Mark KookyZoookerberg is holed up like Yassir Arafat eating plums and sipping wine coolers while his salesforce trots around the globe trying to meet numbers met by the yutz’s at Microsoft and the VC’s that keep pumping money for servers and wine.
I could go buy a bazillion impressions on Facebook for 3 cents a piece. I won’t, because even that’s overvalued based on what I would get back. Guaranteed the brands are figuring out how to go direct and the agency model is screwed once the brands get wise and focus on engagement and not impressions.
That said, Facebook and YouTube (actually could be someone different, but same industries) WILL solve the revenue problem so the quarterly noise surrounding met and unmet revenue issues is just that, noise. Actually – Ashkan as usual gives you an example of how small the problem really is .
It’s just sad that the defections from both companies will be massive and I guarantee you the internal hate must run deep for PookyZooky from his lieutenants.
YouTube has no problems other than the price Google paid for it. Facebook has only three problems KookyZooky Baby Jesus, Microsoft’s breath on it’s neck and the valuation.
Not the end of the world, just more opportunity for the little guy’s like you and me.
Days like today remind ME why I am LONG social networking and web video (at $3 billion, I will also buy some facebook stock if anyone is selling).
Otherwise, there is just nothing going on there for me. Very disappointing to be in the web space and get little utility from a company with a $15 billion valuation. I guess I am not representative of the maret but ‘they’ say my demographic is the fastest growing sector in the space.
I still believe in ‘Social Leverage’ being what the next web is all about, but Facebook is not there.
In other Facebook news Read Write Web I learned that an application exists to clean up the mess us 40- year olds make. It’s called rather smartly IgnoreAll.com .
The stakes are high enough now that the community could help clean itself up.
Facebook has a terms of Service. Scoble broke it. It’s not like Facebook is complicated. You sign up, you are fucked. You get lots of potential, but loads of crap. The terms of service says it’s not your crap to export. Seems straightforward.
Basically… as the computer said in the great movie “War Games ”
“The only way to win…is not to play the game!”
Kind of like credit. You sign up, expect junk mail in perpetuity. You want to stay off junk lists, lock yourself in your own little black box.
Scoble claims to have 5000 Facebook friends. Whatever. I am completely lost and mucked up at 300.
The 30 plus year old age demographic is just not wired right to have more than 100-200 contacts on Facebook. Period. We are too old for this tool in it’s present state though we try.
I appreciate all the people who have friended me, and I have taken the time to accept most that were even vaguely real, but I am not, nor is any 30 plus year old, wired to clean it up. Once you make a mistake in social network friend acceptance (don’t lie, we have all done it), it spirals out of social control.
I think that’s Facebook’s true next problem. In the mentime, what a freaking microscope they are operating under in nerdville.
I hope they figure it out. Until I see some daylight or a real simple solution I continue to use it less and less. You will too.
One true glimmer of hope for Facebook – I believe one thing and one thing only, the nerds are always wrong when it comes to money and investing. They are ALL short Facebook.
PS – Just ordered the movie from Amazon. My kids will ove that movie like I did.
I think Ben Stein is funny, at least in Ferris Bueller. Hard to picture him as smart or as writing for the NY Times, but he does. Today he rips on Goldman . It’s old news, but still news that needs to be spread. Goldman is the world’s largest bookie that fixes games and legally sells you shit while they are dumping it out the back door.
I was out with a entrepreneurial neuro surgeon friend of mine tonight who was talking about this idea in healthcare . All the good ideas are taken . This one funded by my friends at Spark Capital. I can’t wait to introduce them.
Likely in many ways. Not traffic for sure, not in consuming the blogosphere discussion. UPDATE – I did not have the right words, but Fred does as to why it’s not from Privacy backlash alone . If you think it’s just this you should check out our Wallstrip shows on Equifax and Fair Isaac. They have been shitting on your privacy for decades – it’s actually great business.
If it were a public stock, would it have recovered from the meltdown as fast as Baidu and Google?
Obviously the pressure of a $15 billion market cap is already freaking them out. That won’t stop.
I check in on Facebook maybe once a day. I use Google 100’s of times. I assume if I was in China, I would be doing the same with Baidu.
If I get an email alert from Facebook, I don’t rush over. Can’t my friends reach me at my e-mail address? I can’t even take the time to clean up all the crap streams and spam I am already getting…and this is from ‘my friends’.
Facebook guys: stop thinking about how to “monetize your users”. It’s insulting, pedantic, infantilizing – and you guys are way smarter than that.
Start thinking about how to turn yesterday’s inert consumers into living, breathing, prosumers – who can begin to reshape the DNA of the firms you’re connecting them with.
When you do that, you’ll be making things better – not trying to take over the world.
Sure…that will happen like me giving up bread and icees, a few hours and days at a time…MAYBE!
Based on the amount of VC money, Microsoft Money and Market Cap, it’s highly unlikely they can ‘Fix Facebook’ in the broken way that Umair is talking about.
I am most amazed that a big brand like Coke, Pepsi or Amex missed this acquisition. Left alone to just be a network without the pressures to monetize as a stand alone business, Facebook was surely IT. Coke would have sold billions of dollars of Coke and water to a whole new generation without ever selling any information about it’s consumers just by gifting Zuckerberg and the Company to the world.
I still wish Coke or Amex would have bought it and given the damn thing to us with one superbowl ad a week so that we could see where a social network could go without the advertising fuss. But, we can count on this ‘who owns my data issue ‘ to be resolved much quicker now that Facebook has to monetize. Tempers will continue to flare and something is going to give.
. This one funded by my friends at Spark Capital. I can’t wait to introduce them.
