Why is Facebook worth £104 billion

[jaycee331]

Also, search europe vs facebook. A clever law student has identified 16 violations of the data protection act that are embedded in the way they do things. Basically, if they operated wholly within the law (but we have toothless, useless regulators) they have no business at all.

[Phanerothyme]

The Greek governments need to read more Dickens and maybe they just might get things right with their economy.

 

"Annual income 20 pounds, annual expenditures 19 pounds, 19 shillings and sixpence, result happiness.

 

"Annual income 20 pounds, annual expenditures 20 pounds. ought and sixpence, result misery"

 

Good advice from Mister Micawber to David Copperfield and still good advice for the Greeks

 

Germany, France and the Uk cannot go on bailing out a deadbeat country.

 

I may not be a financial analyst of any description, but even I can see your analysis is simplistic at best.

 

If the Greeks do leave the Euro, it will be because they are defaulting on all the bailout lending so far, as well as everything else.

 

Given the international and european banks exposure either directly or indirectly, to greek debt, it's likely that they would be in danger of going under, and thus require further bailouts. Your precious dhow (!) would sink like a stone.

 

The greeks could never have joined the Euro without the complicity of the large accounting and consultancy firms that established that the convergence criteria had been met, even though it was (apparently) painfully obvious to everyone that the Greek economy was in no fit state for monetary union.

 

It's easy to use the Greeks as a scapegoat, but that's all they are. The sins of the economy are all still present and very active. Wiping Greece off the map won't make much difference to the picture of a global economy run by the wealthy for benefit of the wealthy.

 

 

Banks are businesses. If they overextend themselves they should be allowed to fail. The governments should let the banks fail naturally like any other business.

 

Griff Jones had it about right on Question Time this week.

[Lynchee]

Know him personally do you? Or are you just going off what he looks like, how much money he has and his tv persona?

 

I don't need to know him personally to see he's munting

[Eric_Collins]

As long as there are several Million people who clearly don't have a life beyond Facebook updates, it will live forever.

 

And no, I am not one of those people.

 

I have to agree with Rich on this one.

I know people so addicted to this rubbish it's like real life, I've seen phones smashed and computer screens punched if they have been tagged in a photo they hate. Every conversation is about someone's status and how they are going to smash faces in because someone has been mentioned in it.

 

Scary thing is too people are doing this tosh while driving , walking and working. There is no wonder they end up in some sticky situation and start giving status updates from the northern general.

[Cyclone]

Have you?

 

I've found that you can do everything you can do on facebook, without using faceboook, and have been able to for 15 years.

Really, you could upload from your camera phone in the pub to a website the photo you just took, and it would be shared just with the people you had identified in that photo, or with a larger group if you wished.

You could do that 15 years ago?

Or you could create some kind of calendar event, with a location, invite a bunch of people and the system would automatically collate the replies into convenient coming and not coming lists for you...

 

I've found people who use facebook are generally those who can't use the internet effectively and need it all wrapped up in a branded, limited package, and they also tend to "interact" electronically with their "friends" as opposed to actually interact with their friends.

 

It's strange what we find.

I suspect that you've dismissed facebook as some 'branded, limited, website' as some sort of technological snobbery and never bothered to find out what it could actually do for you.

[Phanerothyme]

Really, you could upload from your camera phone in the pub to a website the photo you just took, and it would be shared just with the people you had identified in that photo, or with a larger group if you wished.

You could do that 15 years ago?

Given that cameraphones weren't available, you couldn't do it on facebook, had it existed, either. Obviously when making a comparison like this you need to be able to take into account the march of technology. I say obviously, but perhaps it isn't that obvious.

 

But yes, 15 years ago I did take pictures on a digital camera and share them with people, including information about who was in the picture and where it was taken. I could have chosen to share it with an even larger group, or even posted it on a website. In fact we used to regularly take pictures of whiteboards and send them over to another company as well, much like Basecamp does today.

 

Or you could create some kind of calendar event, with a location, invite a bunch of people and the system would automatically collate the replies into convenient coming and not coming lists for you...

That functionality has existed even pre world wide web - admittedly perhaps it wasn't quite so idiot proof as facebook (which is, let's be honest, it's biggest USP to the members/data generators), but I never claimed idiots could do all this 15 years ago.

I suspect that you've dismissed facebook as some 'branded, limited, website' as some sort of technological snobbery and never bothered to find out what it could actually do for you.

Actually my work requires that I use many facebook accounts every day. I just don't use it in my personal life, because I can do everything I need to (communicate with people) without it.

[Cyclone]

No. He's already entitled to receive the sale proceeds of the IPO.

 

No he isn't, he still owns the 28% that he owned before, the IPO didn't involve him dumping all that stock and converting it into cash.

[Cyclone]

Given that cameraphones weren't available, you couldn't do it on facebook, had it existed, either.

I didn't claim that I could do everything facebook does 15 years ago without facebook though...

You could certainly email, blog, instant message, even group chat on IRC. But the majority of what facebook does wasn't possible.

Obviously when making a comparison like this you need to be able to take into account the march of technology. I say obviously, but perhaps it isn't that obvious.

 

But yes, 15 years ago I did take pictures on a digital camera and share them with people, including information about who was in the picture and where it was taken.

By emailing them to people presumably, or maybe hosting them somewhere and emailing out a link.

I could have chosen to share it with an even larger group, or even posted it on a website. In fact we used to regularly take pictures of whiteboards and send them over to another company as well, much like Basecamp does today.

Sending photos to people is really not the same is it.

 

 

That functionality has existed even pre world wide web - admittedly perhaps it wasn't quite so idiot proof as facebook (which is, let's be honest, it's biggest USP to the members/data generators), but I never claimed idiots could do all this 15 years ago.

 

Actually my work requires that I use many facebook accounts every day. I just don't use it in my personal life, because I can do everything I need to (communicate with people) without it.

You could communicate with people before the invention of the telephone, does that mean that you refuse to use it or claim that it doesn't add any value? You could communicate before email existed as well, but I'm guessing that you see the point of that and use it regularly?

What about discussion boards like this, bulletin boards they used to be called. I managed perfectly well before they existed, or at least before I knew how to and had the capability to access them, but I couldn't converse with hundreds of people about such diverse ranges of topics so easily.

 

I still think that you're dismissal of facebook is a bit of techno snobbery, it's not the most important website out there, it's not even the one I check most often, but it's definitely got it's uses and value.

[jaycee331]

Technology for the sake of it if you ask me.

 

What practical purpose does it serve to be able to upload photo's in real-time? So it can fuel more ego's with the "ooh look at me, I'm in a pub having fun aren't I just awesome"... And so what if some party photo's get shared a day later through more traditional methods?

 

I think it's also highly invasive for people to instantly tag their friends in photo's in perhaps compromising positions without their consent. So no, not for me. This isn't progress, it's just invasive pointless nonsense that solves a problem that never really existed to begin with.

[Cyclone]

What practical purpose does it serve to be able to call someone on a mobile phone?

 

What's a more traditional method for sharing photos, wait until you finish the film, get it developed a few weeks later, sometime never show the resulting photos to the people in them. That's if you would ever take a traditional camera to the pub and take a few snaps...

Or maybe that's too advanced for you after all what practical use are photos at all. It's just so you can remember a holiday or show them to someone and go "woo, look at me, I had a holiday".

 

Highly invasive... It's really quite easy to avoid though, don't register if you think that might happen. Or don't put yourself in compromising positions.

 

There was certainly no problem that facebook set out to solve, but given it's massive popularity it appears that a lot of people don't believe it's pointless nonsense.

I'm sure a lot of them aren't very bright and use it for what I consider to be pointless nonsense (stupid games for example). But they like it, it serves a purpose for them, so who am I and who are you to declare that one of the most popular web sites in the world is pointless nonsense?