Facebook in the hole, or is it just me?
One of the central design principles behind Hubdub is that people should be held to their public statements. Often a blogger will predict a company will be a success or failure, however only very rarely does anyone ever check 12 months down the line whether they were right. What if you did check and you found out that blogger you thought was so insightful was wrong more often than he or she was right? Would you still have as much confidence in their predictions?
Three months ago, I made a prediction that Facebook would never see a valuation north of $6 billion (blogged here). Ooops. I guess I am in the hole on that one. But despite my prediction getting blown out of the water I think my analysis still holds. Plus more recently, some other bloggers have started to raise questions such as:
- How good are your friends recommendations? (Not very says Professor Gita Johar)
- Does Facebook obey Metcalfe’s law? (No says Cory Doctorow at Information Week, in fact I think Gresham’s law is more applicable)
- Is Facebook playing fast and loose with user data? (Yes says News.com)
So while I am one prediction down, I’m going to double down on the next one. (Consider it the ‘I’m in a hole, time to get a bigger spade strategy’).
I predict Facebook will not see a valuation north of $15 billion in 3 years.
There, I said it, check back in 3 years time 
Popularity: 7% [?]
Tags: facebook, Predictions
December 5th, 2007 at 1:12 pm
I’ve got a taker:
Nigel says:
you going to take my bet on Facebook?
Tom says:
is it “at the point 3 years today” or “at any point over the next 3 years”?
Nigel says:
at any point over the next 3 years
Tom says:
ooooooooooo………
Tom says:
mmmmmmmmm……………….
Tom says:
strictly greater than $15bn? or $15bn again included?
Nigel says:
strictly greater than (they may get some more dribs and drabs at $15bn)
Tom says:
as valued at investment (they’ve got a lot of cash now unlikely to do many more rounds you’d think) / purchase / IPO? or some random analyst report?
Nigel says:
any liquidity event - private or public
Nigel says:
not random bullshitting analyst reports
Tom says:
ok… 3 years is a long time, I’m gonna say they do!!
Tom says:
(with about 51% confidence!)
Nigel says:
you are on my man and I’m going to record this
Tom says:
Back the Zuckerberg! every time
Tom says:
It’s a huge phenomenon and isn’t gonna be dislodged from the mass market anytime soon. Early adopter techie crowd - yeah. Everyone else - they’ve got too much muscle for anyone but Google
We’ll see…
December 5th, 2007 at 1:14 pm
Tom sounds like a smart guy!
December 5th, 2007 at 5:01 pm
Oh no is it too late to back out?
Microsoft VP for Corporate development said that Facebook could “be worth well more”. Insightful analysis (snigger snigger) here:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/342237_redherring05.html
December 5th, 2007 at 11:52 pm
Hmmm, let me see, Red Herring that well known supporter of Microsoft, remember Facebook don’t own the user, the user is just spending some time playing with the Facebook App. Like always unless the user experience is great and changing (for the positive - not spambook) they will stay around.
Otherwise they will go somewhere else. Just for the record, I don’t think that Facebook is a bad business but it isn’t build on a foundation of owning or keeping the user. We have already seen the power of the user “crowd” with their monitisation strategy.
Tom, I will stick with the old curmudgeon on this one. Valuation <=$15b in 3 years time.
December 9th, 2007 at 6:51 pm
Facebook’s value to a user is in the network of ‘friends’ they have there, which makes switching difficult unless all your friends move too. Could such a high switching cost be said to contribute in some sense to ‘owning the customer’?
December 9th, 2007 at 8:37 pm
However, your friends don’t live there (at least I hope they don’t). You can export your address book the same way you could export it out of Hotmail so there isn’t any real lock in, beyond habit and good functionality. If something shinier comes along or they lose users’ trust (I bet the latter) then users can walk. Compare that with the lock-in Microsoft used to have with Windows (i.e. a real platform).
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