for W3c validation
Should Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook, and other hi-tech entrepreneurs, cash in now or continue building their company on their own? There’s some debate and I definitely see the arguements both ways.
With Facebook, my personal opinion is that they should remain private for at least another 18 months. They have an absolutely huge opportunity in front of them. Since FB is already profitable, it is not really subject to the lack of cash problem as many young tech companies are. Facebook, which has built their brand name to a point that advertisers view them as a viable option (ie media buyers won’t get fired for buying ads on FB), has two absolutely huge advantages in terms of attracting a large number of big-name advertisers:
- Highly engaged audience — I think the roughly 1 billion page views a Facebooks serves on a daily basis says it all – users are very, very active.
- Highly targeted audience — I would guess FB can (and do) target their ads against almost all of the fields that users fill in. That means, advertisers can target users that are “Very liberal, between the ages of 20-22, live in Seattle, and single” if they want to. Users targeted to that level are extremely valuable to advertisers.
If anyone can take the social networking reigns from MySpace (and I REALLY want someone too), I think FB is the most likely. That said, I hope Facbook continues to listen to their users and build compelling products – though I’m certainly not impressed with their “Gift Shop” feature.
