Facebook's IPO one of world's largest

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP-Excite

By BARBARA ORTUTAY

NEW YORK (AP) - Facebook found more than enough friends.

The world's definitive online social network said Thursday that it raised $16 billion for itself and its early investors in an initial public stock offering that values Facebook at $104 billion. That's more than Amazon.com and other well-known companies such as Kraft, Walt Disney and McDonald's.

It's a big windfall for a company that began eight years ago with no way to make money.

Facebook priced its IPO at $38 per share on Thursday, at the top of expectations. Now, regular investors will have a chance to buy stock in Facebook for the first time. The stock will begin trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market sometime Friday morning. The ticker symbol will be FB.


Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20120518/D9UQQ7IO2.html

[MrSlayer]

1. Sucker bet.

That's what I see this as.

[KurtNYC]

3. GM trashed this Facebook IPO on Tuesday

saying they wasted $10 mil advertising on facebook.

I agree with you. This an investment that will tank like AOL but in what timeframe? I found this:
http://news.investors.com/article/611797/201205171413/top-5-internet-content-ipos.htm

in my research. And it looks like there is an opportunity to short sell either today or whenever the peak is hit. FB is valuing at $38 per share based on I don't know what aside from sheer greed.

Back during the dot com bust there was a pattern and FB kind of fits it -- start a free service, grow the subscriber base, claim to be transitioning successfully to a profitable business model (eg. selling ads), value way above earning (if there are any) then have an IPO and cash in. Apple and other long term companies got dragged down with the crap because many institutional investor don't really understand the internet, even now. You could have bought Apple at $7 a share in 2001 because according to instutional investors Apple was 'run by hippies and had not future against the well disciplined machine that was Microsoft.'

A fortune will be made today.

[provis99]

2. five years from now, Facebook will be defunct.

[underpants]

5. My co-worker said today that 3 of her 4 teenagers have already dumped FB and moved on

mostly to tumblr

That is THE market that keeps FB running.

[Fearless]

11. I bet that's what they told her.

Just saying.

[riderinthestorm]

13. Well, my 15 yr old is under punitive scrutiny and I DO know what she's doing since January

She's just finished major rehab and her life is completely stripped out in front of us. I have all passwords, access, phone logs and text message logs, and her time is 100% accounted for at the moment from waking to bedtime. My husband or I actually sleep in her room nightly at the moment as she's threatened to kill herself or run away so someone is literally with her every moment of every day. Her teachers, counselors, and close friends are also onboard, as are all of her close cousins (and my sisters of course). She's being monitored 24/7 as a recently released substance abuse addict.

I can say with complete accuracy, at this moment in time, for this snapshot, that in the past 6 months my daughter has rarely used facebook and almost exclusively uses tumblr and twitter. YMMV but honestly from monitoring HER usage, I also can spot trends within her friends usages and I can say for certain FB isn't all that in the teen world.

[Fearless]

14. Under non sequitur it says see this sub-thread.

I feel for you and your situation, but clearly this is well, well outside of the norm. I stated to the poster above, their child is likely lying to them. Most kids, if not all over say 14 years old, have a Facebook and use it fairly frequently. Most kids also don't want to "friend" their parents on Facebook, not necessarily because they're doing something wrong, but because it's kin to having one's parents constantly hovering over them, and thus they claim not to have one. As a gay man in my mid 20's, I still do it for many family members. There are some things, family just doesn't need to know.

[riderinthestorm]

16. Feel better after delivering gratuitous slam?

I posted my comments to illustrate my point - most teens that I can see (786 friends on my daughter's FB acct not that I'm following them ALL) arent using it much. She's got 18 cousins, the four oldest de-activated their accounts (29, 26, 23 and 18 yrs old), the youngest has never had one and uses Twitter and texting only (12 years old), the rest range in age from 13 - 17 and they are rarely on... maybe once/week, and one of those hasn't been on in more than 3 months. My daughter hasn't been on in 6 weeks. She uses Tumblr and Twitter however daily, and texts like mad - I would stipulate that most teens use texting FAR more.

I completely understand your point about keeping stuff private and how they can claim they don't have an account. I also understand they can "filter" their account so only designated people see activity (which most kids do so their parents CAN'T creep on them). I also realize my story is anecdotal.

[Fearless]

17. None of what you've said in the first paragraph...

is close to what I've experienced having been in college in Massachusetts when Facebook was developed. Everyone, literally everyone has one. Different strokes for different folks. I would just point out that if she has 18 cousins and 5 don't use it... 13 do... that's over 72%. And that while I can't speak for the 786 friends your daughter has, I would point out that she has 786 friends on Facebook. How many people does the average person know? Of that number how many have accounts.

I understand that Facebook is greatly a generational tool. But to say that most you know aren't using it much doesn't change the fact that facebook.com is the #1 most visited website in 2011 as surveyed by Google and Twitter is #16... Tumblr, while popular, is not in the top 17.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/24/most-visited-sites-2011_n_883756.html#s297621&title=1__Facebookcom

You may also find these statistics valuable...

Excerpt: "Over 700 Billion minutes a month are spent on Facebook, 20 million applications are installed per day and over 250 million people interact with Facebook from outside the official website on a monthly basis, across 2 million websites. Over 200 million people access Facebook via their mobile phone. 48% of young people said they now get their news through Facebook. Meanwhile, in just 20 minutes on Facebook over 1 million links are shared, 2 million friend requests are accepted and almost 3 million messages are sent."

http://www.digitalbuzzblog.com/facebook-statistics-stats-facts-2011/

EDIT TO ADD: I would also point out the two greatest threads on the home page right now on DU are cross-posts from Facebook.

[NYC Liberal]

12. That long?

The Internet is fickle. Users will switch at the drop of a hat the moment someone comes up with the "Next Cool Thing".

None of Facebook's users have any real loyalty to the company; they use it out of pure convenience since that's where everyone happens to be.

[Fearless]

15. I doubt it...

Facebook is essentially a beefed up phone book. Whether or not you or I like it, I assume it is here to stay. People have years of photos uploaded to it, for instance, ones they frequently don't have backups to. They've also latched onto the micro-gaming trend, text and video chat, and people's interest in gossip. All in one place. It's a very powerful driving force to keep people logging on IMHO.

[sendero]

4. Believe me..

... the big boys know that this is a joke. But while the laughter continues there is one more chance to fleece the "retail investor" "dumb money" "muppets" that fall for the nonsense.

You'd think people would have learned something in the last 10 years but apparently many did not.

[underpants]

6. It was floundering at $38 (the offering price) for a while

I just don't see where they are going to expand to satisfy their shareholders. No market expert me but I just have never found FB to be all that great. There is no direct, trackable exchange between people but then I am conditioned to DU.

One analysis that I read last week (I think) was that Zuckerberg has to at least double revenue to keep the shareholders happy. How? He floated charging for FB about a year ago and it was immediately shot down ON Facebook. It has become almost a public utility at this point. Add to that the fact that it seemed to only become popular because MySpace (nice buy there Mr. Murdoch) was loaded with Spam and strippers.

Maybe they have some software that is going to create revenue but I just don't see it.

[sendero]

8. Exactly..

.... this is the same scenario as has happened over and over for internet companies. People think that just because a site has traffic that can be monetized.

FB has done horribly at this and I don't see how it will change.

I expect that, like Groupon (that at least has SOME revenue model) and many others this will be trading well below the IPO price and soon.

[renate]

7. more than Amazon? More than DISNEY????

That is so nuts. I don't know whether this shows that there are stupid people on Wall Street or stupid people in the tech investment industry, but it certainly shows that some people shouldn't be trusted with money.

As has already been said on this thread--tumblr is the next new thing (according to my kids).

[Prometheus Bound]

9. Expect Facebook to buy it then.

[riderinthestorm]

10. My 15 yr old has a FB account but hasn't been on in months. She uses tumblr and twitter

almost exclusively....

I've been watching all day with a sense of incredulity - this is sooo much like the IPOs of the 90s and early 2000s and we know exactly where 99% of those ended up. I'm really shocked at the frenzy.

[Redford]

18. My kids (18 and 15) rarely use facebook anymore

My older child uses it occasionally but my younger child only uses twitter now. They say the trend is away from facebook just like they all left Myspace.

In my opinion the stock price was way too high. I'm glad it was a bit of a bust.