"Can I say you're my girlfriend on Facebook?"

crazy valuation but u never know

― max bro'd (nakhchivan), Monday, January 3, 2011 2:03 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah i feel like 'you never know' is exactly the attitude of the dumb money that will be left holding the bag

I just don't see a transition from fb to something else happening w/ half a billion people - maybe over an extended time period, but in the next 10 years? it's not like friendster, myspace etc. cause those were younger internet savvy people. so there might be a mac/linux of social networking that takes a bite from the market, I don't see a mass exodus cause the exodus-types aren't the majority of fb users anymore.

I think the FB valuation makes sense as long as the way our 'economy works' holds - like FB is the holy grail of information for advertisers, if FB plays its cards right they can parcel out that info for huge $$$ while reforming and reshaping the public's conception of privacy so that we become cool with Gilette showing you ads because you have a beard in your FB profile pic

Facebook is the trailer park of the internet.

fb thinks they can turn on the ad faucet on like google did, which is not as easy when people arent requesting specifically what theyd like to see ads for, which is why despite having ads for a while and passing google in traffic they generate a fraction as much revenue

they also know that to stay the #1 social network whatever the fuck that will mean in ten years being a website isnt enough, they have to sort of become the internet, which is what fb connect etc is all abt

fb is a v smart well positioned company but theyve got monumental obstacles ahead

can they do it, absolutely - is their success likely enough to make them worth $50b, fuck no

Nah, FB is the Windows of the Internet, now. Critical mass with ppl who would never use internet apps normally has been reached. Everyone's granny only knows how to use FB and maybe google. That sort of shit embeds, it doesnt go away; if it did, Windows wouldve been superceded a long time back.

Mind you unlike windows fb isnt an ESSENTIAL tool. Not yet anyway.... unless ppl honestly start using it for all cloud computing tasks (email etc), uggghhh.

fb more essential than windows, you have other viable options for your OS, you don't have any other option for social network w/ basically everyone in the world

fb maybe doesn't bring in the ad revenue that google does (yet) but it's still the most visited site on the internet and the site where people spend the majority of their time online, that's gotta count for something

I just don't see a transition from fb to something else happening w/ half a billion people - maybe over an extended time period, but in the next 10 years? it's not like friendster, myspace etc. cause those were younger internet savvy people.

― iatee, Monday, January 3, 2011 2:09 AM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

the moms will move to wherever their kids go and so on - but really people moving to a similar site is the least of fbs worries - the market shifting to something that hasnt been invented yet is more like it

i mean shit just look fb got more traffic than google this year

also you are discounting the effect of the Beard Recognition Algorithm which I just sold to facebook last week

its prob harder to shift social networks than it is to shift search engines, because so much of your personal data/experience is tied up in a social network

like facebook is what it is because of user's contributions, whereas google is what it is because some nerds figured out the best way to give you good search results for 'free porn' or w/e

afaict it basically scanrs yr prefs for GAPDY tho dayo

fb maybe doesn't bring in the ad revenue that google does (yet) but it's still the most visited site on the internet and the site where people spend the majority of their time online, that's gotta count for something

― dayo, Monday, January 3, 2011 2:22 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

it counts for a lot but people look at google and go do that ad revenue - but google is a huge outlier - itd be more reasonable to look at other sies as far as what kind of money one can expect from ads - i mean fb is the most visited site on the internet and a lot of smart people figure its prob around a break even proposition at this point

so yeah theyve got value for sure but $50b ehhhh

the moms will move to wherever their kids go and so on - but really people moving to a similar site is the least of fbs worries - the market shifting to something that hasnt been invented yet is more like it

i mean shit just look fb got more traffic than google this year

sorta hard to argue about technology that hasn't been invented yet - but when that shit is invented, there are only 3/4 companies that are gonna start out w/ the world market already in their hands. facebook is one of them. is that worth 50 billion dollars? who knows? I wouldn't be betting on it, but I wouldn't bet against it either.

$50 billion not even that ridiculous a number in wall street money, how much is goldman sachs worth again? trizillion?

i feel like ppl forget how long 10 yrs is in the internet

think about how much this forum has changed in 10 years

if I told you pitchfork would still be around 10 years ago would you have believed me

I def feel the internet has been 'stabilizing' for the past few years as all the norms get hipped to it and change becomes much harder to effect

idk

yeah but i wouldn't have foreseen p4k's growth

That sort of shit embeds, it doesnt go away; if it did, Windows wouldve been superceded a long time back.

― Ex Loin Tamer (Trayce), Monday, January 3, 2011 2:18 AM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

eh feel like windows is the exception rather than the rule when it comes to this type shit - also there are no cto's making decisions abt what social network people can use at this point

just feel that for loads of its users its like their entire lives are on fb's servers - all their thousands of photos, links that they posted, blog entries, contacts - don't really see how a new hot social networking site could easily wrest that away from fb

I def feel the internet has been 'stabilizing' for the past few years as all the norms get hipped to it and change becomes much harder to effect

― dayo, Monday, January 3, 2011 2:34 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

facebook passed myspace in traffic less than three years ago, think abt it

if someone offered me facebook stock i would take it

yeah but the usefulness of social networks depends on their size, I can only see fb getting taken over by a network that does something else entirely (that fb can't copy) which then slowly becomes a regular social network too. I can't imagine what that would be, which is why I am worth 0 billion dollars. xp

comparing fb and myspace is misleading because myspace was, even at its peak, a tiny % of the world

hey guys when is ILX gonna have an IPO

its really amazing how quickly people have accepted social networking as this regular static thing thats essential to their lives

I find it more amazing that they didn't catch on in 2003 or something, considering how simple the technology is

I mean I guess it had to be a slow developing thing, but it could have started long before it did

comparing fb and myspace is misleading because myspace was, even at its peak, a tiny % of the world

― iatee, Monday, January 3, 2011 2:39 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

myspace had over 100m users, besides the entire point of my comparison was to point out that fbs ubiquity is an incredibly recent phenomenon

also the rise in fb's success is pretty correlate to the rise of smartphones, no?

its really amazing how quickly people have accepted social networking as this regular static thing thats essential to their lives

― ice cr?m, Monday, 3 January 2011 18:40 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

It's still possible to exist without social networking atm though. Not that I'm countering your point, I just think we're not there yet. btw I am not looking forward to the day when having a fb account is as essential as having an email address.

I sorta consider them two different phenomenons, but I still have a $30 phone xp

myspace had over 100m users, besides the entire point of my comparison was to point out that fbs ubiquity is an incredibly recent phenomenon

― ice cr?m, Monday, January 3, 2011 3:43 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah but how many of those 100m were returning users or regular users

Livejournal was similar in a lot of ways to FB - your own group of 'friends', personalised profile etc. I'm kind of surprised fb and myspace took as long as they did to get where they did - but then it wasn't long ago that doing anything 'on the internet' was kind of a niche thing. My group of friends all had Myspaces but no-one in my office did, for example.

fb is well ahead of smartphones, but yeah obvs thats a huge factor in this whole thing

my fb account more already essential than my email for most communication, email mostly just for formal stuff or sending files xp

myspace had over 100m users, besides the entire point of my comparison was to point out that fbs ubiquity is an incredibly recent phenomenon

― ice cr?m, Monday, January 3, 2011 3:43 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah but how many of those 100m were returning users or regular users

― dayo, Monday, January 3, 2011 2:46 AM (48 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i dont know myspace was huge, not as huge as facebook, p shitty site overall tbh

there are a lot of shitty bands out there

I find it more amazing that they didn't catch on in 2003 or something, considering how simple the technology is

― iatee, Monday, 3 January 2011 07:42 (3 minutes ago)

^^^^^^^^

this was why i was rmde a bit at the hyping of zuckybro as a 'programming genius'....i mean he might be but facebook is insufficient evidence, his talents lie elsewhere

i think fbook's initial success was based on a sense of 'solidity' contra the fly-by-night tackiness of myspace et al, and short of a major fuckup they should be able to stay afloat that way

it's just the maximizing revenue that's difficult but yeah taking that raw data and reselling it is def a challenge

Facebook places/locations (?) is where the fb/smartphone thing melds properly imo.

myspace was totally on some 'in my world of young ppl' shit and pretty exclusionary, also almost actively user-unfriendly

also I don't wanna come off as college bro after a bowl hit but it seems that once something has attained 'critical mass' it just kind of has so much inertia that its pretty much unstoppable/unchangeable? look at the English measuring system ffs lol

Myspace was revolting, all the on-screen junk and flashing shit everywhere. Dunno who in that org thought such a design ethic was going to have longevity.

myspace was totally on some 'in my world of young ppl' shit and pretty exclusionary, also almost actively user-unfriendly

yeah nobody called myspace 'exclusionary' at the time - when facebook was very explicitly exclusionary. but that's a really good point - myspace's home page never ever attempted to look like a site that everyone on the world would join.

also I don't wanna come off as college bro after a bowl hit but it seems that once something has attained 'critical mass' it just kind of has so much inertia that its pretty much unstoppable/unchangeable? look at the English measuring system ffs lol

― dayo, Monday, 3 January 2011 18:51 (28 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Everything changes though. All it takes is for the playing field to shake and for fb to be looking the other way for a few minutes.

hah those are two different uses of exclusionary - for myspace I meant like, if you weren't part of that world of young ppl you didn't feel 'cool' enough to join

facebook was just basic exclusionary

when you consider what myspace had done (seemingly took what friendster "invented" and turned it more mainstream and corporate and successful for a time), they blew it even more than friendster did, which was i think to focus on a demo that would eventually outgrow it, and facebook decided to make a site that was friendly to everyone of any age. quite possibly zero people i know use myspace now. facebook could go that route too, i know a lot of people who are pretty much over it. i think it can be quite exhausting to feel the need to have a particular website to return to all the time (lol?)