Enough Complaining About Facebook’s IPO
Enough already of the special Facebook ticker on CNBC, and the constant yammering on the financial news channels about its “botched IPO”. There was nothing botched about it — FB went public, the bankers collected their fees, they extracted the maximum value for their client, and they (seemingly, reasonably) complied with the Byzantine regulations governing [...]
Valuing Facebook
I was in Times Square Friday, watching the news camera crews setting up for shots with the NASDAQ 7-story high marquee behind them, toting the new FB listing. I had actually written this Thursday night, and held off posting it because as much as I thought the Facebook IPO was over-valued, I prefer not to [...]
Facebook Ads and the Long Tail
In advance of the first tick on Facebook stock at the NASDAQ open tomorrow, it seems everyone has a comment about their revenue model and whether it supports a $100B valuation. Unfortunately, a lot of the criticism leveled at Facebook comes from an advertising world that still hasn’t figured out the long tail effect. Forbes’ [...]
Instagram Is About Context
There have been lots of bytes written about Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram, with the eigenvectors of sentiment pointing in roughly these directions: keep it away from Google, pick up wickedly smart engineers, build on their mobile expertise, get a rapidly growing user base at a reasonable cost per user. The real answer (in my network-centric [...]
Facebook Is The New MTV
Music is the original social network. Long before the printing press and written books, stories were carried in song, across generations and long distances. Even today, listening to the chazzan during a Shabbat service, I can make some guesses as to his or her age, seminary experience, and position on the reform-to-orthodox spectrum within three [...]
Really Simple Sharing Experiment
Early results are in from my decision to stop using Facebook Notes. Due to a variety of failures on Facebook’s end, I decided to announce new blog entries as wall posts on my own and the Snowman On Fire Facebook pages. I’m calling the decision to switch a huge win. Facebook is now the largest [...]
Facebook Notes: So Long, and Good Riddance
I’ve been using the Facebook “Notes” application for about a year and a half to import notes from my various blogs into my Facebook profile and pages. As Facebook has grown in popularity, I’ve found more people reading my ramblings through that channel than those who end up clicking through a Google search or (gasp) [...]
Facebook Isn’t Going To Start Charging Users
Seems like at least once a week one of my (numerous) Facebook friends joins a group “protesting” that Facebook will start charging some nominal fee per month. Facebook isn’t going to start charging users a monthly fee. They are (for now) advertising supported, and user fees would radically reduce the user population, which further reduces [...]
Accidental Geography on Facebook
I’ll admit to a certain vanity with Facebook: I’ve been trying to build an audience for my blog, using a Facebook page to import blog entries and inviting just about everyone who’s a friend to follow the page. Facebook very nicely provides “insights” (analytics) on interactions with the page – number of comments, ratings, and [...]
Face(Book) Time With Elias
I discovered that Elias has a Facebook fan page a few weeks ago, and while it’s short of content (for now), it takes you to some interesting places and seems to be populated somewhat regularly with syndicated news feeds. A few emails back and forth, and perhaps some trackbacks from his sports management team, and [...]