Why the world needs the cloud -or- Hoarders: Data Edition

The cloud will / should play has a crucial role in the long-term viability of the internet.  Big data has made the crunching of huge amounts of data open source by some.

Cloud is necessary because duplicate data on multiple systems will require an exponential amount of storage.

Data hoarding is something that others have written about: see video

Data hoarding today (pictures, documents, videos, and a record of everything) It has increased the demand for local storage and with lots of competition in the hard drive and storage market, storage has been commoditized.  Data's cyclical pricing as technology is improved and storage becomes cheaper.

There have been times when storage would go from $1000 to $200 in a year.  It will continue to drop in price.  Amazon Glacier has taken storage to a new low at the cost of a penny per gigabyte per month.  

Facebook Stock Prediction: Outsmart the Market

The Pump/Hold/Buyback

Facebook waits to go public.

Early investors make their money by selling stock at the opening IPO price of $40.

Quickly, anyone who purchased at the opening price loses a significant percentage of the stocks value as the media reacts to information on Facebooks relatively low annual profits and projections.  None of this information is new.  But the buzz of the IPO and the strong desire to get in on a potential boom leads investors to ignore the fact that facebook profits are 1/100th of the valuation.

The first date where employee stocks are able to be sold creates an influx in available shares, driving the price down.  Stock hovers around $20 / share.

Peter Thiel dumps his stock, still makes a boat load of money, but doesn't get as much as he could have if he sold his shares at the opening IPO price.  As the first Facebook investor, rumors and speculation that he knows something we don't know further hurts the stock price.  Stock drops slightly.  Thiel remains on facebooks board.  What could he know that we don't?  He shouldn't know anything the public does not know, but that is impossible.

The second date where employees can unload stock comes and shares drop even further.  I predict a low of between $10 and $15 / share.

What is facebook doing?  Monetizing mobile, being more agressive with ads, harvesting more user data, and further targeting.  All equaling higher revenues.  What does facebook need to increase stock price significantly?  Projections of 200% annual profit growth.

Zuckerberg has outsmarted the system by capitalizing on buzz to sell shares at a high price.  Then he waits for them to drop, going as far as referring to it as disappointing.  The public must know about financials and company management, it does not have to know about R&D and upcoming product development (look to Apple as an example of extreme secrecy from a public company).   

New product developments and acquisitions increase revenues.

Zuckerberg and insiders buy back significant shares of stock to "Show Faith" in the future of the company.  What they really did was buy back their company for significantly less while still getting a massive payday.

Because Zuckerberg has majority control and has decision making power that trumps the board, he is able to convert his public company back to private.  His early investors got their exit.  Loyal employees got their reward for low pay and long nights.

Facebook is once again able to focus on making a great platform that people will use without the restrictions of shareholders.  Profits can become secondary again and Facebook has enough cash to run the company on zero profit for many years.

Wallstreet weeps, Nerds rejoice, Zuckerberg outsmarts the market.