dagblog - Comments for "Joe Nocera Gets Facebook Wrong"

OKAY SON, YOU WISH TO GET IN

Richard Day — Sun, 27 May 2012 00:23:36 +0000

In reply to Joe Nocera Gets Facebook Wrong

OKAY SON, YOU WISH TO GET IN ON 'THE GROUND FLOOR'?

Well this is your chance.

This is where America is headed son.

No, no, no....you wonder where the folks are now who did not dig in on the IPO of Microsoft? Or Apple? Or Enron (okay forget about frikin Enron for chrissakes!)

THE TIME IS NOW, NOT TOMORROW, NOT THURSDAY OF NEXT WEEK!)

Yeah?

Well who in the frick are you kidding?

THE TIME IS NOW OR NEVER.

TOMORROW IS TOO LATE!

Okay son now get in your jammies and get in bed. It's late!

One of the top stories on the

Donal — Sat, 26 May 2012 21:45:36 +0000

In reply to Joe Nocera Gets Facebook Wrong

One of the top stories on the New Yorker right now is Leaving Facebookistan.

This launch-pad explosion is also one more reason to be wary of what my colleague James Surowiecki has analyzed: Facebook’s two-tiered corporate-governance system, which ensures that founder Mark Zuckerberg retains firm control, and can’t be easily challenged by dissident shareholders, even if he steers badly off course, as highly self-confident men in their late twenties sometimes do.

Those are reasons for investors to be doubtful; at least as worrying is what the I.P.O.-palooza signals about Facebook’s sovereignty over citizens, here and abroad. Facebook has become a public square of global importance. By the end of the summer, it may have more than a billion users, or about fifteen per cent of the world’s population. Some of these people are restive and see Facebook as a substitute public space for speech and dissent that their own authoritarian regimes don’t provide. Facebook users have already helped to foment revolution in some places (Egypt and Tunisia) and are still trying, at great cost, to overthrow one of the Middle East’s most brutal regimes.

And somewhere else I ran across the opinion that moving all that money from Wall Street to Silicon Valley was a good thing for innovation.

An irony is that Morgan

Michael Maiello — Sat, 26 May 2012 20:01:10 +0000

In reply to Winners and losers. Isn't

An irony is that Morgan Stanley allocated Facebook shares to its most profitable clients (even over its largest clients, if you were an MS client an you wanted to buy FB ou got them based on the amount of fees you'd paid). So... they wound up killing their own whales.

Winners and losers. Isn't

SleepinJeezus — Sat, 26 May 2012 19:48:40 +0000

In reply to Joe Nocera Gets Facebook Wrong

Winners and losers. Isn't that what the market is supposed to be all about?

Nocera is right about not shedding a tear for those who made the bet but didn't make their killing on this deal as planned. But as for the winners and losers in this deal, it seems they were pretty well pre-determined according to who was provided accurate, up-to-the-minute data and who wasn't. We may not have much sympathy for gamblers who lose at the games they play. But we also don't take kindly to elites and insiders who play others for suckers. The latter is the reason the Facebook fiasco is getting such a bad response from the public at large. And very rightly so.

destor, I am not well

Aunt Sam — Sat, 26 May 2012 18:32:41 +0000

In reply to Joe Nocera Gets Facebook Wrong

destor,

I am not well versed on IPO factoids. I appreciate your post as it helps me better understand the basics. I have long believed that it's not the 'market' per se that is volatile and dangerous, just too many of the people who participate in the processes.

Appreciate.