Yes, but.....
What is she doing to generate Facebook revenue? It's all about advertizing. FB ultimately doesn't care how many blurry photos of drunken college partying she posts.
Yeah, I know, she's the product and not the customer.
I just wonder what else is out there with a few million users that would give her a bunch of friends to talk to. That's Google's problem with g+: nobody takes the first step to drag the rest of their group over there from FB. Instead the "kids" can tinker with their FB privacy settings to keep their drunken photos among themselves so that their parents don't have to [-]laugh[/-] see them.
Her university has a dedicated web page for students selling things to each other-- bicycles, dorm furniture, textbooks, and so forth. But it's the college's website, which means you have to log in. Instead all of the students use a huge FB group called "Seniors Selling Stuff". Within 48 hours her [-]dumpster diving[/-] shopping was finished.
But there will always be challengers.
I wonder if she and her friends are influenced by the advertising, making purchases all or partly as a result of what they see on FB?
The trick is finding the challengers. Maybe it'll take FB a decade to wither away, or some hugely stupid privacy policy mistake. Their game to lose.
I can't think of any FB advertising that influences her decisions-- the influence is her peer group. Her biggest uses seem to be support groups (homework, projects) and scheduling events. Movie reviews? Restaurant reviews? But they're all of the form of "I went to this place and it was good", not so much "FB told me about this and I like it". When she experiences something that she wants to share, she goes to FB and tells her friends... or finds the FB fan page and "likes" it. I'm not sure that her decisions are influenced by FB more than they were influenced by friends, and FB just happened to be the most convenient way to communicate.
I guess FB helps advertisers figure out what consumers want. You think they'd be better at it by now...
If FB runs ads, my Chrome Adblocker is apparently removing all of them. In fact the only ads I see on the Web are the link ads that somehow sneak into my first use of E-R.org for that day. And if they only generate revenue with a click, I make it a point not to click.
After sucking $18 B out in real money, I'd be willing to go down with the ship (mataphorically speaking, of course).
It's only $18B if he sells the shares!
He'll probably go down like most CEOs... he'll borrow against the shares, get addicted to using his brokerage account as a checkbook, and then get hammered by margin calls during a market meltdown.