
Zuckerberg: Facebook Will Have A Business Plan In Three Years - prakash
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/10/zuckerberg-facebook-will-have-a-business-plan-in-three-years
======
pxlpshr
I'm not going to make a comment on whether or not FB can be profitable... but
here is some doom and gloom comedy if you believe we're in a monsoon of a shit
storm:

Employers will cut staff, trim the fat, and leave only the super productive.
Businesses will put a stop on productivity leaks, this means the 18-20 people
on my FB buddy list (99% of which have graduated) at 1pm on a Thursday will
have to call it quits, or lose their job.

College students will be faced with a credit squeeze, halt their $30-40 a
month @home internet and return to using school provided connectivity, making
them a far less connected market.

Fb traffic declines, advertising expenditures are cut... Fb and Pets.com
become soul mates.

Just kidding... :)

~~~
josefresco
OR... because the job market is in the crapper, kids will extend their college
visits, giving them several more years to waste networking on sites like FB,
thereby keeping FB's valuation high and their profits coming when the markets
rebound just in time for their "revenue plan"

~~~
pxlpshr
That assumes they have access to credit and loans to extend their hiatus. :)

------
nickb
We're now in a recession and branding budgets are almost always the first
things that big companies cut. This is Facebook's bread & butter. Facebook
will need to make some heavy cuts if they plan on searching for another three
years.

~~~
anamax
> We're now in a recession and branding budgets are almost always the first
> things that big companies cut.

Does/will Coke cut its branding budget?

I think that there are very few companies with valuable brands. (Sony might
have one, but how many people buy something because it says Pioneer on the
box?) The rest may have some name recognition, but that doesn't move much
product.

~~~
nickb
> Does/will Coke cut its branding budget?

Yes, of course. They all do. When you have less demand and people have less
disposable income, you tend to put more money into measurable advertising that
can directly impact the bottom line. I think you'll agree that Coke's brand is
safe and as Buffett says, the moat is very, very wide indeed so to them,
cutting branding budget will not show any impact for at least 2-3 quarters.

~~~
timclark
Coke is almost 100% a branding company. The sugary water distribution and
manufacture is franchised in most territories.

------
lief79
It does say

"In three years from now we have to figure out what the optimum model is."

There is a difference between being not profitable, and being optimally
profitable.

*started with the wrong markup

------
callmeed
Last week I tried to buy some FB ads ... couldn't get past the setup/purchase
screens (was improperly validating my info).

Do I have to wait 3 years for that to work?

------
foulmouthboy
Current business plan (apparently only slightly facetious):

1\. Get everybody on Facebook 2\. Create a huge map detailing how everybody
relates to everybody else. 3\. ???? 4\. Profit

I always figured that there were smarter people than me working on step 3, but
maybe there weren't.

Maps of the non-social kind are useful because they can be bought and used to
get to places you've never been to. Maps of the social kind are apparently
useless because everybody wants their privacy and you're basically left with a
map telling you where you are and what's within two steps walking distance.

------
furiouslol
I'm going to call it right here right now: Facebook will be irrelevant 3 years
from now.

~~~
akd
Why do you say that? Do you think people are going to lose interest in the
things they do on Facebook, or do you think a new competitor is going to
provide a product sufficiently better than Facebook to take over the market?

------
jonknee
There are few people that I would rather see fall into a fiery downfall of
fail more than Zuckerberg. Maybe he'll wise up and take the cash before it's
too late.

~~~
ROFISH
Zuckerburg and Facebook as a business might fail, but it's still used by
MILLIONS of college students all over. If Zuckerburg can't make a business out
of millions of eyeballs, somebody will buy their husk of an indebted corpse
and take a shot at it.

~~~
unalone
Yeah. I can't see Facebook going down without a massive fight.

------
thinkcomp
Perhaps it's still too early to tell, but this certainly does read a bit
differently now than it did when I wrote it two years ago.

<http://www.aarongreenspan.com/letter>

~~~
mariorz
let it go

~~~
unalone
Yeah. That's history by now. Give it a rest.

~~~
thinkcomp
Two points:

A) Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.

B) The point of my posting the link wasn't to remind anyone of the personal
history. It was that as a business decision, Facebook not accepting Yahoo's
buyout offer looked brilliant in 2006 and 2007, but now looks questionable (at
best). Who knows what Yahoo can or can't afford at this point, let alone $100
per user.

~~~
unalone
I think Zuckerberg is pretty adamantly against selling. Money or no money,
he's currently got the keys to the one web site that every college student is
coming to rely on. That gives him a lot of power, and it gives him a lot of
leeway with trying to make money. So, as of right now, he's still in a pretty
good position.

------
sabat
Three years?!

