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Comment by arihant | Hacker News Reader

Facebook is, in a way, damaging the industry. PG already spoke about how their mishandled IPO could hurt the funding landscape for startups.

If this happened to a non-technical coffee shop owner, it would turn him off from the "whole social media thing" and not just Facebook.

On a higher note, I do not understand FB customer relations people at all. They always use business buzz words and almost seem incapable of answering anything directly. Would loose my sleep if I ever had business based on anything Facebook.

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If the Facebook IPO ratchets down the breathless nonsensical exuberance in the funding landscape, I will personally like to shake Zuck's hand.

I'm also okay with people turning off from the "whole social media thing". Any reasonably savvy marketer has known for some time that social media advertising isn't worth anywhere the amount that heavy-intent advertising is worth (say, search engines). It's about time the public cottoned on to this.

>Facebook is, in a way, damaging the industry. PG already spoke about how their mishandled IPO could hurt the funding landscape for startups.

I don't know about that. Even if facebook prices never again reach the IPO price, a lot of facebook was sold at IPO price. How much of that money went back to investors and Engineers here in the valley? if most of it did, then we've got a lot more cash floating around now than before.

None went to engineers and very little went to investors at the IPO price. The first lockup period just ended a week ago or so which allows early investors and engineers to liquidate their shares. I think by Nov 11th or so, all of the vested shares given to employees will be liquid however it seems very unlikely the stock will approach the IPO price in that time.

>None went to engineers and very little went to investors at the IPO price.

Hm. so that money is in the facebook bank account, then? Or somewhere else?

If it does end up in the facebook bank account, that could be almost as good for the boom. It seems that a popular exit is 'getting bought by facebook or google' and I have the impression that google buys mostly to prevent Facebook from doing so.

Something like $10B went to cash on hand for FB.

hm. That /sounds/ like a lot of money, but, like most people, I have no real handle on how much that really is; fifty thousand $200K/year developer years? I don't know if that's enough to support a bubble, but certainly it's a acquisition pool that would make angels, at least, drool. I don't know if that is enough money (considering that they probably won't spend it all in one place) to interest the more serious VC, but eh, it ain't nothin'

> "Facebook is, in a way, damaging the industry."

Which industry is that?

Mentioned in the next line: "whole social media thing".

The pre-IPO (over)valuation industry.

How about the global economy with its overvalued IPO that's undoubtedly going to pull a Zynga.

The tech-fad industry.

Fortunately not the one I work in. No cloud, no social here. Just problems solved :)

>> "The tech-fad industry."

Exactly. :)

The Department of Muppet-ology at Goldman Sachs...

> PG already spoke about how their mishandled IPO could hurt the funding landscape for startups

Do you have a link to this? I'm curious about what he has to say about it.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4067297

Thanks!

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