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Aswath Damodaran, NYU's legendary finance professor, has made two monster calls in recent weeks. 1) He sold Apple near the top after hold it for 15 years. 2) He said Facebook would be a " Goldilocks IPO " – not too hot, not too cold. That latter call may still be up for debate. But the bottom line is that it neither surged, nor totally collapsed. In a new guest post on Forbes.com , Damodaran offers a valuation for Facebook: $29 per share . That gives the social network a market capitalization of about $70 billion.
VALUATION GURU: Facebook Is Worth $29
Charts: Facebook’s IPO In Historical Context And Its Share Price Over Time
Facebook will be the largest tech IPO in history today as the company and its early shareholders raise about $16 billion at the final price of $38 a share. There is also an allotment for them to sell up to $2.4 billion more in the next 30 days. Here’s how it compares to other historical IPOs, according to NASDAQ data.Speaking at the Royal Television Society in Cambridge on Friday, Sir Martin said that social networks were "not the right context" for commercial advertising because they interrupted something that was supposed to be fluid and informal. "Facebook, Google+, Twitter are advanced forms of social interaction. We used to write letters to each other and now we correspond through Facebook and Twitter. If you interrupt that with a message you may run into trouble. Sir Martin claimed that Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder, had been forced to withdraw two "failed experiments" at commercial activity on the social network after they sparked a "revolution" by users.
WPP chief Sir Martin Sorrell has 'fundamental' doubts over whether Facebook can carry adverts
FACEBOOK'S WORST NIGHTMARE: With GM Pulling Its Ads, Here's How The Other Dominoes May Fall
General Motors' decision to cancel the entirety of its $10 million Facebook ad budget is, arguably, the second major shoe to drop on the social network's ad budget. Back in January, Procter & Gamble CEO Bob McDonald told Wall Street he was scaling back his company's $10 billion annual ad budget (mostly in traditional media) to take advantage of free impressions offered by Facebook in the form of Likes and status updates. That's two out of America's top three biggest advertisers.
It's Not Just GM That Thinks Facebook Ads Don't Work--Others Say Facebook Is "Getting Worse, Not Better"
On the eve of the Facebook IPO, the country's third-biggest advertiser, GM, announced that it was pulling its entire $10 million ad campaign from Facebook because the ads don't work. This was obviously bad news for a company that many people still think will one day be bigger than Google. GM's competitor, Ford, quickly responded by blaming GM, saying that its own Facebook ads work perfectly well. But other huge companies also appear to be having serious doubts about the value of the Facebook platform. Forrester analyst Nate Elliott has this to say:
When someone sees your most recent message, it will be marked as seen. That way, you always know who got the message, and who didn't. Messages are marked...
Comment peut-on être sûr qu'un ami a vu le message qu'on lui a envoyé ? - Facebook Aide
In what should come as a shock to potential investors, one of the world's biggest advertisers, GM, has announced that it is pulling a $10 million campaign from Facebook...because the ads don't work. The effectiveness of Facebook ads has always been a big question-mark, with some data suggesting that the ads just don't perform well. According to Sharon Terlep, Shayndi Rice, and Suzanne Vranica of the Wall Street Journal, GM decided to pull the ads after meeting with Facebook executives and coming away unconvinced that they were effective. GM currently spends $40 million a year on its Facebook presence. Importantly, however, only $10 million of that spending goes went to Facebook.
ATTENTION FACEBOOK INVESTORS: This GM Ad Cancellation Is Big, Bad News
General Motors Co. plans to stop advertising on Facebook after the company's marketing executives determined their paid ads had little impact on consumers, people familiar with the matter said, a move that comes as more companies question the effectiveness of advertising on the social networking site.
GM to Stop Advertising on Facebook
This is the story of how Saverin got so angry at Zuckerberg—how, from Saverin's perspective, Zuckerberg screwed him out of a huge chunk of Facebook stock . It's also the story of how Zuckerberg solved an early problem at Facebook, one that could have potentially prevented the company from becoming the global behemoth it is today. The story is sourced from people involved in the founding year of Facebook, people close to Facebook, and documents viewed by Business Insider . It is an update to a previous story of ours , which included previously unpublished emails and instant messages between Mark Zuckerberg and early Facebook colleagues and confidants. This new version includes new material: Previously unpublished email correspondence between Zuckerberg and Facebook's early lawyers. In late 2003, Harvard sophomore Mark Zuckerberg asked a Harvard student named Eduardo Saverin, a junior, to deposit $15,000 in a bank account that would be accessible to both of them.
How Mark Zuckerberg Booted His Co-Founder Out Of The Company
Facebook & Mobiles: 488 Million Mobile Users
Can we believe that? Yes, we can…! Facebook rocks our mobiles with 488 million mobile users of their 901 million registered users! Facebook finds and engages 54% of all its users on mobile phones, thus smartphones and tablets according to socialbakers . There are many apps out there in the world but Facebook knows how to engage their users. The iPhone and iPad together get a share of 24%, Android 19% and the Blackberry even 8%.
Facebook Hopes to Go Public on May 17 [REPORT]
Facebook is looking at the May 17 date for its initial public offering, TechCrunch reports, citing several source familiar with the matter. These sources also claim that Facebook will be valued at around $100 billion or $40 a share – close to the current valuation of the company based on secondary market trading. The date, however, is not set in stone. Federal regulators might want more time to look at paperwork from Facebook’s $1 billion acquisition of Instagram, which could push the IPO date back.Spotify Announces Major Stats: 1.5B FB Shares & More
Speaking at the AdAge Digital Conference earlier today, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek announced that as a result of its partnership with Facebook, the company has now seen over 1.5 billion Facebook shares and also 1,500 years worth of music streaming within its apps. In addition to a number of juicy statements, including a partnership with Coke and the announcement “that every intelligent device within 2 years will have access to Spotify,” some cold hard data has been released: It’s impossible to keep up with the astounding stats in this #spotify presentation. 1.5B FB shares, 50B reach, 1500 yrs in apps #aadigital — totem (@TotemStories) April 18, 2012As Facebook's seventh employee and first advertising sales rep, Kevin Colleran had a front row seat watching Mark Zuckerberg take his dorm room startup from a half dozen employees to more than 3,000. We posted an extensive Q&A with Colleran earlier today. In it, Colleran talks about a bunch of lessons he learned from Zuckerberg and Facebook, which is now a $100 billion company and will IPO next month.
Four Management Rules You Can Learn From Facebook's Seventh Employee - Business Insider
Faced with its first serious competitor, Facebook has dropped a billion dollars to purchase Instagram, a photo-sharing service. Why? To drop a roadblock in front of Pinterest, the Facebook-on-training-wheels that has recently been all the rage. A few changes to Instagram and it can compete very effectively with Pinterest, with the added ability to interface with Facebook even more directly than it already does. The alternative is to create a new service that has Pinterest in its crosshairs, rather than make any changes to the existing product. This is probably the best way for Facebook to head, with a separately branded “better Pinterest than Pinterest.”
Instagram Is Facebook's Pinterest Killer - Forbes
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