Replies to post #8142 on The Rising Influence of Rising Affluence

[wow_happens28]

In my own experience, Facebook acts more like a multilevel marketing scheme. My circle of 150 friends and not posting on FB near as much as a year ago. It get old. Maybe globally they can make it last a while. Valuing these guys is not my area of expertise. But, it does seem way too high to me. But I hear that 40% of the worlds population does not wear shoes. After shoes they get computes and go on Facebook, lol. As I said, not my area.

[DewDiligence]

Barron’s (rightly, IMO) disparages price of FB’s acquisition of WhatsApp:

http://online.barrons.com/article/SB50001424053111903506304579383272433420760.html

If half the [WhatsApp] user base pays a dollar a year, that's almost a quarter of a billion dollars annually, not a huge amount of revenue. If Zuckerberg is right in his prediction that the service will grow to a billion users, and if half of those people pay, and if the fee can be raised to, say, $5 a year, on average, assuming add-on services, one can foresee $2.5 billion a year or more in annual revenue, which is real money. All of which is to say that the rosier scenarios might be rewarding, but they still wouldn't pay back the WhatsApp investment for some years, if ever.

The darker possibility is that Facebook simply had to do this. As Evercore Partners' Ken Sena, who reduced the stock to Equal Weight from Overweight last week, points out, Facebook has experienced slower growth among people aged 18 to 24, which appears to be the sweet spot for WhatsApp.

[DewDiligence]

LNKD has had modest success in China:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/06/technology/to-reach-china-linkedin-plays-by-local-rules.html

LinkedIn’s experience provides a blueprint, and perhaps a cautionary lesson, for Silicon Valley as it tries to crack the vast Chinese market. Other American tech companies are watching with great interest, wondering whether LinkedIn will find an equilibrium between free speech and Chinese law that it can live with.

LinkedIn’s global English-language site has attracted four million Chinese members without gaining much attention from the Chinese government. But the company wanted to reach more of China’s estimated 140 million professional workers, and so in February it introduced a Chinese-language version.

The Chinese-language site has attracted about a million new members and seems to have the tacit approval of the government. It is functioning without blockages even though the authorities have cracked down on other Internet services, including Instagram and Yahoo, in reaction to the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.

The secret to LinkedIn’s seeming success? Aside from its willingness to play by Chinese rules on expression, the company has relinquished 7 percent of its local operation to two well-connected Chinese venture capital firms.