After all that hype, the Facebook IPOD only gained 23 cents per share. Either it was priced extremely well, or there wasn’t much reason for it to close higher (though the intra-day high did hit $45). Based on that, the few people who bought at $38 and sold in the mid $40s made money, but everyone else lost some.
Keep in mind that the P/E for this stock is in the 100s and you can see why some people wouldn’t touch it with a 10ft pole.
Facebook IPO hits tomorrow. Of course, the biggest question is, should you invest in it? Nearly everyone uses it, adults spend more time on Facebook than they do with Google or nearly any other web property, and what’s better than betting on social?
My problem with this is the rather crappy timing. Facebook has 901+ million subscribers as of their latest S-1 filing. They are unlikely to grow significantly beyond that in the near future. All new investors want to see the same thing, growth. And as Facebook has pretty much peaked in its user count, the only thing left is increasing their average revenue per user. I don’t know what kind of tactics Facebook is going to create to do that, but we’ve already seen how this company has failed at handling privacy, so I have little faith.
In the end, it all boils down to a simple question: is Facebook somehow going to magically take those near billion eyeballs and turn them into cash, or will it be just another social network people waste their time on? Only time can tell.
My advice, don’t be a sucker. Go invest in something else.
What I hate most about tech press today is that so few of them seem to care about facts. When it’s as easy as a click to publish information, it seems the threshold for correctness has plummeted. Take the recent story about how a delay in Qualcomm chips has pushed back the release of the next iPhone (sidenote: I hate the term “iPhone 5″). There are so many things wrong with this statement:
1) A product that had not been announced cannot fundamentally be delayed. I say this because unless there’s an expectation from the company itself to release a product “on time”, or was planned to take longer, it cannot be late. The difference is planning.
2) The next iPhone was never going to be released at WWDC for several reasons: no new iPhone has been release without a new version of iOS, there has been no iOS 6 beta, releasing a new product within 12 months of the old one is frowned upon, and the likely chipset needed for a 4G LTE iPhone is only now hitting mass production (Qualcomm MDM9615).
3) The iPhone 4S is still selling ridiculously well. Why give that up so soon?
4) Should the next iPhone have LTE, the longer Apple waits, the more coverage those networks get. Apple is never going to pull a Sprint and release a phone for a network that doesn’t exist (this is why the iPad 2 did not have LTE, despite the fact that the MDM9600 chipset was available).
I’ve given about 4-5 solid reasons why Apple was never going to launch the next iPhone in June. The company is a creature of habit and has to abide by road maps like every other tech company. I seriously question any tech journalist that doesn’t question the validity of rumors based on the facts at hand instead of link baiting.
The amount of cloud storage a company is willing to give you is inversely proportional to their expectation of a customer filling it up. – Jeff Kibuule
2 weeks. That’s the average amount of time a honeymoon period lasts when I get the latest tech gadget. That’s how long I adore a device and its design before flaws become glaringly obvious and I want to return the device. It’s happened with the Nexus S, Samsung Focus, Samsung Captivate, Galaxy Nexus, and now the Lumia 900. Granted, none of these devices were horrible were bad (and in fact the Lumia 900 was quite good) but I think it’s always important to look at how you’ll be feeling about a device 3-6 months ago when the shiny factor wears off and you’re dreaming about the next great gadget.
Tomorrow, the Lumia 900 goes back to Amazon not because it wasn’t a great phone, but because I know Windows Phone 8 will clearly be so much better. And so the cycle begins again. Also, I finished the Windows Phone 7 version of my app after 8 days of development and don’t really need it that much anymore. Check it out: http://www.medplusapps.com/#wp7
Google+ had a redesign today. It’s sleeker, more intuitive, and a nice step forward. So why does everyone sort of pretend it’s dead? Sure, there’s no people, but the real reason is that a social network lives and dies on its API, and right now Google+ doesn’t have one. No way to access what has been +1’ed, or your circles, or the latest post in your feed. APIs are a wonderful thing, because they let 3rd parties integrate with the service (or even create an entire app like with several 3rd party Facebook apps when the iPad was first released).
Build a robust Google+ API and the people will come. Prediction: Google I/O.
Apparently colorful filters are worth real money these days as Facebook has decided to buy Instagram for $1 billion. There goes my desire to ever use their product!
Seriously thinking about getting a Lumia 900. I’ve gotten used to the way thngs work in iOS after owning an iPhone for almost 5 years and sort of settled in but I’m looking for something new now.
I’ve used both Windows Phone and Android previously with their flagship devices of 2010 (Samsugn Focus and Nexus S respectively) and there were always things that got in the way of me saying “I could switch away from an iPhone and be happy” With Windows Phone, I was hoping for more apps. The apps that we’re there we’re great, but there weren’t enough of them (that is steadily improving over time) With Android, it h ad a large number of apps, but I was disappointed in the quality, with UI designs that were never coherent.
I’m hoping that the Lumia 900 provides an experience that I could proudly recommend to others, and With Windows Phone 8 looming around the corner, who knows, maybe I’ll switch 100%.
I wish there were more bloggers that would talk at a deeper level about the technology that powers devices today. Since they won’t, I will. Hopefully It will turn into something that I can be proud of in the future.