Facebook in particular will come back because there is no alternative social network with nearly as many people on it. The fundamentals of the business aren't really at risk -- most of the users will stay. The impact of potential privacy-related regulation is already priced in to a large extent because everyone already knew that GDPR was going to happen before this latest scandal broke, and Facebook was already prepared to comply with it. I doubt the US Congress in its current state would pass anything as strict as that.
With social media boycott campaigns it's hard to separate the noise from impact on the bottom line but with recent stories of Uber and what was occurring behind the scenes, the #DeleteUber campaign actually did have a negative impact on the bottomline that was felt and was definitely a huge driver for the board moving to remove Travis which is underreported as everyone instead focuses on the drama that occurred as that sells as a better story from the press side.
With Facebook it will really be about how many people truly delete Facebook.
The difference of course is that every Uber user was generating significantly more revenue on average than the avg Facebook user, so the number of users that delete Facebook would have to be much more significant.
Also interesting, is what is the global response. Is this localized to the US, are many people globally doing the same thing?
If it doesn't impact the bottom line through a massive amount of users deleting, then the stock will bounce back well before the next quarterly earnings report.
Most of the examples from above - Intel, UA, Wells Fargo etc had serious issues. But the average person didn't own the problem. Today if you talk to an average person about Intel's issues they will respond - Is my laptop/pc working without issues? If yes. Then I don't care, let Intel come up with a patch.
Chipotle on the other hand was a case of customer's owning the problem. In people's mind having a burrito from Chipotle posed a health risk. Hence, the bottom line impact.
If you tell an average person, and I did try, about how Facebook sold their data and the issue with Cambridge Analytics etc, they dint seem to care. The reason is while Facebook did let CA misuse the data, it didn't really "force" people to share their data -- this is an actual quote from a non-technical user.
So, as far as an average person is concerned, the question is - will Facebook change it's structure to make it difficult to share their location, last meal etc for some likes? If not, then they don't care.
Chipotle is an excellent example of how this might affect Facebook.
I think Chipotle could have recovered from this scandal if not for the fact that many people were already less into the 'chain restaurant' thing (in particular 'millennials', I remember reading somewhere).
Of all the people I know, a shockingly small percentage actually uses Facebook actively. And just looking at my FB feed, it's become a ghost town compared to what it used to be. Many have moved to WhatsApp/Telegram/Snapchat/Instagram/etc. for their regular interactions, and mostly use Facebook for overt marketing/self-marketing purposes, if at all (events, business pages, etc.). And there's a surprising amount of grumbling about WhatsApp and Instagram being owned by Facebook, by people who I wouldn't characterize as the 'type' for this kind of grumbling.
The fact that Facebook is still used for some things, and that they own WhatsApp/Instagram might end up saving them, but I still wouldn't be surprised if, similar to the Chipotle situation, this is just that last push that many people need to ditch the FB ecosystem, or at least actively look for alternatives. And so far I get the impression that the WhatsApp/Instagram 'moats' are much more sensitive to disruption than FB is, or used to be.
Online privacy is too abstract to cause a visceral reaction of disgust in the average person, but food poisoning scandals can do that, especially to parents or people who recently ate at the restaurant. (Actually, framing the Facebook privacy issue as one involving the endangerment of children would probably get a lot more traction among the general public than the current media narrative.)
Its also about action seeding, for later events. With each strike like this some people leave and its likely they are early(ish) adopters, and also likely that they are opinionated ones (just my theory). So their leaving reduces the quality of the network, for the bulk of passive users. And I know (anecdotally) few passive users. People who just read and never do any comments or likes. So the value of the network goes down for them. And they may then spend lesser time. Or may have lesser satisfaction. So network effects brought it to where it is, and they also work very well in the other direction.
On the other thread on HN today, on WhatsApp founder, I wonder if they wouldn't have sold to Facebook (of all the players), what would have been the social media landscape be like today?
I am just hoping, like I am sure many others on HN, that this event finally seeds an open social network, which works like emails do.
You covered the fundamental reason why Facebook _could_ suffer from this but I believe it won’t. Uber is very easy to ditch because it has well-known competitors that are just or almost as good and readily available. And uber doesn’t have years of photos, friends and interactions that I’d be losing.
I don’t like being a product. Yes, Google products still make money off me, but I try to minimize it, and they’re at least slightly less callous.
I'm right there with you. I try not to use Google products either...I guess probably the only one I explicitly use still is Waze...there needs to be a mapping/traffic alternative.
or at least better at not getting caught.
For example, I literally haven't seen some of my high school friends since we graduated 22 years ago, but I know all about their kids and families and their recent successes at their jobs. I like knowing that I'm still connected to people I spent literally every free hour with in my youth.
It's especially salient for me because Facebook didn't exist when we graduated. Many of them I've only reconnected with in the last 5 to 10 years, so I remember what it was like when we didn't have Facebook to keep in touch.
It has real value for me.
People you're actually close to matter 100x more, and you're going to stay in touch with those people regardless.
I have a Facebook account that I set up for some service that needed it for a login. But I've never used it beyond that.
It's definitely not about social fulfillment.
People already have had serious reservations about how fast things have been changing, and if you think that death by robot car and privacy violation by social media isn’t going to create a backlash, you’re not reading your history. It won’t help the tech sector that “old media” has everything to gain by keeping this dripfeed going.
This is a first wave, and while it will recede, there are more and bigger waves to come.
We're already seeing dramatic deterioration in DAUs and minutes per user.
This episode will cause a few users to leave Facebook completely, but many more will use it less.
And that deceleration in the growth rate will need to be offset with an acceleration in earnings and cash flow for the stock price to increase from here.
That used to be the case. It's trading at a particularly unusual discount today in fact, on a growth to valuation metric. It's radically superior to Amazon on that front. It's better than Google. And it's dramatically better than Microsoft (which barely has any growth).
Facebook is trading for ~23 times likely 2018 earnings. And perhaps 17 or 18 times 2019 earnings.
Google has half the growth rate of Facebook, with a higher multiple (messy earnings statements the past year, but it's reasonably around 30 times 2018 likely earnings).
Microsoft has barely grown earnings for a decade. Their sales growth is single digits. ~30 PE ratio.
Amazon? Ha.
Netflix? Ha.
Cisco has had a contracting business for years on the top line. Profit has also declined. They're being granted a ~20-21 PE ratio on the basis of zero growth. That's barely below what Facebook is getting for considerable growth.
Or take Activision, trading for ~55-60 times earnings, with something around 1/5th the growth of Facebook.
Facebook has a PE ratio a lot closer to Oracle, which has a stagnant business that hasn't increased earnings in years.
Even pathetic Coca Cola, which has a collapsing business (years of sales declines), is trading for ~30 times earnings.
McDonald's which has a business that has been contracting for years, is trading for ~25 times earnings.
Facebook is cheap in just about every way compared to the broad market and compared to most slow-growth blue chips.
If margins get squeezed, or if growth slows, or both, the valuation is in jeopardy.
The average user spends 43 minutes per day on Facebook. Last quarter, users spent 2 minutes less per day.
What happens if Facebook is perceived as mildly toxic to many users?
Just like people used to drink gallons of carbonated high-fructose corn syrup every week, almost overnight most people decided that's not healthy, and soda sales have declined every year for 12 years straight.
What if something similar happens to Facebook? If a year from now people are spending 25 minutes a day instead of 40, what happens to the margins and growth rate that justify a $500B valuation?
I'm not too familiar with the former, but am I correct in assuming it's less useful, compared to FB proper, for both ads and information gathering?
And with WhatsApp, if everything is indeed end-to-end encrypted, would this not be even more the case? Instead of a steady supply of chats, photos, location data, FB would 'only' have metadata to work with. And ads are probably not really a realistic option at all.
Unless I'm wrong about all that, I imagine the value of these two platforms is significantly lower than the original value of Facebook (to them, anyways)
