Facebook

probably not all that different a business plan, though FB supposedly keeps more detailed records on people, so they might just decide to use that for a profit center. who knows how they plan to make a profit, all I know is I'm not investing in them, no matter how much they might claim to be worth.

What's the supposed accounting maneuver? Goldman took TARP because Paulson required all the big banks to. The idea was all big banks had to take TARP because otherwise the market would determine that those who didn't were unhealthy and sell them off. Goldman paid the money back early because they didn't need it in the first place. Taxpayers made quite a bit of money off of this. Goldman was able to pay the large bonuses in 2009 because they correctly positioned for the big rebound. In fact by going long the market at that point, I would say they contributed to the rebound.

Also note that Goldman's positioning was neutral at the time of the crash in 2008. It came out last year that they made a net of $500 million (peanuts for them) on their positions surrounding subprime that year since they had some long and some short, the idea being to try and get as close to neutral as possible.

Facebook makes plenty of money from their ads and their in-app payment system (facebook credits). They will do just fine and if they go IPO I am going to buy their stock. Right now the IPO is only for select Goldman clients ($2 million+). I thought Google was overpriced during their IPO because it was "simply a search engine" but it has grown to be so much larger than altavista ever was.

Facebook had a record 750 million photos uploaded during the NYE holiday.

I think Samsung1 has it right, however we should remember that for invetmentment purposes it is almost impossible to guess the ultimate winners. A few shrewd people with very good connections make a killing. Most people who try to guess this kind of thing lose some or all of their money. Apple, A HUGE SUCCESS in recent years was also A HUGE SUCCESS at the beginning, and almost went belly-up in the middle. Tough to outguess the pros.

Fuck Facebook. The fact Goldman Sachs bought half a billion into it should tell you it is evil.

trying to compare facebook to myspace is like trying to compare tuscl to stripclublist. Facebook and TUSCL are in a league of their own compared to myspace or SCL

Sam, now? It was a different story a few years ago. As I recall, MySpace was the unquestioned #1 at the time. Then Rupert Murdoch bought it for a large sum and directed his staff to monetize it. That effort pushed users out and Facebook was happy to take them in.

social networking never was as big as it was today a few years ago. No 3rd party applications, no payment system (facebook credits), mobile apps, iphone/android, etc. Robert Murdoch bought myspace for around $580 million. Today facebook is valued at $50 billion. It is just not fair to compare them together.

Rupert Murdoch*

Fuck facebook.

People are invested in facebook in a way they never were in Myspace. Facebook also has little if any serious competition. It grabbed a nitch market and went nuts from there..

If Facebook is really valued at $50 billion the financials that Goldman Sachs is floating around today (Jan 7) indicate a PE of 140-150!! And a price to revenue ratio of 40-50!! So, profit margins are good - 30%- but not spectacular and valuation is stratospheric. The hysteria that will accompany Facebook's IPO will drive the valuation numbers even goofier. I will say "No Thank You" to any drone trying to peddle this paper to me.

I am kind of an investment geek and I have become more and more curious about this Facebook story. I found more Goldman Sachs revenue numbers for the company today (Jan 8). The revenue multiple is now 25, not 40-50. This is still a goofy number. Remember, all these figures are teasers. Unaudited numbers are always to be considered pure fiction (like the disclaimer at the bottom of this discussion board).

back in 1980, the state of massachusetts did not allow their citizens to buy Apple IPO because it was considered "too risky" based off conventional measures like P/E. There is just no telling how this IPO will do.

thanks farmerart for your investment research.

Any one hold shares of BJ (BJ's Wholesale) or CIM (Chimera) lol

PE and revenues makes little difference for IPO/growth stocks. It's all about the story/hype. In some cases it even make sense to run a compnay at a loss for a while to capture market share.

Exactly.Dougster. The hype makes these kind of stocks way too scary for an old guy like me.

I read a report that Canadians love facebook. The percentage of the population using facebook is higher in Canada than USA. Maybe the cold weather has something to do with it keeping people more indoors and online more often.

"Apple, A HUGE SUCCESS in recent years was also A HUGE SUCCESS at the beginning, and almost went belly-up in the middle."

AAPL has been on basically an upward tick since 2004-05, with the exception of the recent, massive economic downturn at the end of 2008. Goldman Sachs (GS) hasn't recovered nearly as much as AAPL has at this point.


I've used both Facebook & MySpace, and FB is just a better interface. It's certainly not perfect, and there are plenty of negative issues with FB...but I agree that the 2 haven't been in the same league for quite some time now. One of the only things that they have in common right now is that they're both private companies.

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"I read a report that Canadians love facebook. The percentage of the population using facebook is higher in Canada than USA."

Canada, the UK, USA, Chile, Sweden, Australia, Israel, and Ireland use FB the most (in that order).

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blo…

"Canadians spend more time online than users in any other country"

http://www.allfacebook.com/canadians-are…

AAPL has been going up? GTFO! We couldn't have figured that one out on our own. We are so glad we have MisterGay to help point these things ultra obvious things out to us.