Four reasons why Facebook might be overvalued | Hacker News Reader

Four reasons why Facebook might be overvalued

arturadib.blogspot.com

14 pointsarturadib8 comments

These aren't really 4 reasons. They're 4 counterexamples supporting 1 reason - that social networks come and go.

In my opinion, a bigger reason is market saturation. Facebook's valuation assumes big growth will continue, but at this point in time, if you're not on facebook, you're pretty unlikely to ever be on facebook.

but at this point in time, if you're not on facebook, you're pretty unlikely to ever be on facebook.

Really? Is their growth slowing down substantially?

For valuation purposes, "growth" is not necessarily tied to user base growth, but rather profits growth.

Indeed. Google's dominance of the search engine market has in no way prevented them from keeping to grow.

Facebook may very well diversify even more to keep its growth, and therefore valuation.

What? What about every single year children getting old enough to use it all across the world?

"Clearly social graphs are fragile."

I come across this sentiment all the time and I'm thinking that maybe it's completely wrong. Maybe it's not the social graph that is fragile, but crappy companies. Every one of Facebook's predecessors did something wrong. Too much downtime, bad design, corporate interests, spam, etc.

I don't see Facebook making many (big) mistakes.

The larger the company, the more complacent they get. They become tied to their legacy and have a difficult time adapting to a changing world. This is magnified dramatically in today's tech environment. I think Facebook is just a privacy breach (or stupid privacy decision) away from becoming a company that can rapidly accelerate their time on the upside of the bell curve.

I agree with your overall theory but not with your conclusion. I think Facebook is making two big mistakes...

1. Thinking that everyone agrees that privacy is dead

2. Still having not found a way to allow users to separate groups in an effective way (e.g. it's now possible to keep Mom from seeing those party pics but it still isn't easy)

I think developers are afraid of Facebooks dominance right now and think it's a waste of money to challenge them which is why you don't see anyone trying to exploit those flaws. But they do exist and Facebooks seen (and largely ignored) the backlash to prove it.

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