California is SAVED!!! Betcha California Treasurer John Chiang is priaptic over this IPO.

I'm expecting a good pop on the first day. The top of the pricing range puts them at $75B and folks had been talking before about $100B. 25% pop doesn't seem out of the question. It's FACEBOOK after all and needs a good showing on its IPO.

A 25% pop will be just the beginning. At a $25 pricing, I expect a gap opening to $65 and a EOD close of about $85. Everybody and their sister wants in, so they will be chasing this to the moon. At least the first few days.

Bid/ask spreads are likely to be insane, however, with the expected volatility.

The Facebook IPO will be great...for those who own the stock (and can trade it) at the opening. Those who buy those shares will likely get their face ripped off.

How many times do people have to see they same thing? GroupOn? Zenga?
The definition of idiot is doing the same thing and expecting a different result.

I absolutely hate the company, but let's be honest: Facebook is no Groupon, Zenga, Pandora, or any of the other weak-ass IPOs that have hit lately.

To the general public, Facebook is as much of a player as Google or Apple, and the demand for the stock is likely to be insane - at least at first. Give it a few weeks and the story will likely change, but that stock is going to fly the first day.

I was tired of the FB fad after about 2 weeks of activity and 12 months of inactivity. I was tired of being interrupted only to find "my friends" just had a wonderful trip to the Islands. The majority of my "friends" are people who had been in my life at sometime over the last 20 years..90% of which I haven't seen or actually TALKED to in years, but were all to happy to show me their vacation homes and trophy hunts (wives and game). When I started seeing some of these people with 1500 friends I had to laugh. This IS a fad..a race to "I have the most friends" - it reminded me of high school.

Isn't it funny how the same handful of people are on there every other minute? I feel sorry for these folks! This will not translate into the next Microsoft, sorry, I wouldn't touch this one. I'll go have a weekend in Vegas instead.

Oh I'd take an allocation if I could get it, and flip it on the first day too.

I did that a lot in 1999, and make lots of money. But I didn't sit on any of the stocks and I'm glad I didn't, as nearly all were losers over the next six months to a year.

"this will soon wind up running into the people's perception (and reality) that they're paying for the delivery of the ad that is disrupting their experience".....I crossed that bridge about a year ago.

Not to mention people can't really click through and buy something on the phone... most internet advertising is counting on impulse buys.
(I guess technically you can, but I don't think most people want to)

Genesis wrote..

It's also the fact that data plans are usage sensitive, and therefore the user is paying for the delivery of the advertising that he is then forced to consume.

This is a bankrupt business model that will eventually collapse inward on itself.

It is a bankrupt business model in a free market but in our current "merger of state and corporate power" system all Facebook needs to do is grease the right palms in Congress to get a "Free Speech Preservation" bill passed which excepts their traffic from the data caps. They need to keep all that personal information flowing in, after all, because surveillance is so much more costly when you actually have to send agents out to collect the information manually.

Bingo.

I used to use Firefox, back in the 2.x days. At that time I blocked ads aggressively, because a combination of inefficient Flash/Jscript and slowly responding ad (or DNS) servers resulted in significant slowdown of the browsing experience.

Then Chrome appeared on the scene. No addons... but Google built in a lightning fast Javascript engine. I switched, because even with ads the experience was faster on Chrome.

But I did this in the context of no bandwidth cap.

I've watched the size of the average webpage balloon since the mid-90s. Today I believe it's >1MB per webpage, on average - but only a tiny fraction of that is actually CONTENT. How many webpages do you visit in a day? A week? Per month? This is why I flat-out will not buy a mobile data plan that has a 'cap.' My normal browsing habits would blast through most caps not because of multimedia I wanted, but because of ads I did not ask for. Thus I would block the living crap out of ads on any mobile device.

Caching helps reduce reloads when you hit 'Back' on a desktop, but mobiles can't aggressively cache. There's no real way around this, except a REAL pricing model for data. VZ and AT&T do not have real pricing models; they have a ridiculous parody of what should be offered.

genesis wrote..

the question is whether at 99 times earnings there's inherent value in what amounts to a fad company selling advertising to people who hang around posting pictures of themselves doing beer bongs.

That about sums up FB . lol

"all to happy to show me their vacation homes"

Yeah, a couple we know hasn't made a mortgage payment in a good 2 years...but they just posted their Jamaican vacation photos informing us of what a "wonderful life" they live...

I'm not sure how the current Facebook can make real money..but they do have a large customer base...selling ads...nah...but selling products...I can see it...sorta of a social network Groupon kinda deal.

Facebook offer daily "deals" and get a cut of the sales..I see a lot of potential in that..no upfront cost for the merchant..just hand over a percentage of sales that came in from facebook.

I don't know about Facebook, but I found an IPO that is interesting to me. See, there's this bar in Silicon Valley where ten thousand people show up every night and don't buy anything. They are going public soon.

Their IPO is going to be worth billions.

(shamelessly stolen from one of my coworkers)

Facebook is too massive for me to so much as guess to its future, save that I do think its current IPO projections with a value of $100B are completely hilarious. Compare to other similar sized companies. Microsoft is $250B. Coca cola is $175B. So Facebook is more than half the company of Coke? I don't think so.

" The majority of my "friends" are people who had been in my life at sometime over the last 20 years..90% of which I haven't seen or actually TALKED to in years, but were all to happy to show me their vacation homes and trophy hunts (wives and game). When I started seeing some of these people with 1500 friends I had to laugh. This IS a fad..a race to "I have the most friends" - it reminded me of high school. "

It has fad aspects. However, having a presence online is not going away; facebook is more or less just what myspace was, which is what "my own home page" was years prior.

Like you I was getting more and more "friends" and realized that there's a reason I don't talk to my highschool graduating class anymore. I've since removed more than half the list and have only 50 I actually give a damn about on there. I know people with 1000+ friends. They don't ever talk, or know the majority of them. They're just using it like a self-marketing campaign.

I used Facebook a lot when I was a student and during a stint of unemployment. Both of those periods consisted of me not having a lot on money to spend on goodies that were advertised. People that have jobs may have Facebook blocked and don't have a lot of time to look at it during off work hours. Facebook activity is probably inverse to productive economic activity.

Pintrest is far more interesting for potential advertising revenue and converted clicks.

how do i go about getting ipo allocation?

It's going to be like Pets.com... Only funnier...

My data part of my phone plan, has a 512mb a month cap. I got that in case I accidentally connected to the net via my phone (I guessed that should be able to cover all foreseeable eventualities).

One month I did use a little under 20mb (I was setting up an Android phone). That's about it (I managed all of 8mb one other month), and I have zero interest in connecting via the mobile phone network still. I have a few utilities on that Android phone, to make sure I don't connect or leave anything connected, should I use that phone at any time (I don't really use that phone, but may do a bit more if the port of ICS comes out for it at some point, as it isn't actually a 'bad' phone, other than lacking real usable buttons - stuff this touch screen nonsense).

My interest in 'Smart' phones, has pretty much disappeared completely, and I really don't see it returning. Any adverts that turn up on my phone, will probably see that phone disappear permanently into the back of a drawer.

I think I have been on Facebook twice in total. Once was after being asked by the wife of a friend, to remonstrate with an individual on her behalf, that had inexcusably hung his own young daughter out as pedophile bait. I can't remember the other time, but it obviously didn't inspire me nearly enough to go back. I don't do Twitter or other ridiculous **** like it either (that includes MSN Messenger type stuff, which I have hardly used way back to even before ICQ came on the scene).

Just what is the attraction of re-establishing contact, with people you have successfully managed to avoid having any interaction with, for many blissful years?

Helooooo! There's many a good reason why I didn't keep in touch with you and your f***wit friends, dumbass, and being a candidate for a Darwin Award was the least of your problems! Helooooo! I didn't 'get back to you' because you utterly sucked in bed, couldn't handle a glass of sherry without making an even bigger fool of yourself and puking, and I've had more stimulating conversations with a broken f***ing toaster! would be all too par for the course.

If this is turning grumpy and intolerant, can I have a bigger helping please?

Frankly, I'm rather rapidly going off Google too. Its efficiency as a search engine seems to have been comprehensively flushed down the toilet.

The 'novelty' of this absolutely ridiculous ****, really is going to wear thin with most people, much sooner rather than later, isn't it? I mean, the whole "OMGZ! I z tkin to u on awsum orgazmik divise innit" experience, does have extremely limited comedic viability.

The lifespan of which, will probably be rapidly done to death, by liberal standups pretending to be comics, as well.

What I really am looking for, I suppose, is the F**k Off And Die In A Fire! social network, and a 'friends list' that responds with a permanent 'Number Unobtainable' or 'The Number You Are Calling Still Thinks You Are An Incurable Psychopath, So Go F**k Yourself' message.

Any Android apps for them yet?

Sorry, just rambling, but I'm getting seriously hacked off with all this stupid trash. Even my Nokia 6303i has a ridiculous Facebook icon, ffs. /sigh

I don't believe the PE matters so much as what is the potential. That is, where do we go from here? Facebbook is like GOOG. They are going to have to find more web based businesses to keep going. 99 means they need to 6X their earnings before they become a real company against their stock price. Then it means a couple of doubles before it was worthwhile holding the stock long term. That is a put your money on a number and shoot craps game.

The story is China is going to all get on Facebook. To its advantage, corporate world has gotten involved. The deal is they are already involved. They are also involved with AAPL. Advertisement about phone apps is always iphone. When will it sink in that is only a slice of the market? You have to believe China isn't going to have their own social networking outfit and then you have to believe these countries are going to allow the interaction to go on unrestrained. Then you have to believe Facebook will be the end all. My space seemed to disappear in this craze, even though it is still there. I doubt the people that have the money in this world are going to be playing in these venues much.

It will all revolve around whether the ad revenue continues to grow. A friend I get to do my AC repairs said the company he works for pays $75 a click for GOOGLE. I don't believe it, as I had a friend who had an internet company selling satelite TV and his margins weren't that much. Maybe it costs them $75 a customer after all is said and done. Otherwise the game can't go on.

75 bucks a click? I call bull****. Else that company is frakking stupid

Quote:

http://pinterest.com/pin/233624299390012....

WARNING: Viewing Pinterest May Cause Pregnancy.

I know Low. I could see a customer average costing $75 when it all shakes out. 100 clicks. 10 calls, 1 customer. Even then, that seems high. But, HVAC charges $75 for a service call, then they bring out the call girl. I had one quote me almost $2000 margin to put in a 3 ton unit. Probably a 4 to 6 man hour job.

Facebook can be annoying if you look at other peoples posts. I just use it as a sort of digital journal or to keep in touch with organizations or hear about events. The worse thing on Facebook has to be those games. Why in the world someone would play that is beyond me, but please dont email me asking for farm animals or diamonds or what not. These games really just say " I have no life".