Posted on 06/04/2012 8:51:13 PM PDT by Lmo56
Facebook will lose dominance as a major web company in less than a decade, Eric Jackson, founder of Ironfire Capital said Monday on CNBC's Squawk on the Street.
"In five to eight years they are going to disappear in the way that Yahoo has disappeared," Jackson said. "Yahoo is still making money, it's still profitable, still has 13,000 employees working for it, but it's 10 percent of the value that it was at the height of 2000. For all intents and purposes, it's disappeared."
Jackson said there have been three generations of web companies. The first generation was big web portals, such as Yahoo [YHOO 15.01 0.09 (+0.6%) ], where content was aggregated in one place. The second was the social web with Facebook [FB 26.90 -0.82 (-2.96%) ] and the third generation is companies focused entirely on monetizing the mobile platform, something Facebook will continue to struggle with, Jackson said.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...
BUT, a lot of users will be PO'd if this happens. Then, they will drop FB, leading advertisers to drop [like GM did].
At least Google has something of a worthwhile marketing plan. It sells space on its search results page on the basis of ACTUAL searches.
Like, if I search for a widget to buy, then I see companies advertising widgets for sale. I don't mind, since I am actually looking to purchase one.
OTOH, FB can only glean my interests from my FB Page, and then PUSH ads toward me [whether I want them or not].
That is why I have a FB account with NO PERSONAL INFO in it. I am only on FB so I can see friends' FB pages ...
Just like the telephone, it's all about staying in the "cool" group while avoiding the "uncool" group so the cool group will get tired of being lumped in with all the other tag-alongs and invent their own new social media site so they can be "cool" again.
I'd never invest in Facebook. But if I had money, I'd invest in tattoo removal. Once the lemmings decide tats are no longer cool, some people are in line to make a fortune.
Oh crap, that long. I read the other day that 1/3 of all divorce cases now have the word Facebook in them.
Facebook is like eBay.
ALL sellers go to eBay because that’s where the buyers are. MOST buyers go to eBay because that’s where the sellers are.
Same for Facebook. MySpace never was close to ubiquity. Facebook is the one where grandparents find their grandkids, and vice versa.
And probably always will be.
How’s that Google alternative working out for all you Betamax viewers?
You’re right—narcissism never goes out of style, it just morphs.
I read the other day that 1/3 of all divorce cases now have the word Facebook in them.
FB is trying to be too big for its britches.
If it charged users like $1/month to use it, it might lose 200-300 million users, but would still gross about $500 million/month.
It could then add services and innovate - charging those who want to use the enhanced services a minimal amount more.
This is waay better than trying to depend on the advertising model ...
Hum? Yahoo is profitable, and has 13,000 employees and it has disappeared. ok?
Wait until everybody figures out Carbonite might have a limited lifespan with everybody’s files in the cloud.
I’m hoping 5 to 8 days.
Agree
For a brief time, Yahoo was the most valuable company on Earth.
“All glory is fleeting.”
But, Zuckerberg got the cash from the chumps who bought the stock on the day of the IPO ...
I’d give them half-life of another 3-4 years so comes out the same. I find it interesting that even FB has admitted in SEC filings that it’s having difficulty “monetizing” the shift to mobile users. So isn’t the mantra that everything on the internet is supposed to be freeeeee? Except when that screws the guys who are making all the cool apps for you and your FB friends to use need to pay the bills...then freeeee isn’t freeeee anymore. Just ask the NYT or your daily newspaper. FBs IPO flopped because they couldn’t convince investors their business model was sound. FB is an advertizing medium, all the social networking jazz is just a way to make the ad model work.
It wouldn’t surprise me. The net keeps evolving, so it follows that someone will come up with a better/newer/etc. mousetrap. I’ve never been a FB kind of guy in the first place, so it doesn’t matter to me much, but I would not be surprised to see it surpassed in the next few years.
Then again, I’m mystified by the success of Twitter. I honestly figured it would have gone the way of Snapvine (remember that one?) and the like by now.
Never base your long term business plan on the whims of 13 year old girls with an attention span of 2 hours. LOL, OMG!!!
Ive asked Jim to create a Freeper Sales Swapmeet page.
Take 1% and end the freepathons or at least put a dent in them and add to the revenue while providing a service.
Call it “Jim’s List”
I doubt it will last even that long now.
Twitter is the new “in” thing among 20 somethings.... there will be something “new” shortly ! My newly minted 18 year old came home from school in April
and said BTW “you’re not dumb enough to buy FB?”
I promptly assured him that I was not quite that dumb.
Just like the analysts said AOL was doomed
Yet they are still around giving out email accounts to every spammer who wants one.....
Twitter is the new “in” thing among 20 somethings.... there will be something “new” shortly ! My newly minted 18 year old came home from school in April
and said BTW “you’re not dumb enough to buy FB?”
I promptly assured him that I was not quite that dumb.
Sorry for the double post!
Apparently I am dumb... but not with my finances!
They sell it to the government! That’s why Obama and Zuckerberg are such great friends! Obama has paid that dude very well so they can spy on people through facebook.
The chinese communist government is also a big investor in facebook, and has its spies creating fake personae to ensnare military people.
Totalitarians around the world like this free-for-victims to use spyware and they have accumulated quite a lot of data on Americans.
Facebook is a dot com, and this just another episode of betting on the eventual profitability of what seems to be a clever idea.
Clever idea, maybe. But not worth the kind of money the fools shoved into it.
“X-rays will prove to be a hoax.” Lord Kelvin
It's a great family photo sharing site, though. A visit every three months is enough to gather the useful new family information...
Search is necessary.
Without search, I'd have to remember where to go. With search, I type my thought into the address bar, and I'm there.
Without search, the internet is worthless. With Facebook, the internet is still the internet.
Frankly, Facebook is a PITA. Why should I bother? It doesn't fit my routine. I'll lurk when a search engine leads me there. The rest of the time, out of sight, out of mind.
I have no interest in Facebook.
IIRC once you have signed on there is no way to get off.
You may close your account but the info is still there for the taking.
My personal life is....personal.
The FB account I started last year went bye bye last week.
Its just a tracking program sold to the highest bidder.
But then again many sheeple would love to be chipped and tracked, as long as they are in a pen, fed and shorn then why worry?
Uh.... huh?
Whazzatmean?
so its narcissistic to keep in touch with family and friends?
“Facebook isn’t necessary. “
800 million people disagree
Since when is ‘necessary’ a requirement? Who gets to decide whats necessary?
I wouldn’t say so, but there have been many university studies on FB that have come to identical conclusions, that the majority of FB users (not all) fall into two categories: 1) the lonely (shut-ins, disabled, etc.), and 2) the narcissistic.
Well perhaps, we all know the veracity of university studies.
I know the people I see on there have families and friends and post about them.
Of course those universities would probably say the same about FR.
“Heartily concur. FB only has personal info/data to mine and sell to potential advertisers.”
I really believe this claim. When my wife passed away, I changed my FB profile to widowed. Much to my surprise I started receiving email solicitations from Match.com, Christian Mingle.com, Eharmony.com etc. I immediately disabled my account.
Similar thing happened to me except I was getting these strange sidebar advertising during my Yahoo mail account viewing. Even my Amazon preferences seemed to change.
Tracking cookies are now like telepathic bloodsucking tics attached to your under regions.
Whats really scary is FB becoming like Minority Report. Anywhere you go your eyes will be scanned and then personalized propaganda advertising is bombarding you like a waterboard interrogation.
“Tracking cookies are now like telepathic bloodsucking tics attached to your under regions.”
I recently installed Firefox 12 which has a ‘do not track option’. In addition I have blocked the Facebook website along with deleting cookies of ‘unfriendly’ web sites. Don’t know if this will help maintain my privacy.
I’m 64 years old and I’ve been on FB for 3 years. I have friends from many age groups, the majority of them over 30, and many around my age. They, in turn, also have friends in their age group. Yes, there are 13 year old girls on FB, but FB is a diverse group of people - rich, poor, black, white, married, single, young, old, and many military members and their families. I don’t know about all the financial hullabaloo because being on FB doesn’t cost me a dime. I can’t see FB going away because there are millions of members who aren’t going to just go away. It may become another social site with another name, like what happened to MySpace, but it will be around in some form.
I’ve been on for 3 years and haven’t had one bit of problem with my personal info. Nor do I know any of my friends who are on FB who have had any problems. You just have to be smart and not post super-personal things on there, like when you’re going on vacation, or details about your love life that you wouldn’t want plastered all over the world. Keep it smart and you should be OK.
And what happened to MySpace? It just got replaced by Facebook. The same thing will happen if FB disappears. Another venue similar to it will come along.
A misleading number. I'm in it more than once, for example.
Since when is ‘necessary’ a requirement? Who gets to decide whats necessary?
The user.
In the case of many internet companies, there are more moving parts than in a normal business. It's often the case that the user is not the customer. Rather, the user is the product, whose attention must be sold to the paying customers. So, the user is necessary and must be acquired and must be satisfied, but is not sufficient. That's why that word monetize
appears so often in discussions of internet companies. Eric Jackson is just pointing all that out and speculating that FB doesn't have the stuff to meet the challenge.
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