FACEBOOK FREEFALL CONTINUES...

What exactly made anyone think that Facebook stock would be a good buy?

• Was it the free games?
• Was it the free means to keep in touch with old flames just in case your marriage got irreconcilable?
• Was it the success of Myspace?

Seriously, it makes money on advertising and selling its users' information for market research. What else does it sell?

I only saw Obama For America ads blanket the site of late, and people aren't fond of their info being used for marketing. Maybe I'm missing something since I only see Facebook as a fad, but something must be wrong in Menlo Park, right?

What's driving people to use it? 

• Cyberstalking? 
• Farmville?
• Chat features that AOL used LAST CENTURY?

 I don't know, since there are plenty of sites out there that do things better than Facebook does, which makes Facebook seem to be a fad. Myspace was better for blogging and sharing music, if I remember correctly, but it turned ghetto once everyone caught on to its existence. Now it's a punchline: Facebook is for people you know. Twitter is for people you wish you knew. Myspace is for people you wish you didn't know.

Facebook simply peaked prior to its IPO, so it had no where to go, but down unless it bought up/merged with Yahoo and Microsoft to compete against Google.

Mergers don't exactly work all the time as AOL/Timer-Warner clearly indicated.

The IPO made sense for Facebook, because it needed capital to grow/develop beyond its current rut.

• It costs a lot to run servers to allow up to 900 million users access to their online Facebook content.
• Facebook has a number of issues with hackers, so they have to prevent outside parties from invading their servers. 

Off course, I'm just saying what is on my mind regarding the subject, so who am I to say it was a bad buy or not? All I remember about first learning about stock is from looking at the daily paper as a kid. I liked Coke and McDonalds, but the stocks never did a whole lot from my vantage point since they were big and established companies that stayed about the same + or - a few cents. They mostly went down day to day when I looked, so I figured just because I liked their products that I didn't need to own a piece of the company.

Stock Market needs to be taught in basic high school education. People need to understand how corporations are developed and structured. Some people assume things about the market since they see how successful people get rich quick and young, so they relate the markets to playing the lotto or outright thievery. They get involved for the wrong reasons, and nothing good comes of their endeavor..