Facebook is being helped in a way that has been obvious from the beginning by how over-hyped it was on all the broadcast media - exponentially beyond any value it actually has. It can run up and stay afloat for a while with all that "help". They've been baiting the hook for a long time.
I thought the big reveal for 2012 was that they'd be adding a "Want" button to go along with the current "Like" button. Like a global wedding registry. Or something. Last I looked, Facebook was generating approximately $5 per user, per year, on average. Doesn't really seem like very much, to be honest. Will that even cover the electricity bill?
Facebook has enough users it could do anything; what would you do with a billion clients? IMHO, I would become a credit card processor or bank of some sort, like a paypal; maybe even a Visa. Easily exchanged cash between members, everyone is on it, then every website will put a facebook login on their site, you would never have to register for another online shop again... you would pay with the credit card already stored on your facebook account. Stores would love it, since every time you purchased something it posted on your wall (depending on privacy settings), and you would get more honest reviews on products you purchase.
face book growth is peaking, this is going to be a $100 billion dollar company the first day of trading with 800 million users, how much more can you grow your bottom line when you already have the entire US population already on that site, if anything they are not going to achieve any where near the growth rate they had just a few years ago, the company is a has been. Its gotten to the point where its actually annoying to see products contain the words twitter and facebook all over them. I think in the next couple of years people will make the transition off the site, its over played and boring at this point, is it that important to know where 97 of your friends are on a Friday night or what they are having for lunch, its actually quite fucking pathetic if you ask me.....
And how many of those users are just the same people with different ID's? Maybe some of FB's employees are busy running up that user count right now.....
really handy if they have copy/paste-as user button. Or even copy A+B and paste as C to make it fancier. testing robots can make it look alive... what about make everyone spend extra $2 on FB merchandize. which is 2B out and 2b in. This will pump up IPO value for 20B. I should be marketing manager there !
Facebook is an electronic journal, and people will use it for that reason. I don't know of any website I can pay to advertise in 4 states to over 2 million people for less than $800. Twitter wants $5,000 per month, but linkedin will let you use "leads generation" essentially free in your local area. The targetted advertising pay-per-click is better than google, and that's saying a lot because facebook has even more data about individuals than just the searches that they are running.