Dark Days Ahead For Facebook and Google? 215
An anonymous reader writes "Dallas Mavericks owner and media entrepreneur Mark Cuban thinks he knows the reason for Facebook's disappointing IPO; smart money has realized that 'mobile is going to crush Facebook', as the world's population increasingly accesses the Internet mostly through smartphones and tablets. Cuban notes that the limited screen real estate hampers the branding and ad placement that Google and Facebook are accustomed to when serving to desktop browsers, while phone plans typically have strict data limits, so subscribers won't necessarily take kindly to YouTube or other video ads. Forbes' Eric Jackson likewise sees a generational shift to mobile that will produce a new set of winners at the expense of Facebook and Google."
Obvious (Score:4, Insightful)
Flame baitin article is flame baitin.
Mobile will destroy Google? (Score:5, Funny)
It's too bad they don't make phone software or something that could help them pick up at least a little market share in that area, amirite?
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It's too bad they don't make phone software or something that could help them pick up at least a little market share in that area, amirite?
Exactly. Google is doing way more to get into the mobile business than mobile companies are doing to enter the search business.
Search? What search? How, exactly, does one do search in a mobile app, other than googling it?
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It's too bad they don't make phone software or something that could help them pick up at least a little market share in that area, amirite?
Exactly. Google is doing way more to get into the mobile business than mobile companies are doing to enter the search business.
Search? What search? How, exactly, does one do search in a mobile app, other than googling it?
Fuck I don't know. One thing we can all agree on: Facebook can't possibly die fast enough. DIE FACEBOOK DIE. May all its investors and employees weep and march penniless to the nearest welfare line. May Zuckerberg be followed around with a live TV camera everywhere he goes everything he does and i do mean everything. "Oooh he's taking a shit on Channel 3!" He does like his privacy you know. May his wife divorce him for a morbidly obese redneck truck driver after first cheating on him with his best fr
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The funny thing is that Facebook is only having a hard time on mobiles because it choosed to.
It can't be that hard to create a passable mobile interface for Facebook, even if you take some space for ads. Lots of people do create good interfaces for lots of different stuff, and there is nothing unique on FB about that.
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'ER' a lot of the insiders have sold already, Zuckerberg has dumped a billion dollars worth on the suckers, Goldman Sachs has sold 50% of it's holdings, M$ has sold, etc. etc.. If fact insider dumping of stock is already severely impacting the price which is why they have 'slowed' down their sales, seeing if it will recover, if not expect another major insider sales driven drop.
I'd be really suss about the major 'outside' purchases, what really motivated the corporate executives to decide to buy that dog
Re:Mobile will destroy Google? (Score:5, Funny)
You just don't get it. Mobile is going to hire Steve Ballmer to crush them. With a chair.
Re:Mobile will destroy Google? (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, some of the most popular mobile services. Pretty much the #1 most useful thing about a smartphone is being able to access Google Maps while you're out.
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Giving it away for free, but making up for it in volume. That's not a very good business plan.
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Because it doesn't have the surface area (Score:2, Insightful)
That sounds a lot like Google's business plan for their search engine. Give it away for free, and make ads dirt cheap. But get enough ads and all those tiny sums turn into huge piles of cash.
The point is that even IF Google continues to be the search engine of choice on Mobile (as it will on Android), they still make way less than they do on the desktop. Think of how much space on the desktop Google they devote to ads in the result. Now do a search on a mobile device - there is hardly any space left for a
Re:Because it doesn't have the surface area (Score:4, Insightful)
Now do a search on a mobile device - there is hardly any space left for ads anywhere after you display the results, perhaps one or two...
So that's an order of magnitude reduction in ad revenue for Facebook and Google, even IF they remain sole search provider...
This would mean the top spot would pay an order or two more for the placement on mobile. One more flaw in your argument is Google is not paid per ad impression. Google is paid only if the ad is clicked. Google can collect lot more information about you on mobile than desktop, and can accurately determine which ad you are likely to click (in a less sinister way, which ad you would like). So if they work it out right, they might end up make more revenue on mobile than desktop (even considering only search, and ignoring all ad supported apps on the market)
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Google owns AdMob, THE largest mobile (hence the "Mob" part of their name) advertising network around. The mobile may have less r
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It's too bad they don't make phone software or something that could help them pick up at least a little market share in that area, amirite?
Maybe google (or facebook) should just suckit in and buy Twitter...
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It's too bad they don't make phone software or something that could help them pick up at least a little market share in that area, amirite?
Sure, but the point is that it's much harder to slip ads in on a phone, without overly annoying users, than on a larger display, regardless of whether it's via web site or native app.
Re:Mobile will destroy Google? (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole point of Android is to be a mobile search platform. You're not such an insufferably stupid moron that you think Google isn't making momy.
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I don't know, maybe they are making your momy.
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With that being said I don't show my Ada on Google mobile. They appear to mainly be misclicks on that platform.
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Re:Mobile will destroy Google? (Score:4, Insightful)
Even indirectly, they profit more from iOS, a platform that they don't even waste resources developing. As far as business is concerned, Android is nonsense, they could be doing much better by partnering with Apple rather than antagonizing them.
Re:Mobile will destroy Google? (Score:4, Funny)
The real irony is that I'm using an iPhone to defend Android.
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Well, you are not really defending Android.
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Profit is still profit.
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Google does not make money licensing Android. But they make a shitload of cash serving adds, gathering info on android users, locking you into their ecosystem, etc.
Re:Mobile will destroy Google? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Locking" is a pretty strong term considering you can extract your data, and move it to another ecosystem if you choose.
Re:Mobile will destroy Google? (Score:5, Insightful)
If "locking" means "providing me with so much good stuff--including the ability to easily leave the second I choose to--that I don't want to leave, even though I can," then hell, sign me up!
modfail (Score:2)
Troll? Not only can you get your data out by the provided interfaces, but the backends are proddable with the development tools, and you can manually extract any data out of the databases that you like.
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BEEEP wrong answer try again...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/mar/29/google-earns-more-iphone-android [guardian.co.uk]
They made 500 million over the course of 4 years, whereas Google earning 38 billion last year from computers. Even if they were sandbagging it for the court case it is small change...
Re:Mobile will destroy Google? (Score:4, Insightful)
You dont understand. Google does not really care about Android being more popular. What they do care about is whether Google gets to define what a smartphone is and can hence get Apple to offer their services on iPhones. They might make more money out of iPhones, but it is often because of Android, they get to make money of iPhones.
Re:Mobile will destroy Google? (Score:4, Insightful)
Your post makes no sense. The only reason why they make any money from Apple at all is because Safari defaults to Google for search, nothing else; the interface doesn't change the slightest if you choose Yahoo or Bing instead. They aren't redefining anything, or influencing Apple in any way that's positive to them. As a matter of fact, they are actually antagonizing Apple, to the point that Siri has been implemented with Wolfram Alpha as its backend and Google Maps is slowly getting ditched in favor of both OpenStreetMaps and Apple's own maps, because Google's licensing is making it impossible for Apple to implement a decent Maps app.
Re:Mobile will destroy Google? (Score:5, Insightful)
Right. Everybody knows the true sign of victory in business is share price and how many workers they can shed.
Unfortunate for Facebook, that they can't announce the layoff of 10,000 workers, because that would surely send the stock into the stratosphere.
OK, OK, I'm just joking. The real sign of victory in business is successfully suing your competitors for IP infringement.
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Ok, if we both get to be competitors, I'll let you keep nearly all the market share, and you let me keep the profits. Deal?
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But (Score:2)
...at the same time mobiles are able to establish higher rate connections, and it would probably make sense for Google to purchase a mobile phone operator or assist an one into providing much larger data limits than currently exists. Then the limits discussed above disappear and Google/Facebook resume letting the good times roll .....
Re:But (Score:5, Interesting)
I think that was their plan, but they can't now because they own Motorola. One of the US FCC's big firewalls (the only one, it seems, that they care to enforce anymore) is that a carrier cannot manufacture their own phones, essentially to prevent the kind of massive fail we saw in the 70s with AT&T.
As far as I can tell, Google's plan was to buy up massive amounts of darknet (already done), set themselves up as an ISP (pilot project in Topeka), and gobble up enough spectrum to make themselves a big player in mobile internet (T-mobile would make a good buy, and DT wants to sell). Unfortunately for us, the patent wars forced Google to look for a defensive portfolio, and Motorola leveraged their portfolio into forcing Google to buy them to get their patents (or else they'd all go to Microsoft/Apple; Motorola essentially held themselves hostage), so that dream is dead for now.
It may be possible for Google to spin the remains of Motorola back off as a separate manufacturer; they certainly don't seem very enamoured with the company, seeing as they're keeping the two businesses entirely separate in terms of management and workers, and aren't really even collaborating with them when making the new version of Android. Maybe they'll just shuck off the phone maker part of Motorola Mobility and continue on their grand plan; they've certainly got the free cash to pull something crazy like that.
people are over thinking this (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:people are over thinking this (Score:5, Interesting)
Or maybe the facebook guys did a really good job of getting the maximum value for their previous investors.
If you guess the value of a company as 110 billion dollars, and it turns out it's actually 95 that's a lot closer to reality than if you guess 20 and find out it's really 160. If you look at google, that opened at around 90 immediately jumped to 110 ish, then dropped to 100 not too long after, the next major local minimum is 243, which comes 3 years later, and it's now around 600. Feel free to pick your own preference for what counts as the 'correct' value of google stock, but pretty clearly the answer has been a hell of a lot more than 100 dollars a share for the last 7 years.
The point of the IPO was in part to get cash so they can build and capitalize on new ideas. I have no idea what those ideas are, but then I wouldn't have anticipated amazon's cloud service (and I have a close person friend who works on it, and was working on developing it). Facebook bought themselves time, with cash, both to get regulators off their back (fairly, you can't have that many shareholders and not be public for long) and to invest in and build new revenue streams. Again, no idea what those are. Mark Cuban clearly doesn't see them either, and he's presumably more credible on the topic than I am, but that doesn't mean Zuck is without a plan to make more money.
Of course you're right, the whole thing could be hype or stupidity. Zuckerberg might be a naive idealist who's happy to never pay a cent to shareholders and run Facebook like a charity with enough revenue to keep everyone paid and then nothing else. That would be a disaster for facebook stock in the not too distant future, but he does have a chance to make it into a proper greedy profit building enterprise, rather than just an invasive leech on your privacy.
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Or maybe the facebook guys did a really good job of getting the maximum value for their previous investors.
If you guess the value of a company as 110 billion dollars, and it turns out it's actually 95 that's a lot closer to reality than if you guess 20 and find out it's really 160. If you look at google, that opened at around 90 immediately jumped to 110 ish, then dropped to 100 not too long after, the next major local minimum is 243, which comes 3 years later, and it's now around 600. Feel free to pick your own preference for what counts as the 'correct' value of google stock, but pretty clearly the answer has been a hell of a lot more than 100 dollars a share for the last 7 years.
It's important to remember that whenever someone wins on the stock market, someone else loses. It's a zero sum game; if somebody makes money, somebody must have lost money. An IPO is essentially a competition between the company and the investors; the company wants to extract as much money out of the investors as possible for the amount of ownership they're giving up, while investors want to extract as much company ownership as they can for as little money as possible.
Facebook appear to have had "a very suc
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Why would I then write a law to compel you to go public? What's my interest in doing that?
In a word, control. The government likes to have control over things. Why do they have the SEC, after all, instead of just letting privately-owned companies do what they want? Why is "insider trading" illegal? Why shouldn't people be able to get inside information and then make well-timed stock trades? Because the government, for better or worse, wants to be able to control things and regulated things. Not that r
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Why is "insider trading" illegal? Why shouldn't people be able to get inside information and then make well-timed stock trades?
Because insider trading is only profitable if someone is being scammed, i.e., the guy that doesn't have the insider information.
The more information all actors in a given market have, the healthier it is. Insider trading goes directly against that and makes a market unhealthy, as no one will participate in a market that allows bullshit like that to occur because they're probably going to get screwed by someone in the know.
You can't really say Caveat Emptor when one of the parties in a trade had no fucking
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The implication was that there shouldn't be regulation as concerns insider trading and I felt that needed to be addressed directly.
Come on, you can't tell me you missed those implications in that post. "Why do they have the SEC at all...?" "Why is "insider trading" illegal?" "Why shouldn't people be able to get inside information and then make well-timed stock trades?"
Just another bitch about the government cloaked in thoughtfulness. I feel those sorts of posts demand retort.
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It's based on the number of shareholders, so you're right, if you have 4 owners you can stay private and be a 200 billion dollar business for all it matters.
At some point, and that point is arbitrary, it becomes a matter of so many people owning shares that there is a responsibility to those people to make sure they are fairly informed about the status of their investment. That 'fairly informed' in a matter of making it public. Because shareholders will need, or want to do a lot of things with those asset
Facebook is just the new MySpace (Score:4, Insightful)
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I dunno. I know it's not popular around here to like anything that smells like "social," but I find I like using Facebook far more than I ever liked using MySpace. Even if you assume they're both serving the same market with all of the exact same features (which isn't really true), one piece of software is not identical to everything else in its category. It may be that Facebook succeeds simply because it's better.
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no it won't. It's integrated far more then AOL ever was. It also adapts, something AOL, my space, etc couldn't do.
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Yeah....why didn't he compare google to facebook? Google is clearly acting like microsoft(another unprofitable company).
I mean, seriously, Facebook and Google are analogous. They both create a web page. It isn't as if one of the webpages(Google) is defined by patented technology while the other webpage(Facebook) is mostly just defined by copyright.
Also, they both have made software(wait, Facebook doesn't), so Google should be compared to these too. Don't you remember all of the facebook software?
All sarcasm
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Google is a slightly different beast, because it isn't a one product company. Facebook has only one product- the Facebook network. If that goes belly up (in the way that the MySpace or AOL networks did), then that's the Facebook Corporation finished.
If Gmail goes belly up, Google won't be dead in the water. If Android went extinct it would hurt for Google, but again- that's not even the major part of their business.
That's not to say Google won't die one day too, but their death will follow a different model
FB and Google are NOT in the same situation. (Score:4, Insightful)
One is the designer and developer of the most popular smartphone + tablet OS. The other has a garish social networking website.
Now which one do you think is better positioned to take advantage of mobile Internet users?
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The one making tangible products. FB is another dotbomb in the making, it's akin to the idiots that valued Yahoo's IPO above P&G's stock.
Re:FB and Google are NOT in the same situation. (Score:4, Insightful)
One is the designer and developer of the most popular smartphone + tablet OS. The other has a garish social networking website.
Now which one do you think is better positioned to take advantage of mobile Internet users?
All I know is that I have an Android phone, and I feel taken advantage of.
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Only because nobody makes a good multi-core phone with a decent physical keyboard. Somebody, please, put a fast dual-core processor and 1 GB of RAM into a phone with this kind of keyboard [t-mobile.com] please!
Re:FB and Google are NOT in the same situation. (Score:5, Funny)
All I know is that I have an Android phone, and I feel taken advantage of.
Are you sore?
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I'm not sure their goal was ever to make money "from android" so much as to ensure that the phones that are out there are able to use other Google services, which do make money. If it weren't for Android competition, you might have iphones that don't have a nice gmail or Google docs app, or whatever. Competition is good for everybody, and Android could be quite successful as a loss-leader.
I'm not sure what the total combined number of smartphone+tablet android installs vs the total combined smartphone+tab
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Really? [cnet.com]
Come on guys, a little research goes a long way.
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Also, iOS is the #1 tablet operating system, not Android.
Android is probably the #1 phone+tablet operating system, just as the OP said. No, not the number one tablet (by itself) OS. There's still a LOT more smartphones being sold than tablets, but the same OS is used on both, so Android's lesser share on the tablets is made up for by their numbers on the phones.
They view Facebook as a direct threat because Facebook has replaced email and the web for a lot of people.
How do you figure? Email, maybe for som
No Need For Elaborate Explinations (Score:3)
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Income Capitalization would disagree with you.
Keep in mind, that within 2 weeks GOOG was 20% lower the opening. And the seemed to survive that.
Re:No Need For Elaborate Explinations (Score:5, Informative)
Keep in mind, that within 2 weeks GOOG was 20% lower the opening. And the seemed to survive that.
Yeah keep repeating that, and it might become accepted as truth at some point. Google opening price was $100. It never went below $100 (I think the least was 99.xx). Even more interesting was that the IPO price was $85. It never came close to the IPO price. The initial investors of Google IPO were happy from the begining. Facebook on the other hand, you know.
Poppycock (Score:2)
Google has the most popular mobile operating system, and has working HUD glasses, I dont see how life is going to be difficult for them.
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Ah yes, and working HUD glasses has what percentage of the market? They're neat in concept and they've been out there for a long time, just like VR and just like VR they're going nowhere no matter how well they work or how much money is spent trying to refine them.
Just like motion controls will never go anywhere. And ebooks, too, because people like the feel of paper under their fingers too much, and you can't get that from a screen.
If man were meant to fly, he'd have been born with wings.
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Google's mobile Ad revenue (Score:5, Informative)
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That he as a trollish ass that make money from stirring things up.
As if Google and facebook aren't mobile.
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It's a lot of money, but it's less than 10% of what Google is currently bringing in. I happen to think that Google will find a way to prosper as the internet changes (not sure how, but I have faith in their flexibility), but a 90% revenue cut certainly would be bad news!
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Maybe he's talking about the 34 billion that Google brings in from things other than mobile ad revenue.
Utter BS (Score:2)
Wasn't it obvious? (Score:5, Insightful)
Simple grade 3 math explained why the shares went down. It's hard to justify that kind of multiple of earnings. Their income growth rate makes it unlikely it'll ever sustain that kind of value. It's got nothing to do with generational shifts to mobile.
Facebook is different than Google, very different. Facebook is one well developed web app, with remarkable popularity. Google is founded on the strengths of their search engine. Search is key, search is where you start. Search means you're looking for something, and susceptible to being introduced to something else that you might not have been looking for. Facebook is a tool, an application. Ads in applications diminish my experience with my application, ads in my tools make me not use said tool.
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Fair enough, but Amazon's P/E is more than double that of Facebook's, and I don't hear many people calling on it...
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Are you sure Amazon's P/E is 200+? Or are you talking about the old times, when they made their IPO?
Mark Cuban knows a lot about... Mark Cuban (Score:2)
It's true he invested money into Real networks (anyone use RealPlayer lately? Thought not.)
Mark is a good example of the write once-read-many kind of things.
Sadly, everything he's ever touched has ended up on the back end of a donkey.
Real-networks. Sorry, glad you made your buck back, nobody uses it.
The Mavericks? Yes, they won... nothing.
HDnet? That's like the ONLY US HD TV network never to succeed in HD.
Mark Cuban is the Charlie Brown of kicking a good investment to the... whoops,
Lucy just pulled it o
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The Mavericks? Yes, they won... nothing.
Mavs are the defending NBA champions, although they were bounced out of the opening round of the playoffs this year.
They also made the finals in 2006.
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"In 1995, Cuban and fellow Indiana University alumnus Todd Wagner started [what would become] Broadcast.com. In 1999, during the dot com boom, Broadcast.com was acquired by Yahoo! for $5.9 billion in Yahoo! stock. After the sale of Broadcast.com, Cuban diversified his wealth to avoid exposure to a market crash."
There is a reason that he is filthy rich.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Cuban [wikipedia.org]
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The Mavericks won the championship last season. This is not exactly nothing.
Why do people care what Cuban thinks again? (Score:5, Insightful)
Since then he has goofed around with sports teams and had a bunch of failed business ventures. Apparently on Slashdot this makes you a technology genius who's every blog post is front page material.
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No, it's much simpler than that. Slashdot hasn't had a Two Minute Hate yet today, and this article is pure gold for that - it let's Slashdotters both rail at Facebook *and* worship Google in the same post. Shame the editors couldn't find some some tripe somewhere that tied in Microsoft or Apple for the trifecta
I having a problem with credibility here... (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong, the forces that be, want desperately to make desktops go away... They can't be locked down or locked in the way mobile devices can be, and the people who use them well are unruly, demand their right and freedom, and typically don't play well with service providers walking all over them. So I understand the pundits claiming the PC is dead long live the mobile device!!!
The problem is that there's this peculiar thing. Its called a DISPLAY, and the one on a COMPUTER is just a wee bit larger than a hamster's cage mirror, sized display that passes for a screen on smartphones. I swear there will in 50 years be an entire generation of blind people dancing to their retro ringtones from devices long abandoned for the health problems. I personally want a great big, huge frigging display. One that won't make every person over 35 squint so hard, they look like they're doing a Clint Eastwood imitation. I want to see what I'm working on without having a microfilm reader's lens welded to my eyes. I like movies and art that fill my field of vision. I like lots of windows up so I can code, and debug, and document, and browse, and email, and edit pictures all at the same friggin time.
If the price of my great big display is that it sadly that leaves room for greedy clowns to slip advertisement into my field of view, so be it, I have to keep getting more creative to keep the stupid stuff out. This is a request for the world at large. Someone out there. Provide commercial media without commercials and people will gladly pay the premium. I would, in a heart beat!
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Provide commercial media without commercials and people will gladly pay the premium. I would, in a heart beat!
Like cable TV promised, then reneged on to raise profits after everyone signed up? ( if you are old enough to remember that time period )
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If the price of my great big display is that it sadly that leaves room for greedy clowns to slip advertisement into my field of view, so be it, I have to keep getting more creative to keep the stupid stuff out. This is a request for the world at large. Someone out there. Provide commercial media without commercials and people will gladly pay the premium. I would, in a heart beat!
The problem is that advertising has usurped the role of micropayments - visit a page and the owner gets about a tenth of a cent for each ad displayed. We need a ubiquitous system of micropayments in order to cut out the advertiser middleman on the web because everything is so decentralized that the old subscription model doesn't really fit.
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I couldn't agree with you more. I have a smartphone with a smaller screen than most (an X10 Mini Pro), which I like as it needs to dwell in my pocket all day (plus it has a physical keyboard, which is wonderful for me). But for doing actual work, even the 15" screen on my company-issue laptop is unbearably small. The 3" screen on my phone is fine for the odd Google search and checking BBC News, even Sat Nav; but for anything more than that I'd want to slit my wrists. My 15" screen does my head in even for u
What if flat data plans are coming to mobile? (Score:2)
At least, here I can get a mobile flat data plan for 15€/month. This would make Mark Cuban's point moot.
Wasn't myspace supposed to be the big thing (Score:2)
Microsoft has the Answer (Score:2)
Do web ads even work? (Score:2)
I think the entire market is a sham. The smart users block every ad, tracking cookie and other marketing tool they possibly can, and I think everyone else mentally blocks they ads that do get placed on pages. I can't recall a SINGLE WEB AD, although I periodically scan my spam box for funny phishing emails or Nigerian scams.
Facebook is worth about $12 a share based on FUTURE potential. That is about it. But that is combined with the inherent risk of a product that could literally implode over night like MyS
Just putting it out there... (Score:2)
Why would I care one whit if "Facebook and Google" are facing "dark days ahead"?
Are "Facebook and Google" supposed to be exempt from the overall decline and fall of Western Civilization? I mean, is anyone paying attention?
On my list of concerns about dark days ahead, Facebook and Google is some ways behind the massive die-off of bees and the Fall TV season.
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I will see your shenanigans and raise you 1 Bullshit. There's always some "expert" out there that can predict the future. Expert, Ex-spurt, Ex - someone who used to be something significant but is no longer. Spurt - drip under pressure.
I call your bullshit, but I don't have enough chips, I guess I'm all in.
I probably should have said something more insightful like, hmm, I didn't know facebook and google didn't work on mobile devices,
oh, wait, they do
In fact, I probably use google maps more on my iphone than on my desktop.
Re:I call shenanigans (Score:4, Insightful)
I probably should have said something more insightful like, hmm, I didn't know facebook and google didn't work on mobile devices, oh, wait, they do In fact, I probably use google maps more on my iphone than on my desktop.
How much do you pay for using Google maps? Do you follow ads a lot? If the answer is that you don't pay anything to Google for your mobile maps, and you don't follow ads, then how is Google making money off you? The same observation applies to Facebook.
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I don't follow ads on my PC when I'm driving either.
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A shift in usage from desktops to mobile will not take down Google; if anyone were in a position to embrace this sort of change, Google would be a top contender. As for Facebook, I would venture to say that it is reaching the end of its life-cycle.
Google is like a Road Map, which collects a little bit from any gas station, restaurant or hotel you ask about along the way. They are a starting point and make money on referal.
facebook is a destination. You go there to share pictures, natter a bit or nose around your connections connections connections. If you want to research anything to buy you go back to Google.
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Exactly. Even FB makes sense with mobile usage: if someone's out somewhere, takes a picture with his cellphone camera, and wants to show it to all his friends right away, how is he going to do that without Facebook? FB even has apps to do that easily. Whether they can make enough money with that to keep the company afloat is another matter, but there's certainly valid uses there.
And anyone with an Android phone should know pretty well just how important Google services are to the operation of that phone:
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Everybody is dissing Facebook right now. Cuban would just be one more voice proclaiming "Facebook is dying!" Throw Google in there, despite the fact that it doom dominates mobile search; and well now you've got a nice trollish article.
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The problem with your analysis is that a lot of people LIKE to showboat about themselves or their family. Similarly, though they're constantly derided in places like this, people LIKE reality TV, Jerry Springer, etc.
Now whether people showboating about themselves, with pictures of themselves drunk and high or whatever so their 700 "friends" can see these pics and make dumb comments on them, will make Facebook into a financially viable company is another matter.
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"Google's main source of revenue is through ads..."
just like Facebook.
"that includes mobile and video ads."
Facebook also has mobile ads. They don't seem to have gotten into video ads yet, but that's not a big deal. Give them time. Also, anyone who sends video ads to my mobile finds themselves avoided like the plague.
"Google has a vast array of projects/services and is constantly developing new ones"
Most of which are noble experiments but money sinks, and don't last very long. Of the ones that are succes
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Most of which are noble experiments but money sinks, and don't last very long. Of the ones that are successful, virtually all are just a means of selling more ads.
Except for that... you know... that whole Android thing. You can drop a couple million here and there on dead end projects if one occasionally turns around and suddenly becomes the largest OS on the fast growing type of device (mobile). Google sucked the air out of the room for anyone doing maps, e-mail, web browsing, and now mobile devices. That isn't to suggest that there are not worthy competitors in all fields, but Google is a god damn gorilla in each and makes its competitors fight tooth and nail.
Go
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Kinda flies in the face of what Cuban said, doesn't it.
I disagree; it wouldn't matter if that number was 99% that are using it on mobile. The question is, is Facebook effectively monetizing those people, or are they just using the free service. If the latter, Facebook's goose may be cooked. Free is fun, but all those servers sure ain't free to Facebook.
Re:You're showing them! (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm curious what exactly makes a user "active". I know so many people with Facebook accounts that abandoned them ages ago...they didn't go through the bullshit hassle of deleting the account, but they stopped logging in.
This is one of the reasons why I really wondered about Facebook's valuation being accurate or not. I know for a fact that I had multiple accounts (before I deleted them), so to FB, I was 3 separate people (work, play, and politics). I know many other people that have a work account and a personal account to keep their private lives private.
Based upon my own off-the-cuff observations in my circle of friends and family (obviously not scientific, but just for the sake of estimation) I would guess that 2/3, maybe 3/4, of the active users are actually real, individual people. When you're talking about 900 million "active users", that's 225-300 million bogus, worthless accounts. How would an advertiser know that they were targeting ads at real people and not an alternate account? How would they know that all their "likes" were legitimate potential customers and not someone just fucking around on a throwaway account they don't care about?
The mobile customers are probably legitimate, I'll grant that, because most people aren't going to tie a troll account to their mobile device. But that still leaves 450 million accounts that are very questionable in my opinion.
I know Facebook would never really release numbers on the numbers of people that have abandoned their service or the number of potentially duplicate/troll accounts because it's just negative publicity with no positive gain for FB in doing so, but it would be nice to know if I'm completely off my rocker or if I just happen to know an inordinate number of people that have multiple accounts.
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About 1/4 to 1/3 of the people I know who use facebook have more than one account. Of course I know a lot of strange people... so that might not strengthen the case for your estimate.
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