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Do you think facebook is going down?


Looking at the trends, I suspect Facebook will be the goat in the tech group cull that's being contemplated.[1] The reasons for thinking this are three-fold:

a) Extremely poor share performance post-IPO (which has irked a lot of heavy-weights) and demise of Zynga's revenue sources. Although ad revenue is there, there's a lot of industry research showing that $/click return is minimal at best (out of all of these models, FB appears to have the lowest, and easiest to Bot). FB ad revenue has more to do with the current glut in Corporate $cash holdings than real returns, fyi.

b) Lack of utility outside data mining / advertising (all others, even dead ducks like Yahoo! have secondary and tertiary utility, not to mention the shining lights like Google who are still willing to push the envelope). By this, I'm not referencing Social Utility, but Business Utility.

c) Their ties to NSA / current security concerns go so far beyond the base level of acceptance that it's a given they'll suffer hard blow-back. Those Bilderberg meetings weren't about unicorns and skittles and any serious business should be concerned about having their employees mined so easily (and in certain fields, more open to Social Engineering hacks directly due to this intel). Even as an American company, you'd want this be considering this; for the rest of the world, it's a major concern.

You can argue about these, but I suspect as they hit their 10 year mark, there will be a hotter, faster, hungrier and probably more honest model to replace them (i.e. "We will do X with this data - agree, and get Y benefit, or even better - we'll pay you Z for it, and not in Farmville Tokens, or even "pay Z+1 to go dark").

Anyhow, since this is free commentary, YMMV. But, realistically - the age of the "Dumb Fucks" is closing. Wild Wild West is ending, and the Buffalo ain't roaming no more. If you need that explained: a large amount of the cash generated by web 2.0 (e.g. Huffington Post sale) was created by parasitical leveraging of user's ignorance & goodwill. I suspect that's about to change with a newer generation; although, hey, Pop Idol still makes money, so perhaps not - but it will only be farming the ignorant, which is hardly "cutting edge". Face Book as the online Walmart - there's an image to take to heart as you look @ it's stock price over the next 6 months.

Full disclosure: Never had a Face Book account, because Privacy / Anonymity is the coolest thing in a connected world, nor do I hold any FB stock, nor am I shorting FB stock in any manner.

[1]FT - Real progressives believe in breaking up Google (no link, as it is pay walled). I don't agree with the opinion piece, I'm merely using it to denote a recent trend.




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