Facebook's nearest future

Before jumping into the future of Facebook (FB), let's analyze the history and the current positioning.

Recently, FB was valuated at $14 billion dollars, an impressive amount for a social platform. Its common stock increased from $25 per share to $32 on the second market, an independent marketplace for illiquid assets, in a matter of months or even days. The historical valuation on the left, courtesy Fast Company, gives an appreciation of FB growth rates.

While some information sources suggest that FB may become an Initial Public Offering (IPO), the company is highly attractive for the private investors. The biggest ones are Microsoft Corp and Digital Sky Technologies, investing $240 million and $200 million respectively into FB. In this light, Reuters points out that FB most likely holds a strategy of selling the shares in private placements instead of going public.

From my perspective, the business model of FB includes, but most likely not limited to:
- Self-service ads
- Brand ads
- Virtual products

In a two-year time, I expect the number of users to stabilize, indicating market's saturation. We all sign up for FB, admire it at some point, become really active users, get bored with it, eventually check from time to time. However, it still stays as a great communication tool. Maybe virtual products are not that relevant and innovative, but the ads are definitely flourishing (competing with Google, btw).

FB itself aims at transferring the internet into more user-friendly environment by informing the sites on user preferences taken from the users' FB profiles. Not very private, but probably efficient:) In lines with our last IS class and the future.