Okay, well 10 years ago today facebook made its
Wall Street debut on the NASDAQ and over the course
of this past decade, many people hit the like
button but others most certainly have not to explain.
Let's turn the clock back to May 18th of 2012
. We're going way back and to say that the
facebook I. P. O. Was highly anticipated
would be an understatement. By the time of its
I. P. O. Facebook had long established
its popularity with college students and Ceo Mark Zuckerberg was
already looking for the next big trend which at this
time it was being able to monetize facebook on smartphones
. There was so much conversation around mobile. Well
Facebook raising a whopping 16 billion in the debut and
to put that into context, it is still the
largest tech I. p. o in history.
10 years later the I. P. O.
Also ranking third among all publicly traded companies with its
platform being used by 500 million people worldwide and bringing
in$1 billion in quarterly sales. Facebook's first year
on Wall Street wasn't exactly smooth though. In fact
it was honestly a bit of a mess. Startup
trading was delayed to what the NASDAQ turned to quote
technical air and quote, I remember that resulting in
some orders not going through and then within three months
the stock had lost roughly half of its value.
As investors grew concerned that facebook's hype growth would disappear
with consumers flocking to smartphones obviously Zuckerberg and facebook putting
those concerns to bed headed clearly in the years to
come clearly and one way facebook was able to continue
its rapid growth Kristen was through acquisitions the most notable
of course being instagram facebook actually acquired the photo sharing
platform months before its I. P. O.
And in retrospect got quite a steal. The purchase
was a mere$1 billion Facebook's largest acquisition at least
at the time. The move fueled Facebook's mobile president
and helped catapult Instagram's valuation to$100 billion 2018 Facebook
didn't stop there. A pair of major acquisitions in
2014 grew its user base even more. It bought
mobile messaging service WhatsApp for$19 billion. Facebook also
acquired Oculus VR which was the company's initial leap into
the metaverse but we'll dig into that in just a
moment. Let's zero in on WhatsApp and that acquisition
which did come with some controversy Brian Acton he was
the co founder of WhatsApp explaining to Forbes in an
interview why he decided to leave Facebook and$850 million
dollars on the table. He said this quote I
sold my user's privacy to a larger benefit. I
made a choice and a compromise. I lived with
that every day actions actions sentiment didn't go away at
least not quickly in 2018 when facebook was embroiled in
scandal actually act and then tweeted this it is time
hashtag delete facebook. I do remember that kristen I
know you did too. It's something we covered here
on cheddar news and the sentiment was shared by many
, many people around the world after that acquisition.
I would say it wasn't just such a unfortunate departure
or not so smooth departure with the WhatsApp co founders
but also with instagram, right, that was a
little bit more hush hush. But some inside reporting
did show that there was basically a culture clash between
the instagram heads. Those who had founded instagram and
Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg of course, ultimately winning out.
But those instagram founders basically departing and not necessarily on
the best of terms. Okay, well Hannah,
you mentioned the word scandal earlier and here's what we're
talking about. So as you see, facebook's success
has also been mired in controversy. A large chunk
Of revolved around that revolved around the 2016 presidential election
, Russian manipulation, impacting stories that appeared on users
feeds and reports in 2018 revealing that up to 87
million users were impacted by a data breach and of
course whistleblower, Francis, pathogens. a testimony about
the social media giant. Well this all isn't going
away either, turns out facebook also the subject of
multiple antitrust lawsuits including one by the FTC alleging the
platform has a buy or bury ethos when it comes
to acquisitions. Um, what I'll say at least
thus far is certainly the Francis how jin testimony was
not a good look for facebook as certainly the activity
happening on some of its social media platforms namely instagram
the expose by the Wall Street Journal, impacting teen
girls and the mental health of vulnerable Children. Not
a good look either. From a business standpoint though
, we'll wait to see if anything really actually comes
with these antitrust suits facebook still a cash cow here
. It did get slapped with a fine several years
ago before the pandemic, but it was really just
a drop in the bucket. Nothing that would actually
change the course of direction for this company just yet
. And you mentioned those scandals Kristen when you're a
company like facebook mired in scandal and you're facing challenges
like this one. What could one solution be?
How about a name change the company rebranding as Meta
last October but the decision is also forward looking the
company turning its focus to the digital world, something
Mark Zuckerberg believes will be the future of the Internet
. Just take a look at the video on your
screen, investors may not be seeing things the same
way though, shares this year down by 42%.
Still meta has a stronghold over the social media spectrum
. There's no denying that facebook instagram WhatsApp ranking among
the top six most used apps in the world And
with that of course comes a lot of controversy that
you and I just talked about Kristen and a lot
of criticism with, there's so much data on reports
coming out that facebook specifically, especially I should say
I did have a hard time when it came to
getting misinformation out there and not being able to handle
a lot of people. A lot of the misinformation
that was being posted on their sites. You know
I think the most surprising thing to me hand out
over these past 10 years. Two things one how
that completely botched I. P. O. I
remember I was here at the new york stock exchange
. It was a NASDAQ IPO's not in new york
stock exchange IPO's they were all on the west coast
in Silicon Valley. Said to celebrate this. It
was a mess. No one even remembers that anymore
. No the second part is especially when it comes
to what facebook's done in terms of basically copying Snapchat
that that doesn't continue to be a bigger story.
I mean basically Evan Spiegel and snap said facebook ripped
off my I. P. And that has allowed
it to be so successful on a platform like instagram
which now does give Tiktok a run for its money
. So that's the other thing I think here that
somehow just continues to be okay in the whole situation
not to mention real that I feel like it's totally
copying Tiktok. So we've seen that a lot when
it comes to facebook