Bloomberg: Facebook to postpone IPO until 2012

By on Jul 31, 2010 at 5:49 AM
General July 31, 2010

Bloomberg is reporting that social network Facebook will postpone an IPO until 2012. Investors have been speculating that the world’s largest social network — valued at $24.9 billion — would go public sometime in 2011. Bloomberg writes, “Waiting lets Zuckerberg, 26, hone the skills needed to steer a company that issues quarterly results while facing criticism on such matters as user privacy.” Facebook declined to comment, and Zuckerberg himself said his company would offer an IPO, “when it makes sense.” People familiar with the company estimate that the social network would bring in as much as $1.4 billion in sales in 2010 alone. Would any of you jump on the Facebook IPO if given the opportunity?

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  • Invest vs Trade

    There is a difference between investing and trading. I would trade the IPO riding the initial public emotion wave. But with every wave, there is a crash/lull which is why I’d trade rather than invest. To invest is to put in money and leave it for the long term.

    I see Facebook lasting many years down the road. They are ever more popular in the younger generation which will keep them supplied with fresh users. Even MySpace is still 26th in the world (13th in US) according to Alexa. As more and more devices become portable and social, FB only will make gains. The next FB will still be at least 2 years away if launched any time soon, and mainly it would take some bad misstep by FB to essentially drive users away (probably security or privacy issue).

  • MJ

    I’ve been reading the banter, back and forth now, for several months, trying to gauge what other peoples thoughts are about a FB IPO. I came to several conclusions, including the Myspace scenario and I agree, Myspace, like AOL, crash and burned almost immediately after they plateaued.

    And I’ve ready many comparisons to Google as well. Obviously, with so many users, people forget, users = potential customers. When you have that much traffic and start doing a little math, you can figure out what % of those people logging on will hit that ad link to the right.

    In fact, let’s do some math – all hypothetical of course. You have 500 million users. Let’s say 10%, or 50 million users click those ads. Then let’s say another 10% actually purchase something, or 5 million users purchase $10 worth of seeds or what have you. Now you’re looking at $5,000,000.00. That’s a lot of chump change. Obviously $5mill does not translate into $30billion, but what it does translate is the earning potential, which leaves a lot of people at a crossroads.

    Some investors go off of something they can tangibly track, Q1-4 analysis, NOI, gross sales, etc. And the speculators are the ones keeping their fingers cross that FB makes some money.

    But we all go back to the original question – CAN FB earn? And on the same level, WILL it earn? Myspace failed because it wasn’t a very user friendly website and the earnings potential was never exploited in the best way possible – the site was too cluttered, never clean, and hard to navigate.

    FB can earn but as someone said above, it’s about HOW they plan to get there that’s leaved mixed signals for me. Will they earn? Of course they will – they wouldn’t be in business and no one would support them if they couldn’t earn. In fact, yes, it took them 7 years to figure out a good model – but remember, 7 years ago, no one thought FB would be where it is now; FB was never designed to be a business exploit at all, however it’s mutated and evolved into just that. Now that it costs millions to simply operate a month, the business side HAD to come into play.

    How many of you are on forums and they’re always asking for donations, a dollar here a dollar there? They need it for server space and FB is no different. Instead of asking for donations, they had to evolve that business model and they simply weren’t able to get it quite right till now. Even as we speak, it’s not perfect and that’s why Mark has bought in so many people -he’s not a marketing genius – but it’s following Bill Gates plan – hire someone ELSE that IS the genius to generate income.

    FB is worth buying when it happens, but it’s something that from a business stand point, you have to look out for. Amazon does so well because they have tangible products available and that’s their bread and butter; FB is not that model so comparing FB to Amazon or Google is a mistake.

    Whew…ok, that’s enough for now.

    PS – buy FB stock, but it’ll be for the short term, UNLESS they can pull an Apple-style killshot and provide a serious money making application. Then go longterm. You just have to wait and see.

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