Evolve or Dissolve. Facebook’s On Going Battle
For 100 billion dollars, Facebook ought to be sipping out of the chalice of business dominance.
Recently, Facebook announced its IPO (initial public offering) and valued the company at 102.3 billion dollars. That’s right, billion.
That number is awe-inspiring, mainly because Facebook’s business model is so simple. Also, merely saying the word ‘billion’ can make a person feel both euphoric and scandalous at the same time.
When the money high wears off, where does that leave the public that is initially being offered to? As college students, probably nowhere (unless you own a large business or corporation). The shares of Facebook are indeed available to the public, but only a wealthy sliver of the public.
Facebook’s IPO Maybe the Largest in Tech History
The largest social networking site in the world, Facebook became one step closer to becoming a publicly traded company. Founded in 2004, by Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard, the website now has over 850 million monthly active users.
Zuckerberg, who passed off offers from Yahoo for 1 billion and Microsoft for 15 billion, can look back at his decisions to pass up such large sums of money, and see how good of a choice he has made. Some say the IPO could raise around 5 to 10 billion dollars, while the market capitalization (total value of the tradable shares) could reach anywhere between 75 and 100 billion dollars. With Zuck owning around 28% percent of Facebook, you can do the math.
Your Facebook Page and Tumblr Account Could Soon Be Your New Resume
If this isn’t a real sign that the times are really changing, then I don’t know what is. Some investment firms are now asking you for your “web presence” on social websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, or your personal blog, instead of a traditional resume, either submitted online or on a desk. The reason being for this, is that they are more interested “in what people are like, what they are like to work with, how they think”, says Christina Cacioppo, an associate and Union Square Ventures, who blogs about this very type of thing.
Now, for someone like me, this type of evolution in the hiring process would, without question, make me alter where I post content, what kind of content, and how frequently I do so. In fact, there’s quite a few people I know who would be immediately tossed away to the side as a potential employee, based solely on the type of content they post online to social networks. Scary, eh?
Facebook + Skype = ?
The biggest social networking site in the world, Facebook has launched a video chat application yesterday. Joining the social media giant is Skype, which was just recently bought by Microsoft for some 8.5 billion dollars. This mutually beneficial deal provides Facebook access to a great free video service which offers more user interaction, and Skype with a connection to the worlds largest social networking infrastructure.
