Facebook IPO

Don't buy it. If you do your homework (and you always should before buying/selling) you will find that Facebook stock is for suckers. No real product, no real service. And you can't compare it to Google either. Google is at least 10x more valuable and actually has some real products in the works.

Facebook is a fad and like myspace, the fad will eventually pass. Take a look at any of the comments online.

 

Big difference between Google and FaceBook...

 

Anyone wonder if Facebook has peaked?

I think it has unless they can come up with more uses for it.

If it does not change much, competition will eventually take some of their share, as they always do to the leader.

 

Facebook isn't going away like a fad. They have a billion users. The stock however is a different story. At 38.00 it would be valued at over 100 billion dollars which is a ludicrous valuation You will get the opportunity to buy it cheaper.

 

IPO was a relative failure. Issuers had to step in to prop the price up above opening.

 

Facebook may be here to stay, but it's hotness may be largely gone.

 

[snark]
Facebook HAD to go public, they could not figure out their privacy settings.
[/snark]

 

Whatever happened to MySpace?

 

^ remember when Yahoo was regarded like Google is now?

 

Growth stocks are mysterious. They are only worth what the next investor will pay for them. Pets.com anyone?

Facebook stock might have value but as others have pointed out, FB does not provide a service that everyone uses or wants. I have no use for it. Old school technology is sufficient for me.

Personally, I don't like FB because you can't hide. Google knows enough about me already when I search my full name. Five years ago, I was totally anonymous. Not any more.

The gang member Cowboy from the movie "The Warriors" said that "if we wear our colors, we can't hide". Vermin replied " Who wants to hide?" I'm with Cowboy.

 

Facebook's epic fail - latimes.com

 

ETrade (I don't have an account there) was offering their users the chance to get in on the IPO. My dad has one from his former company's ESPP. I looked at the questions and if he answered them truthfully, he would probably get denied (he's a completely ignorant when it comes to investment knowledge).

TD Ameritrade was also offering, if you met certain criteria. I submitted my request for 100 shares and was told it'd be by lottery system. I didn't receive any.

My parents also have a joint TD Ameritrade account w/me for my dad's former ESPP stock in another company. My mom wanted some, so we went thru the same process for that account and she did receive 100 shares this morning.

I've got Fidelity as well, but didn't qualify as I was nowhere near what they required.

Ha. Yeah, they've fallen so far. It's crazy.

When I started investing (and didn't really know what I was doing and had little money to invest), YHOO was one of the best investments I ever made. $500 of YHOO turned into over $10K during the .com bubble! I luckily sold all of it when it was pretty high up there. If there were only some way to know, I'd have poured all of my $ into that stock, instead of just $500.

It'll be interesting to see how it does, in the long term. If it falls and hits what looks like a support level and then bounces, I might buy a little. As http://www.jeremysiegel.com/ said on Squawk Box on CNBC before the IPO, IPOs are like a lottery ticket. He said the track record for IPOs is generally very poor...

But anyway, can you imagine if you had the IPO shares of say AAPL or MSFT and held onto them until now? If you had GOOG IPO shares, you'd be sitting pretty as well.

 

I used to work for Yahoo!, so I did really well with their stock.

 

BTW, does anybody else see the XXX Showgirls ad at the top of this page?

 

On this note, thanks to Facebook , I found out that one of my friends read Facebook Billionaire's Girlfriend Priscilla Chan Has Big Week Too (and Not Because of Mark's Money.) | Secrets to Your Success - Yahoo! Shine (well, the same story, not sure if it's the same URL, as I said no to the Yahoo FB app).

Anyhow, if you skip to ~10:15 in the video at The Donald To Facebook, you'll hear Trump's commentary about whether Zuck should get a pre-nup. Long ago, I saw an interview w/Trump where he said essentially "I would not be where I am today w/o strong, but fair prenuptial agreements..." He said that if he didn't have a pre-nup, he'd be a loser.

 

Nope, sure your not "shift tab-ing" between prius chat and something "else"

:rockon:

 

I heard on the news (or financial news) that the Winklevoss twins should be worth $300 million now. Facebook's new billionaires - The Winklevoss twins (8) - CNNMoney says $228 million.

Hope they're happy now...

I just stumbled across http://whoownsfacebook.com/, which gives a much lower figure. Not sure how accurate that page is.

 

Well, on the note of the pre-nup or not (who knows?), I just found out thru a friend commenting on one of Zuck's events that Zuck and his GF got married today: https://www.facebook.com/zuck/timel...338533999&hash=10100387011762121&pagefilter=3. If the link doesn't work, you can see it at https://www.facebook.com/zuck.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...e-girlfriend/2012/05/19/gIQAvSGtbU_story.html says:

 

According to the commentators, Facebook has saturated the market, leaving little room for growth. And unlike Google, Yahoo, Apple, and Microsoft (or even Tesla, the only one mentioned in this post that I own any of) Facebook does not offer any tangible product or service. I don't think they're going away, but I also don't think they're going to grow.

Further, as I see it, the IPO was not issued to raise needed capital to invest to expand the company. It was issued because the founders wanted to dump their ownership in exchange for cash. Apple went public so it could grow. Tesla went public, and used the money to develop the Model S. The procedes from Facebook's IPO went into the pockets of the founders so they could be rich. There's nothing wrong with doing that. I'd have done the same. But as an investor, I look at that and ask: "If the owners want out, why would I want in?"