Interesting how things change post-IPO

As an article in The Atlantic pointed out earlier this week, we spend twice as much time on Facebook as we do on Twitter, Google Plus, Tumblr, Pinterest, and LinkedIn combined.

The author, Alexis Madrigal, wrote,

"One in every five page views on the Internet is a Facebook page. If the Internet is valuable, Facebook is valuable.”

Mother of God.

Stay cool, Facebook: "But the bedlam of the past two weeks does matter in one important way: Facebook, more than most other companies, needs to worry deeply about its public perception. It needs to be seen as trustworthy and, above all, cool. Mismanaging an I.P.O. isn’t cool, neither is misleading shareholders."

Stay cool.

I think even Facebook is surprised at how unhappy the public market shareholders are.

This is really well said:

Facebook’s business strategy is essentially to colonize the rest of the Web. It wants your Facebook account to become a universal login to other Web sites. It wants news organizations to partner with it, so that your Facebook friends are notified of whatever you read. It wants transactions to go through Facebook, and it wants games played on Facebook. But each of these deals needs a partner, and the partner needs to feel good about Facebook.

[Read more.]

Cool isn't as important as trust.

The reputation of Facebookâs management team has also been deeply tarnished, particularly by the accusations that it wasnât entirely open to investors about declining growth in its advertising business.

Because Facebook has centralized an incredible amount of power with Zuckerberg, we need to trust him. Do we still? Yes, but not as much as we did two weeks ago.

[Read more.]