Tag Archives: Facebook

What’s to “Like” about the Facebook IPO

  By Carl | May 27, 2012 - 10:21 am | Uncategorized
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I have to tell you I feel for a lot of people on the Facebook IPO. Let me walk through my thoughts in as organized a manner as a maniac can get.

First of all I am proud of the general consumer of stock. A lot of Wall Street was expecting Facebook Frenzy and thought that the demand was going to give them a lot of people wanting Facebook at any price so the traders are the ones that have been hurt the most by the IPO. Given the fact that Wall Street continues to not recognize the pain on main street, maybe this can help them get on the Cluetrain.

Secondly, I feel for the employees of Facebook. In the past on another stock, I made the mistake of not declaring the value of my stock until required by law. The result was that my shares were valued at the price of the opening as income. The result at the end was that I owed the government 75% of the value of the stock by the time I sold it. (And Yet I am still a Liberal). My expectation is the Facebook employees will have a lot of guys like me in their mix, so I feel for them. This includes Eduardo Saverin who is trying to solve the problem of paying to much.

Third, I feel for NASDAQ and Morgan Stanley who were suppose to have a shining moment and ended up with egg on their face. These opportunities to learn from your mistake often come at the price of executives being removed, or worse the blame being misplaced. Either way, I feel for those involved.

Now for those of us still interested in investing in Facebook the stock restrictions end in about 85 days. I would say wait until those who were as ignorant as I and not as smart as Eduardo, sell to pay their taxes.
Then you can buy the stock. Don’t be surprised if that dip brings it down into the teens. Their a lot of people with stock and taxes to cope with.

And I feel for those people who are paying those taxes the most, since I am sure they will not see the benefits of being good citizens, just the cost.

And for those in that pain, I want you to know that I am “like” you.

Last Weeks Rant – Well That Was Disappointing

  By Carl | May 25, 2012 - 12:53 pm | Uncategorized
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For those who didn’t notice I tried to use the mail merge tool and sent a note with the subject “Funny how the conversation has diminished with all the tools at our disposal” . It was suppose to lead into this email.
Other than three people with an unsubscribe request, I am not sure anyone opened it. Here is what I wanted you to read.

I was listening to NPR http://n.pr/KOwWSu this weekend and they were having a debate as to whether we were really communicating on the Internet or just falling in love with our voice (and those that agree with us). It occurred to me that I was not hearing like I used to from friends about my articles and posts.
So I am hoping you find something interesting in my posts and respond. I will post your replies on appropriate blog or keep them to myself if that is what you prefer.

Here are the places I posted last week.

First of all I gave a lecture at Pace University to a class the Internet as Universal Service. It’s an interesting contrast looking at POTS, IP, GSM and Wi-Fi. In the end I think Wi-Fi is going to be the only safe technology to trust as end to end. I say this since LTE is being deployed as proprietary as possible by the carriers. I understood that for the first few years since the drive was there to get something to catch up to data demand. However, it’s clear this is going to be the norm and not the early adoption issue. http://www.slideshare.net/alwaysoncarl/does-the-mobile-internet

Cooper’s Law may be thwarted by bad deployments and the opportunity for competition is pretty sad. Last week we saw Lightsquared give up the ghost, I swapped my phone from a lesser party back to one of the two big players. http://www.mobilitytechzone.com/topics/4g-wirelessevolution/articles/2012/05/16/290511-cancelled-my-4g-phone-evidently-it-wasnt-primary.htm I went to order from Clearwire and realized the process was going to drive me nuts so I gave up. Pretty Sad and it indicates why there is reluctance to leave the incumbents.

Candidly it’s easier and the fact that the cable operators sold spectrum co to Verizon Wireless points out how hard it is to break in. While our friends in WISPA, do a great job supporting cost conscious customers, the general consumer market is not very flexible. When companies like Lightsquared go under and Clearwire revamps it makes it harder for the next company to break out.

I have friends tell me that Apple and Google are the real carriers and looking at how resentful ATT is that the bulk of the bucks go to Cupertino you can see there is no need for Apple to hurry to buy a carrier.

However, the market cap on Clearwire is so low and the bandwidth is so great, now may be the time. Perhaps it will be Amazon.

I should also note that I was at Blackberry Jam in Orlando two weeks ago so I don’t mean my quoting of others to suggest I think that devices are going to be duopoly like the wireline. In reality I think Microsoft and RIM are both on the right track. You will hear more about this as soon as I get my interviews posted. Let me say this the closer we get to full compliance to HTML5 the more opportunity for end to end to win. This will come up when we do DevCon5 in NYC in July. Http://www.devconfive.com

Not to be pitchy, but that’s also why I added the Bring Your Own Device / Wi-Fi sessions to the 4GWE event (now called Mobility Tech Conference & Expo) http://www.mobilitytechzone.com/conference/ . The business of the mobile Internet is very nascent and while we can be glad the carriers have gotten past WAP. We still have a long way to go before the business is mature.

Hell we can’t even agree on what’s mature yet. Yahoo! As a stock finally found a new height, but we will see if it maintains. I was hoping for a new mobile commerce model from Scott Thompson http://www.imhocorp.com/?p=939 . I guess he may have to pull a Steve Jobs and rise like a phoenix from the Ashes. Speaking of Ashes, Facebook looks like a good buy in about another 98 days http://blog.tmcnet.com/4g-wirelessevolution/2012/05/facebook-you-still-can-judge-them-by-their-cover.html . Although based on the amount of stock already out there and NASDAQ faulty T+1 systems. I may have to add a few more days for the market to equalize.

Mark Cuban said this was the most important IPO ever and in some ways he was right http://www.webpronews.com/facebook-ipo-may-be-the-most-important-in-history-says-mark-cuban-2012-05 . The stock may have single-handedly killed the tech bubble on Wall Street. I don’t know if you watched but for almost every other tech stock in the market it was like a scene from “On the Beach’ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053137/ . Nothing was moving. Even Apple was dropping as the capital went out to meet up with Facebook.

The market however is efficient and is back to work. One thing that kept coming up on Wall Street and with Gigaom is that Facebook has yet to figure out wireless http://gigaom.com/mobile/will-facebook-adapt-to-mobile-or-will-mobile-adapt-to-facebook/ . So let’s end with a discussion of largest user of wireless – machines. I did a webinar with ATT and AXEDA last week that was very good but left me questions about the singularity being near. http://m2m.tmcnet.com/topics/m2mevolution/articles/290542-phases-m2m.htm

Anyway I hope you enjoyed my rant and linking you to most of the places you can find my thoughts. As always I like it best when the audience talks back. I hope to hear from you soon.

Kind Regards,

Carl

You Can Never have Enough Friends

  By Carl | October 31, 2010 - 2:44 pm | Carl Ford IMHO
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@Apple, @Google and @Microsoft.

People often give me more credit than I deserve. I am a well connected person, but I am ecclectic in my friendships and tastes. Often there is an expectation that I know “EVERYONE”. I don’t and some that I do know don’t necessarily want me to chase them around for every inquiry I get.

So my general rule of thumb is to use Linkedin. I am an open networker and I believe that many of us trust it as a way to initiate a conversation.

While many friends want me to see Facebook in the same way, most of my immediate family uses Facebook, so getting professional work done is harder on that system.

Never the less, I have started a campaign to connect up directly with all my speakers on both Facebook and Linkedin. Yes I will do twitter too, albeit briefly ;<).

If you want to talk to the people I want to hear, its good for you to connect with me on either platform.

Receding My Bills – Plaxo

  By Carl | March 12, 2009 - 8:03 am | Carl Ford IMHO
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Lets see how long it takes. I called Plaxo trying to remove the payment for Plaxo management.
Since Pulse is not a two way system, the innovation of Plaxo is no longer connected to the payment I make. The answer was, “Send an email”. Now sent and replied to in the form of a form letter.

As you may recall, I like the Plaxo purchase by Comcast. I even think Pulse is pretty good. Nichy – somewhere between Facebook and Linkedin. I like what Plaxo is doing but when I saw the renewal notice,

I realized this is a bill I don’t see any value in anymore. The value was in the consolidation of my email accounts and synchronization.

Now adays, we are all probably address schizophrenic. Many of my accounts are using login emails that a no longer valid.

Is Facebook the AOL of its time

  By Carl | October 13, 2008 - 7:32 am | Carl Ford IMHO
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Sometimes even typing the title of blog post is scary.  I expect to get some pushback on this one.

At Gigaom’s blog this weekend was the analysis that Social Networks had peeked.  I always try to be a contrarian.  My history is to never join a ground swell in either direction.  So this obviously has to be the an upbeat discussion.

So let me put this in terms of what I see with the wife and kids.  My wife is still an active AOL user.  She has email loops and favorites and if she ever was going to leave AOL it would be because those features disappear.  In other words, her good will is almost everlasting. AOL is her address book and her buddy list. AOL lost its “cool” was when broadband became available and apps were discovered by the subscribers that made AOL’s interm portals irrelevant.

Facebook has very similar relationships with my kids.  The “kewl” factors are the network they have with their friends. And the groups and apps are minor for them the networking and the wall is a great asynchronous communication amongst their friends.

So what would drive the friends off of Facebook?

I think a mis-step in privacy and the effort to insert more financially viable solutions may allow the kids to look elsewhere.  As Facebook starts to lose execs and add new executives from Google and Yahoo! the question is will the kids be everlasting Facebook users.

The obvious question is what are they willing to pay for? Unlike AOL, Facebook has set their prize at zero.

I would love the analysis of the change in Facebook use five years after graduation.

So far I don’t see the driver to leave.

“Am I the Only One” Social Network

  By Carl | October 3, 2008 - 10:06 am | Carl Ford IMHO
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Caveat:  The domains are for sale, and if anyone wants to partner I am open to this idea.

Facebook has become an email tool to me.  I am not someone who shares my personal interests in a social network, I would prefer to keep these things, well – personal.

So as I look for a work oriented social network, I am dismayed by the clubs, groups, favorites, movies and other categories i have to fill out.

Friends invite me to lots of these things.

I do not want to offend anyone with my lack of interest in their causes, faith and politics.  Close friends know I am very opinionated about these things, but the history associated with them is the basis and its not a fad oriented grab your attention experience for me.

I want a no nonsense work oriented network.

I want to see a window into my fellows blogs (related to work) and a trend trend tracker.

So the question is am I the only one?

Conference 2.0?

  By Carl | July 2, 2008 - 7:10 am | Carl Ford IMHO
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I was talking to a friend in the conference business about the tools I am seeing being used at some conference and many of them are making a lot of sense to me. I think we are on the cusp of a new era of event services. That allow the attendees at the event to share their views and build a site that continues the benefit from the event.

Take a look at http://www.enterprise2conf.com/about/what-is-enterprise2.0.php as an example.
It has a wiki, blog, social site, Facebook Group, and a newsletter. Thats a lot of focus.

Calliflower – Something to Squawk about

  By Carl | June 25, 2008 - 7:49 am | PodCast
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Iotum has done some very cool technology strategies and almost always at the core has been the idea of contextual communication.

Their latest service in this space is called Calliflower and it is in keeping with that model.

For sometime now Alec Saunders has been doing an event on Facebook called Squawk Box. Unlike its CNBC equivalent its been an user participating discussion. While the conference call is going on the chat is active and the group is in full participation.

Those capabilities are now migrating out of Facebook into a Web 2.0 service aimed for small businesses.

Want to hear more… Listen to podcast with Alec Saunders. or better yet listen to Squawk Box or best of all go to http://www.calliflower.com/ and try it.

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