$O! How Much Do YOU think FaceBook is Worth ?

[cbelt3]

http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/30/technolo...?iid=HP_LN&hpt=hp_bn6

[iaJim]

A lot less than it was if they persist in changing everyone to timeline!

[Spock]

Less than MySpace .... eventually.

[hal]

I'd say $50B MINIMUM as of right now. There is no reason that it shouldn't become the equ of Ma Bell but worldwide. It SHOULD become an immense monopoly of incredible value if they do it right...

MS took down Netscape, but who has the power to take down facebook? Apple? Not likely...

[michaelb]

i think it is a fad that will pass, so over the medium term, not that much.

[blooz]

It's going to be worth a lot less than it originally sells for.

I find it useful in some ways, in maintaining content with people I might otherwise not miss anyway, and with friends who want to share something with a wide bunch of other friends in one posting. but i think the luster will diminish. Spock mentioned myspace. There is a good example of something that looked great and then faded. Could happen to facebook. i'd recommend buying early and then selling when the price goes up and getting the hell out. but i am broke and living on social security and the few graphic jobs I can dig up (mostly because i am lazy) so what do i know about finance.

[Lux Interior]

blooz wrote:
Spock mentioned myspace. There is a good example of something that looked great and then faded.

Can't say that I was ever a big fan, but every MS page I ever had the misfortune to run across looked like it was coded by Jackson Pollack on acid.

[bazookaman]

[Z]

I'm undecided if I'm being curmudgeonly or simply thinking that this, too, shall pass. It's worth whatever someone will pay for it. That said, the laws of thermodynamics, loosely applied, limit how big it can get and keep growing. Their growth is slowing.

[sunder]

Just look at all the ways of meeting up online that have come and gone. Each was considered a big deal at the time. People even worried about how addictive they were to teenagers. They all burn bright for a while, then fragment or totally die off.

There are many reasons why people leave. Some will find a new fad to obsess over. Others lose their free time - jobs, marriage, kids. Nobody will be playing Farmville 3 years from now. In five years nobody will even remember Farmville. It's cool to reconnect with an old college buddy, but after a few exchanges what do you do? You have moved on, your life is now with your current friends and neighbors.

This list of dead or mostly dead communities is not in any real order and I'm missing tons of examples for each one listed.

BBS's
Compuserve CB and all its clones
Hotline Servers + clones
Usenet discussion groups
AOL discussion groups + clones
eWorld (almost forgot that one)
Tripod and all its clones
The Well in San Francisco + clones
My space

FB will not die off but a few years from now nobody will be talking about how much of a powerhouse they are. They only make money from ad views. They have built an incredibly expensive infrastructure on the belief that their explosive growth will go on forever.

It will be interesting for me to see how well Apple can cannibalize FB. Once they get Siri and iCloud working well on all products and combine that with their TV strategy, they could kill FB. People sign up for FB because it's free and they can share messages, pictures, and video. If iCloud does all this with a good voice interface and offers dozens of other benefits anytime anywhere for free, they could rule the world. There are things that a computer maker can offer that a simple interactive website database cannot.