FB - Facebook

[fareastwarriors]

Instagram Looks Like Facebook’s Best Hope

 

With lawmakers and users on the warpath, the photo-sharing app could be Mark Zuckerberg’s way out of the latest data scandal.

 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-04-10/instagram-looks-like-facebook-s-best-hope

[oddballstocks]

I wish someone would ask the elephant in the room.

 

Senator "I just want to confirm, even if you pretend to collect less data from users that you'll still be collecting and shipping the full amount to the CIA and NSA correct?"

 

Zuck "Yes.."

[Jurgis]

Senator:

You're walking in the woods.

There's no one around,

And your phone is dead.

Out of the corner of your eye you spot him...

 

Zuck: Shia Labeouf

 

 

------------------------------------------------

[rkbabang]

Of course congress is too busy trying to understand the internets and how all this new fangled technology the young people are using these days works to ask the real questions about the real issues:

 

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Says He ‘Was Human’

 

‘I am not a lizard’: Mark Zuckerberg is latest celebrity asked about reptilian conspiracy  (isn't that exactly what a lizard would say?)

 

People Are Wondering If Mark Zuckerberg Is Actually A Robot

 

[LongTermView]

I like this example that Zuckerberg gave yesterday at the Senate hearing:

ZUCKERBERG: So let's say you have — you're an app developer, and you — your goal is you want to get more people to install your app. You could bid in the ad system and say I will pay $3 anytime someone installs this app.

 

And then we basically calculate on — on our side which ads are going to be relevant for people, and we have an incentive to show people ads that are going to be relevant because we only get paid when it delivers a business result, and — and that's how the system works.

 

CAPITO: So it — it could be one — you could be paid for the advertisement. I mean for the sale.

 

ZUCKERBERG: We — we get paid when the action of the advertiser wants to — to happen, happens.


 

[Guest longinvestor]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/04/14/would-you-pay-18-75-for-ad-free-facebook/?utm_term=.dc704128bbd3

 

Drag Google and others into a subscription fee based model?

 

And this, thoughtful essay from an early insider / investor in FB

 

https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/january-february-march-2018/how-to-fix-facebook-before-it-fixes-us/

 

[Liberty]

https://www.wired.com/story/sigh-of-relief-inside-facebook/

[vinod1]

 

And this, thoughtful essay from an early insider / investor in FB

 

https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/january-february-march-2018/how-to-fix-facebook-before-it-fixes-us/

 

This is a really good article.

 

Hope some of the recommendations are put into practice. The two below would be a good starting point to promote greater competition:

 

Second, the platforms should not be allowed to make any acquisitions until they have addressed the damage caused to date, taken steps to prevent harm in the future, and demonstrated that such acquisitions will not result in diminished competition.

 

Seventh, consumers, not the platforms, should own their own data. In the case of Facebook, this includes posts, friends, and events—in short, the entire social graph. Users created this data, so they should have the right to export it to other social networks.

 

Vinod

 

 

[Jurgis]

Seventh, consumers, not the platforms, should own their own data. In the case of Facebook, this includes posts, friends, and events—in short, the entire social graph. Users created this data, so they should have the right to export it to other social networks.

 

This may be well intentioned but really meaningless.

 

Show me a single social network or forum or whatever that allows you to export your data (ah, btw Facebook does allow you to export your data haha 8)) in a way that is then importable somewhere else and it just works... Right. Crickets.

 

People who write these articles probably think that if they write it, someone will just magically do what they suggest and world will be a better place . In reality, the "magically" part is really really hard. And unless there's a huge strong push by a visionary team, none of it is going to happen. Especially when suggestions require interoperability, portability, etc.

 

Edit: homework assignment for the talented people everywhere: if I export my data from CoBF, which clearly refers to other people in CoBF, their posts, threads, etc., how exactly this can be imported into some-CoBF-clone-forum-social-network without losing most of its meaning? Bonus question: how do you preserve context without violating rights of others?

Edit2: I forgot: the solution is to put everything on blockchain. There.  8)  ::)  ;D

 

Color me skeptical.  8)

 

But I am all for world peace, rainbow unicorns, and users owning their data.

[vinod1]

Seventh, consumers, not the platforms, should own their own data. In the case of Facebook, this includes posts, friends, and events—in short, the entire social graph. Users created this data, so they should have the right to export it to other social networks.

 

This may be well intentioned but really meaningless.

 

Show me a single social network or forum or whatever that allows you to export your data (ah, btw Facebook does allow you to export your data haha 8)) in a way that is then importable somewhere else and it just works... Right. Crickets.

 

People who write these articles probably think that if they write it, someone will just magically do what they suggest and world will be a better place . In reality, the "magically" part is really really hard. And unless there's a huge strong push by a visionary team, none of it is going to happen. Especially when suggestions require interoperability, portability, etc.

 

Edit: homework assignment for the talented people everywhere: if I export my data from CoBF, which clearly refers to other people in CoBF, their posts, threads, etc., how exactly this can be imported into some-CoBF-clone-forum-social-network without losing most of its meaning? Bonus question: how do you preserve context without violating rights of others?

Edit2: I forgot: the solution is to put everything on blockchain. There.  8)  ::)  ;D

 

Color me skeptical.  8)

 

But I am all for world peace, rainbow unicorns, and users owning their data.

 

Instagram. It was able to grow by being able to import from Twitter social graph. Now all of them wised up. But it has been done in the past.

 

Forget data. Just being able to export your social network. One way to implement would be to come up with a unique ID for each person at Facebook level. So nothing personally identifiable would be exported but just this unique facebook ID of friends relationship would be exported. That way you can recreate the relationships in another competing network.

 

Count me  skeptical as well that this would happen.

 

I am skeptical in the existence of God. But I think it would be terrific to have a God. So something like that.

 

The combination of Facebook not being able to buy any more social companies + export of social graph would help a great deal to incent startups in this space. May or may not make a dent in Facebook but it would be a way to promote competition.

 

Vinod

[Liberty]

The fact that a phone's contacts are accessible to other apps is the way that most of these bootstrap.

 

The social graph is ok for some types of networks (messaging), and was ok back in the early days of social networking, when most people were starting from almost zero, but at this point, if you just ported the social graph but didn't bring over all the content (personal photos, videos, posts, etc) I think a lot of people wouldn't find that enough. Even if you decide to make a move, it's hard to break the habits of everyone else in your graph and have them post their stuff and message you somewhere else too. The land grab part of this might be over.

[Jurgis]

If you want to pwn Facebook, heavy regulation would work much more than theoretical data portability. China did it. Europe might do - a lesser version of - it.

 

I don't care about it much either way. I now have some money invested in FB, so I'm immediately biased, but overall I don't care much. I think the whole data ownership and portability is not very workable, not very useful and not gonna improve anything (much), but if people want to work on it, power to them. Maybe they'll do something useful, who knows.  8)

[vinod1]

I am pretty much in agreement with both of you guys.

 

Given the scale FB has reached - along with all the content it has, ensures that no other social network is likely to displace it anytime soon. What data portability offers along with closing of acquisitions for FB, is to allow other social networks to grow/survive in future. Think what it would have been like if Instagram and WhatsApp are still independent. Not that it is a magic bullet. The fact that Google itself has thrown the towel, is all the proof we need.

 

At the end of the day, it is only regulation along many dimensions - data portability, privacy rules, limitations on acquisitions, etc have a chance of working. I do not think Chinese style regulation would be accepted in US. So it has to be little more subtle.

 

Vinod

[Liberty]

Not only that, but the mass of existing content is useful for the user experience (which we tend to forget in these days of data scandal).

 

So in theory, a new social network will little content but lots of people would probably be a worse experience than one where your newsfeed is optimized for you based on lots and lots of past shown preferences (ie. they can show you updates from friend X straight to the top because they know every time you've seen one in the past you left a comment, and show you articles about electric cars because you always click through to read those, but not to show you anything from that stupid uncle because even though he's in your graph, you've muted him, etc). A newer social network would kind of have to throw things at you more randomly and the average experience wouldn't be as good/personalized.

[SlowAppreciation]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-18/facebook-is-forming-a-team-to-design-its-own-chips

[Liberty]

https://stratechery.com/2018/open-closed-and-privacy/

 

 

[Liberty]

Q1:

 

First Quarter 2018 Operational and Other Financial Highlights

Daily active users (DAUs) – DAUs were 1.45 billion on average for March 2018, an increase of 13% year-over-year.

Monthly active users (MAUs) – MAUs were 2.20 billion as of March 31, 2018, an increase of 13% year-over-year.

Mobile advertising revenue – Mobile advertising revenue represented approximately 91% of advertising revenue for the first quarter of 2018, up from approximately 85% of advertising revenue in the first quarter of 2017.

Capital expenditures – Capital expenditures for the first quarter of 2018 were $2.81 billion.

Cash and cash equivalents and marketable securities – Cash and cash equivalents and marketable securities were $43.96 billion at the end of the first quarter of 2018.

Headcount – Headcount was 27,742 as of March 31, 2018, an increase of 48% year-over-year.

In April 2018, we increased the amount authorized under our share repurchase program by an additional $9.0 billion. Our board of directors originally authorized repurchases of up to $6.0 billion of our Class A common stock under the repurchase program, and this increase is incremental to the original authorization.

[Spekulatius]

FB numbers are stellar, IMO.

 

As I mentioned in another thread, I started investing in 1982.If someone had told me that there would be a company in 2018 that would grow their revenue from $8B to $12B or 50% YOY, while making $5.6B in operating profit and having FCF left to buy back stock at the same time, I would have thought he would be nuts.

 

Even more so, if he had told me that I can buy this for roughly 20x earnings.

[LongTermView]

If someone had told me that there would be a company in 2018 that would grow their revenue from $8B to $12B or 50% YOY, while making $5.6B in operating profit and having FCF left to buy back stock at the same time, I would have thought he would be nuts.

 

Even more so, if he had told me that I can buy this for roughly 20x earnings.

 

I agree.

[Jerry Capital]

Julian Robertson agrees (fifth largest position from what I can see Q4 2017)

 

This is from September 2017:

 

KELLY EVANS: All right. Let me ask you about a couple of particular companies, just thinking about Apple, for example, which has a lot of cash overseas.

 

You were a holder of that going back a couple of years, and they have a big event today and are launching a bunch of new products. But has it just become too expensive for you guys, is it not -- or would you look at investing in Apple again?

 

JULIAN ROBERTSON: No, I think we should definitely look at Apple. Apple is not that expensive of a stock. There are a lot of disadvantages of being an old goat. One of the few advantages is the fact that we've seen all this a little bit before. And right now the Apples, the Facebooks, the Googles, those great growth companies are priced cheaper than they would have ever been in the '60 s , '70 s , and '80 s .

 

KELLY EVANS: Hmm.

 

JULIAN ROBERTSON: And I don't think a lot of people realize that.

 

KELLY EVANS: Well, you're trimming your positions in Facebook, and Google, and you're not in Apple right now.

 

JULIAN ROBERTSON: Well, I don't think I've . . . I kind of trade Facebook and those things a little bit. And I consider myself kind of a long-term player of Facebook.

 

KELLY EVANS: Even though you think the markets overall are expensive, these emblematic tech same names you actually don't think are that expensive?

 

JULIAN ROBERTSON: Correct.

 

KELLY EVANS: And we've spoken about Netflix before, too, which then you said that one might maybe got a little out of reach.

 

JULIAN ROBERTSON: That might be a little out of reach, but that one is awfully tempting to me because it's run by really good people and -- and I love it, too.

 

[LAUGHTER]

 

JULIAN ROBERTSON: Anybody that doesn't like Netflix, that's like saying you hate Santa Claus.

 

KELLY EVANS: Do you have a favorite show right now?

 

JULIAN ROBERTSON: No, but I just . . . I like all of them.

[LongTermView]

Wrote a new article: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4167059-facebook-alphabet-bright-prospects

 

If anyone knows the specifics on growth vs maintenance in their capex then I'd like to hear about the details.

[Liberty]

Looks like FB is getting into online dating:

 

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/01/facebook-is-launching-a-dating-app.html

[Liberty]

Re-org:

 

https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/08/one-family-under-cox/

[cameronfen]

Wrote a new article: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4167059-facebook-alphabet-bright-prospects

 

If anyone knows the specifics on growth vs maintenance in their capex then I'd like to hear about the details.

 

Someone like Baidu spends only 5% of revenue on capex.  They have capex heavy moonshots like Google and Facebook, but much less.  Facebook generates revenue in a similar model (ads on websites) and 39 billion out of 41 billion comes from adds.  So you can attribute 2 billion to maintenance on the website (idk how much to attribute to other businesses like Oculus), which may even be conservative. 

[LongTermView]

Wrote a new article: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4167059-facebook-alphabet-bright-prospects

 

If anyone knows the specifics on growth vs maintenance in their capex then I'd like to hear about the details.

 

Someone like Baidu spends only 5% of revenue on capex.  They have capex heavy moonshots like Google and Facebook, but much less.  Facebook generates revenue in a similar model (ads on websites) and 39 billion out of 41 billion comes from adds.  So you can attribute 2 billion to maintenance on the website (idk how much to attribute to other businesses like Oculus), which may even be conservative.

 

Thanks, cameronfen. After talking with folks over the weekend, it sounds like the Depreciation and amortization line is pretty close to maintenance/replacement capex for FB.