So what happening with the FB IPO, so far it has failed to explode upwards in price as predicted by lots of financial analysts.
Are people finally realizing that its all hype, and generated only to make a profit for the I-Banks/institutions.
I firmly believe that FB has had it finest moment, and it will start to fade from here on out. With the advent of more people accessing socail media on smart phones, FB will not be able to realize any substantial profits derived from small ads not being present.
Any thoughts?
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Goran_K says
It's the new paradigm, man. Like, turning profits is the OLD paradigm and totally outdated. As long as investors want to fund our innovation, we can keep going forever.
/1999
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Andy S says
Do you intend to short FB? If so, when?
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Patrick says
The underwriters were defending the $38 price with a huge resting bid.
The articles I read made it sound normal, almost expected-- whereas the blogs are calling it manipulation.
Anyone here have any IPO knowledge? What is normal behavior for the underwriters? Anything potentially illegal going on here?
My gut is to agree with the articles, that this is normal for such a large, public IPO. The underwriters felt their accurate price discovery reputation was on the line.
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xenogear3 says
Well, that is probably true. I have a friend who has two dogs, a cat and a horse. Each of them have their own unique Facebook pages. So that is 5 unique Facebook users-just one of them human though ...
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OH GOD OH GOD I'M RUINED!
I bet my entire nest egg on Facebook and it's ALL GONE.
Now instead of sipping drinks drinks while servants fan me on the porch of this beauty:
I'll have to move into one of these:
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I have three - IDs like Phukkbo McZpazz and Plotch Kloppfer and Phace Bighter - connected to all manner of random people of almost no relation. The ads are completely random and of no connection at all to my real life. Since I claim my birthday indicates I am 114 years old, I get occasional ads for adult diapers. It looks like General Motors finally figured out how this kind of user base amounts to a completely useless cohort for its advertising needs. Their marketing people have telling metrics no doubt and after a few years of instrumented data have decided shouting into a random set is less useful in connecting to consumers than conventional alternatives. Only a matter of time before the rest of the marketers figure out what GM has concluded.
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Pleasanton, CA
When I saw that eTrade was offering IPO shares in FB to retail account holders, I knew the price was already at or beyond the upside potential. Otherwise, the underwriters would have only offered shares to their institutional customers and valuable account holders -- as usual. Instead, they had to enlist the support of the public (the dumb money) to sell the supposedly over-subscribed offering.
As they said in Rounders, if you look around the table and can't spot the sucker -- it's you. And any retail customer who thought they were "so lucky" to get IPO shares through their brokerage was also the sucker.
They would NEVER offer IPO shares to the public if they thought there was any upside in the offering. Never... so I knew by last week that this thing was a dud.
That, and the GM announcement which proved what I already knew (being in the industry) that advertising on FB is not effective for advertisers. For the past year or more, marketers have been spending gobs of money on FB ads because they "have to," regardless of cost and performance, because it's the hot thing -- and because they're told to by CMOs who don't want to miss out if there's a "there" there. But they're starting to question the ROI ,and will start pulling back on these budgets as more and more advertisers demonstrate that it's not working, and it's "okay" to stop advertising there.
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rented is very astute.
My goldbug friend asked me the other day why I want some Facebook and I said their business probably sucks. He looked shocked.
The majority of the people I am friends with are guys my age who don't buy anything based on ads, or even look at them, or they are people with no means to buy anything anyway.
I originally got facebook so my neice could keep in touch with me and through facebook, her grandmother my mother.
Others are overseas people so somehow they became the most "friends" I have. The number of friends one has seems inversely proportional to 1. age 2. being male
I.E., younger, hotter females have the most friends. They have the least money usually too.
Where can a company buy ads? Everywhere. So, what is Facebooks competition? Newspapers, magazines, television, radio, google, every website with readable content, so facebook has about as many competitors for its business as facebook has members.
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lostandconfused reminds me. I made a facebook account for a dog too! I wonder how many ads he clicks?
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CBOEtrader says
Yes done a few.. and no, its not normal unless its a big client name.
Certainly the spread between the price and higher opening is banked by the underwriter (morgan stanley). So its an incentive to keep it above syndicate price. IN most cases the Underwriter will serve as investment broker so they want to keep FB as client going forward.
Why did it fall ? ... MS fixed the price at $38 given the demand and then FB after added 25% more shares.. the price wasnt adjusted for the additional shares.. with more shares as supply, prices should have been adjusted downwards... the market reacted.
There was also a system glitch.. which impacted order taking.
No, not illegal.
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I've been on a couple of friends and family lists for IPOs and most everything was ready to be acquired by institutional investors at the IPO. They were boring infrastructure plays with conservative accounting. But they were valued highly by people who understood those industries and were booked out to the old-line investment houses and mutual funds on day one. Facebook has been a hairball of an investment vehicle from its inception. Zuckfuck's real innovation has always been in his ability to find the next round of suckers to believe his latest valuation was rational.
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Las Vegas, NV
Successful IPOs usually pop nicely if priced properly. There have been several IPOs priced to perfection in the last couple of years. This is not good for repeat business. Why buy the IPO and go into broker lockup? If you like it then wait and buy after the IPO at a discount.
There are several things about this IPO that smell. One to watch out for soon is the release of insiders to sell. Usually there is a lockup period of 6 months. Suckybug negotiated a 3 month lockup period for all his employees. This thing may go under $5 in the next couple of years. I wish I could borrow the shares to short it. Only the hedge funds and fat cats will be able to borrow and short this turkey.
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As soon as the "puts" go live...guess who'll be buyng them? :)
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chzwiz says
So much for the 1000 new Multi Millionaires the pathic media was crowing about...
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Pleasanton, CA
Sorry, there are already thousands of them. They've been selling on SecondMarket for a while now... and they'll make millions selling even at $20 or $30...
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Will questionable FB IPO, remove from housing market one of reason for low inventory ”Facebook effect”?
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They shorten', they hatin' !!!
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PockyClipsNow says
You smoke the good stuff. What is it, indica sativa?
They dont have a phone, they dont have a phone story, most of the users are using FB app, at the grace of aapl and goog, and they dont have any employees, some 3500, and they dont have any real intellectual property, and they have, get this, they sole thing of value they have, A WEB SITE, like friendster, and myspace, its a website, with 900 million broke gen x and gen y people the world over with no disposable money because rent, food, gas, tuition and housing is brutally overpriced. no dough, but consuming terabytes a second recording who bopped who last night.
Yeah, a real goldmine headed by a hoodie wearing intellectual property thief who knows how to got to the top of the heap where it should be plain to see, the emperor has no clothes.
it should also be noted that adsense was bought by goog, as was youtube and andriod. All the innovation is stolen or bought by the oligarchs. Appl stole from Xerox Parc. MSFT stole from Kildall. IBM and Sun actually invented new things without resorting to petty theft for most of it.
We dont celebrate innovation as a society, it seems, we-all celebrate thieves and robber barons ripping off the world and the future getting to the top so they can have a marble mirror pool a mile long in a 10 million dollar an acre estate while the rest of us eat ramen to put the kids through school.
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Rented through the downturn says
Thats just BS from journalist.. you cant sell anything on the secondary market unless its fully approved by the Board of Directors (Due to Goverence) and must be in compliance with SEC limits of 500 investors. Pre Ipo stock very often is restricted from trading and transfering to other parties. The 1000s is really not feasible...
The majority of the 2ndary trades are from a handful of VCs and Microsoft who already invested 100s millions. These same investors are the ones who piled in mega millions into FB already. Its not some scruffy engineer banking into millions.
One needs more info than what some journalist says.. they oftern dont understand the whole story here.
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Pleasanton, CA
While folks here keep referring to FB's user base as a collection of broke Gen X and Yers, you should know that their largest and fastest growing audience is the highly valuable female, 35-55 segment, which has a lot of money. In fact, it's their younger demographics that are at risk.
That said, again, it's the format and the context of the FB website that makes the ads ineffective. Therefore, FB's big move will be to take their intrusive data-set and sell it off of their site to advertisers who can make money advertising on other publishers' sites.
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Rented through the downturn says
yes, I know. posting pictures of their kids and their adventures. Buying stuff? no. Just trying to stitch the family back together with zuck trying to spy and sell the info. Rather pathetic really. I have never not once even SEEN an ad on FB. And funny, those FB phone apps are ad-less , sadly, developed by a third party, lol, some 100bn company. What a POS.
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Andy S says
It failed to pop???
I'm shocked.... really shocked....... shocked I tell you.... NOT!!!
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CBOEtrader says
From observation of progress in first day trading of FB appeared to be a big financial trap.
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REpro says
First day flop. It perfectly makes financial sense to get out now - if you hold it.
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Zuckfuck will be facing some awesome law suits by disgruntled investors very soon.
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APOCALYPSEFUCK isFrank Sinatra says
I hope the stock values stays up enough to pay the disgruntled investors.
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They're fucked. A handful of early investors will do OK.
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Facebook IPO:
The LA Times recently marked the 50th anniversary of a seminal book: The Image - A Guide to Pseudo-events in America by Daniel Boorstin
The manufactured hype of the FB IPO would fit the pseudo-event description, although I doubt if Boorstin could have anticipated events in the financial sector being so well crafted and manipulated - then again, I guess that's what most of Wall Street is all about.
In a world saturated by every imaginable medium, each one perfectly designed for maximum manipulation and profit, we will continue to endure wave after wave of meaningless pseudo-events, and those rare events which mark true watersheds will be trivialized by the same media.
There is small comfort in the potential failure of the FB IPO, all of the sharks will have profited nicely regardless of the ultimate fate for the IPO.
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facebook brought to you by the same pushers that sold MBS and CDS. What could possibly go wrong?
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inflection point says
no, not wall street.. it was when microsoft agreed to buy 1.6% share of FB for $240M. Then it became a bubble!
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21458486/ns/business-us_business/t/microsoft-invests-million-facebook/
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Indeed, honestly, when you look at facebook in the ebb and flow things; its peak was in 2009-2010.
By early 2011 the first falloff of disinterest began and nowadays I find it in the same state as Myspace circa 2007; well into its death throes, but no one has truly poked at it yet. They might use the same deceitful tactics as Activision-Blizzard did in WoW to cloak the massive drop in active users; but it is very much a shell of what it was a few years ago in actual usage.
Though not brilliant by any measure, going public to me was affirmation that Zuckerberg and crew knew the party was coming to a close and time to wring the last bit out.
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thomas.wong1986 says
Although I think Facebook is a turd, I know 1st hand this is not the case.
I personally know 2 very early engineers that "worked" at Facebook. Both have sold a large portion of their shares on the secondary market and have both made millions. One of them moved to Washington about 6 months ago and said he'd save "millions" just in taxes and has since "retired". He told me he got $30 a share. The other already owns a house here and has since "retired".
Again, I pretty much hate FakeFriendBook with a passion, but they most certainly did sell a ton of shares on the secondary market.
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Tom, Crazy,
You're both right. There was a lot of trading of FB shares between seed and IPO and it was controversial. SEC was lit up about it and found FB was gaming the system by creating its own private market for the shares they tried to represent as new investment. Some of the ways Zuckfuck was pricing it out to different investors was also of interest to the SEC. I've seen two outfits go from seed to IPO and they were white knuckle all through the process, making sure they'd played it straight. Predictably, they had zero controversy attending their IPOs. One got bought, founder went to CTO chair and retired after a little dust-up about patents years before the acquisition. The other - like 12 years on - still has the same CEO. Neither ever had any trouble with SEC on anything. FB was in trouble in the first instance with an SEC that is by all accounts asleep at the switch. That's why I say, who really knows what is going on in their books?
We will find out.
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APOCALYPSEFUCK isFrank Sinatra says
Good call! It has already happened:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/breaking/chi-investor-sues-nasdaq-over-facebook-slipups-20120522,0,930879.story
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Die. Zuckfuck, Die!
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Patrick says
I gave the wrong link. This is the one actually about possible wrongdoing by Facebook:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/22/us-facebook-galvin-idUSBRE84L1BS20120522
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Mark Zuckerberg as well as owners of Morgan Stanley, Charles Schwab, and Goldman Sachs all has the same ancestry - famous of screwing regular folks.
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REpro says
All because of greed of regular folks.
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clambo says
Where can I get a free copy of Office?
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http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57439918-93/facebook-zuckerberg-sued-over-ipo/