Facebook's Nasdaq listing has gone down as the worst-performing large initial public offering in the past decade. "Leaving Facebookistan," a blog post written by New Yorker writer Steve Coll, suggests that the troubles of the world's largest social-networking company are merely just beginning.
Coll writes that he ultimately quit Facebook because he didn't feel safe, an expression I've heard repeatedly and personally identify with. One wonders how and if Mark Zuckerberg will overcome increasing privacy concerns or whether he's signaling, by going public, that the company's peak has come and gone.
The lawsuits over Facebook's mismanaged IPO are already trickling in. MySpace and Friendster, long-forgotten Facebook predecessors, have evolved into websites focused on music and Southeast Asian users. It's possible Facebook will find its own special niche in baby pictures, or photographs that should never have been shared in the first place.
2 comments:
I think most would agree that Facebook is not going anywhere for quite some time. But, in light of this blog post and its recent IPO, it does seem as though Facebook may be a relatively inflated platform. In addition to the fraught tension FB maintains between privacy and transparency cited in this NY Times article, they may simply be unable to garner the ad revenue everyone anticipated. In a recent AP-CNBC poll (link below), 83% of respondents say they never or hardly ever click on ads, and over half think FB is a "passing fad." Even if FB continues to grow its user base and content, only time will tell if the money will follow.
And as a public company, Zuckerberg will have to give his shareholders something more tangible than his principles and proclamations about the importance of an open platform.
Link to Poll:
http://ap-gfkpoll.com/uncategorized/our-latest-poll-findings-2
Forgive me Father, for I have sinned.
I am finally coming clean with a dirty little secret I have harbored for many years.
I...........(drumroll please)............ am NOT on Facebook.
Yes, I may be the social networking version of the "only living girl in New York".
I realize that many of you just rolled our eyes in that way that I have become so familiar with over the past five years. Ever since my British colleague so egregiously created a Facebook account ON MY BEHALF in 2007- one that I merely needed to click "accept" in the email I received confirming my undoubted participation- I have been avoiding the site like the plague.
I have nothing against its members, or against the creators, or even against the productivity detraction that it has become for my team at work. I simply don't have time or space in my life for "another thing" and already feel overwhelmed with communications.
As a rule, I like my privacy- or whatever remains of it. I use duckduckgo.com, I call every catalog and remove myself from the mailing lists, and I turn off location-base on my iPhone. I'm sure they still know exactly where I am at any given moment, but ignorance is sometimes bliss and I sleep well at night. I'm not even sure who "they" are....
I recently came across this Ted Talk:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/sherry_turkle_alone_together.html
Whether you agree or disagree with the sentiment, I have found myself making more attempts to connect in real ways with my friends and family. I have learned to close my laptop and (gasp) stop the school reading in favor of sitting on the couch with my husband, opening a bottle of wine, and connecting in the way that only happens when you are staring into someone else's eyes and really hearing them.
Google CEO Eric Schmitt gave a college commencement speech a few years ago at UPenn, and I thought this quote was interesting (keep in mind he works for Google):
"You need to live for the future and the things that you really, really care about. So what are those things?
Well, in order to know that, I hate to say it but you're going to have to turn off your computer. You're actually going to have to turn off your phone and discover all that is human around us."
This year's speech was for Boston University and his sentiments didn't change too much (one excerpt below):
http://www.bu.edu/news/2012/05/20/boston-university-139th-commencement-address-eric-schmidt/
"Life is not lived in the glow of a monitor. Life is not a series of status updates. Life is not about your friend count–it’s about the friends you can count on.
Life is about who you love, how you live, it’s about who you travel through the world with. Your family, your collaborators, your friends. Life is a social experience first, and the best aspects of that experience are not lonely ones–they are spent in the company of others."
I have spent my entire career working for Silicon Valley tech companies, and even I wonder about whether technology is bringing us closer together or further apart.
Recently, I traveled to New Zealand and was waiting for a flight in the Auckland airport. I needed to confirm an address that lived in my Gmail account for the next stop on our itinerary. There was a 3-person waiting line for the scant few free airport computers, and I watched one after another after another traveler log into their Facbook accounts and start looking through photos, reading others' updates, and trying their best to foil my attempt to get REAL information that I needed. I rolled my own eyes.....and vowed yet again that I would never have a Facebook moment of weakness...
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