There was a post a couple of days ago which highlighted a report that a lot of the advertising clicks on Facebook were being done by bots. This is followed up with a story that more than 83m of the 955m user accounts (thats 8.7%) could be (read - ARE) fake. The only reason Facebook is worth $10bn let alone the $45bn it is currently is due to the insanely large user base and the possibility of monetising these users through ad revenues.
For those of you bullish on Facebook (if you even exist...), do these 2 stories less than a week apart give you reason to reconsider your position?
It'd be interesting to see how things turn out in the future. I still honestly believe that Facebook could disappear like MySpace. Now that they have gone public they are going to rely on their ad revenues via mobile devices down the road which will piss off customers because nobody likes ads.
Invest in Path (at least emotionally).
haha, great find. Especially with this coming on the heels of that story about bots clicking on advertisements. Everything about Facebook is expectations. People are hoping that they can monetize their user base. They are hoping that Facebook can maintain their growth rates and profitability. They are hoping that Zuckerberg will magically and suddenly give a shit about investors, shareholders etc. He negotiated the deal of a lifetime for his early investors and now he is back to being in total control of Facebook, exactly how he wanted it.
They are looking towards mobile and that seems to be where the 'hope' for growth is. Maybe they can use instagram to do something there, but considering he hasn't addressed it since they bought them that looks to be a push at best. I doubt the rumored phone will help either. People pulled back the curtain on Facebook and aren't liking what they are seeing.
I believe it, I find it extremely hard to believe that 1/6 of the world regularly logs on and checks facebook
When they claim 955m "active users" I believe their definition is someone who logs onto Facebook once a month or more. That includes someone who gets a link from a friend to a picture or video on Facebook, views it and then never logs on again. I personally would not class that as an active user. I would be very interested in seeing the number of people who log on every day, and then the number of people who actually post / upload / comment every day. Those numbers would be extremely interesting.
what else is there to do while taking a shit?
exactly. When I do use facebook, I am on my phone most of the time. If (when) substantial ads hit the app and mobile web version, people will push back heavily
i love how pretty everyone has been putting zucks on a pedestal for the past 5 years.
no doubt he's accomplished more than 99.9% of people his age but Facebook's a fucking social networking site. 20 years from now, no one's gonna give a shit about Facebook or Myspace the same way people will remember Bill Gates or Steve Jobs
Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but "fake accounts" implies that Facebook is basically creating, running, and maintaining these fake accounts in order to provide fluff to the user count and maybe click on some ads. Thats not really the case, especially since a lot of these are "duplicate" users, and I know about 2-3 people who have these duplicate users, particularly older users.
I honestly haven't ever payed attention to an ad on facebook. I didn't even know they existed for a few years of having my facebook. I don't see how the ads are profitable.
How do they expect to monetize all of the accounts that people set up for their pets on FB?
Puppy chow adds that you can lick through, I mean click through? ;)
This is a company that I have wanted to see fail since talks of an IPO started.
I agree. I don't 100% know why I don't like it, I just don't. I don't have a FB account anymore because I truly believe it facilitates negative aspects of life and cuts down on old-fashioned person - to - person interaction. As an earlier poster said, the more the company needs to monetize to appease shareholders and the Street in general, the less user friendly the site will be, and the fewer members it will have (that's gotta be a formula in some textbook somewhere, right?).
Anyway, I agree. It may be time to short Zuck.
I could not agree more.
On top of that, Facebook has gotten countless numbers of people fired for uploading stupid sh1t. People have died in car crashes from the Facebook addiction. Also, people have a false sense of friendship and probably feel the need to add anyone and everyone that wants to be "friends." The icing on top of the cake would be that we all got these ideas from a socially retarded guy with Asperger's and 0 friends.
Disclosure: I'm short FB.
Could not agree more. I cannot wait for Facebook to become aggresive on ads and online props that they intend to sell for real cash.
Saw this in Forbes the other day as well:
Twitter Has Begun To Cut Off Instagram - Is Facebook Next?
One thing is for sure, in the Internet Age almost no site is truly invincible. At one point some people couldn't dream of a world without AOL, or where Yahoo! wasn't the top search engine, or MySpace wasn't the go-to social website. Things change and Facebook is being used less and less, at least among my friends.
I can only see so many pictures of people's kids, or the breast-feeding photos. The ads just make it that much worse.
Wait - so 'box gap' isn't a real person?
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