Facebook IPO: The bad news

Hey, someone has to rain on the parade. Might as well be me since I’m from Seattle and all.

We’re starting to see some angles coming out of what was actually revealed in the S-1 documentation that paint a less rosy picture of the gigantically successful company’s future. Maybe a couple of storm clouds in those blue skies.

Facebook has a mobile problem going forward
The future of Facebook and the future of social in general is not really people sitting at computers, it’s mobile devices. It’s apps on mobile phones and tablets. And in this space, Facebook is not making money.  

From Facebook:

“Although the substantial majority of our mobile users also access and engage with Facebook on personal computers where we display advertising, our users could decide to increasingly access our products primarily through mobile devices. We do not currently directly generate any meaningful revenue from the use of Facebook mobile products, and our ability to do so successfully is unproven.”

For Facebook to advertise on an iPhone app or a tablet app, the ad needs to be small, so you can’t have many of them, and they need to be subtle enough not to anger the user.
So good luck with that, Facebook.