Yes, he sure did – and muppets of all varieties now know what it feels lke to be a Winklevoss twit or one of his other IvyL victims. Speaking of which,

Brother Saverin surrendered his citizenship in Sept ’11, and from chart #1, FB had a value then of like $80B, as compared to like $60B now – and with his exit/capgain tax based on that first figure. Meaning, he paid tax on a higher value than he would have if he hadn’t fled the States. And he blew his citizenship to get the privelege to walk into that trap. So it’s true – every cloud does have a “silver lining”.

Sometimes the right answer is the obvious one – The Beverly Hills muppets priced FB at $42+, and they and the insiders all thought the low-rent muppets would swallow the barbed-hook baited with “the FB story” even more passionately than the nouveau riche muppets had. They got double-crossed by the (surprisingly prudent) low-rent types. I’ll cry tomorrow.

In hard copy terms, if FB becoms the equivalent of the Penny Mailer, it’s hard to see how it will continue to have resonance with its user base. It’s already incredibly annoying to slog your way through the posts you have no interest in. Advertisers want to be intrusive, but if they are too intrusive then the forum stops being appealing and no one at all looks at it. That’s the main reason they all want to work through stealth means.

Anyway, I think it doesn’t make much sense to look so closely at the logistics of the IPO, who could buy in, when, on what terms etc. The real value of FB is over time if it can figure out the business issues, and I at least am extremely doubtful.

I also noted that not many seem to have analyzed this issue in terms of the documented drop off in individual investing generally. As a consumer kind of company, FB might have been expected to generate individual investor interest but that does not seem to have happened, so I see that as a pretty dour signal for the short-term future of individual stock investing.

Hey – you don’t suppose it’s possible that low-rent muppets are smarter than the Beverly Hills SecM crew, do ya’? That’s not even theoretically possible, is it?

MrRFox, Felix isn’t wrong, in the sense that in order to buy FB shares on SecondMarket, you had up until fairly recently (have?) to be an “accredited investor”, which is IRS lingo for “having a net worth of at least $1M US, not including the value of one’s primary residence or have made at least $200,000 each year for the last two years (or $300,000 together with his or her spouse if married) and have the expectation to make the same amount this year”.

I don’t think that its too far out to describe the set of folks outside that description as “the public”, since if you DID meet that criteria, then you could have just bought into facebook via a VC fund at Kleiner Perkins, Accel Partners or what have you.

He gives the kids free samples, because he knows full well
That today’s young innocent faces, will be tomorrow’s clientele

Add to the fact that i have never clicked on a link on FB, and it’s never driven me to purchase anything, and i would doubt that many companies get decent revenue from it… And GM seems to agree with me there too…

I don’t get the valuation, and i don’t get how people think it’s worth even it’s current price… Based on the poor go forward strategy and the limited revenue opportunities, I recently passed an order at $5 per share. It will get there in not too long

I have an FB account because a friend of mine asked me to open one. I look at it about once a week. It’s basically a bulletin board for keeping track of the milestones posted by my friends. The people I am really close to, including the friend who told me to sign up, almost never post there. I friended my sister and I have yet to see a single post from her. From my way of looking at things, FB is a declining use way station, because it just isn’t that appealing to read superficial nuggets posted by something less than bosom buddies (even as it seems to have chased away some other very appealing places that I used to inhabit).

Of course I could be wrong. One of my daughters posts a lot of stuff, but it’s not compelling enough to really keep everyone else interested for long. There is also a lot of manufactured content (games, etc.) that is superficially interesting until you realize it’s just a way of gathering information about people. But among my friends, the pattern seems to do that kind of stuff at first, and then stop altogether.

Anyway, the larger question is, do VC types actually interact with FB personally or do they just assume that the hype about users is true?

Quite a bit. In the short term, the markets trade on momentum more than on value, IMHO.

Seriously? I have at least two accounts and haven’t touched either one in years. Wonder what proportion of the FB population are zombies?

“… basic economic theory suggests that if a stock has buyers at $44 privately, then its public value will be higher than that, since the universe of potential buyers expands enormously.”

News to me that the public is prohibited from playing in SecondMarket – ya’ learn something new (and wrong) every day, don’t ya’?

The IPO certainly did expand the number of shares in circulation. Now, what does “basic economic theory” say about increasing the actual supply of an item by many orders of magnitude, while increasing the pool of potential buyers maybe a little bit?

But hey, long as you get to the right destination –

“The minute they become public and democratic, they lose their cachet. And a lot of their value.” –

what difference does it make what route you traveled to get there?