Showing posts with label Facebook. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Facebook. Show all posts
10.17.2016
2.24.2016
The FANG stocks
What Are FANG Stocks and Why Does Jim Cramer Love Them?
Excerpt:
FANG, an acronym created by TheStreet's Jim Cramer a few years ago, is representative of four of the most popular and best-performing tech stocks in recent memoryBeware the FANG, and other quirky stock market indicators
Excerpt:
The FANG? It’s among the latest in a long line of quirky predictors, funky barometers and other theories that contribute to the noise surrounding why stocks go up and down. Some indicators are tied to the calendar, while others track presidential elections, the Super Bowl and horse racing’s Triple Crown. The FANG is an acronym for four high-flying stocks that are investor favorites: Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google. Never mind that Google is now called Alphabet.Comment: Image source. None are in our portfolio but I may do a future investment of about $ 2200:
Does Netflix's stumble show we've reached peak FANG? Maybe not. https://t.co/SgktjX06od
— Jim Cramer (@jimcramer) July 18, 2018
6.29.2014
Facebook Fone Flop
What Happened to the Facebook Phone? Not Very Much, It Seems
Excerpt:
Facebook has long wanted to be a major part of how you use your smartphone. Now, it looks as if the company has all but abandoned one of its major strategies to do so. The company has disbanded the team of engineers originally assigned to work on Facebook Home, its custom-made mobile software for Android devices, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly. ... Shortly after it was released, Home ran into snags. Early adopters rated the software mediocre at best. And six months after the introduction, Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, said the software was hardly the hit he wanted it to be.Comment: (yes I know how "Phone" is spelled!). Another article from CNET on same. Image Source
8.03.2012
Facebook insider: Like “Hotel California” - "You can check out anytime you want, but you can never leave."
Excerpt:
“The day before, I could just be in a car being in a car. Now my being in a car is a performance that is visible to everyone,” Losse said, exasperation creeping into her voice. “It’s almost like there is no middle of nowhere anymore.”
Losse began comparing Facebook to the iconic 1976 Eagles song “Hotel California,” with its haunting coda, “You can check out anytime you want, but you can never leave.” She put a copy of the record jacket on prominent display in a house she and several other employees shared not far from the headquarters (then in Palo Alto., Calif.; it’s now in Menlo Park).Comment: the song
2.02.2012
Facebook: From social network to social disease?
3 Ways Facebook Plans to Exploit Users
Excerpt (2 of the three):
- Facebook is going to "sell" users for $120 each According to their filing, Facebook had 850 million Monthly Active Users (MAU) at the end of 2011. From that user base the company generated roughly $3.7b in revenue, or just under $4.50 for every member. Nearly 90% of this number comes from selling your information to advertisers who, in turn, try to sell you things Facebook says you want. That may seem like a reasonable trade until we get to the IPO. "If this thing goes public at the price they're expecting (Facebook) will get $120 per user," Matt Nesto notes. Said another way, Facebook is going to sell you for 120 bucks. Wall Street bankers will get a cut of this figure, with Facebook getting the bulk of the money. FB users get nothing.
- Facebook users are about to become billboards In the first line of a 2,000 word letter from Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder announces the following: "Facebook was not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission — to make the world more open and connected." Noble stuff from a guy about to be worth nearly $30 billion. Regardless of the original inspiration, once Facebook goes public Zuckerberg's job is to create value for shareholders. That means getting more than $4.50 a year for selling each user's information to advertisers. One of the ways Facebook is going to go about this value extraction is turning your every click into a sponsorship. If you feel exploited now you ain't seen nothing yet. Post-IPO, everything you "Like", suggest or link is going to be packaged and sold. Anyone you "Friend" will be pitched stuff you like. People with whom you have common friends will be sold goods on the basis of your unwitting recommendation. You won't just be connecting with people anymore, you'll be infecting them with spam, pop-ups, and network. If that sounds something like a social disease it's because that's exactly what it is.
Comment: Gives one pause!
12.14.2011
Facebook Luddites
Excerpts:
One of Facebook’s main selling points is that it builds closer ties among friends and colleagues. But some who steer clear of the site say it can have the opposite effect of making them feel more, not less, alienated.
“I wasn’t calling my friends anymore,” said Ashleigh Elser, 24, who is in graduate school in Charlottesville, Va. “I was just seeing their pictures and updates and felt like that was really connecting to them.”
To be sure, the Facebook-free life has its disadvantages in an era when people announce all kinds of major life milestones on the Web. Ms. Elser has missed engagements and pictures of newborn babies. But none of that hurt as much as the gap she said her Facebook account had created between her and her closest friends. So she shut it down.
Many of the holdouts mention concerns about privacy. Those who study social networking say this issue boils down to trust. Amanda Lenhart, who directs research on teenagers, children and families at the Pew Internet and American Life Project, said that people who use Facebook tend to have “a general sense of trust in others and trust in institutions.” She added: “Some people make the decision not to use it because they are afraid of what might happen.”
...
Erika Gable, 29, who lives in Brooklyn and does public relations for restaurants, never understood the appeal of Facebook in the first place. She says the daily chatter that flows through the site — updates about bad hair days and pictures from dinner — is virtual clutter she doesn’t need in her life.
“If I want to see my fifth cousin’s second baby, I’ll call them,” she said with a laugh.
Ms. Gable is not a Luddite. She has an iPhone and sometimes uses Twitter. But when it comes to creating a profile on the world’s biggest social network, her tolerance reaches its limits.
Comment: I am conflicted about Facebook. Yes I am "on it". I do see value to it (Like seeing Bike Bubba make bread with his daughter!). I am concerned about the privacy issues. My wife has given up on it. Image above: The Leader of the Luddites from Wikipedia
12.13.2011
Facebook: Your very own "War and Peace"
Twenty Something Asks Facebook For His File And Gets It - All 1,200 Pages
Excerpt:
Be careful of what you ask for. That's a lesson that Max Schrems of Vienna, Austria, learned the hard way when he sent a formal request to Facebook citing European law and asking for a copy of every piece of personal information that the world’s largest social network had collected on him.
After a wait, the 24 year-old law student got what he was seeking: a CD with all his data stored on it - 1,222 files in all. The collection of PDF format documents was roughly the length Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace but told a more mundane story: a record of Schrems' years-long relationship with the world's largest social network.
Collected together were records of when Schrems logged in and out of the social network, the times and content of sent and received messages and an accounting of every person and thing he’s ever liked, posted, poked, friended or recorded. The archive captured friend requests, former or alternative names and email addresses, employment and relationship statuses and photos, in some cases with their GPS locations included, to name a few. To Schrems' dismay, much of the data he received from the network was information he thought he had deleted. Facebook, it seems, doesn't think much of the Delete key and continued to hold copies of the data on its servers.
Comment: Makes one wonder whether one should Facebook!
11.21.2011
Facebook's “small world” findings
Excerpt:
The original “six degrees” finding, published in 1967 by the psychologist Stanley Milgram, was drawn from 296 volunteers who were asked to send a message by postcard, through friends and then friends of friends, to a specific person in a Boston suburb.
The new research used a slightly bigger cohort: 721 million Facebook users, more than one-tenth of the world’s population. The findings were posted on Facebook’s Web site Monday night.
The experiment took one month. The researchers used a set of algorithms developed at the University of Milan to calculate the average distance between any two people by computing a vast number of sample paths among Facebook users. They found that the average number of links from one arbitrarily selected person to another was 4.74. In the United States, where more than half of people over 13 are on Facebook, it was just 4.37.
“When considering even the most distant Facebook user in the Siberian tundra or the Peruvian rain forest,” the company wrote on its blog, “a friend of your friend probably knows a friend of their friend.”
Comment: See Yahoo, Facebook to test ‘six degrees of separation’ theory . Disney knew it was a Small World some time ago.
5.03.2011
Julian Assange: Facebook Deemed "Most Appalling Spying Machine Ever Invented"
Excerpt:
Forget the iPhone Tracker. Never mind Google's reach. To WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, the "most appalling spying machine ever invented" is still our good ol' privacy-invasive standby: Facebook.
In an interview with Russia Today, Assange took the not-so-bold stance of condemning the intrusive features and fuzzy privacy settings that we all know Facebook is built upon. However, he went so far as to say that all your wall posts and photo tagging is of great help to US federal agencies to spy on its citizens.
"Here we have the world's most comprehensive database about people, their relationships, their names, their addresses, their locations, their communications with each other, and their relatives, all sitting within the United States, all accessible to US intelligence."
But Assange doesn't let other online outlets such as Google, Yahoo, and Apple off the hook. He claimed all are tailor made for federal investigation -- warranted or otherwise. It's as if, Assange asserted, that citizens are handing over their information to the government on a virtual silver platter.
"It's not a matter of serving a subpoena -- they have an interface they have developed for U.S. intelligence to use," he said. "Now, is the case that Facebook is actually run by U.S. intelligence? No, it's not like that. It's simply that U.S. intelligence is able to bring to bear legal and political pressure to them. And it's costly for them to hand out individual records, one by one, so they have automated the process."
Comment: Interesting. What do you think?
3.12.2011
Two Facebook articles: "age inflation" ... link to divorce
Facebook Users Who Are Under Age Raise Concerns
Excerpt:
Across the nation, millions of young people are lying about their ages so they can create accounts on popular sites like Facebook and Myspace. These sites require users to be 13 or older, to avoid federal regulations that apply to sites with younger members. But to children, that rule is a minor obstacle that stands between them and what everybody else is doing.
Parents regularly go along with the age inflation, giving permission and helping children set up accounts. They often see it as a minor fib that is necessary to let their children participate in the digital world.
Plenty of people fudge the truth about their age, whether to buy beer or project a younger image to potential mates. But researchers and other critics say allowing children to break the rules sends the wrong message. And, they argue, it sets children loose in a digital world they may not be prepared for — exposing them to the real-life threats of inappropriate content, contact from strangers and the growing incidents of bullying by computer.
“Not only are kids lying about their age, but more often than not, parents teach them to lie about their age,” said Danah Boyd, a social media researcher at Microsoft.
Ms. Boyd said this ran counter to the goal of getting parents more constructively involved in children’s online activities, which was one aim of the legislation that spawned the age restrictions in the first place.
At the same time, the practice is hard to stop, say Web sites and federal officials. Sites try to catch under-age users — “We are not burying our head in the sand,” said Joe Sullivan, the chief security officer at Facebook — but verifying a young person’s age over the Internet is a task that ranges from tricky to near impossible.
Comment: Not my worry anymore because my children are all adults and on their own. I'm glad that the Internet was in its infancy when my children were youngsters. My own view ... closely monitor Internet usage of children! There are sexual predators that exploit social media sites.
Second article about link between Facebook and divorce
Irreconcilable Claim: Facebook Causes 1 in 5 Divorces
Excerpt:
Upon further review, Facebook and marriage aren't incompatible.
In the past two weeks, the idea that the popular social-networking site plays a role in one in five divorces was reported by many news organizations. This wasn't the first time that surprising number has surfaced—it has appeared in news reports periodically for the past year and a half.
Some lawyers do say that they see Facebook and other social media playing a role in divorce these days, as people rediscover old flames online or strike up new relationships that lead them to stray from their marriage vows. But lawyers and marriage researchers say there isn't much evidence to support the notion that social-networking sites actually cause marriages to sputter.
Comment: Common sense. My wife knows my email and Facebook passwords.
9.15.2010
9.13.2010
Facebook status: "I have a 140-pound Rottweiler"
Burglars Picked Houses Based on Facebook Updates
Excerpt:
If you plan to log into your Facebook account and announce to the world that you’re heading to the beach for the weekend, you might want to append the status update with a warning that your home is under 24-hour surveillance, you have a 140-pound Rottweiler who hasn’t eaten in a week and that you own a really good alarm system.
If you don’t, you personal belongings could be fodder for some tech-savvy burglars.
According to New Hampshire’s WMUR Channel 9 News, three local men, Mario Rojas, Leonardo Barroso and Victor Rodriguez, have burglarized more than 18 homes in the Nashua area of New Hampshire simply by checking status updates on Facebook and then pillaging houses of victims who announced on the social network that they were not home.
Comment: A reminder about a common sense approach to Facebook privacy!
7.20.2010
Who owns Facebook?
Facebook Lawyer `Unsure' Whether Founder Mark Zuckerberg Signed Contract
Excerpt:
A lawyer for Facebook Inc. said she was “unsure” whether company founder Mark Zuckerberg signed a contract that purportedly entitles a New York man to 84 percent of the world’s biggest social-networking service.
Paul Ceglia sued Facebook and Zuckerberg in state court June 30, claiming that an April 2003 contract entitles him to ownership of most of the closely held company. Ceglia’s lawyer produced a copy of the document for U.S. District Judge Richard Arcara today at a hearing in federal court in Buffalo, New York.
“Whether he signed this piece of paper, we’re unsure at this moment,” Facebook lawyer Lisa Simpson told Arcara.
Palo Alto, California-based Facebook, which hasn’t claimed the alleged contract with Ceglia is a phony, has “serious questions” about its authenticity, Simpson said.
The case is the latest challenge to the origins of Facebook, which is worth $24.6 billion, according to SharesPost.com, a marketplace for closely held firms. Facebook’s paternity was questioned in a suit by a group of Zuckerberg’s former Harvard University schoolmates, who claimed he used code developed on their ConnectU project to start Facebook. They settled in 2008.
Comment: Read the complaint Ceglia v. Zuckerberg complaint
More from Forbes Mark Zuckerberg Sued For 84% Stake In Facebook
6.19.2010
Does email have a future?
Open Thread: The End of Email?
Excerpt:
...
... only 11% of teens email daily, a statistic she sees as a sign of the coming transition to SMS and social networks. But in 2005, another study found that less than 5% of American teens aged 12-17 preferred email over instant messaging for digital communication. Now, five years later, many of those teens are entering the business world--but we haven't seen AIM, Yahoo Messenger, and G-Chat overtake good old-fashioned email.
At least not yet.
A study by the Nielsen Co. of email consumption in Australia, Brazil, several European countries, and the U.S., found that usage rose 21% between August 2008 to August 2009, reaching 276.9 million people. During that same period, users of social-network sites leaped 31% to 301.5 million people. Because of this sharp growth, Internet communities like Facebook are eating away at the amount of time users spend communicating through traditional messenging services: Between 2003 and 2009, time spent on email sites dropped 41%; social networks, on the other hand, now represent 22% of total user Internet time--up 24% since last year.
Comment: I have two views of email. At work .... I hate it. My inbox is full full full. I save send items to cover myself. I save deleted items for the same reason. For people closest to me ... I treasure the phone or face to face. Graphic captured from the article
5.13.2010
Facebook's privacy policies a concern
Why I left Facebook - The social networking service’s privacy policies should give users pause
Excerpt:
Why not simply set everything up for opt-in rather than opt-out? Facebook seems to assume that users generally want all the details of their private lives made public.
Comment: I haven't left Facebook. Some features like photo sharing are really great. But the friends of the friends of the friends connections concern me. Also I have had at least 2 "friend requests" that appeared to come from prostitutes or women trying to sell porn.
11.06.2009
I eschew Facebook Apps
Facebook’s fantasy games cost more than time
Excerpt:
Seriously? You’d do that? You’d totally provide your personal information to yet another third-party application in trade for “free” coins to use in that virtual sharecrop you’ve got going over on Facebook? Do you really want a pig that bad?
Well, even if you claim you wouldn’t do that, there are plenty out there who would. Yes, they’d expose their info to exploitation, just to move that much faster toward “Level One of Daffodil Mastery” within the faux feudal system that is “FarmVille.” If not that, then for a bounty to pay friends willing to fight an enemy in “Mafia Wars,” to upgrade a pretend panda in “Pet Society” ... or pay for whatever it is y’all Yos do in “YoVille.”
Social network gaming apps are making big news for the big bucks they haul in by the bushel. FarmVille, for example, boasts more than 60 million members, not to mention a plethora of fan Web sites.
Comment: I'm actually thinking of quitting Facebook altogether.
2.05.2009
Can Facebook turn traffic into profits?
Facebook turns five
Excerpt:
One challenge Facebook is yet to overcome is how to make money.
US software giant Microsoft bought a 1.6 percent stake in Facebook in 2007 for 240 million dollars, valuing the social network on paper at 15 billion dollars.
But Facebook, unlike other Web giants such as Amazon, eBay, Google and Yahoo!, is yet to prove how it is going to translate traffic into cash.
"There's no significant visible source of revenue other than investors," said Silicon Valley analyst Rob Enderle of the Enderle Group.
"There's a lot of potential there but they're still kind of living in this dotcom mindset where a business plan doesn't make a difference," he said. "And as we saw with the dotcoms, that has a very unfortunate end to it."
"Google was able to figure out fairly quickly how to monetize what they were doing and they became a giant and that's the potential for Facebook but they've got to cross that chasm," Enderle said.
Going public with an IPO, or initial public offering, would not appear to be an option for Facebook right now.
"Doing a public offering when you have no revenue? Good luck with that -- particularly in this market," said Enderle.
Advertising could be a money-spinner but "the ad model doesn't seem like it works all that well for Facebook -- though it could," said Enderle. "You know an awful lot about people, and so you would think they could do targeted ads."
Comment: I think it is a really cool service. I didn't even know that they weren't making money. Wonder if Facebook will be around 5 years from now?
3.25.2008
The Facebook song
Comment: I have a Facebook account! When I first set up my Facebook account, I thought I was checking a box indicating my gender (male) but actually checked the box indicating the kind of people I wanted to me. Greg Lincott contacted me and said that checked box indicated that I was not a heterosexual! I quickly fixed!
HT: Greg Linscott
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