Spekulatius Posted January 30, 2021 Share Posted January 30, 2021 My opinion about Facebook is that they have great management and very creative people. Mark is definitely aware of the bear case for FB. They are likely to search for more diversified instruments within their network (for example the marketplace within the Facebook app and going deep in IG shopping, payments etc.). Their network is, right now, is just so incredible and I don't know exactly what kind of opportunities, but there are a lot of opportunities with billions of people on your social media apps. The utility functions in FB - Facebook groups and facebook Marketplace and perhaps going forward FB dating are adding significant value. In my town, it seems that politics (discussions, web meetings ) are largely done within FB. There is also Nextdoor, but I feel they are falling a bit behind. I do think you have to assume that Mark Zuckerberg is going to steer the company in the right direction for the foreseeable future. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michitche95 Posted February 14, 2021 Share Posted February 14, 2021 I think FB is overvaluing the competition with Apple, in order to show the world that it is not a monopoly. In other words, IMO, the competition with Apple is the best things that can happen to FB in this moment. What do you guys think? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnny Posted February 14, 2021 Share Posted February 14, 2021 Eh, going to war with a company that: 1) Has hundreds of billions of dollars to spend on war and 2) Controls your distribution and ability to shape/design/monetize your product ~50% of your value-weighted userbase ...is not an ideal situation. This competition is probably inevitable, so as long as it’s happening it’s wise to try to extract as much antitrust value as possible from it. But it’s hardly a fantastic development. Especially since I think a lot of shareholders of $FB are also overindexed on $AAPL. If you own both of these companies, obviously you’d vastly prefer some kissy kissy makeup over Facebook dumping billions into a Watch, Apple dumping billions into an Oculus, and both dumping hundreds of millions into lobbyists trying to inspire congresspeople to strangle the other to death. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michitche95 Posted February 15, 2021 Share Posted February 15, 2021 Right, but I am pretty sure Mark will know how to handle it and from the other side congressmen will not think FB is a monopoly Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michitche95 Posted February 16, 2021 Share Posted February 16, 2021 Li Lu sold 27% of his Facebook position Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Every Banana Counts Posted February 16, 2021 Share Posted February 16, 2021 Li Lu sold 27% of his Facebook position It is so hard to know why someone is selling. For every one reason to buy a stock there are 100 reasons to sell. Do you have a good feeling for Li Lu’s investment style? Is selling in and out of companies a common behavior? Buffett recently said he doesn’t “trim” positions. I wonder if Li Lu would have a similar stance. My gut would say yes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michitche95 Posted February 16, 2021 Share Posted February 16, 2021 Li Lu sold 27% of his Facebook position It is so hard to know why someone is selling. For every one reason to buy a stock there are 100 reasons to sell. Do you have a good feeling for Li Lu’s investment style? Is selling in and out of companies a common behavior? Buffett recently said he doesn’t “trim” positions. I wonder if Li Lu would have a similar stance. My gut would say yes. Buffett also sold a small portion of Apple... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dwy000 Posted February 19, 2021 Share Posted February 19, 2021 Ok, somebody please explain it to me because I'm confused. Australia is insisting that FB (and Google) pay Australian news sites for including their news links in FB site posts. FB shut down links to Australian news sites yesterday and reference traffic to those sites dropped by up to 30% (direct access went up). Why on earth would the government and news sites insist on being paid for people to access their sites? Seems they benefit from the increased viewership. In fact you could argue they should be paying FB. What am I missing? Canada is now saying it might follow Australias lead. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RichardGibbons Posted February 19, 2021 Share Posted February 19, 2021 I think it's political, but is based on three observations. 1. The FANGs are making lots of money, and a significant fraction of people think if a company is making loads of money, it is doing something bad, or at least exploitative. 2. Old media companies are suffering in the internet age; many are struggling for survival, but people want media to survive. 3. News Corp was started in Australia, and has good lobbying power. If these three things are true, to a politician, it may look reasonable to take money from the FANGs and give it to media companies. (If this crosses the political line for this board, let me know, and I'll be happy to delete the post. I just don't see an explanation for the question that doesn't involve politics.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dwy000 Posted February 19, 2021 Share Posted February 19, 2021 I think it's political, but is based on three observations. 1. The FANGs are making lots of money, and a significant fraction of people think if a company is making loads of money, it is doing something bad, or at least exploitative. 2. Old media companies are suffering in the internet age; many are struggling for survival, but people want media to survive. 3. News Corp was started in Australia, and has good lobbying power. If these three things are true, to a politician, it may look reasonable to take money from the FANGs and give it to media companies. (If this crosses the political line for this board, let me know, and I'll be happy to delete the post. I just don't see an explanation for the question that doesn't involve politics.) Completely agree it is political. And naturally governments will go after Facebook and Google because that's where the money is. But if you're the Australian media companies desperately trying to drive traffic and views to your site, how is this helping you if they decide to just shut off the links. The government isn't making any money off of this, just the local media companies. Baffling. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liberty Posted February 19, 2021 Share Posted February 19, 2021 Ok, somebody please explain it to me because I'm confused. Australia is insisting that FB (and Google) pay Australian news sites for including their news links in FB site posts. FB shut down links to Australian news sites yesterday and reference traffic to those sites dropped by up to 30% (direct access went up). Why on earth would the government and news sites insist on being paid for people to access their sites? Seems they benefit from the increased viewership. In fact you could argue they should be paying FB. What am I missing? Canada is now saying it might follow Australias lead. Rupert Murdoch's lobbyists found a way to transfer money from a competitor's pocket to their own. Seems to basically be it. If the government wanted to do a tax and then support some things with the money, that'd be one thing. But this isn't going to taxpayers, this is going into Murdoch's pockets directly (oh, and Murdoch happens to support the party in power and have near-monopoly in Australian media). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Every Banana Counts Posted February 19, 2021 Share Posted February 19, 2021 Ok, somebody please explain it to me because I'm confused. Australia is insisting that FB (and Google) pay Australian news sites for including their news links in FB site posts. FB shut down links to Australian news sites yesterday and reference traffic to those sites dropped by up to 30% (direct access went up). Why on earth would the government and news sites insist on being paid for people to access their sites? Seems they benefit from the increased viewership. In fact you could argue they should be paying FB. What am I missing? Canada is now saying it might follow Australias lead. Rupert Murdoch's lobbyists found a way to transfer money from a competitor's pocket to their own. Seems to basically be it. If the government wanted to do a tax and then support some things with the money, that'd be one thing. But this isn't going to taxpayers, this is going into Murdoch's pockets directly (oh, and Murdoch happens to support the party in power and have near-monopoly in Australian media). https://www.ridehome.info/show/techmeme-ride-home/thu-0218-facebook-calls-australias-bluff-google-pays-off-murdoch/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
no_free_lunch Posted February 19, 2021 Share Posted February 19, 2021 Google signed an agreement with newscorp to pay for their content. It's workable. Facebook just doesn't want to pay up. It's advantageous to the news companies if they win, and with the government on their side they just might. From Australia perspective you could argue it's transferring money from an international firm to domestic industry. Just another form of protectionism as I see it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jurgis Posted February 19, 2021 Share Posted February 19, 2021 Canada is planning to do Australia next. So basically WWW is dead. Cause hey, Sanjeev, when are you gonna pay Canadian and Australian media companies for all the links to their pages on CoBF? And in case CoBF ever links to my website - lol that would be first - here is my BTC wallet: <censored> so you can start transferring BTC for every link from CoBF to my websites. This is f*cking complete destruction of the WWW principles. (If this is too political, please remove KK Thx OK) Disclaimer: I have a large positions in FB and GOOGL. I am buying more. But it is possibly one of the biggest risks to both companies - and not just to them. F*ck media companies. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dwy000 Posted February 19, 2021 Share Posted February 19, 2021 I just see it as very shortsighted. You just know these companies are going to prioritize the lowest cost news organizations and punish the high cost ones. Getting Google to pay you to drive traffic to your site is an uneconomical argument that serves zero purpose. It hurts FB and Google, it will ultimately cost the news orgns traffic and gets the government zero. I'm baffled as to who benefits in the long run. Its not like FB or Google are competing with these news orgns. They are a traffic driver not a news producer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LC Posted February 19, 2021 Share Posted February 19, 2021 This is f*cking complete destruction of the WWW principles. Agreed. The founding principle of the internet (the free flow of information) is being assaulted on many fronts. Did you read the piece Liberty posted re: Apple/App Store a week or so back? It is a similar vein. Corporations are carving out chunks of the internet, building walls (and/or paying regulators to do it for them), and charging entrance/exit fees. A rhetorical question to debate internally (at the risk of over-politicizing), if the internet was not created by government and academia, would it ever have looked the way it does? If corporations "invented" the internet, would it ever have been so widely adopted, or would their tollgates have prevented adoption in the first place? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jurgis Posted February 19, 2021 Share Posted February 19, 2021 This is f*cking complete destruction of the WWW principles. Agreed. The founding principle of the internet (the free flow of information) is being assaulted on many fronts. Did you read the piece Liberty posted re: Apple/App Store a week or so back? It is a similar vein. Corporations are carving out chunks of the internet, building walls (and/or paying regulators to do it for them), and charging entrance/exit fees. A rhetorical question to debate internally (at the risk of over-politicizing), if the internet was not created by government and academia, would it ever have looked the way it does? If corporations "invented" the internet, would it ever have been so widely adopted, or would their tollgates have prevented adoption in the first place? Yep, I have read and commented on the Apple/App Store article. I'm not going to comment on rhetorical question. IMO it's very hard to say and discussion would likely cross the political line. #FreeTheWeb Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spekulatius Posted February 20, 2021 Share Posted February 20, 2021 I just see it as very shortsighted. You just know these companies are going to prioritize the lowest cost news organizations and punish the high cost ones. Getting Google to pay you to drive traffic to your site is an uneconomical argument that serves zero purpose. It hurts FB and Google, it will ultimately cost the news orgns traffic and gets the government zero. I'm baffled as to who benefits in the long run. Its not like FB or Google are competing with these news orgns. They are a traffic driver not a news producer. Yes, this makes not sense. I do think it is likely that they find a low cost/ no cost news source and just use this - somebody will cave in for a leg up from the competition. This will lead to less diversity but so be it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Krapdivad Posted February 22, 2021 Share Posted February 22, 2021 One thing that's stuck in my head about FB is how it's a great cloner. Mohnish Pabrai had a talk at Boston College how the market doesn't recognize the power of great business cloners. He mentioned Microsoft, Walmart, and Costco as some examples of businesses that were able to find what works and copy their competitors. Facebook has already shown it can clone the success of their peers: - FB Marketplace (Craigslist) - Stories/ face filters (Snapchat) - Messenger/Whatsapp (iMessage) - Portal (Facetime) They've been working on spreading into adjacent industries and had mixed results: - Virtual Metaverse with Occulus (Roblox/Apple Glasses) - Dating (Tinder/Bumble/Match.com) - Gaming (Twitch/Apple/Stadia/etc) - Facebook Watch (Apple Watch) - Crypto (Bitcoin) - Etc Facebook has shown how good they are at adapting to new circumstances (transition into mobile, increasing security over user data, and ability to block fraudulent accounts/violent videos/inaccurate information). Facebook's ability to constantly adapt, and clone the success of their rivals, with a passionate founder CEO gives it a competitive advantage and long runway in my opinion. The biggest risks facing FB is increasing competition, anti-trust, regulatory, and tax issues which will require constant resources and attention. This is compounded by the number of different countries, states, and cities that they need to deal with. Facebook also gained a bad reputation for being untrustworthy and for their neutral stance on preventing hate speech. However, history has shown that users and advertisers continue to return to its platforms even though they may "hate" the product. This highlight's the power of Facebook's switching moat. Looking at it's price now, it looks like a good buy at $250-$260 based on an 18% growth rate. In terms of FB being a potential multi bagger over the years, it has its already large market cap. It doesn't also doesn't have a fanatical user base like Tesla, Apple, or Bitcoin to provide multiple expansion. However, I believe it does have a large part to play in the increasingly digital social world. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dwy000 Posted February 22, 2021 Share Posted February 22, 2021 Have any of those clones actually worked? Asking seriously - I don't use Facebook much. They bought and paid billions for WhatsApp and I'm not sure it has monetized that well - or at all. Portal is a disaster (does anyone know anyone who bought one of these?). Not sure about Marketplace but Craigslist is still the dominant go to there. They were kind of successful in killing Vine but that has been more than replaced by TikTok. From a value/monetization perspective, Insta and the Facebook pages still seem to be the only real moneymakers. Maybe I'm missing something as a non-user. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Krapdivad Posted February 23, 2021 Share Posted February 23, 2021 One thing that's stuck in my head about FB is how it's a great cloner. Mohnish Pabrai had a talk at Boston College how the market doesn't recognize the power of great business cloners. He mentioned Microsoft, Walmart, and Costco as some examples of businesses that were able to find what works and copy their competitors. Facebook has already shown it can clone the success of their peers: - FB Marketplace (Craigslist) - Stories/ face filters (Snapchat) - Messenger/Whatsapp (iMessage) - Portal (Facetime) They've been working on spreading into adjacent industries and had mixed results: - Virtual Metaverse with Occulus (Roblox/Apple Glasses) - Dating (Tinder/Bumble/Match.com) - Gaming (Twitch/Apple/Stadia/etc) - Facebook Watch (Apple Watch) - Crypto (Bitcoin) - Etc Facebook has shown how good they are at adapting to new circumstances (transition into mobile, increasing security over user data, and ability to block fraudulent accounts/violent videos/inaccurate information). Facebook's ability to constantly adapt, and clone the success of their rivals, with a passionate founder CEO gives it a competitive advantage and long runway in my opinion. The biggest risks facing FB is increasing competition, anti-trust, regulatory, and tax issues which will require constant resources and attention. This is compounded by the number of different countries, states, and cities that they need to deal with. Facebook also gained a bad reputation for being untrustworthy and for their neutral stance on preventing hate speech. However, history has shown that users and advertisers continue to return to its platforms even though they may "hate" the product. This highlight's the power of Facebook's switching moat. Looking at it's price now, it looks like a good buy at $250-$260 based on an 18% growth rate. In terms of FB being a potential multi bagger over the years, it has its already large market cap. It doesn't also doesn't have a fanatical user base like Tesla, Apple, or Bitcoin to provide multiple expansion. However, I believe it does have a large part to play in the increasingly digital social world. Just finished watching Mohnish’s latest talk at Peking university. He went further into what he calls “spawners.” He classified FB as having an “embryonic spawner DNA” which means FB has shown the ability to acquire a company and grow it. More important than the batting average of these acquisitions was the continual frequency of these bets that sometimes leads to the big winners (I.e. Instagram). FB has shown that they have the ability to continually invest in businesses outside of the core Facebook which keeps the company flexible and young throughout the future. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Parsad Posted February 23, 2021 Share Posted February 23, 2021 Canada is planning to do Australia next. So basically WWW is dead. Cause hey, Sanjeev, when are you gonna pay Canadian and Australian media companies for all the links to their pages on CoBF? And in case CoBF ever links to my website - lol that would be first - here is my BTC wallet: <censored> so you can start transferring BTC for every link from CoBF to my websites. This is f*cking complete destruction of the WWW principles. (If this is too political, please remove KK Thx OK) Disclaimer: I have a large positions in FB and GOOGL. I am buying more. But it is possibly one of the biggest risks to both companies - and not just to them. F*ck media companies. Most of the major media companies and tech companies post whole articles...not just links. I don't think you should have to pay for links, but if you're cutting and pasting, or copying whole articles, yeah...I think they should be paying the writers or owners of the content. Cheers! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RichardGibbons Posted February 23, 2021 Share Posted February 23, 2021 Most of the major media companies and tech companies post whole articles...not just links. I don't think you should have to pay for links, but if you're cutting and pasting, or copying whole articles, yeah...I think they should be paying the writers or owners of the content. Cheers! In Australia's case, it's certainly the links that are being taxed, not the whole article being copied. If it were the whole article, then copyright law would likely be sufficient for News Corp to get its cut. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jurgis Posted February 23, 2021 Share Posted February 23, 2021 Canada is planning to do Australia next. So basically WWW is dead. Cause hey, Sanjeev, when are you gonna pay Canadian and Australian media companies for all the links to their pages on CoBF? And in case CoBF ever links to my website - lol that would be first - here is my BTC wallet: <censored> so you can start transferring BTC for every link from CoBF to my websites. This is f*cking complete destruction of the WWW principles. (If this is too political, please remove KK Thx OK) Disclaimer: I have a large positions in FB and GOOGL. I am buying more. But it is possibly one of the biggest risks to both companies - and not just to them. F*ck media companies. Most of the major media companies and tech companies post whole articles...not just links. I don't think you should have to pay for links, but if you're cutting and pasting, or copying whole articles, yeah...I think they should be paying the writers or owners of the content. Cheers! Sanjeev, not true. I haven't seen a whole article on FB ever (I think that's also true for GOOGL). It's links and maybe abstracts. And, yeah, I would agree that there's some legal ground to fight about abstracts. But it seems the demands are about links. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dwy000 Posted February 23, 2021 Share Posted February 23, 2021 We will never know the details but it certainly looks like Australia blinked. Facebook will invest undisclosed millions into undisclosed commercial agreements with undisclosed media companies. In return, Australia drops it's mandatory payments requirement as well as the use of Australian arbitration. So basically, back to business as usual. I'm sure there was a "donation" to some group along the way. And both sides get to claim victory. Back to your regularly scheduled programming... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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