Facebook making profits www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12135320

I watched Amazon for many years, and would avow it was a gone case. Realise this was an online business of selling tangible books, founded before and survived the dot-com bubble, transforming to a logistic company for selling all kinds of consumer products.

But after a whole 9 years, Amazon turned a profit in 2003 and every year since then; AMZN share price rising almost 500% over the period with a gravity defying P/E of 75 (Walmart trades at P/E of 13) Then there's the Kindle and long list of acquisitions - I was proven wrong!


But not so with Ayisi Makatiani's and Amolo Ngweno's Africa Online, started in Kenya in the same year as Amazon. Considering two of the founders were in MIT and the only lady founder in Harvard, it is not surprising they adopted the same venture model as other dot-coms.

Africa Online expanded into Africa in a very big hurry, was listed, founders departed, and subsequently delisted. Granted the company brought Internet to Kenya and made the founders some money; but prove my scepticism right - Hard to make money if you first learn the habit of living on handouts.


So the jury is out on Facebook, famously credited for introducing the social age of the Internet. As with all things, time will tell. Here's an interesting opinion piece from CNN, that reminds us of days of AOL, Myspace etc:
Facebook hype will fade

@Muganda facebook is unique and will outlive any of its critics, with its millions of users facebook is fast becoming the most sought after advertising platform let them bring facebook email i will say goodbye to gmail...waaah connecting with friends and reading my email at the same time will be awsome...i believe ecommerce is the next big thing in Africa as African economy grows at a rapid pace, poverty will become a thing of the past and Africans will live busier lives thus more will turn to shopping online, it was just last week when i saw a trader loose a sale because the Mzee who wanted to buy a hard-drive couldn't use his debit card.

Meanwhile in other news: "Facebook Will End March 15th!"

WeeklyWorldNews, PALO ALTO, CA –Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook will be shut down in March. Managing the site has become too stressful.

“Facebook has gotten out of control,” said Zuckerberg in a press conference outside his Palo Alto office, “and the stress of managing this company has ruined my life. I need to put an end to all the madness.”

Zuckerberg went on to explain that starting March 15th, users will no longer be able to access their Facebook accounts.
http://weeklyworldnews.c...will-end-on-march-15th/


Facebook is yet to respond: http://abcnews.go.com/Te...s-web/story?id=12575856

Facebook is valuable, but not 50billion dollars valuable. It just doesn't add up. Goldman Sachs which did the valuation is itself valued at about 88 billion. GS will probably be book running - with such a high valuation, imagine the fat fee slice? I was reading somewhere about an alternative view of a valuation ...not evaluating the value of a single stock, but the whole lot. Hypothetically, if you had 50 billion USD, would you sink it all into Facebook?