen newly minted paper billionaires, proving that $5 billion divided by six is $100 billion
---allowing same said billionaires to cash out as much as possible "so they can spend more time with friends on Facebook"
---cashing in on the worldwide narcissism craze where upwards of 800 million people actually believe anyone cares they exist
---attempt to lure the retail investor back into the equity market, thereby allowing bankers, hedge funds, mutual and pension funds, plus Central Banks worldwide a means of exiting a low volume market
---give financial media such as CNBC and Bloomberg something to talk about besides Greece and Apple
---generate cash for some amazing office raves and awesome offsights
---create additional cutesy and ultimately pointless apps
---other purposes when company officials figure out what the heck they actually need the money for
The offering will be underwritten by the TBTF Morgan Stanley, a cash-strapped and over-levered "Bank Holding Company" with more European sovereign exposure than is good for it, and which would no longer exist save for the generosity of the Federal Reserve and US Department of Treasury.
From the forward of the prospectus, written by sitting President and avid Facebook user Barack Obama, "Facebook is a perfect example of what the American economy still can produce when it puts its addled mind to it"
I would like to know how many de-activated accounts they have. Inactive doesn't matter because the accepted friends chatter will continue to appear on your page whether you log on or not. Those that have de-activated their account, to me, would represent that portion of the thinking public that decided that there is nothing worthwhile on facebook to waste their time on any longer. Facebook sucks and I don't give a whit if a billion investors make a shitload of money on their investment. I prefer firearms and action pistol competition. Thank you
"...when it puts its adderalled mind to it"
Mark Zuckerberg's letter is sheer horseshit. He is as out of control as fat Elvis just before his untimely, commode-based demise.
facecrook!
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Republican-Guard-Islamic-Republic-of-Iran/...
BREAKING!
Federal Reserve Announces,"Will Accept Facebook Stock" As Collateral
Banks Must First Friend http://www.facebook.com/people/BS-Bernanke/606542173 In Order To Qualify