

Ask HN: Would you buy Facebook stock? - jacquesm

If facebook ever went IPO, would you buy their stock, and for what reason would you or would you not buy their stock ?<p>(I know this is almost a 'poll' style question but I'm much more interested in the reasoning than the numbers)
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makeramen
The question should be rephrased to "would you invest in facebook? how much?
and why?" This would take the question of stock price out of the question.

I think bringing price into the equation is arguing details unrelated to the
point of the question. I would assume most of us here at HN are familiar with
the matter and have an approximation of how much FB is worth.

I personally have low expectations for the future of Facebook. As a graduating
senior in college right now, I joined Facebook near it's inception during my
senior year of high school when my peers first got .edu accounts and it was
still private. Almost everyone I knew made the switch over from MySpace over a
year or so.

If you can recall what Facebook was like back in the day: it was an exclusive
club for college students. No high schoolers and no "adults." I really think
this targeted niche was really one of the most appealing factors when I
joined. I also really enjoyed the static structure and cleanliness of each
page. It was nothing like the myspace mess of fugly personalized layouts
everywhere. It was just a nice clean, niche, social environment.

But they've changed a lot since then, and only gotten more unappealing. I
remember the days my friends and I dreaded the "public opening" of facebook,
when your little brother in middle school and your parents and grandparents
started joining facebook. Among all the other features they've now added to
their bloat, facebook is just becoming the social Microsoft. All the old
fogies are trying to jump on the bandwagon and market their facebook sites,
while all the original members like me are leaving.

My facebook page as of the moment just shows my twitter stream and I check it
once or twice a month to see what new comments and event invites I've gotten.
That's it. I honestly don't really care what the majority of my 600 "friends"
are doing; I got code to write.

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Dilpil
The real question is, at what _price_ would you buy their stock. Surely if it
was $.01 for 1% of facebook we would all buy.

Is there a place we can get financial data for facebook?

~~~
brosephius
according to some recent techcrunch posts about FB stock trading on
secondmarket.com, it's about valued at about $25 billion. but they noted that
FB has stopped letting new employees sell their stock, so the valuation is
potentially inflated by lack of supply.

~~~
eraad
I agree, it's most likely it won't be any close to Google's if that's what
people is thinking.

In fact, social content is hard to monetize due to privacy concerns, thus IMHO
Facebook is lacking of a clear long-term business model other than
advertising. Google's investment in Zynga doesn't help that much either.

They have taken the right path targeting developers but I don't seem to
understand where that is going.

So my answer is no, I wouldn't buy Facebook stock, except for speculation
purposes.

~~~
notahacker
differences in CTR not withstanding, advertising worked pretty well as a long
term business model for Google...

Facebook barely scratched the surface of the advertising potential so far -
targeted paid ads in streams, a recommendation engine and beating Foursquare
et al at the location game are all feasible and likely to be more lucrative
than their current rather passive sidebar ads.

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sabj
For me, liquidity would be a concern. I don't think I would want to invest at
FB at the currently quoted 25$ billion level if I had to leave my money there
for a very long time; so much can change, and I share some concerns about the
company's future, at least where valuation is concerned.

The question here though, is about an IPO. I think that the markets would eat
up FB, but it's dicey to try to time such things -- have a look at Tesla, for
example! -- and easy to be correspondingly burned. I presume that if we follow
this question to its logical conclusion, assuming Facebook has an IPO sometime
in 2011, I don't know I'd want to take a bite - I think it would get
overvalued in the public markets, especially at first, and I am not sure about
long-term growth. Huge potential, but can they execute? I would want more
diversification, and I wouldn't want to buy a small enough chunk of FB to feel
safe about that investment; wouldn't be much point. I would be happy to have
it join a roster of other more broad tech investments of mine, though, all
things considered.

Interesting to see the contortions FB has to make to stay under the 500 # to
avoid publicly filing with the SEC ; )

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Stevenup7002
No way. Facebook is falling apart, I don't think it will ever reach a stage
where they can IPO.

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gojomo
Depends on the price, of course. But probably, yes.

Like Google is the search-utility/natural-monopoly, Facebook is the social-
utility/natural-monopoly. While the exact way they extract profits from that
position will vary over time, it's a good place to be, and Facebook's
management has shown itself to be very savvy with regard to each phase of its
growth, and the threats that could dissipate its dominance.

The greatest risk I see is that the next (and subsequent) generations coming
online see it as an old-persons' utility. I think with acquisitions, some
rebranding, and other moves Facebook can address this, and it is within its
DNA to be cognizant of the risk.

