A decade ago, “do you have an e-mail address?” was a common inquiry by friends and colleagues alike. Today, that question has been seemingly replaced with “add me on Facebook.” That is right, the question has been replaced with a command.
Much like how Google overtook Yahoo! to become the dominant search engine, Facebook is the dominant social networking website with over 400 million active users – and growing.
Facebook has really carved out its own unique identity in the social networking world; however, it seems as though the powers that be at Facebook want to be the one stop shop for Web users. With the launch of the "Like" button, Facebook is gathering a vast amount of data about its users.
Do not underestimate the value of this type of data collection. When Facebook executives decide to take the company public, this collection of information will only increase the stock value.
According to Johansmyer (2010):
Are social media websites poised to take over the stock market? Only time will tell. Until then, add me on Facebook.CEO Mark Zuckerberg, according to the Wall Street Journal is putting his head together with those of Paul Otellini, CEO of Intel (INTC) and Charles Phillips, president of Oracle (ORCL) to gain insights on running his company, over which he'll have more control as a result of Facebook's dual-class share structure. If Zuckerberg gets his way, he'll run Facebook for a while before taking the dive into public capital markets.
Zuckerberg tells the Wall Street Journal, "We're going to go public eventually, because that's the contract that we have with our investors and our employees." (para. 2-3)
Johansmyer, T. (2010, March 4). Zuckerberg in 'No Rush' for Facebook IPO [Web log post]. Blogging Stocks. Retrieved from http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2010/03/04/zuckerberg-in-no-rush-for-facebook-ipo/
2 comments:
Wow, how interesting. I think I need to think of a social networking site... I'm ready to bank off of peoples' incessant desire to have the world know how unique and hipstter they are.
Narcissism and voyeurism is alive and well.
For a business model though, I am not sure how well social media can sustain itself since Facebook is not producing a product that people buy ... yet.
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