facebook (Photo credit: sitmonkeysupreme)I started to write this post last Thursday to post today (Monday), but then decided it would make more sense to wait until after the big Facebook IPO had actually happened. This is coming from one who knows very little about stock market issues or finances period. In fact, I am a financial nincompoop which probably explains why I'm not rolling in dough.
For the past couple weeks or more we've been hearing all sorts of hype about the Facebook stock going on sale to the public and the billions of dollars that would be raised and that would be falling into the bank accounts of those who already had stock or who would be trading in it. If I had made my prediction on Thursday that the opening day would not be as big of a boom as some were expecting, I would have been right.
Now, I certainly don't have any well-founded knowledge about this whole IPO thing. As I stated at the beginning I'm a big know-nothing about this sort of thing, but the hype was getting to be a bit too much to not make me a bit suspicious. My own intuitive sense--which is just my silly opinion--makes me wonder about how long Facebook can hold its value.
Google and some others are certainly holding their own, but there are probably many more tech and internet related companies that are dying slow deaths or being absorbed into larger conglomerations. What can Facebook do to grow in the future?
Supposedly they have potential for selling advertising--this said right after GM withdrew a ten million dollar advertising deal because they weren't seeing the anticipated results. And who looks at Facebook advertising anyway? It was a long time before I realized there was advertising.
Then also I'm hearing this thing about portals, which is something to do with people using Facebook to go to other places on the web and then FB gets some kind of commission. Supposedly this will be a huge source of income. Also there could be the possibility of charging for premium services like photo storage. Those guys at FB are smart--a lot smarter than I am--and I'm sure they can come up with ingenious ways to make money. At least until the next smart guys come along to do something similar in a better way.
Don't get me wrong--if anyone has some extra stock they want to turn over to me, I'll take it off your hands if you want to give it to me. And if I had money to play with I would probably be tempted to invest. I'm just feeling pessimistic.
There's something bigger to this whole thing that kind of bothers me and I'll be telling you about that in my next post. Come back on Wednesday for ANOTHER THING I DON'T UNDERSTAND AND WHAT I FIND DISTURBING ABOUT IT.
Did you invest in any Facebook stock? Would you? Where do you think Facebook will be going in the future? Do you use Facebook and if so, to what extent? If there were a charge to be on Facebook would you be willing to pay it? Is anybody still on MySpace?
