This is an interesting discussion on a "pure play internet" company, and it smells a lot like 2000 in San Francisco.
Facebook, as an offering, is imminently repeatable by competitors, with their strongest advantages being a virtuous circle of: 1. They have critical mass 2. They have "0" cost barriers to entry, (don't charge anything). Changing advantage #2.- "charging users in a way that would generate reasonable P/E ratios for a multi-billion dollar company", would almost instantly remove advantage #1. Maybe Facebook needs to "get real", and admit its best business model most probably is as an advertising based site worth a respectable $100 to 500 million, (of course they can spend 100% of investor's cash to come to this conclusion, when did we last see that happen? ...). Internet companies are young in concept and inception, but not "that" young any more. It's good for us and Internet Companies to have grownup business models, with respectable valuations based on real profits. Our field offers real value, we don't need the "Facebook hype" of a "5 to 20 billion dollar co.", and in fact I think it lowers our value as a whole. We're in a down swinging market, (factorially larger then the "dot com" crash). As in all bubbles it was based in faith of the ever growing pie. Capital markets are changing in a generational fashion right now. I'll bet money that realism, and the display of real value, is going to be a very strong message for a very long time. Conversely gambling will probably be more of a sideshow. On Sat, Oct 11, 2008 at 12:24 PM, Jared Spool <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > 1) either you keep your internal costs lower than all your competitors, so > that your margins are always naturally higher, or > > 2) you keep your quality high enough that you can charge premium prices to > keep your margins higher than your competitor. > > -- Joseph Rich Rogan President UX/UI Inc. http://www.jrrogan.com ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
