patrick.net

You forgot zynga. I wonder if this could become the biggest company in the world shortly thereafter. It wouldn't take much to top apples market cap if they're starting it off with a 100B market cap.

They have nothing more than peoples information + a wall for people to write on, this company doesn't even have much staying power.

Go facebook. Funny, how people will diss you for not being "on facebook" Good social preoccupation though, people are bored, give em something to play around with on the computer which does not require much thought. Not being real social, I don't plan on setting up an account.

pkennedy says

They have nothing more than peoples information + a wall for people to write on, this company doesn't even have much staying power.

Think about the superbowl, the type of money advertisors will pay for 30M viewers.

With Facebook, you have, say 500M users spending hours everyday. Not only are there tons of users, but they are the sticky type. They literally can have a superbowl everyday.

Simply an amazing company. 1.5B operating profit on 3.8B Gross or 40% operating margin. They have the type of business that can get 60% operating margin as each incremental revenue does not cost them anything.

Do you guys think Facebook is a worthy purchase? I kind of understand that they make money by selling personal information, but I don't know how much money they actually make which makes me weary on the issue of buying their stocks.

I'll add to what Fortwayne says by injecting...

Not only that, but Facebook is this decade's "Petrock".
Compound the Petrock effect with Facebook and Google's practices, of selling private info. It's really only matter of time before people push back. It will be in fashion to not be on Facebook or other social networks for that matter.

Or even if that doesn't do them in, new laissez-faire semantics of future internet standards will. Example...

Much of the new programming design, patterns and practices are designed to intrinsically bake much of Social Networking attributes into new technologies and standards. By that I mean, the future will have Facebook or Google like services built into the web architecture. Where there wont have to be a centralized repository of information. But rather, the information will be stored collectively. Whether data resides on the cloud or on a desktop hard drive.

We'll all be connected with or with out Facebook or Google.
At which time those services will go the way of the milk man.

SFace says

Simply an amazing company. 1.5B operating profit on 3.8B Gross or 40% operating margin. They have the type of business that can get 60% operating margin as each incremental revenue does not cost them anything.

Advertising... thats all. There is only a limited amount of advertising dollars that can be spent each year.

The GOP says

Much of the new programming design, patterns and practices are designed to intrinsically bake much of Social Networking attributes into new technologies and standards. By that I mean, the future will have Facebook or Google like services built into the web architecture. Where there wont have to be a centralized repository of information. But rather, the information will be stored collectively. Whether data resides on the cloud or on a desktop hard drive

Its called CRM, customer resource managmenet.. and its been around for some time since the early 90s. But the idea goes back to the 80s.

chanakya4773 says

LinkedIn is very similar in profession network and i am not seeing them making tons of money.

On the contrary, companies are willing to pay good money for recruitment purposes. Most High-tech Silicon Valley companies pay a bonus of $1.5k to $3k per hire. And they pay up to ten thousand in referral bonus for a V.P.

LinkedIn's position isn't easily usurped. Many people added their work information and very rarely checked the account again. It took a long time to accumulate this many users.