Do you think that a social media bubble could be starting?

[Gooner dinho]

Ever since Facebook purchased Instagram, a company with no real tangible assets, for $1 Billion, I have been thinking that an overspeculation of social media platforms & websites is occuring. I feel like with that business deal, Facebook pretty much is saying "Hey, invent a new social media platform that has x amount of users and we'll purchase it!"...I mean, is that how the dot com bubble started? A mass overspeculation of an industry that burst because it yielded nothing but advertisements?

[squarerake669]

I agree with you.

[Alex]

Oh yeah, there's way to much hype. Ads does not mean a company can mean it is worth $1 billion dollars.

[John W]

The Facebook forays into various forms of messaging such as the instagram service and email is to try and secure Facebook as the default environment for users, they are paying for the billboard space on your screen. This is the same concept that rewarded Microsoft by securing the desktops of every PC built, it's what Microsoft was afraid that the browser would co-opt so there is a very large battle taking place. Facebook is hoping that future applications would be wrapped as facebook apps. I think they have serious challenges such as how to break into the work environment but as the iPhone versus Blackberry battle demonstrated, consumer desires can eventually overwhelm corporate resistance. The efforts are far more focused now then they were in the dot com era and I think it's pre-mature to discount them as bubbles. During the dot com, they didn't know what they were fighting for, now they have the battlefield mapped out.

[curtisports2]

Possibly. As more and more people become aware of what can happen to their personal data that they freely give out, without thinking, on Facebook, and that Facebook essentially owns that data and can do anything they want with it (and that the government has the ability to take it if they want it), you'll see people fleeing Facebook in droves.