Facebook Doldrums

Facebook's problem is very real. This is not like when Amazon's stock price nosedived after the dot com bubble burst in 2000. That was an industry wide event. This is a Facebook specific event. Compared to that LinkedIn is doing fine for now.

And this is about cold, hard cash.

Data mining is where the money is at for Facebook. More mobile usage is not bad news - quite the opposite - if data mining is the primary way you monetize. More engagement means more data.

Below $20 is the red zone. Facebook has already entered that.

How Facebook Could Save Its Shattered Share Price

Now as it plunges towards half its IPO value, it’s entering a state of emergency

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Exuberance, Not Froth

Image via WikipediaI said it was not a bubble, but there was some froth. I am revising that. I am now saying it is not froth, it is exuberance. It is mostly a positive scenario.

Fred Wilson: Megatrend Crosscurrents: The history of tech investing is a series of waves or megatrends that come one after another. Mainframes to minicomputers to PCs to client server to Internet, for example. But right now we are in the midst of a number of these megatrends all happening at the same time. There are at least four big ones going on at the same time:
- Mobile - yesterday I wrote that at least 16% of the visits to this blog are coming from mobile devices and that number is up from essentially zero six quarters ago
- Social - Facebook will have 1bn users in the next year or so
- Cloud - A third of Netflix' new subscribers are opting for the streaming only plan
- Global - companies like Skype, Facebook, Twitter, Google see upwards of 80% of their users from outside the US and these numbers are growing faster than ever ...... Each one of these megatrends would be an investable wave on its own. But we are in an environment when all four are crashing on the shore ata the same time. Twitter, for example, is mobile and social and global.

Wait, Did They Say Froth?
Bubble, Boom Or Froth?
Is It A Bubble?
Glass Half Full Phase

At first Fred Wilson said maybe a bubble. John Doerr said it's a boom. That word does not quite capture it. I said froth. Fred said froth. Then Fred said glass half full. Now he is saying exuberance. And I agree. It is not bubble, boom, or froth, it is exuberance. Done right this can give America China like growth rates. This is about lifting billions out of poverty, and making the already rich feel like it is not happening at their expense or at the expense of the planet.

Is It A Bubble?

Image via WikipediaThis bubble talk/debate could last for the rest of the year. It might even spill into 2012. Because the craze is just beginning. My take has been that some real wealth is being created, but there sure is some accompanying froth. That is not something to complain about. On the cutting edge there are hits and misses. To expect for all hits is highly unrealistic. It just never has happened.

But the debate is robust and very real. Everybody who is a somebody has an opinion.

A Mini Bubble Burst In Three Years
Bubble, Boom Or Froth?
Bubble Talk Goes On: It's An Overshoot

Future Of The Internet: Easy, Says Dixon

Chris Dixon: Predicting The Future Of The Internet Is Easy: Anything It Hasn't Yet Dramatically Transformed, It Will.: Facebook’s “private” IPO with Goldman Sachs ..... the dot com crash of 2000 disillusioned many .... Already transformed: music, news, advertising, telecom. Being transformed: finance, commerce, TV & movies, real estate, politics & government. Soon to be transformed (among many others): healthcare, education, energy. .... The modern economy runs primarily on information, and the Internet is by orders of magnitude the greatest information mechanism ever invented. ..... People, companies, investors and even countries can’t stop this transformation.

I have ready many blog posts by Chris Dixon, and the content of most of them have been super, but the title of this blog post stands out. This is the best title to a Chris Dixon blog post yet of all I have read yet. It is bold, it is obvious. There is no beating around the bush. It is simple. Simple enough that makes you feel as to why you yourself did not push out that blog post title. You could have had it to your name.

This is Chris Dixon's best blog post of all I have ever read, and I have read a few.

Twitter Should Go For A Netscape-Like IPO

Netscape was just a browser. It was not making any money. But it went public. It acquired a market value of billions overnight. That launched the dot com craze. That might have partly been responsible for many dot com booms and busts in the years ahead. The message that a business need not make money was, well, wrong. But the internet was very real, the web was very real, dot com was as real as it gets.

I think Twitter should similarly go public. And with the newfound wealth it should start zapping up companies left and right in the Twitter ecosystem. It should integrate all the hottest features into Twitter itself.

A tweet is like the atom in physics. A tweet is the building block to so many wonderful things. Twitter is utility. It is that fundamental. The revenue generation can wait. With the Netscape browser it was hard to imagine how money was going to be made. With Twitter, it is not that hard.

Are Bing and Google paying Twitter money to be able to search through all the tweets? Why did Twitter not do what Sponsored Tweets and Ad.ly are doing?

Twitter has to evolve and evolve fast if it is to go past the tech elite. You don't end up with a billion users if you stick to the same old same old. Rapid expansion asks for acquisitions. Acquisitions are done

Cover of Relapse

with money. After you go public, you have loads of cash.

A Twitter IPO might help jerk America out of its economic slumber of over a year. The craze would begin all over again.

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Jeff Jarvis, Me And Twitter
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NYC Twitter Elite: Number 12
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Twitter Top 0.1%
Twitter Should Hand Over Search To Google
Twitter Number 115 In New York City
Twitter, TechCrunch, And The Stolen Docs
The Best Follow Friday I Ever Received On Twitter
Space, Time And Twitter: Are There Plant Twitters?
My Twitter Suspension Lifted
Can Tweet Google, Can't Tweet Twitter
Monetizing Twitter: A Few Ideas
How To Increase Your Following On Twitter
Is Google Wave Social Enough To Challenge Facebook, Twitter?
Real Time Search: Twitter Is Not Doing It
Google Falling Behind Twitter?

Eminem: The Relapse: Twitter
Converting To The Mass Follow Formula On Twitter
NewsDesk: China, Twitter, Hawking, Obama
Digg Button, Twitter Button For Your Blog Posts
Twitter Is Not Micro
The Depth Of Your Friendships At Twitter
Goal: A Billion People On Twitter
Fractals: Apple, Windows 95, Netscape, Google, Facebook, Twitter
I Talked To Google Through Twitter And It Worked Like Magic
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I Get Twitter

My Relationship With Ashton Kutcher 

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