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http://www.barrons.com/articles/facebook-slips-pivotal-says-sell-p-g-ad-spend-cuts-worrisome-says-pivotal-1501506978

 

Anyone worried we are seeing a near term top here on CPG spend on digital ads?

 

I love the first sentence... like there is a direct cause and effect. A whopping 0.27% head for the bunkers guys the nuke is coming!

 

Shares of Facebook (FB) are down 47 cents at $171.98, after Pivotal Research’s Brian Wieser this morning cut his rating on the stock to Sell from Hold, and reiterated a $140 price target, warning the stock is too expensive given the risk advertisers may not spend enough.

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How did Facebook not foresee that this could happen? Even more, how did it not realize it was happening until outside observers reported it? One possible conclusion is that Sandberg and Zuckerberg's innumerable outside activities are pulling them away from Facebook's core business.

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How did Facebook not foresee that this could happen? Even more, how did it not realize it was happening until outside observers reported it? One possible conclusion is that Sandberg and Zuckerberg's innumerable outside activities are pulling them away from Facebook's core business.

 

A more cynical view might be that people don't look so hard at the shadows when they're minting money hand over fist, and they responded when it became inevitable.

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How did Facebook not foresee that this could happen? Even more, how did it not realize it was happening until outside observers reported it? One possible conclusion is that Sandberg and Zuckerberg's innumerable outside activities are pulling them away from Facebook's core business.

 

A more cynical view might be that people don't look so hard at the shadows when they're minting money hand over fist, and they responded when it became inevitable.

 

It could be that this type of thing is only obvious in retrospect and they never thought about the consequences of letting machine intelligence produce the key words.  I think as humans become more and more reliant on AI to data mine, observe, and analyze us in more and more ways, we are going to find out things about ourselves that we don't always like.

 

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How did Facebook not foresee that this could happen? Even more, how did it not realize it was happening until outside observers reported it? One possible conclusion is that Sandberg and Zuckerberg's innumerable outside activities are pulling them away from Facebook's core business.

 

I think they already banned all kinds of keywords and phrases but those slipped through. If it was that obvious, not only would they have thought about it before, but some journalists would also have found it before, y'know, anti-semitism was a daily news item in the US.

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Maybe a bit, but a lot of this is hot journalistic air. EU is way ahead of US of fighting big tech and it's unlikely that US ever reaches EU-level of wrist slapping.

 

(Any political comments to politics section please)

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How did Facebook not foresee that this could happen? Even more, how did it not realize it was happening until outside observers reported it? One possible conclusion is that Sandberg and Zuckerberg's innumerable outside activities are pulling them away from Facebook's core business.

 

A more cynical view might be that people don't look so hard at the shadows when they're minting money hand over fist, and they responded when it became inevitable.

 

This is what happens in big organizations, these things wouldn't even have been on someone's radar until the problem is highlighted. Everyone is more involved in building the next big thing

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How did Facebook not foresee that this could happen? Even more, how did it not realize it was happening until outside observers reported it? One possible conclusion is that Sandberg and Zuckerberg's innumerable outside activities are pulling them away from Facebook's core business.

 

A more cynical view might be that people don't look so hard at the shadows when they're minting money hand over fist, and they responded when it became inevitable.

 

This is what happens in big organizations, these things wouldn't even have been on someone's radar until the problem is highlighted. Everyone is more involved in building the next big thing

 

Quick, make a list of every word or phrase that could be offensive.  It would be a long list and I'm sure you would forget some.

 

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Quick, make a list of every word or phrase that could be offensive.  It would be a long list and I'm sure you would forget some.

 

Context also matters. It's not like you can ban "jew" or "jewish", or the local Klezmer orchestra might not be able to target potential customers, but how many phrases with those words in them along with other words that aren't by themselves over the line could be deemed offensive? ("hater" can also be used with inoffensive stuff, like I'm a "reality TV hater" or whatever)

 

It's a tough problem. But that's why they pay them the big bucks, so I'm sure they'll figure it out over time.

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Maybe a bit, but a lot of this is hot journalistic air. EU is way ahead of US of fighting big tech and it's unlikely that US ever reaches EU-level of wrist slapping.

 

(Any political comments to politics section please)

 

Some more info on the subject:

 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/buzzfeed-ceo-google-facebook-should-share-more-revenue-1508356543

 

“The business model of news is changing, and if Google and Facebook take all the revenue but don’t want to pay for the fact checking, the reporting, the more-intensive investigations, who does that work?” Mr. Peretti said Wednesday at The Wall Street Journal’s WSJ D.Live technology conference. “I think Google and Facebook are going to have to fix that.”

 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/barry-diller-says-tech-giants-inevitably-will-face-more-regulation-1508263601

 

“Inevitably it has to face regulation,” said Mr. Diller in an interview at The Wall Street Journal’s WSJ D. Live technology conference. “This is a different situation than the standard fear that down the street in a garage somewhere is your competitor…The dominant companies do not have fundamental competition.”

 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/investors-are-cautious-on-techs-big-startups-many-may-be-overvalued-1508360252

 

“The system is not working right,” said Sam Altman, president of the tech incubator Y Combinator, at a panel at The Wall Street Journal’s WSJ D.Live technology conference. “I don’t know if tech companies are going to get broken up, but I do know the tech backlash is going to be strong.” Driving these concerns are job losses and economic inequality resulting from advances in tech and artificial intelligence, mixed with tech giants’ growing influence in Americans’ lives and politics, the panelists said. “These companies are more powerful than AT&T ever was,” said Bill Maris, a venture capitalist who ran the venture-capital arm of Google-parent Alphabet Inc. until earlier this year. “If you think the system is broken,” Mr. Maris added, “the people with power and money are the ones that people will look to say, ‘We need to disrupt that.’ ”

 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-10-19/everyone-s-mad-at-google-and-sundar-pichai-has-to-fix-it

 

The CEO is increasingly boxed in by regulators, tech critics on both the right and the left, and even his own employees.

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Guest Schwab711

International growth was really impressive. I was skeptical, but they seem to be monetizing that very effectively. Continued US growth surprises me as well. My feed continues to get more empty, but whatever they're doing seems to be working.

 

A congressmen today admitted that Facebook knows more about an individual than the US government. Facebook has a better business than Moody's. I'm in awe, but still no position, yet.

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International growth was really impressive. I was skeptical, but they seem to be monetizing that very effectively. Continued US growth surprises me as well. My feed continues to get more empty, but whatever they're doing seems to be working.

 

A congressmen today admitted that Facebook knows more about an individual than the US government. Facebook has a better business than Moody's. I'm in awe, but still no position, yet.

I'm really curious to see if there's any decline in user engagement as time goes on. On one hand you could say its a form of entertainment and will fade, on the other hand you could say its a form of communication and won't fade any more than email. I see a strong decline in content from my network. Google trends and some of the other online traffic tools seem to see the same, although I doubt they're all that accurate (who Google's facebook?). They seem to be replacing any decline in users either with more users, more ads per page, or higher price per ad.

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Over the near term FB will continue to be a fine business I expect.  It is still a dominant player in terms of its online presence and will therefore attract a significant amount of ad revenue.  The extent that it penetrates other countries remains to be seen.  I suspect that over the longer time frame its growth rate will level off and may fall as there is FB fatigue - especially if they fail to innovate or if there is a new messaging/ networking competitor that emerges which is more captivating.  Now if we were to compare FB with Tencent for example - an integrated company with many dimensional components, I think Tencent has a more compelling investment case.

 

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The extent that it penetrates other countries remains to be seen.  [...]  Now if we were to compare FB with Tencent for example - an integrated company with many dimensional components, I think Tencent has a more compelling investment case.

 

What do you mean that it remains to be seen if FB penetrates other countries?

 

MAUs on FB for US & Canada are 239m. Europe is 364m. Asia-Pacific is 794m and Rest of World is 675m.

 

I think that' pretty well penetrated in "other countries", depending on "other" compared to what. But if it's compared to N-A, then 88.5% of their users are outside. Even compared to N-A + Europe it's 70.9% outside of those "western" countries.

 

On the other hand, Tencent is pretty a Chinese story (where they dominate). It might be a more compelling investment case, I don't know, but I don't think there's much question that FB is well penetrated around the world, with China a notable exception.

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Those are pretty good numbers for MAU's.  I'll have to plead some ignorance on this front.  However, would you have any data on how well they are able to monetize their MAU's.  Ie. Income per MAU by region and the growth in this income?  That I think would be more telling about the health of this company.

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Those are pretty good numbers for MAU's.  I'll have to plead some ignorance on this front.  However, would you have any data on how well they are able to monetize their MAU's.  Ie. Income per MAU by region and the growth in this income?  That I think would be more telling about the health of this company.

 

It's all in the presentation here:

 

https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_financials/2017/Q3/Q3-'17-Earnings-Presentation.pdf

 

ARPUs in Europe are about 1/4 of NA, and ARPUs in Asia-Pacific are about 1/10th.

 

Seems like an opportunity more than a problem.

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