skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I believe Facebook has at least 6 business models in operation today, including:

* ads in margin

* special paid for groups

* sponsored likes

(these are discussed in Kirkpatricks book of Facebook - and here: http://www.quora.com/Facebook-1/What-is-the-revenue-distribu...)

Additionally, Facebook has just launched Facebook Credits. Zynga (revenues $600M+) is their launch partner. Facebook gets 30% of their spend.

I do not think they are struggling to monetize.
While I understand the frustration that gave birth to this rant, I would like to note that all this has nothing to do with squid per-se.

First of all, squid has nothing to do with ssh, irc or smtp - that's one's firewall, not the proxy.

As for the web traffic, which squid does work with - yeah, though luck. But you'll have that with any proxy, not only with squid.

Furthermore, in a larger corporate environment, you DO want to monitor your employees, which is one of the primary reasons they enforce proxies.

At work, you shouldn't be checking your personal mail. You shouldn't SSH to your home machine, you shouldn't use public IRC, and so on and so forth.

Chances are, the company has an SMTP server, and you can send relevant mail through that. For talking with co-workers, private IRC or jabber can be set up on the company's internal network.

All in all: yes, you will be limited in a corporate environment, and that is for a reason. It has hardly anything to do with squid, though.
The Laws Underlying The Physics of Everyday Life Are Completely Understood
What a careless advice, your are just telling him: just play lottery! With all due respect to YC, getting into YC is not easy.
Could you offer a translation? I'm curious how it relates, going the other direction.
Haven't got a dime from me, and they don't have an idea on how to.
Last I checked one of the most profitable "internet" businesses (Groupon) in the last decade is in, and founded in, Chicago.
My best guess is that they are waiting to book an entire year of platform revenues - which will give investors a better idea of what their business model actually is.

This time next year they will have 12months of ads + platform revenue to show off. Their business model hasn't been complete up until now.

That is why they opened and sanctioned the secondary market, because of employee pressure and because they had to buy time before going public.

Besides companies prefer to remain private, esp because of the amount of overhead being public adds (esp after Sarbanes Oxley). The role of CEO completely changes when you are a public company.

If anything the reluctance to go public is a good thing, since it means that Facebook are thinking it through and establishing themselves - not making a dash for cash.

Google was also very reluctant to go public, but the SEC and their own employees forced the issue.

This is going to be one hell of an IPO.
I agree that this valuation is absurd and that Facebook will never really be worth this much. I also really like the 37signals guys and a lot of their opinions.

HOWEVER, one thing that has been bugging me is the thought, espoused by 37signals, that not generating a large profit as a business is a bad thing. We're forgetting that these businesses that don't make huge profits are still employing large amounts of people, creating new jobs every day, and giving back to the community in many ways. Facebook has over 1000 employees. Granted they may not be making 33bil in profits (or even revenue), but that's pretty cool that they were able to create 1000 new jobs that didn't exist before, while also improving the lives of many people who use the service--eg, helping people keep in touch with friends and loved ones, helping people find old friends, etc. If they break even for the rest of the existence of the business, they're still doing pretty damn well IMO.
Ask HN: Are startups/companies open to hiring outside US?
I am following a question on quora http://www.quora.com/Startup-Recruiting/Are-startups-companies-open-to-hiring-outside-US-How-do-I-do-it
Would like to hear from fellow HN members if any one tried the visa route by directly applying and getting a role or aware of any companies/startups willing to hire people outside US?
What if there's not faucet to open?
Value is determined by what someone- anyone- will pay for something. And it makes sense if you think about it. The goal is to find out how much you can sell that something for and it is the exact same problem as figuring out how much someone will pay for that something.

Company valuations are messier than tulip bulb valuations though. With tulip bulb valuations you are saying that since someone will pay x the bulb is valued at x. With company valuations you are saying that since someone will buy 1/n of the company for x then the company is worth n*x. This makes sense because people really want a piece of facebook and valuations do a great job of setting that price. But the price is also used to determine how much the entire company will go for, which is how the number is often thought of.

As long as the valuation goes up and you have the opportunity to sell for a net gain then it is a good investment. DHH's thoughts here are important beacause they call attention to a valuation bubble. I think the main controversy lies in his creative use of words.
I didn't ever see the point, I already have most of my movies I really want bought on iTunes and then backed up, and you can re-download them for free anyways. I don't like discs because they eventually just get scratched or lost.
I always figured they'd go and do a payment system because in facebook the 'graph' of your friends validates you to the point that doing business with someone becomes a lot less risky than on paypal, but for some reason they seem to be holding back on that.

Maybe the zynga deal is a prelude to that.

It would make good sense to do that, facebook is the closest we've got to a verified ID on the net. The issues to contend with would then of course be hacked accounts and such but that's not different from other payment systems.
It strikes me as a bad plan to depend on 400% growth that's sustainable over a decade. You're right, people are horrible at taking growth variables into account. They usually overestimate them.

Facebook may well achieve the numbers outlined above. But let's not kid ourselves. People were doing the same back of the envelope calculations for MySpace when it first started to get big. I see nothing wrong with a judicious use of common sense and caution in this case.
Oh that made it so much more clearer :)
>This strikes me as classism

Sorry. What I mean to say is that the kids who are in the existing private schools have some sort of a support structure that has obtained the money for them to go to a private school, and it is that support structure more than the school that increases their academic output.

If I had that money to spend I would put it towards programs like Trio which don't throw money at schools, but instead put money into support structures like tutoring, counseling, and outright paying students money if they excel.

Putting kids in private schools is a somewhat blunt instrument to create network effects.
8 Most Common SEO Myths | Joanna Ciolek
So I'm paying to fix a bug in their software that I've already paid for?

Call me crazy, but if I have the option of cracking open the stack and having a go at fixing the bug myself I'll do it. At least that way I'm not dependent on anyone else for the fix...
It should be immediately obvious that they're comparing intrinsic value vs market valuation, so no, it's not tautological at all.

Everyone who invests should know that market value does not necessarily predict intrinsic value, and it becomes more problematic when there's illiquidity, and when only a small fraction of the company is being bought and sold. These are basics, going back to Ben Graham's famous book on value investing, and probably much further back than that.

Even if liquidity and size didn't matter, it's still a basic error to go by last share traded and claim that that represents the actual value of the company.
They don't even need to stream. I would be perfectly happy to download the classes.
The Chicago dig seems really, really unnecessary.
Too awesome. As a linux user, I feel ashamed that I never tried to use forward slashes in Windows.

I really like that split thing. I'll have to do some more research into it. Figuring out how to do that and assign each split to its own variable and all...

Thanks a ton!
Colorado officials say it's too expensive to password-protect business data
Also, Sharepost currently has 3 positions for sale at valuations between 33 and 44 billion. The total outstanding shares for sale represent 0.001% at 44B.

That's pretty close to the 0.000000001% that put our $100B valuation on paper: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1941-press-release-37signals-...

But hey, you better snatch these shares up quickly. It's rare that you get a chance to a clear shot at a company where "profit is almost certainly growing at a rate that will make their valuation reasonable". How much can I get you down for, Joel?
As mentioned in the comments on youtube, the cntl-alt-del button seems like a strange addition.

You'd think they would have been able to manage to add a reboot into the power key, something like hold the power to the left for 4 seconds or something like that. A dedicated key for reboot isn't very confidence inspiring.
"Colorado officials say putting password protection on corporate data -- where only a business owner or representative can make changes -- is prohibitively expensive. Instead, the state has opted to use e-mail notification any time information is changed to a business' records."
Also, "Dozens of businesses in Colorado, and probably thousands more nationally, are victims of a new and frighteningly easy breed of identity theft in which corporate information is hijacked and millions of dollars in phony credit purchases are made."
I've been to MiniBar a couple times, havent been since I moved out of London. There was definitely a lot of boozing - but there was also a great vibe and some great ideas.
Things are changing very fast in this industry. So even 10 years and 2 billion users are optimistic numbers. And if you take 2 billion users, most of these users are from very poor countries, it is extremely hard to monetize these users (almost orders of magnitudes harder than users from rich countries.). That said, I don't think that Facebook is overvalued by orders of magnitudes, and the 37signals article did not make much sense to me.
Shouldn't the first rule of writing good software be "nothing is a black box"?

At some point something in that box is not going to work how you expect it to, regardless of who makes it.
Both of them have some insights worth pondering, but the attacks are kinda negatively overshadowing the discussion. Joel really shouldn't have started the Chicago hyperbole.

Do they have some history or it's just impulsive?
runtime maybe.
With respect to traditional brick-and-mortar businesses the skills required to successfully build, grow, and manage a small business are different from those required do the same for a big corporation.

That is, successfully running a neighborhood cheese shop requires different skills - and attention to different metrics - than successfully running GE.

One is not 'better' or 'worse' than the other. They are simply different.

37signals is a small business. This is not a knock against them.

The knock against them is that they readily forget (ignore?) this when they point fingers at other, large corporations for operating differently from them.
Thanks a ton for the help guys! I have officially written my first Python code to save me a day of typing and I can't thank you enough. Not only have you saved my fingers, you have helped to spark the proverbial fire under my butt with regards to learning Python. I've been removed from programming for so long that I forgot how neat it was to write something and watch it go.

Here is the final script for anyone who cares. Can it be optimized?

in_file = open('c:/WVASA/original.txt', 'r')
out_file = open('c:/WVASA/output.txt', 'w')

for line in in_file.readlines():
county = line[:11].rstrip()
email = line[12:42].rstrip()
name = line[43:72].rstrip()
street = line[73:98].rstrip()
city = line[99:117].rstrip()
zipcode = line[118:].rstrip()

out_file.write(' <tr>bgcolor="#006699">\n')
out_file.write(' <td>' + county + '</td>\n')
out_file.write(' <td>' + name + '</td>\n')
out_file.write(' <td>' + street + '</td>\n')
out_file.write(' <td>' + city + '</td>\n')
out_file.write(' <td>' + zipcode + '</td>\n')
out_file.write(' <td><a href="mailto:' + email + '">' + email + '</a></td>\n')
out_file.write(' </tr>\n')

in_file.close()
out_file.close()
I know you were being facetious, but agricultural derivatives are totally different from equities. But we do also have a stock exchange and options exchange in Chicago, you know.

Anyway, the primary reason that your point 3 is true is because of basic supply and demand. It is harder to buy all the shares than to buy a few. When it's perceived there's a very small number of shares available--I don't know if this is true, but it does seem like investors are clamoring to invest in Facebook--share price will be higher than if that were not the case. In particular, perceived scarcity can share prices artificially high. The idea of getting a slice of the pie before someone else does was a big factor in the dot-com bubble, for instance.
I am one of the guys running it. If somebody volunteers to record, we'd love that; we've been spending all of our bandwidth on curriculum / getting good speakers.
The Genius and Tragedy of Patrick McKenzie (patio11)
While some of his complaints are valid (for example the bar London Minibar uses has terrible acoustics), there's a lot of value to be gained.

A lot of it is about serendipity, you don't go out looking for solutions, but when you're there solutions have a way of finding you.

I think if you go there thinking "I want xyz" you might not get a lot out of it. The author of the article says "do we really want to hear other startup’s pitches?"

I'm always happy to hear other startup's pitches, indeed on a few occasions I've met up with other HNers just to hear their pitches. I enjoy learning about problems others are tackling and providing feedback where I can, and hearing other people pitch helps me understand the weaknesses in my own pitches.

If you go in with the attitude that you don't care about what anyone else is doing then you're not going to make many friends. Networking isn't about how many hands you shake, it's about making deeper mutually beneficial connections, and to do that you have to have an interest in other people. Without that it's not going to work.
That is sharespost's estimate of Facebook's worth, not what Facebook is actually worth. Hopefully if this thread was a little less heated, at the basics this is a discussion on estimating the present worth of Facebook.

A decent estimate would include the expected future worth, whether it is based on expert analysis or a market's expectations. I don't think any estimate here could be categorized as what "it will be worth in the future".
This is a fantastic idea!

I hope they are able to put the classes online after the sessions.
A commenter there (Maldoror) exposes the lack of credibility of this article:

"On the one hand you say: 'The Laws Underlying The Physics of Everyday Life Are Completely Understood' and then you qualify this with 'We certainly don’t have anything close to a complete understanding of how the basic laws actually play out in the real world.'"
Realistically, you'd also have to track the allocation, and deallocation, of the range the file is being mmap(2)d into.

sendfile(2) (it appears, I don't really spend time in the Linux kernel) piggybacks on the kernel's pipe code; it allocates some non-contiguous buffer pages in kernel space, but it doesn't map any new pages, and it doesn't allocate enough pages for the entire file.

It's also been around (and presumably making things faster) for over ten years. That's a long time to let a hypothetical future "best" triumph over an achievable "okay".
Sounds like fun. Signed up. See all you New Yorkers there.
Facebook also knows what websites you go to now. They have all of the log data from serving almost ubiquitous like buttons & "popular on facebook" components now.
Iphone application
GreenFin.Ae is a web design firm in SIngapore which offers high-end website design , iphone application and 3D presentations , all provided by professional web designer
It's interesting sometimes, how the book seems to change after another reading. But it's probably you that's changed.
Which means that if Facebook's valuation rises over the next decade there will be an even bigger gap between their user base * revenue per user than there is today. Either that or their valuation will have to remain flat for the next decade.

Does anybody else see a problem in that?

A company's valuation can certainly take into account growth potential, but when it assumes massive growth and leaves no margin bad things happen. Risk is much higher since any faltering of the company would need to be adjusted for in stock price almost instantly. If a normal company sees slower than expected growth the stock may fall a little. If an overenthusiatically future valued company sees slower than expected growth the stock may tumble by huge margins (because it's tied to the company's size 10 years from now, not today). Worse yet, if there's no margin remaining in stock price it'll be forced to remain stagnant for a very long time. This is bad for investors and bad for the company (because the use of stock as employee compensation is less potent).
'(corpii?)'

corpores, if you must.
It'd be great to have them as downloads ..
We're hiring team members in Panama.
The present valuation isn't as important as intrinsic value if you're talking about the long term. Of course the valuation is a multiple of its trading price. With that definition, its worth whatever people are trading shares think its worth. But that's only 3% of the shares.

But what I think the 37signals post is addressing is how directly tied this valuation is (or isn't) to the company's intrinsic value. price-to-earnings, a guess at its margins, durable competitive advantage etc etc. In that sense, is facebook truely worth $33B? That's a different question than what's its current valuation. Its subjective, to be sure, but its still fundamentally different.

Its a private company. I doubt many outside the company know its financials. Information scarcity leads to pricing inefficiency. For all we know, speculators might be driving up the price to cash out sooner.

Another point I mentioned before: Everyone is incentivised to see the valuations go higher. The VC's, employees with shares, the founding team, etc. They can cherry pick talent from the competition with such valuations. Since I don't think you can short SecondMarket stock, there's no way to bring negative information into the market to keep prices rational.

To your last point, facebook has certainly figured out how to make money off its current users. But it has radically changed the underlying user-conventions to get there. It started out as a college-yearbook and photo storing site with no profit-motive. In order to become profitable, its iterated on that simple concept with such a pace that the majority of users have yet to catch on with how things have changed beyond photosharing and posting on friends walls. The majority of people have no idea what is being tracked. For them to squeeze out further revenue, it follows that more fundamental changes must take place to get there.

Whats one thing that could absolutely destroy facebook? Overnight? If they started making public which users were viewing which profiles, and with what frequency. That could kill it pretty easily, I think. Of course, they would never do it, but I think if a terrible scandal or crime occurs, involving sensitive user data, and people are compromised in such a manner, that would be a problem for facebook.A billion dollar company shouldn't be so easy to kill.
This is the future!!! I remember when I saw this website a year ago, and it seemed then that the majority of items would be purchased for only the price of the material used (could be mistaken about that). I can understand talented people who want to make a buck going away from that "business model".

But imagine if even a little of the "open source" culture rubs onto this community, prices could fall incredibly low for super interesting products. I can really see this taking off.
It could well be that "only" $200M in profits is the result of spending $$$ on R&D and product development (FB Questions, FB Places, FB Credits), which could lead to a massive amount of cash flowing in shortly.

They've massively invested in infrastructure, which has certainly lowered profits. They could very well start benefiting from this as soon as next year.

Without information, though, it's all speculation.
Psychological experiment referenced in article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pit_of_despair
Argue about it all you want, but I will never accept a company's valuation based on second market stock. Only when the stock is publicly trade-able and market forces determine the price to be paid will I accept a valuation.

And a valuation at, what, 33x revs (on a good day)? I'm sorry, but gambling that hard on a web company on the basis of "potential" profits is not good business (I don't know whether it's a Silicon Valley thing or not), if you know, they can be bothered to monetise it before the next website du jour comes along.

YouTube was "valued" at $1.6bn, and has really struggled to make money. I'm not denying that it wont pay off for Google in the long run, but when Facebook floats, you think that investors will stick around if they struggle to monetise and fail to bring profits and revenues to a 1/5 or a 1/10 of valuation in 4/5 years?
Hey I didn't say it's a good option, just that it's an option :) The whole "paying someone to fix their bug" always boggled my mind. But it's the reality of MS and the reality of many of their customers. It works for them, so more power to them. I guess.
I think this is a great idea, and you've done a great job of explaining it on the website.

I also like the way you are getting people to sign-up and seed businesses with the simple 'we'll give you a sample'.

Really great, loved the video as well.

The only thing I think I don't like is the home page. It's dark, and your logo could use some work.

Well done, and congrats.
Investors don't usually have to pass around their resumes like a typical job applicant.
Physics demos from NVIDIA GTC keynote
I think their CPM is in the $30-$40 range, but the key missing piece of information is how many views they get per user. I know my Facebook use has gone from multiple views per day (20, 40?) to 1 page every other day. Still lets say each user looks at Facebook twicer per day, each user is about 1/2 a CPM per year, or $20 revenue per year.

But CPC, well I've never clicked on an ad on Facebook in my entire life.
Honestly, you have to be blind not to see the business model and assets that they are building.

Go to http://www.facebook.com/ads and take a look.

You can target ads at "all doctors under 30 in the chicago area that went to a ivy league school". This type of targeting can lead to huge CPMs.

One example of where they could go: they are one cookie away from a significant branding ad platform.

Another idea: advertise on keywords in activity streams. Tie this to the branding ad network above.

Update: Not clear why this is getting downvoted. These are two huge opportunities for Facebook that could easily justify big multiples. And people said the same thing about Google (no serious business model) before it went public.
Depends on the context. For a VC who has built a style around misspelling and weirdly styled blog posts, those rules don't apply. We don't do spell check or grammar check on rap lyrics because those rules don't apply.
Predicting The Future By Alan C. Kay