Social Network Investments

jimjames

opinions4u wrote: »

High risk to the extreme.

Just imagine if anybody had been stupid enough to buy Friends Reunited for an obscene amount of money ...

And MySpace.

My idea of a good investment isn't one that is sold for 90% less than it was bought for. $580m -> $35m in 6 years is eyewatering.

MySpace sale offers tough lessons in social networking
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13972392
Within the Facebook value is $1 billion paid for Instagram. Whether $1 billion is a suitable valuation for a company that shares photos and is 18 months old is debateable but Facebook shareholders money is being spent on "investments" like that.

boltneck123

My Space was a joke though to be fair, it seemed so disjointed and un-organised and I was quite young when it first hit the internet and my friends at school said it was just full of pervs. In all fairness it was just cr*p.

ruperts

Radiantsoul wrote: »

Facebook has huge barriers to entry which makes it quite interesting. I guess in theory a rival could copy or leapfrog it. But GooglePlus has failed as it is hard to get all of your existing friends to move over to a new platform.

People will move as soon as something new comes up which is good enough and fresh enough to make the first few thousand 'pioneers' feel as though they are part of something new and exciting.

That's all breaking into the market will take really: get the cool cutting edge kids on board, the rest will follow.

Google will always fail at this precisely because it's google. On the internet, google is like an old grey haired middle aged bore. There's nothing new or exciting about it no matter how clever their concept.

So for me, I feel Facebook is extremely vulnerable. It's only a matter of time before someone comes along and trumps it. Once that happens, as a social network the fall will be swift. Whether it could still be a good investment, depends on how well they diversify away from ad-revenue in the meantime.

daz501

I'm not sure if Facebook can be compared to MySpace. I always found MySpace fairly frustrating, slow and oversaturated with ads even at its height of popularity. At least Facebook, in its defense, has better functionality and wider appeal then MySpace ever did. MySpace let you customise so much of your profile page that there were times when my browser would crash. Facebook do not allow certain scripts or code so the interface is kept much cleaner.

Recently though, Facebook has been very slow to load, and always seems to be breaking down. Also, they don't seem to listen to what their users actually want and go ahead and implement changes not necessarily in the interest of users. For example, the new "timelines" for fanpages/marketing pages are absolutely dreadful, although these changes are supposedly for the benefit of businesses.

I was watching an interview with Mark Zuckerberg recently and the interviews suggested that Facebook "Never asks for permission, and always begs forgiveness." That is to say they cross the line once too often and expect to be let off just because they're Facebook.

jimjames

daz501 wrote: »

MySpace let you customise so much of your profile page that there were times when my browser would crash. Facebook do not allow certain scripts or code so the interface is kept much cleaner.

Recently though, Facebook has been very slow to load, and always seems to be breaking down.

The only app that routinely crashes on my iPhone is Facebook. It is also the only mainstream app where updated versions stop previous functionality from working and need a subsequent fix release a few days later. What is tolerated for a small startup isn't the same as what is acceptable from a major software player and their testing regime seems to be woefully inadequate in relation to their size.

gkerr4

if you can get in on the IPO then do so!

and sell it on listing day - the hype around Facebook IPO will be massive, it'll be hugely oversubscribed - will make a good trade, but not an investment.

IronWolf

Regardless of whether Facebook will survive or not, even if it does I don't think they will make enough money to justify the IPO price.

Hydromancer

boltneck123 wrote: »

jimjames,

That does make sense to me, I think I'll start researching into that.

Do know of any tech funds that have potential that I could look at to give me a starting point?

Also have a look at the Herald investment trust which invests in smaller quoted companies in technology, communications and multi-media

boltneck123

Thanks for the heads up Hydro.

I think the comments about Facebook are all valid in some respect. This is one of the first BIG social media companies being listed and we are entering the un-known. In my opinion I think in the short term everything will be great, long term probably not so much. Once you have share holders to please it's a different game altogether, I hope that Facebook can look at say Google for instance and learn from them. But we can only wait and see, I wont be investing in Facebook, at least not immediately.

It would be nice to get into some tech funds etc that hold patents for tech that companies such as Facebook may need to survive the competition. We shall see. It was nice to get some varied opinion and has given me a lot to think about.

Good luck to all in your investments, past, present and future