Elric

I've noticed FB's mobile advertising has gotten a lot more aggressive over the past few weeks. When users go to Google they are looking for specific things, when they go to Facebook they are browser. That means Google's ad inventory, per visitor, will always be worth more. What Facebook has and Google doesn't is data on who all of those people are. Like I said earlier in this thread, its Facebook expanding that reach through a display network that can bring in the money. I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet. I would also expect Facebook to make a move in the hardware market, probably with a Facebook phone. While Google beats Facebook, Apple beats Google. A phone could do a lot to multiply Facebook's revenue. It would be amusing because it would probably run Android. Without Steve Jobs the iPhone could begin going stale. I've seen some red flags with other things Apple has been doing. There will be room to grab market share if they want to. Facebook's stock slump is a good thing, it means there will be money to be made. Mark Zuckerberg isn't Mark Pincus, he's going to be around for a while. I'm still not buying, but if my company wasn't eating up all my damn cashflow I would probably slowly be starting around now. P/E is high, but look at where Amazon is now. There is still a lot of room for growth.

Based on my extensive movie watching career I would assume they were used in the commission of a crime This is what happens when exotics get too cheap.

I expect they are going to do some very interesting things with that IPO cash. A little more of a drop here and I'm going to start buying. Groupon's IPO was a "cash out", Facebook's IPO was a "cash in"

A few years back there was a company that insisted on using Paypal to send multiple six figure payments. I crossed my fingers real hard and figured the company's owner was a nut case (he wasn't, but the companies CFO probably was.) We never had any problems. The most important thing you can do is never leave a balance in your Paypal account. Secondly, consider having a secondary bank account where you only keep Paypal transaction funds so you don't have any unauthorized transfers.

ouch. Seats are all the way forward? Still looks small.

You hit the nail on the head. Here is what I would expect to happen: -Revenue should increase 2x over the next 12 months just from market forces in the ad market. -Facebook launches an ad network, within 24-36 months it will have a monopoly market share on display adverting -Mobile ads, both on the Facebook app and other mobile apps bring in $$$? new revenue (in the US, measured by minutes used per day mobile apps now exceed the web.) -Facebook isn't satisfied with the amount of user data they have, they want more. That means increasingly valuable slices of traffic advertisers can buy, beyond just the market forces inflating advertiser costs. I can not predict how much this will increase their revenue, but I would expect it to be significant. -Rather than being the next Facebook, new companies are plugging themselves in to Facebook in order to get more users faster. This is minimizing the risk of a future competitor. In addition to that, Facebook has been sucking up a good portion of the smart engineering talent. That means the products launched work, and they are designed correctly. I can't even think of an appropriate analogy for putting Facebook, as both a service and a company, in the same category as Myspace. Its not pretty, but something along the lines of dog shit to a Victoria's Secret model. I don't know what investors will do, but right now they seem comfortable with high P/E ratios for tech companies they think are still growing rapidly and will be around a while. I don't know if I'd buy the stock. I didn't have the type of money to be buying shares on the private market, but that would have been the time to get in.

I'm not questioning your credentials in copyright law. Megaupload let users upload files and then lets other people download the files. If they want to download larger files or download quicker they pay Megaupload a subscription fee. Other sites, like Rapidshare use this same model. I read through the indictment for Megaupload. The foundation of the case is that the owners/employees knew there was copyrighted content on the site, consumed the copyrighted content personally, and tried their best to prevent rights holders from removing the files. Another "key" point was that they failed to appoint a registered DMCA agent until a few years in. How many website owners know that they need to register a name and address with the US Copyright office for every website they own in order to fall under the DMCA safe harbor? Take a look at the Viacom Youtube lawsuit. Youtube's founders knew there was illegal content on their site, most likely consumed it themselves, and wanted to minimize the removal of copyrighted content because it would slow down their business. If you used Youtube back in 05 or so, there were plenty of full length movies and TV shows on there. To this day I can find "videos" of copyrighted songs on Youtube of virtually any artist I've ever heard, including those rare enough that have limited to no digital music distribution. Megaupload and Youtube were started in roughly the same time period. The difference is that Google bought Youtube and with it came essentially a billion dollar defense fund. Viacom lost their case.

Funny someone mentions this. Spirit sends out an email saying: while JetBlue's website displays this at the top: Nice spin Spirit, the same airline which charges $50 for either a carry on or checked bag and doesn't tell you until you check out.

I'm surprised there are still rooms at the W? I've been down here once a month since November, and every time the W books full for the weekend, and I have to switch hotels. Granted, I book it like 4 days ahead of time

Shutdown doesn't have anything to do with SOPA, except may be political timing. If this guy is guilty so are the Youtube co-founders. The difference being that Youtube is now owned by a company that can spend billions on legal fees and fines.

I've been poking around airbnb the past week, it looks like its really good if you need to stay somewhere a week or three. Amusing article about it in the NYPost recently, amusing because people got their names and faces listed as illegally subletting their apartments. Buy the shit you normally would using the SPG card and then you never pay for a starwood hotel room ever. Anyways, I'm not spending $1m on starwood hotel rooms so 8% back on what I do spend on hotel rooms is inconsequential. Still would appreciate it if someone could estimate how many $ they get back per $1m spent on a black card

I saw one company actually claim in their terms that a customer couldn't complain to the FTC. From what I understand you could force arbitration, but a company can't say "you can't sue us for any reason."

Anyone estimate the $ value they get back for every $1m spent? I've been using my Starwood AMEX for years now, it varies based on where you redeem points, but I estimated for every $1m spent you get about $19,000 to $33,000 in hotel stays. Being at the point now where I want to die every time I stay in a hotel, I've been shifting my spend over to the Plum card which gives 1.5% back, or $15k per $1m (I believe the cards initially had 2 or 3% back.)

The high cost of college tuition plus unemployment is not going to disappear. I think these two things are 90% responsible for the current protestors. When people have jobs, they don't have time to go to protests (unless they are in a union.) The demand for free college is not as outrageous as it sounds. I suspect that it could be delivered for $1,000-$3,000 a year when all the waste is stripped out and internet based classes are used. If you look at the for-profit schools they are arbitraging the difference between the government subsidy induced market rate of a college education at about $15,000-$20,000 a year against the cheap cost of delivery thanks to modern technology. A huge chunk of the school's cost is spent just on marketing & recruiting along with all of the administration and management that overhead entails. Whats left is their profit. An accredited college education can be pretty damn cheap. The pressure is here now. Major schools such as MIT and Harvard are putting courses and lectures online for free. There are organizations that are funding free textbooks. Harvard has banned researchers from handing over copyrights to journals which have been charging schools astronomical rates for yearly subscriptions. What is left is costs of paying teaching assistants to give one on one help to students and costs for physically required participation in things such as labs. Here is where things start to get interesting. The movement toward "free" education is going to result in a gigantic money vacuum from higher education (when student loan defaults spike in the next few years this is going to become a very apparent problem on the federal level.) The higher education system is pretty much the base of the American left. These guys are going to fight hard in support of obnoxiously expensive education. In fact, guess who wants to ban online courses right now (http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/10/11/university_of_california_lecturers_union_says_it_can_block_online_programs) OccupyWallstreet is an attempt by America's bourgeois "left" to distract the voting base from the Democrats repeated blunders. This may work in the next election cycle. After that, I think the party is over. This core group that has benefited from lavish pensions and six figure salaries on behalf of the federal and state governments may instead find themselves with no job, no pension, in the poor house.