A while ago I wrote about Alan Jones - a right-wing radio shock-jock in Australia with a well organized Facebook campaign against him.
I did not think Jones could survive the onslaught - new media I thought won.
I bet my business partner $50 that Jones would be chased off air.
I lost - and $50 duly traded hands although I took until today to pay him.
My faith in the power of Facebook to change the world is reduced. Not so keen on FB stock either any more - I find myself using FB less and less...
Worse: my thirteen year old son is not nagging me to allow him a Facebook page.
John
PS. We made a small profit on Facebook stock mostly via selling put options which eventually delivered to us at an average cost in the low 20s. We sold a few calls (and much was called away from us) in the mid to high 20s. I consider this luck. I used to think that FB was a "no brainer" in the low 20s. Not so sure any more.
6 comments:
John,
My 3 kids (ages 20, 17, and 14) all use Facebook less than they did 6 months or a year ago. They all tell me their friends are similar. Twitter seems to be much more popular with this group today.
Dan
I closed my FB page when I found out conversations were monitored and where seen fit reported to the police.
FB has I think built up, slowly and with great labour, a reputation for being data abusers and by that inherently disrespectful towards its users.
Users know this - it is simply a known truth about FB. As such, when a user uses the site, there is an inherent and constant internal conflict, where one is consenting to and abetting ones own misuse.
This over time is slow poison and so in the end we see, in the absence of factors encouraging use (whizzy new features, etc) a falling off.
I note in this regard Twitter not being listed in the PRISM network.
Malnutrition takes a long time to set in, but just as long to remedy. I suspect user attitudes are much the same. The short term benefits of abuse of trust are very great.
I rarely find that, if I don't check it for a few days, I've missed anything of substance. To me it feels like reading one's horoscope--entertaining, but hardly necessary.
What are your views on the Focus Media now that Carlyle closed the transaction? Difficult to believe that with all the noise around this name, they would have done that without doing proper due diligence.
in terms of the customer i have plenty of friends who check facebook each morning before getting up as do all their friends around the world. girls in particular love facebook and love checking in on one another.
i think basing popularity on US kid datapoints may be nearsighted. who knows what happens by the time they get to college and start to expand their small network. i hated facebook until i started travelling and it was an amazingly valuable service (i could contact anyone after a conversation and getting a name). no i don't think facebook is going anywhere other than up
in terms of the company can you imagine the value of all of those software engineers? thousands of very loyal and smart engineers in that organization some of whom i know - they're the type of people who learn japanese for fun. that coding power would be very valuable if incented right.
plus the value of all of those personal accounts to just about any other west coast technology company could be massive.
i'm much more inclined to be long the stock than short. then again i like Apple at $430 so what do i know
I'm still puzzled that you ever thought Alan Jones would be taken down by a Facebook campaign of people that didn't like him. He survived a lot worse with his advertising issue.
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