If you had invested in Facebook on its first day of trading, thinking the stock would take off like a rocket and make you rich (along with founder Mark Zuckerberg), well, I hope you didn’t throw your life savings into it. In just three days, you would have lost a quarter of your money. But what about Mark Zuckerberg, you may be thinking. You may have lost thousands but since last Friday he has lost billions. That leaves him only $15 billion ahead of what he had last Thursday. Poor Mark. I bet he would feel better if you “liked” him.

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It baffles me why this is surprising to anyone!
Facebook’s main source of revenue is advertisements cleverly sprinkled throughout the page. (The same is true for Google, but at least they have some other products)
But… do you know anyone who actually clicks on ads anymore? In fact, you can get a plugin for your browser that will automatically block ads, wherever they are. (it actually blocks the HTML of the ad from loading, making the page load faster!)
I think there’s a level of delusion in people who don’t think that ad-supported sites are a huge bubble.
Hi DB, thanks for visiting. I did in fact endorse AdBlock in an earlier post here: http://chcollins.com/100Billion/2012/05/plug-for-plug-in/
You are right — my shopping experience has nothing to do with ads that are fed to me. When I want to buy something, I look for what I want using Search. The only time that an ad caught my eye and made me look further into it was a TV ad for the Can-Am 3-Wheel Roadsters. They look like fun. Expensive fun.
Oh that’s right! I thought I remembered you blogging about AdBlock before.
I’ve been using it for a number of years, and it’s pretty much the greatest thing ever.
Can you imagine what would happen if browsers came with AdBlock enabled by default? Would that single-handedly take down Facebook and Google?
DB, somehow I doubt that Google Chrome will ever include AdBlock by default. Look at the uproar Dish Network created among its content providers when it announced a commercial-skip feature on a DVR.