Facebook May Have Missed the Boat
Chelsey is a member of The Motley Fool Blog Network -- entries represent the personal opinion of the blogger and are not formally edited.
If there's one thing I know about as a college student, it's Facebook.
I would be ashamed to say how many hours I've spent Facebook stalking exes, enemies, and completely random people I've never actually met (Hey, we all do it). But lately, the phrase "Facebook is the new Myspace" has become unavoidable.
The days of exclusivity are over and the days of "like this status" and "repost this if you're a mother/sister/human being!" have taken over. And thus died the appeal of Facebook.
With the California-based company expected to file its IPO within days (or even hours), expectations for the social media giant are high to say the least.
In what could be one of the largest IPOs of the decade, Facebook expects to bring in about $10 billion.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook is expects its value to rise to somewhere between $75 billion and $100 billion. Anything less would be termed a major disappointment.
Well Mark Zuckerburg, it might be time to prepare for disappointment.
Facebook's user count is at 800 million as of September— which means nearly 1 in 7 people throughout the world have a Facebook — a number that isn't likely to increase by much in the future.
Recent innovations meant to counter decreasing user satisfaction, such as the timeline feature, have met mixed — though mostly negative — reviews. Paired with the struggling economy, these factors could pose problems for the company when it goes public.
Many have made comparisons between Google's (NASDAQ: GOOG) 2004 IPO and Facebook's expected IPO, pointing towards Google's steady growth as a positive sign for the social media company. But those were different times — economically, socially and technologically.
If the company had chosen to go public even last year, that $100 billion worth might have been possible.
But Facebook missed the metaphorical boat, and now they are facing the same problems social media companies before them have faced of becoming viewed as outdated and cluttered (Xanga, anyone?).
Maybe it's not Facebook's fault. Maybe people are just becoming less interesting. But from where I stand, it's undeniable — Facebook is losing its appeal.
And when the billion dollar company goes public, presumably months from now, user interest will likely have dropped even lower, with a drop in investor interest to follow.
Do you think the era of Facebook is moving past us? Did Facebook file too late?
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