New Facebook Investors Will Be Bagholders

You've probably heard all the excitement lately over the news that Facebook will be going public - on Wednesday they filed their IPO prospectus with the SEC. They are soon to be trading on the NYSE and the company is predicted to be valued up to $100 billion. This means that thousands of investors are going to be putting up their money and betting on the future of Facebook, hoping to score big returns.

Google went public back in 2004 and anyone who bought Google shares then is doing very well right now with their return on investment. But is Facebook another Google? Does it really have the staying power and growth potential?

We see it more as another Myspace. And social networking sites like Myspace and Facebook don't have the type of staying power that search engines like Google do. They're more like a fad or fashion trend, although they can definitely stay popular long enough to rake in some dough. But these sites have a life cycle where they reach their full potential within a few years, and then as the excitement wears off and their users get bored, inevitably something else comes along that becomes the next big thing. And right now we're at the very end of the peak for Facebook's popularity. It has already had its been run, the big run is not in the future.

Young people are always what drives the next hot site, the next innovation. Facebook is still "cool" right now, but how about in a couple years when a whole new generation views Facebook as their mother's social networking site? It's going to happen, and it won't be long before it does.

Facebook is about to get a shitload of money though, and it definitely won't go down without a fight. Expect to see a bunch of new features and services rolled out over the next few years and witness their attempt to turn it into something much more than just a social networking site - just as Google became much more than just a search engine. But at the same time they're rolling out these new features, they're also going to be facing pressure from investors to monetize their popularity. Investors won't just be flooding in money to Facebook to be nice, they're going to want to see big revenues coming in. So at a time when Facebook is almost at its "old and stale" phase of the life cycle, they're going to be bombarding their members with annoying ads and other ways they can get money out of them. It's only going to make it that much easier for people to switch to the next big thing when it comes along.

Republicans supporting "Stop Online Piracy Act"

Hey Republicans, what happened to all the "less government" talk? If you really mean that, we're with you. But time and time again it seems that you pick and choose your ideology depending on the issue.

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was introduced in the House of Representatives on October 26 by Texas Republican Lamar Smith. The bill's aim is to fight intellectual property infringement online but it puts a huge burden on domain owners and gives the government power to force Internet Service Providers to blacklist domain addresses.

For example, let's say there's a picture hosting website in Japan called japan-pic-host.com which allows users all over the world to post pictures to share with their family and friends. And let's say that 1 member of the site (out of millions) submits a picture of a diagram that is copyrighted by someone else. If this bill were to become law, the government would then be able to force Internet Services Providers like Time Warner, AT&T, & Comcast to prevent people from visiting the entire website altogether. If you tried to visit japan-pic-host.com to check out your friend's latest photos, you'd get an error message on your browser.

The same could easily happen to sites like Youtube. With the millions of user-submitted videos on there, the government could easily find an example of copyright infringement - all the justification it would need to shut the whole thing down.

From Wikipedia:

The bill would allow the court to order Internet service providers, “payment network providers,” search engines, and advertising services to take “technically feasible and reasonable measures” to cut off these illegal foreign infringing sites in their respective fields. Internet service providers would be required to modify their DNS look-up servers to return an empty response for these sites, making them virtually inaccessible, while search engines would need to filter results linking to such sites.
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The remaining provisions of Title I allow for voluntary actions to deny services to rogue sites and to sites selling prescription medication without requiring a prescription or where the drugs are adulterated or misbranded.
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The bill would require internet service providers to filter DNS queries of offending websites, rendering them unresolvable.

Are there bad things on the internet? Sure. Does copyright infringement take place online? Yes. But we must ask ourselves, is it worth regulating the internet and giving the government more power just to go after a couple copyright infringers? Don't we already have processes in place for copyright owners to go after those who infringe? Why do we need to hand over additional blanket controls to the government? The government should not ever be able to force an internet service provider to block an entire website. If the government has a legitimate beef with a copyright infringer then it needs to deal directly with that person.

Internet Service providers should not have to be put in a position to police their customers or deny access to particular websites. Isn't this what sets us apart from countries like China? We all seem to agree that it's a bad thing when the Chinese government cuts off access to certain websites. So why are we voluntarily headed down that road ourselves? A few cases of copyright infringement isn't enough justification to give the government that much power, just as the fear of terrorism isn't enough justification for us to give up our rights in order to feel safe. And in both instances it's the supposed "less government" Republicans leading the way.

Currently the Stop Online Piracy Act is supported by these representatives:


Lamar Smith [R-TX]
Howard Berman [D-CA]
Marsha Blackburn [R-TN]
Mary Bono Mack [R-CA]
Steve Chabot [R-OH]
John Conyers [D-MI]
Ted Deutch [D-FL]
Elton Gallegly [R-CA]
Bob Goodlatte [R-VA]
Timothy Griffin [R-AR]
Dennis A. Ross [R-FL]
Adam Schiff [D-CA]
Lee Terry [R-NE]