Is Facebook the new Yahoo?
 

Case in point: buying a company (mobile photo site Instagram) that makes no money for $1 BILLION

Smells like Yahoo's deal for Geocities back in the day for over 1 billion USD. The only people who made REAL money with Geocities are the folks who used it as a freehost for affiliate marketing :1orglaugh:winkwink:

you think facebook makes no money?

There is a glaring difference...

Facebook has their shit together and have almost nothing but wins in their history and have done almost everything right.

Yahoo was always a big bucket of retards that failed at everything they touched.

1 Billion dollars for a solid company of this size is just as much a tax decision as it is a business decision.

It smells more like Microsoft to me ..try to own everything people use on their computer or phone.

My first sties were on Geocities. LOL.

Did they buy a company that doesn't make money, or did they just buy a company that millions use to post pictures to multiple social networking platforms...

No I was referring to Instagram.

@TheSquealer you are right regarding your point that Facebook does make money. However, look into their filings and you'll see that their infrastructure cost per active user looks unsustainable. They are making $ now but it might not be sustainable and blowing $ on deals like Instagram makes their current strategy look like Yahoo's Pacman strategy back in the middle of the first Dot Com boom and bust cycle (1998 to 2001).

All of that might be true. But from what I can tell, their recent purchase is actually relevant to their core business model. Social media.

Yahoo bought Geocities? For what purpose? They couldn't even figure it out, then they were so stupid that they shut it down altogether instead of selling it or monetizing the traffic in some other way.

Something seriously wrong happened with Yahoo at some point.

The latest on today's Facebook acquisition...

http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2012/...nic/?hpt=hp_t2

i used to get a lot of traffic from yahoo directory but not so much anymore.

*Shakes head*

Allow me to explain: FB just bought their biggest competitor (read: threat) in regards to mobile photo sharing.

Earlier in March Instagram had over 25 million users. That is nothing to sneeze at and FB now will own all of them. Plus, that user database is about to double with the recent release of the Android app.

When will people begin to see that FB is a platform, not just a website? :disgust

Anyway, if any of you get the chance to invest in FB stock after the IPO, just do it. This is merely a repeat of what happened with Google. Don't miss the opportunity.

I thought this was interesting - especially as it is from CNET, not some random blogger.

http://howto.cnet.com/8301-11310_39-...b_content;main

Cnet's bloggers are not immune from posting opinion pieces under that brand's banner.

The editorial logic behind that post is that there is a segment of instagram users who will eschew the use of instagram simply as a snub against FB. Why not give these users a tutorial of how to stop using instagram and get those views (and search engine traffic) versus some other smaller blog attracting these users?

With Google+ reaching 25 million users in just a few months, Zuckerberg is feeling the heat.

Interesting....

Yahoo/geocities did come to mind... but then gain so did Google/youtube.

I understand what you are getting at. I haven't looked at facebooks numbers.

I am very familiar with Yahoo and the fact that they are thoroughly inept in every sense of the word. The worlds second/third largest search engine had to turn over search to their competitor after denying they were a search engine at all. They turned over their bread and butter - PPC to their competitor. All of their purchases with the exception of flickr since their founding, I believe have been laughable and disastrous and 100% unrelated to anything Yahoo does (core competencies).

In fact, who the fuck even knows what Yahoo is? Whats Yahoo? The best search engine ever? A social media platform? Stock quotes? A product that tries to be everything in the minds of consumers is ultimately nothing in minds of consumers. This simple problem has always been their largest problem.

They are a mess and have always been a mess and have been losing money forever.

Anything that can be said about Yahoo and how they conduct their business and the ineptitude in which they've done so cannot be said about Facebook. The question you are posing couldn't even be answered in the next few years as only time will tell what moves were brilliant and which weren't. If nothing else, Facebook has almost nothing but wins behind them. No one has even came close to what they've achieved in their space and they are even threatening the worlds largest search engine without even trying to be a search engine.

They've made a large purchase of a business that gets them a 25 million user head start and is well within their core competency/business model. That cannot be said about anything Yahoo ever purchased. Yahoo has done nothing but act like a rich, drunk 20-something punk living on his daddies money... primarily coasting for almost a decade on the early success of search and PPC (they even license PPC patents to Google).

btw... i dont use facebook or have a hard on for facebook. I simply admire the sheer magnitude of what they've achieved, in the time they did it in.

at this point, the only reason I still have a Yahoo login is to play fantasy football with my buddies each year.

i am quoting this only to bump it in the few years as fail.

Facebook has bought what company and done well with it? Tech buyouts are some of the biggest busts in history. There was a paper published about how buyouts in general are a net loser for large corporations. I do not think this is a great move but then who knows. Facebook needs to do something after this stupid timeline thing.

I never said they bought anything and done well with it. I was saying that they understand their core business very well, their core competencies very well (neither of which could ever be said for Yahoo) and made a purchase that made sense for them (also cannot be said of Yahoo). The full benefits of that purchase will not be realized for years so its pointless to speculate today on how good or bad a move it was in my opinion.

Persons said the same thing about Google and Apple.

The animosity alone that the platform generates in some circles is symptomatic of the frustration some users feel when faced with the realization that FB is here to stay.


The fact that you have to make this point reveals a very interesting thing about the general consensus of others who may not understand/like FB:

It appears that if you say anything positive about that platform, persons will jump down your throat.

Clearly you have not followed FB's history of acquisitions. All of Facebook's prior buyouts helped to build the team that is in place and were integrated directly into the platform. So it wasn't a matter of "doing well" with a company that they would buy.

The FB playbook is simple and effective: Buy your strongest competitor within a particular technology sector and assimilate to make the overall FB platform stronger. This latest acquisition is a diversion from that strategy because Instagram can and will stand on its own.