For Sale: Facebook Shares, 67% Off
Now Mike Arrington reports that Bill Dagley, a California money manager, is repping a seller with a block a stock they're willing to part with at a "value far less than $15 billion." He then cites a source that says the valuation Dagley's client is looking for is in the $3 billion to $4 billion range.
Sound plausible? It does to us. We've heard a different but similar version of the story from "Stone", a prolific and anonymous SAI commenter, for a while. The last time that Stone threw this one out -- this week -- he asserted that the valuation was "less than $4 billion for sure."
And now, prompted by Arrington's report, we've heard from a different source -- this one we know, but have agreed not to identify -- who says that in April, he was offered a 0.25% stake for $12.5 million -- a $5 billion valuation. Our source, who didn't move forward with the deal, says they weren't approached by Bill Dagley but by a Facebook employee, inquiring on behalf of another Facebook employee.
So either said Facebook employee is now working with Dagley, or there are multiple Facebook shareholders looking to unload shares for 2/3rds or less of the $15 billion number the company boasted about last fall. We'd bet on the latter.
As for the substance of the matter, aside from me telling you guys about this I've also told you that Facebook, in general, has some serious issues. I've heard that their site architecture is a disaster and that a total re-write of their product is required. This is part of the reason why they need all the money they keep raising --- to keep buying servers to compensate for their technology problems.
People that work there tend to believe this is a fad which is why you might soon begin to see more of these stories IMHO.
are there metrics that point to it being a fad? early adopters bailing? high churn? tiny % of high frequency users with a great drop-off for other users? i haven't seen any stats but my personal experience doesn't reflect a fad-like adoption - no one seems to dropping off and more professional contacts are friending me than are linkedinning these days.
from the outside monetization seems like a bigger challenge...
The relationship between preferred and common valuation is not necessarily tight. There's a cliff at the bottom where preferred get almost everything and common get almost nothing. The discount is related to the chance of the final valuation being in this zone.
MS, being a strategic investor, is getting all sorts of tangential benefits, such as inside info on social networking. If you're just trying to make money off a few common shares, you are in a different category altogether.
The only people I've noticed who have flaked off are the self-proclaimed "social media experts" who signed on for the first time last year when the apps platform just launched, so they could know all about it and could tell their blog readers/consulting clients about it. These are the same 10,000 who are now obsessed with Friendfeed -- whose amplified voices in the tech media echo chamber don't represent mainstream society. Good riddance, anyway.
Not saying Facebook is going to grow faster, or that it won't be replaced by something better/different, or that it's worth anywhere near $15 billion. But the people who have used it the most over the years are still using it multiple times a day.
i built an app for facebook and found out that the users are more interested in flinging turds at each other's profiles than anything else
wow, what a business! not.
http://zooie.wordpress.com/
I say, sell those shares then ...
Sounds a little like language used by folks back in the mid 90's as they defended Geocities and Broadcast.com. Back then sites like facebook were called community. At one point they were adding tens of thousands of "new" communities each day. Now, sadly, they don't exist. If Matt Cohler is the seller then he clearly doesn't believe in the future, for if he did, he probably wouldn't be selling now.
That said, while it may be a fad, it's not passing that quickly so there may be time to figure out how to make a buck.
Until then I would be more willing to rate it $1 - $10 for each user.
Of course none of this equals profitability, which is an entirely different ballgame. But I think it demonstrates staying power, which goes a long way towards monetization.
TokSee
Mac Video Converter is an all-in-one Mac DVD conversion software program. This DVD Converter for Mac is an excellent tool for Mac users to convert DVD to MP4, AVI, M4V, MOV, 3GP, MPG, FLV, MP3, and for iPod products, iPhone, Apple TV, PSP, Youtube (web), Creative Zen, iRiver PMP, Archos, all kinds of video cell phones and digital video and audio players.
Welcome to free download and try it.
chanel replica bags ;
replica chanel handbags ;
wholesale replica bags ;
chanel replica purses;
gucci replica handbags ;
replica gucci handbags ;
In addition we offer prepaid game cards for many games. Multilingual competent team, we are your MMORPG´s partner.
wow account