Barron's is skeptical about Facebook's ability to monetize 900+ million users (2012)

Barron's has been skeptical about Facebook (see Feature, "Mad About Facebook!," May 12) because of the company's high absolute valuation, relative to earnings and revenues, and challenges to its evolving business model from the greater use of mobile devices by Facebook users.  Facebook hasn't found a way to generate meaningful ad revenue from mobile users. 

The problem for Facebook is that it amounted to a giant concept stock with a $100-billion-plus valuation.  Bulls said CEO Mark Zuckerberg was a genius and would find ways to monetize Facebook users.

However, without valuation support from ample earnings, it's tough to say where Facebook will settle.

~ Andrew Bary, "Facebook Loses Face - And How," Barron's, May 21, 2012

Kevin Duffy on how the 2000 tech bubble led to internet 2.0

The dot-com bubble of 2000 was never the internet itself, but the notion of “first mover advantage.” There was a gold rush mentality to stake claims, and it was the internet pioneers who largely took the arrows in the back. If anything, the optimists underestimated the transformative nature of the new technology. The early 2000s shakeout cleared the way for a powerful second wave that drove the economy and made vast fortunes for the settlers. 

In March 2000, when the NASDAQ Composite peaked at just above 5,000, Amazon.com hadn’t recorded its first $1 billion in sales, Google was in diapers generating $19 million in revenue, and Mark Zuckerberg had yet to reach his 16th birthday. Today the founders of Amazon, Google and Facebook are worth a combined $440 billion and their companies valued at $4.22 trillion, not quite 10% of the total U.S. stock market capitalization.

~ Kevin Duffy, "Bubble Lessons," The Coffee Can Portfolio, April 26, 2021