不买Facebook股票的理由

    当然，Facebook自然是希望能够达到高的发展速度，但可能性微乎其微。我们可以看看一组数字。谷歌上市前的最后一个季度，即2004年第一季度，公司营收比去年同期上涨了161%，而盈利也上涨了109%。凭借强劲的盈利增长势头，投资者才会给出高估值。而且，公司也没有让投资者失望，三年后，即2007年第二季度，公司营收比2004年同期增长了590%，而盈利增长幅度更是惊人，达到了667%。

    现在再来看看Facebook。今年第一季度，Facebook的营收仅比去年同期增长了45%，而其盈利实际上下跌了12%。这样的数字很难让投资者相信，这是一家具有超强增长前景的公司。

    Facebook正以极快地速度走向成熟。随着越来越多的用户将手机作为主要上网途径，其主要平台电脑网站开始逐渐被手机平台所取代。Facebook的投资者必须坚信，公司可以在很短时间内实现手机平台的货币化。公司也认为，通过在用户的“个人新闻中心”中植入广告可以满足投资者的需求。虽然这种做法确实可行，但它能否成功带来足够的营收，证明Facebook高得离谱的估值确实合理？对此，我们无从判断。

    而且，手机广告能否达到广告商想要的效果，目前尚不清楚。毕竟，使用电脑登陆Facebook的用户很少点击网站上的广告。美联社（Associated Press ）与CNBC近期进行的一份调查显示，83%的Facebook用户“几乎从未”点击过Facebook网站上的广告。虽然，公司的路演视频演示了一些满意的公司，比如班杰瑞冰激凌（Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream）和迪阿吉奥公司（Diageo）。这些公司通过在Facebook上的广告实现了业务增长，但它们其实只是例外。本周，美国最大的广告商之一通用汽车公司（General Motors）宣布停止在Facebook上投放广告，称广告“效果太差”。其他大型公司可能很快也会做出相同的决定。在一家市盈率在100倍以上的公司身上，投资者绝对不希望看到这样的事情发生。

    当然，Facebook确实有相当大的价值，但还达不到1,040亿美元的水平，至少目前还不行。虽然公司确实掌握着全球数以千万计的用户个人信息，而且对于市场营销商和广告商而言，这确实是宝贵的资源。但问题在于，Facebook已经拥有9亿强大的用户基础，它的发展空间还能有多大？公司的用户基础肯定会继续扩大，但肯定不会再有以前那样的发展速度。

    实际上，在Facebook作为主流社交媒体平台的国家，用户的抛物线式增长似乎已经出现。Facebook可以在这些国家扩大其用户基础，但不可能像以前一样迅速。不是因为这些国家的竞争，而是因为还没有成为Facebook的人们处于某些原因决定不选择Facebook，其中主要是出于对隐私问题的担忧。

    在Facebook影响力较弱的国家，人们并不是没有听说过它，只是人们已经在使用其他的社交媒体平台。这些平台包括韩国的赛我网（Cyworld）、日本的明希网络（Mixi）、巴西和印度的Orkut（谷歌旗下的社交媒体网站） ，以及俄罗斯的vKontakte。此外，Facebook还没有进入中国市场，当然这并不稀奇，但如果它有能力打入中国，则可能面临人人网（Ren Ren）、新浪网（Sina）和腾讯网（Tencent）的围剿。而这些被Facebook的竞争对手所占据的市场同时也是巨大的新兴市场，这些国家经济发展迅速，而人们生活水平也在不断提高。

    从长期来看，Facebook要想取得成功，需要在创新上下大力气，要想真正实现、甚至是接近其估值，可能需要开拓新业务。当然，说起来容易，做起来难。以谷歌为例，在其核心的搜索业务之外，谷歌一直没有取得太显著的成就，而Facebook要想在facebook.com的基础上寻求突破也免不了步谷歌的后尘。华尔街已经为Facebook募得了数十亿美元，以让它大展拳脚——但愿Facebook能理智地支配这些钱。

    翻译/审计 阿龙/汪皓

    Facebook would love to grow that fast, but it probably won't even get close. Let's look at some numbers. In Google's final quarter as a public company, the first quarter of 2004, its revenues jumped 161% from the same period a year earlier, while its earnings jumped 109%. Given its strong earnings momentum investors rewarded the company with a high valuation. The company didn't disappoint and three years later in the second quarter of 2007 its revenues were up 590% from the same period in 2004, while earnings grew by an even more impressive 667%.

    Now let's look at Facebook. In the first quarter of this year its revenue grew by just 45% from the same period a year earlier while its earnings actually fell 12%. It's hard to justify to investors that you are a super hot growth company with numbers like that.

    Facebook appears to be maturing at a rapid rate. Its main platform, the desktop website, is losing eyeballs to its mobile platform as more and more people use their phones as the primary way to access the web. Investors in Facebook will need to have faith that the company can somehow monetize its mobile platform – and fast. The company thinks it will be able to do this by inserting ads in users "newsfeeds." While that's certainly possible, it is unknown as to whether such a move will successfully produce enough revenue to justify Facebook's lofty valuation.

    It's also unclear if mobile ads will produce results for advertisers. After all, users on its desktop version rarely click on Facebook ads. A recent poll conducted by the Associated Press and CNBC found that 83% of Facebook users "hardly ever" clicked on a Facebook ad. While the company's road show video highlighted happy businesses, like Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream and Diageo, which saw a boost in business by advertising through Facebook, they may actually be the exception. This week, General Motors (GM), one of the largest advertisers in the United States, reportedly has stopped paying for ads on Facebook, saying that they were "ineffective." Other major companies might soon follow. This is not what you want to see from a company that will soon trade at over 100 times earnings.

    To be sure, Facebook does have considerable value – just not $104 billion in value, at least not yet. It does have personal information on hundreds of millions of people from around the globe and that's truly valuable stuff for marketers and advertisers. But the question is can Facebook grow its already 900 million strong user base? It should, but it probably won't happen as fast as it did in the past.

    Indeed, it appears that the parabolic growth in users has already taken place in countries where it is the dominant social media platform. Facebook will be able to grow its user base in those countries, but not as fast as it did before. Not because there is competition in those countries, but because the people who are not on Facebook choose not to be on Facebook for some reason or another, mostly due to privacy concerns.

    In countries where Facebook does not have a strong presence, it's not because people haven't heard of it; rather, it's because they are already using another social media platform. Those platforms include Cyworld in Korea, Mixi in Japan, Orkut (owned by Google) in Brazil and India and vKontakte in Russia. Facebook isn't in China, which is not a surprise, but if it is ever able to get in, it would face competition from social media sites like Ren Ren, Sina and Tencent. The countries where Facebook isn't big due to a competitor are also the big emerging markets where the economy is growing rapidly and the population is becoming more affluent.

    To be successful in the long term, Facebook will need to get very creative and probably open new business lines if it wants to ever come close to living up to its valuation. That's easier said than done. Google hasn't really shown that much progress in growing outside of its core search product and Facebook will probably experience the same thing as it tries to grow beyond just facebook.com. Wall Street has now raised several billion dollars for Facebook to make a go at it – let's hope they spend it wisely.