Facebook To Go Public On Friday, May 18 182
redletterdave writes "The IPO on everyone's minds for the past few years — and possibly the biggest one in history — is upon us: Facebook will finally make its Wall Street debut on Friday, May 18, 2012. Sources also say Facebook will begin its IPO roadshow on Monday, May 7, and will eventually list its shares on the Nasdaq (not NYSE) with the ticker symbol 'FB.' Facebook looks to raise anywhere from $5 billion to $10 billion during its roadshow to achieve a $100 billion valuation, which would make it one of the biggest IPOs of all-time."
Re:Best avoided (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Elephant in the room (Score:5, Interesting)
My bet is that the IPO will be a success, just not an hysteric one.
FB? really? (Score:5, Interesting)
In the real estate biz FB means "f*cked buyer" like a guy who bought at a multigenerational top of a housing bubble, or a guy trying to do landlording from another coast, or a guy stuck paying two mortgages because the old house won't sell, guy who bought without contingencies/no inspection and got screwed, guy who believed the lying commissioned real estate agent when she said there were multiple offers so he should raise his bid but there were no offers (she tried that on me and my wife, I laughed at her) etc. Basically a loanowner who didn't get the house he was expecting. Makes all the comments "FB this" and "FB that" sound much funnier.
Re:FB? really? (Score:4, Interesting)
I had that experience, where a house was listed at X, but was told that really it was X+delta close to X itself, because there was bidding war in progress. We walked away right then, and the realtor trying it on us then tried to backpedal, whereupon I told her "You're playing games with us, and because of that, I won't buy this house at ANY price, because I will assume any offer I make that you or your client find acceptable will screw me." It's a form of bait-and-switch and I won't play that game... but a lot of people "fall in love" with a house and have to have it. I guess I've had too many houses in my life to really get that attached to them.
Re:Yep... (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh and this...
Venture capitalists fund startups that leverage Facebook data to disrupt their incumbents. Former Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya left the company to start a venture capital firm with a single mission: fund companies that will use Facebook's open APIs to take over large, calcified industries like banking, education, and healthcare. Palihapitiya is funding a banking startup, for example, that will give potential customers a credit score based on their Facebook activity. Potential: Unknown. The idea is that Facebook will profit from companies using its data to disrupt incumbants the way it figured out how to profit from Facebook gamesmaker Zynga's disruption of the videogame industry.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/facebooks-lousy-ad-business-is-making-its-ipo-is-looking-hairier-by-the-minute--heres-why-it-doesnt-matter-2012-5#ixzz1tkNTU9mH [businessinsider.com]
Scary.
Re:Elephant in the room (Score:4, Interesting)
Facebook is indeed profitable.
But merely a fad. Just as much as AOL chat rooms, Friendster and MySpace, and possibly even YouTube and Twitter.
There's nothing demanding that users continue to user Facebook, nothing binds their behavior, and worst of all, user interest can easily evaporate overnight.
Oh but there is something demanding that users continue to use Facebook: The Network Effect [wikipedia.org].
And within Facebook's network effect, Critical mass has long since been surpassed and Metcalfe's Law [wikipedia.org] has grown to such a large proportion that, for current users of Facebook, leaving Facebook is akin to simply switching off the internet altogether.
Re:I thought Nasdaq tickers were 4 letters? (Score:4, Interesting)
The NASDAQ OMX equities exchanges currently participate in the National Market System Symbology Plan for the selection and use of 1-5 character root symbols, as governed by ISRA, the Intermarket Symbols Reservation Authority.
NASDAQ, NYSE, and other exchanges like to reserve 1 and 2 letter ticker symbols in order to attract big companies to list on their exchange.
F is for Ford [nasdaq.com]
S is for Sprint-Nextel
T is for AT&T
If you poke around, you'll discover companies you've never heard of, but who are major players in their market
Re:Elephant in the room (Score:2, Interesting)
And yet half the people i know say they haven't checked their facebook page in months...
Its there...they can't leave... but its pretty much abandoned...
I'm curious what percentage of people have an account due to the network effect of needing one to see something or other from time to time, and beyond that never using the site.
Do they make up 10% of facebook? 50%? 80%?
Re:Elephant in the room (Score:4, Interesting)
> They spy on you whether you have an account or not. Unless you actively make
> the effort to block their servers from loading widgets on every other page you visit.
That's what I do. Here are their IP addresses in CIDR format and as address ranges. This includes blocking their "Like" buttons.
66.220.144.0/20 66.220.144.0 - 66.220.159.255
69.63.176.0/20 69.63.176.0 - 69.63.191.255
69.171.224.0/19 69.171.224.0 - 69.171.255.255
74.119.76.0/22 74.119.76.0 - 74.119.79.255
173.252.64.0/18 173.252.64.0 - 173.252.127.255
204.15.20.0/22 204.15.20.0 - 204.15.23.255
Re:Best avoided (Score:5, Interesting)
Read the footnotes. That's where you'll find the really juicy stuff. Not everything is disclosed, certainly; but the footnotes are where the traders spend the vast majority of their time.