Don Marti

Sun 02 Sep 2012 08:15:42 AM PDT

alt.fan.facebook

Let's get the negatives out of the way first. Valdis Krebs suggests that Facebook is Toast essentially because it's a silo with a site-specific social graph, a new AOL.

Josh Constine for TechCrunch: Facebook’s New Retargeted Ads Performing “Very Well”, Adds Partners To Run Them. This sounds like good news, business-wise, but it's just creepy adtech as usual, which is a problem. (For background on this type of business, see A simple guide to how ad exchanges work by Josh Dreller.) Dalton Caldwell explains the Facebook ad situation in Hot Dogs and Caviar. Also, the restaurant is under intense financial pressure to get the machine working, and is valued by investors and employees in a way that assumes the hot dog-to-caviar machine already works. They have roughly 12 months to get the machine working or Bad Things will happen.

But Bad Things? Really? Now for the good news, from Henry Blodget: It's Becoming Clear That No One Actually Read Facebook's IPO Prospectus Or Mark Zuckerberg's Letter To Shareholders. Mark Zuckerberg set up the entire structure of the company so he wouldn't be forced to make dumb short-term decisions by whining public-market shareholders.

Mark Zuckerberg: Hey, can you give me some money, no strings attached, to sponsor my web site?

Investor: What's that you say? You're building a magickal hot dog machine that craps out exponentially increasing amounts of ad revenue? Sure, here's some money!

Facebook said they were building a hacker playground, so yay for them. Let's see what they come up with. At least they're helping to reform Frank Gehry.