i like facebook. i like a facebook a lot. but i’m not sure that i want to make it my home. or carry it with me.
home is facebook’s new software. it takes over your android phone and places pictures and messages from your facebook friends front and center. your phone becomes an extension of your facebook page.
some analysts thought facebook might be announcing the creation of its own phone. that spooked investors so there was a pre-announcement to clarify what will be officially announced on april 12. got that?
with facebook innovations, there are always concerns about privacy. in the case of home, facebook will be able to retrieve and store information about likes, user location, messages and comments. the information will be stored for ninety days and will give facebook a chance to figure out whether you are so lame as to listen to duran duran or that you’re addicted to playing mafia wars. i assume that mark and the entire facebook team, true to their word, will honor facebook/user confidentiality. and not share them with advertisers except when absolutely necessary which is, like, all the time.
the application will come preloaded on some phones released by htc, att and others. so now you can have your phone dedicated to facebook. investors have responded somewhat positively with facebook shares trading at over $27 for the first time since march 14.
my dear friend marky z is a small businessman. he started his little financial empire out of his college dorm room, programming and brainstorming and dealing with the insufferable but undeniably handsome winklevoss twins cameron and tyler.*
yo, marky z, you’ve brought together a lot of people with facebook! and you’ve taken your company public so that we all can invest! uh, well, stock prices have dropped since the ipo at just under forty washingtons to yesterday’s $25 per share. talk about affordability!
marky z is going to be reporting roughly $2.3 billion of income from his stock options alone–you have to add in his wife priscilla’s income as a physician and–who knows?–maybe marky moonlights as a bartender. he does get a deduction for $500,000,000 that he gave to the silicon valley community foundation (and yes, i have the correct number of zeros). the top federal tax rate is 48% and the california state government takes out an extra 13.3%. he hasn’t filed his taxes yet this year, but analysts predict he’s going to owe more than $1,000,000,000 with a top tax rate of 48.3%.
really, should we tell marky z about the 1% arlynn presser surcharge on taxes?
and *tell the winklevoss twins that i’m happy to have dinner with them. just not at the same time. that would be too weird.
file this under depressing: facebook interns make $25,000 more than the average american worker which means you need to seriously rethink everything about the choices you’ve made.
business insider magazine cites salary information gleaned from glassdoor.com in making the claim that interns at the company make an average of $67,000 per year. that’s just about twenty five thousand dollars a year more than the $47,000 that the social security administration says the average american worker takes home.
interns generally are young, motivated college kids who know their way around software and computers. they are in such demand that companies like facebook, google, and microsoft pay them while they’re still in school and even encourage them to drop out of school altogether. product designers, research assistants and software engineers expect to make, on average, over a hundred thousand smackers.
in addition to the george washingtons, interns at facebook get “normal” employee benefits of an iphone, a laptop, access to their gym and three meals a day at the company’s cafeteria. this is not actually the facebook cafeteria. theirs is swanker.
so when you’re thinking the economy is tanking, when you’re wondering whether your master’s degree in art history is being underutilized if you’re working at target, when you think capitalism is a sorry excuse for an economic system, consider a job with mark zuckerberg. apply here today! http://www.glassdoor.com/Job/Facebook-Jobs-E40772.htm
how would i feel about being owned by mark zuckerberg? maybe . . . creepy? or maybe like . . . none too happy? this week, facebook users have had to consider this question
i don’t presume to know mark personally, but it strikes me that he wouldn’t be the sort of dude who could own a woman–or a man for that matter. just a little too geeky. p.s this is NOT a picture of me.
when i made a new year’s resolution in 2011 to meet all 325 of my facebook friends, i was frequently asked if i understood that facebook owns the copyright on all posts, pics, comments of all of its members. i always thought the original terms of use applied, namely that each member owns the copyright to the content of their profile but that facebook has a license to share that profile information with user’s friends.
but over the weekend, as some facebook users noted facebook’s announcement that it was amending and altering some of its privacy conditions.
this post has been showing up on a lot of timelines, a declaration that the user claims copyright to the profile’s content and that facebook can’t “own” the profile. this seems mainly to concern my american and european friends. copyright has become incredibly burdened by the freewheeling internet.
however, mark and facebook haven’t actually amended and altered its policy to change copyright claims. it would be silly to do so because copyright isn’t something that someone can appropriate like that. instead, facebook has declared it wants to change voting rights for its users. facebook has been forced to publicly announce it was never its intention to make any appropriation of copyright.
but the point remains that facebook and mark have been announcing policy changes so frequently that users can’t keep up. so i gotta ask–
in the meantime, i need to get the visual image of being mark’s sex slave out of my head!
mark zuckerberg is possibly satan. at least, some folks feel that way when they find out the terms and conditions on facebook have changed or that timeline is mandatory or that privacy settings have suddenly shifted so that your mother now sees all the pictures of you passed out on your friend’s couch with a case of empties on the coffee table in front of you.
it’s possible that mark is satan because he has defied the essential laws of nature. including the most basic economic law of supply and demand.
the dismal science of economics’ first principle is that if there is more demand (people want) for any asset (beer, gold, oil) the price of that asset will go up. if there is an increase in the supply (more more more) of any asset, the price will fall. but get out a six pack and look at this chart and you can figure out the implications without having to shell out tuition money to the university of chicago business school.
on may 18, facebook went public in one of the most anticipated initial public offering ever. this meant that you didn’t have to be a facebook employee or a real not just facebook friend of mark zuckerberg in order to make money on the one billion member online nation. the stock price on that first day was $38 and when mark zuckerberg wed priscilla chan that same week, it seemed as if everything he touched would turn to gold.
but that spring of his content was made inglorious by the summer’s discontent. facebook’s stock price plummeted to an astonishing record breaking low of $17.55 per share. facebook was washed up. couldn’t compete with other social networks in the mobile device market. had an eye popping 9% rate of profiles useless to advertisers. some early investors in facebook, including cofounder paul thiele, sold what stocks they could–suggesting to the marketplace a sort of no confidence vote in facebook.
this past wednesday was predicted to be a bloodletting: 852 million shares in facebook, nearly as many shares as the pre-existing 921 million shares, would be released for sale. past and present employees and early private investors were not allowed to sell these shares under legal trade restrictions that expired at midnight. the morning bell at the new york stock exchange was to be the death toll as the shares were added to the already bloated supply of facebook shares.
more facebook shares. lower price. law of nature.
instead, wednesday’s trading on the new york stock exchange in facebook shares was as bizarre as if mark zuckerberg had declared that gravity would not be enforced, that one should look westward for the sunrise and that thing where your older brother told you santa doesn’t exist?
better watch out, better not cry!
by the end of trading, the facebook shares were settling into a nice 12% INCREASE to a price of $22.22. this makes no sense whatsoever. unless . . . well, sure, the rational explanation is that there is a class of investors who decided they would wait, that they would hold back and forbear until the trade restrictions expired. smart investors.
and those folks who purchased on may 18 thinking they were in on the ground floor? suckas!
or perhaps there’s something larger at work. maybe mark has created something so magical and wonderful that it is beyond everything we have ever seen. maybe he’s not satan. and maybe his next trick . . .
or maybe he’s just an ordinary guy who came up with an idea in his harvard dorm room and turned it into a billion nation empire in less than a decade. i could have done it too, but i was using my dorm room for partying, sleeping and playing james taylor on my eight track.
i woke up thinking–i cannot leave her behind. miss x was crying when i left her.
“i feel like i made and lost a friend in the past couple hours!”
“no, you haven’t,” i said. “you made a friend on facebook and you still have a friend.”
she wasn’t convinced when i pulled out of the driveway. she sat on the porch bench, crying. i felt awful. i was tired, i was scared, i was driving so many hours. i had so many more to go.
miss x is the 331st facebook friend i have visited since my 2011 new year’s resolution. at that time, i had 325 facebook friends and i resolved to meet and spend time with each one during the course of the year. i mean, who are all these people in my little solar system of mark zuckerberg’s virtual universe?
but as the year progressed and in this year 2012, i have been meeting newer friends. miss x had seen a bit of news about me, had friendshipped me, and we’d been corresponding. she thought she was inviting me to louisville, kentucky to give me an opportunity to test out my fearlessness against agoraphobia. instead, we faced an interesting problem: she drinks. a lot. much more than i do. when i showed up at her doorstep at one thirty, vodka had been two glasses ahead of me.
we all find ways to quell the pain. whether it’s prescriptions, meth, alcohol, video games, hoarding or the carbo load of a dozen doughnuts in front of the television set, we do it. we have to. times are particularly tough right now. miss x lost her job fourteen months ago and has pretty much given up on getting another for the moment.
are you better off than you were four years ago? asked ronald reagan when debating then president jimmy carter. it’s a question every voter has to ask. in miss x’s case, the answer is decidedly no. she has unemployment benefits, but she would rather have a job. and her drinking–popov vodka mostly–has ramped up. jobs often give us purpose, which gets us out of bed and away from our poisons.
the breckenridge inn of louisville, kentucky had generously booked my room next to the “can’t sleep without the television on, argue at two a.m., have makeup sex at four” couple. i so got to appreciate the room decor.
was it a good idea to go back? to meet miss x again? but i was haunted by the crying galpal. and by something she had said.
“i started drinking because i thought i was too boring when i’d be with people, you know, at parties and such.”
i was thinking “that’s me”
i have often felt like a wallflower who can only manage with a glass of white wine. and then i can talk with people. and then another glass of white wine. and i can sit still through dinner parties. and another white wine. i can be funny or witty or amusing. one more white wine. and i’m smushy in my thinking and scattered in my speech. but i don’t notice by then because i have white wine saying “it’s all good.”
i messaged miss x at six a.m. total long shot. if she was up, i would return to her house. we’d go for a walk. i wanted this facebook friend visit to end well. she had drank and fallen asleep and had awakened early. i was packing up for the next facebook friend adventure.
i checked out, went to her house. and that’s when i really met my friend. the day before, i had met alcohol smothering my friend.
the facebook friend who opened the door, the three hundred and thirty first friend i have recorded about since i made that resolution, is bright and funny and witty and engaged in the world. she looks sort of like lana turner or maybe jennifer coolidge. she has a gift for seeing beauty and translating it into home decorating. she has an empathy with cats and although one of her own is dying, she has a sense of humor.
jennifer coolidge is the actress who played stifler’s mom in american pie. this is sort of what miss x looks like. she would be chill with being identified by name but she wants to protect her husband.
we walked and we shared a morning ritual. it is how i pray these days, having figured out that rosaries and om’s sometimes seem hollow for me. we exchanged lists of ten things we are grateful for. i was grateful for coffee that morning. she was grateful for her husband and mother who are both loving. we were able to exchange gratefuls for each other.
there are many days in which coffee has made my list.
we said goodbye. well, goodbye sounds more final than what it was. we hugged and kissed and i will see her again. and i’ll even take up the offer of the manager of the breckenridge inn for a free upgrade because of the couple next door. really, i should just remember that maybe the couple was celebrating and happy and . . . well, actually, i know they were pretty happy at four a.m. roughly thirty seconds apart from each other.
no secret–i love the white wine. we’re having a break up. i am using a drug that is weaning, subtle, strange. i am not a believer in twelve steps because i think we do all need something to get us through the day.
i strike north for bloomington. i thought i would be aiming for tennessee but my friend in cookeville has distractions. i drive. i meet my facebook friends. i ask for their friendship to be in person. mark zuckerberg introduces but there’s nothing better than right there, right now.
i’ve just booked tickets for a florida facebook visit. i will start with tallahassee and i will tour the florida state meeting facebook friends! but this past week i went back to bolingbrook, illinois in order to attend a meeting of the facebook lunch bunch.
this is not what we had for dessert but one of the things i’ll be doing in florida is learning to bake a cake. maybe i should send it to mark zuckerberg. he’s certainly having a rough time of it — facebook shares have dropped from their high of $38 to $19. that means he’s only a billionaire as opposed to being a gazillionaire. a cake would definitely cheer him up. but maybe it cheers him up to know he’s doing great things for people. . . like the lunch bunch!
when i started meeting my facebook friends, i wanted to just meet my friends out from behind the computer. when i am on facebook, i might give the appearance of having a very confident, together life because that’s the image my facebook profile picture gives. so does everybody else’s. really though? i’m in my pajamas, my hair is a rat’s nest, and i feel like a failure. maybe there’s a little bit of that in all of us.
the first time we met as a quartet of facebook friends, one of our members couldn’t leave the house. so we had lunch there. this time, that member picked a place a few blocks outside of the “safe” zone. it was a chili’s. it was nice to have lunch and have no worries of being judged, having to make an impression, having to act like–well–like we lived up to our facebook profile picture and our record at gemville or farmvill or mafia wars!
next time maybe you should join us! especially you, mark! i understand that some business pundits are calling on you to resign. it’s gotta be rough, and i say, just come to the chili’s and have lunch with us!
so lots of folks are frowning about facebook. the social media network built in mark zuckerberg’s harvard university dorm room in 2004 offered up its shares to the public in may. at the opening bell, it was trading at $38 per share and expectations were high. it was the most anticipated of ipo’s!
since then, share prices have plummeted to less than $20 as i write. board member and one of facebook’s biggest investors peter thiel sold off 80% of his shares today and that’s gotta hurt. thiel was an early angel to the company, with a $500,000 check. he’s going to end up with over a billion dollars. that is so much more of a return on investment than i netted when my ex husband and i sold the family home this summer. and i don’t see any articles on cnn.com about what a lousy investment the presser family made in real estate.
dustin moskovitz, one of facebook’s cofounders, is selling 7 million shares today, netting him about $9 million. that sounds like a defection, like a friendship issue. but it’s not. moskovitz still has 126 million shares, or about $2.4 billion in the company. so mark, don’ t hit the “defriend” button!
but let’s look at mark’s summer. and facebook’s summer.
mark and his girlfriend priscilla chan married a few days after the ipo in may. contrary to the storyline of “the social network” mark and priscilla were an item beginning even before facebook was started. he’ll always know she loves him for himself! and she graduated from medical school this year and is pursuing her own dream of being a pediatrician. what a happy couple! i have no idea where my “save the date” postcard and my invite went. but that engraved toaster i got you at bloomingdale’s is on its way!
so on a personal note, mark is having a great summer. and professionally? well, he’s young and he’s created something so amazing that he could walk away and everybody would still think he’s a genius.
but is he going to walk away? no. just because facebook (and the other social network systems) have been overvalued doesn’t mean there’s a fundamental problem. it just means that some people were a little overenthusiastic. a social network’s only asset is information about its users. the only thing facebook owns is information about you–your pictures, your posts, that status update–that it can sell to advertisers. there’s never been a company model quite like facebook, groupon, zynga, linkedin before. it’s to be expected some mistakes would happen in figuring out how to value information about its users.
but with mistakes comes opportunity. the price is dropping. some analysts think facebook is going to settle around $12 a share and that still leaves mark zuckerberg incredibly wealthy.
mark and priscilla have lived in this home for quite a while. it’s big, to be sure, but not quite what you would expect for a gazillionaire. and i respect that the two of them handed out candy at halloween on their own. they’re pretty regular, all things considered.
and here’s the great thing about the shares settling in the teens–it means that mark can look forward to regular type folks investing in facebook. including me!
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Facebook Winner 2012. Body: Dear Winner, Greetings from the Entire board of the Facebook Financial Services Promotion Scheme, on behalf of the Facebook Team, you have Just been awarded a Grant winner of US$750,000.00 from Facebook Financial Services Promotion Scheme. You have been chosen through your User-Name By the Board of trustees.Congratulations Once Again.
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okay, what do i do? what do i do? where do i spend my insane new money?????? suggestions solicited from YOU!!!
facebook has announced that 83 million–or nearly 9%–of its account holders are “illegitimate”. this figure includes duplicate profiles, profiles that are of pets or businesses, fakes and spambots. facebook’s only asset is information about its users which it can sell to advertisers. this admission of a ten percent “spoilage” is particularly bad at a time when facebook is shaping up to be the single worst i.p.o. of all time. on the first day of public trading, prices in facebook shares were set at $38 and now are under $20. in the next few weeks, insiders at facebook are allowed to sell some of their shares and, if they do, the share price will fall even further. and who’s hurting? the state of california had been planning on tax revenues of $1.4 to $1.9 billion dollars based on a $35 dollar per share average.
of course, my sweetheart mark zuckerberg is hurting too! he’s no longer one of the top ten tech billionaires in the world. instead, he has seen his fortune fall from $1.9 billion to a measly $1.2 billion! i still think if we ever meet, he should pick up the check!
when i made a resolution to visit, spend time with, get to know “face to face” my facebook friends, i discovered i had quite a few of these sorts of friends. for instance, the explorer william clark, born in 1770 and deceased since 1838, is the 59th friend i visited last year. okay, i am not really friends with him–i’m friends with lanny jones, who wrote his biography “william clark and the shaping of the west”. i’m also friends with a cat, several dogs, and several “people” whose only interest in our relationship is that they have received free hewlett packard printers or androids and russian mail order brides and i can too!
when i went to new york last year, i was hoping to meet inda loop, a rap musician with whom i was facebook friends. i didn’t know how i knew her except that our mutual facebook friend was richard “mop” furniss. i asked him —
arlynnpresser 