I mean. Hell I’d love to have been working for Facebook and have some options, or whatever.  But that’s obviously something that never happened.

But I’m not buying Facebook today, and I’ll tell you why.

Somehow people think this is the next Google. Google started at an IPO of $85 and went up to start at $100 on the market, then climbed above $600 (and even higheR) and have been there since then. But is Facebook the next Google?

Now if you can get an early buy as a day trader I bet the price immediately skyrockets, but then it’s a game of how quick can you sell it… And then… I think the price drops. But I could be wrong. It could stay up for awhile. If you look at most of the hot IPO’s the stock prices now are lower than when they opened, even after an initial jump (Pandora, Groupon, Zynga, etc).

Now granted Facebook isn’t any of those. It’s more than all of them combined. I realize that, but are they Google/Apple/Microsoft level?

I mean what am I missing. They have a social network, which gets alot of eyeballs, but I think it’s SOFT eyeballs. Ew, not like that.

I have close to 300 friends on facebook, which is a fairly modest amount. Of those I’d say 20-30 post regularly at least every few days. A few more comment, and there are a bunch of “lurkers”, but… That’s soft.

See Apple makes computers, operating systems, phones, ipods…

Google has their search engine, and ads all over the internet, and analytics, and half a million other products like google documents, or the calendar, and mail…People USE their software, regularly. Plus Android.

Facebook… Is a social network. They have no hardware. They don’t sell ads outside their space. It’s a website.

Yes the ads are very targeted, but as we see from GM backing out, they don’t always work so well. People ignore them.

So it’s people using a website. THey could leave. They left Friendster and Myspace and AOL. Why isn’t everyone on AOL? AOL WAS IT. “You’ve Got Mail” was the ubiquitous voice of recieving email. They even made a damn romantic comedy starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan out of it.

And they’re dead now.

No, not Tom Hanks or Meg Ryan.

Or AOL.

But they’re not having a 100 Billion dollar IPO.

Facebook has eyeballs right now, but a “new big thing” comes along, and I think Facebook could very quickly lose those eyeballs. Like insanely fast. I think anyone who thinks that Facebook is going to be the king of Social spaces in 10 years hasn’t been watching the Internet the past 10 years. The past 20 years.

Could they remain huge?

Sure. And I”m sure people are betting on that.

But I think most of the investors right now want a quick buck on a hot new IPO.

I just remember when that IPO was Netscape.