It seems the other major social media companies are delaying their IPOs, first Zynga, now Facebook. Even Groupon delayed though it seems they may be going forward now. I know it’s a different situation but every time I heard news of these delays it reminded me of a brief(3 month) time that I had at freeinternet.com, as the bubble was bursting the company was in a hotel meeting hall and the CEO was talking about stuff, the only thing I remember from the meeting was that their investors were delaying their IPO due to “market conditions”, that their investors wanted their “quality companies” to wait till things improved (this was about July 2000 if I recall right).
The conspiracy theorist in me thinks that Groupon is doing anything they can to get their IPO out the door because their model is by far the most shaky and they need to cash out before it’s too late. Zynga not far behind. Facebook makes some real money at the moment, though the hype doesn’t hold water and I’m sure they hope in 2012 or 2013 they may be luckier.
Joke’s on them though, the economy is still going to be in the crapper in 2012, and 2013, and 2014 and 2015 and probably 2016 and 2017 too.
One thing these IPOs do seem to have an impact on is the local housing market in the bay area, a lot of folks (especially in Palo Alto) are apparently wanting to sell their houses but are holding off until these IPOs to try to get some executive to buy them for big bucks.
Life without a bubble is tough..whether it’s social media, or cloud computing, or the government trying to re-inflate housing (and other assets with low interest rates and stuff) there’s a lot of interest in building another massive bubble.
I love life without bubbles; going through 2 bubbles in 10 years is enough.
Comment by Tony — September 15, 2011 @ 8:49 am
Yeah life certainly is interesting without a full fledged bubble, it seems our economy doesn’t like life without a bubble since it seems that’s the only way we’re able to generate large numbers of jobs anymore 🙂
Comment by Nate — September 15, 2011 @ 9:10 am