They basically came to market with a 100x Price to Free Cash Flow ratio. I don't doubt Facebook will be massively profitable, but it was a lousy buy at the IPO price.

Quote from: drugal on May 23, 2012, 09:32

Zuckerbeg has been victimized by these bankers, imho. They trapped him in this scam. I hope this won't destroy FB, beside the IPO fraud, it is a decent platform to advertise yourself a photographer, and to keep connected with (possible) customers.

Victimized? You surely must be joking.

My thoughts exactly. No almost exactly, I'd say must be blind or at the very least just naive.

Hello, this is 2001

Can I have my IPO back

 

Quote from: ShadySue on May 23, 2012, 09:16

I watched the Beeb documentary last week before the flotation and thought it was interesting that the UK financial experts they interviewed all thought it was a bad buy, but the Americans were much more bullish.

And now all of the buyers have become little cry-babies because they thought they could make "easy money". Serves them right!

Hey the American banks, loan companies and investment firms already proved how smart they are with the housing crisis, lets not assume any one of those greedy suits with their designer adoration's, has learned anything but more ignorant blind swinishness. Oink Oink, my little piggies. There are some risks involved in investing, even for insiders who get exclusive access to IPOs.

No sympathy at all.

Totally. Plus, I seriously doubt Zuckerberg makes all his financial and legal decisions by himself.

In June, Ironfire Capital founder Eric Jackson predicted: "In five to eight years they are going to disappear in the way that Yahoo has disappeared."

That would be OK with me. But after Yahoo disappeared, FB took its place. So if FB disappears, some other scam social networking site will come along.

Yesterday, someone turned me on to a music service called Spotify. The only way to sign up for an account was through Facebook. Of course I knew what would happen then. No. I created a dummy FB account to link to it. No friends, no nothing. Linked to a dummy email account, too. Looks like the trial expires in 6 months, then I can only listen for 10 hours a month unless I pay.

So I think this is how FB will start making some other kind of revenue. But that means people just get more and more tied in to some giant kind of Big Brother scam, gathering all their data and selling and re-selling it. 

I probably won't use the Spotify much. I'll stick to my iPod.

Please search for Spotify and Royalties - then maybe you will stick to buying rather than streaming.

The #1 link when I did that search is this site which, whilst not uncritical, is all about how this is potentially a good deal for new artists. It is a long article and worth reading.

According to this item the model will likely never be able to pay a high royalty rate per stream but that artists have the opportunity to make a good income provided they can get users to listen to their tracks. And that the outlook for new artists is good as these services spread into new international jurisdictions, increase membership and become more ubiquitous.

Long story short, this is the volume argument again. Unlike with stock photography subscription models (so far) however, these models actually count and pay for use (and effectively discourage casual piracy). I have no idea whether these are strong or complete arguments or indeed the extent to which this is usefully analogous to the world of stock photos.

Also - because these music subscription models are potentially so well integrated into the world of social media it makes it possible for artists to build an audience. All of the music which I have discovered this year has been via Flipboard thanks to Twitter and RSS ... in terms of sales, listening for free, has this month translated into a 1 complete album download from iTunes and a CD of the same album from Amazon because I wanted to give my mother a gift wrapped copy. Since I never almost never listen to the radio and seldom watch TV I would have limited opportunity to discover music any other way other than via people being able to blog or report recommendations online.

I prefer Pandora to Spotify. I'm there to listen to music, not network. Just my two cents.

I pay $5 per month for MOG. I haven't been able to get a clear answer for how artists get paid through the service, and whether or not it is a good deal for them. I'm certainly not married to the service. If I found that artists were getting a poor deal, I would leave instantly.

I like the ability to stream any song, any time on MOG, which I can't do with Pandora. It has a much higher bit rate than Pandora and sounds pretty good through a stereo. I find Pandora to be better for discovering new music, as it does a great job at matching similar bands to your tastes. MOG does an "okay" job with the same task.