Facebook’s Future: Will it be successful for the social network?

Facebook filed their S-1 document at the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday, February 02. The move to go public in the summers will certainly lure much wanted cash to the California-based company. Analysts have estimated the net worth of the company in 2012 to be in tune of around $80 to $90 Billion, up from estimate current worth of $55 to $75 Billion. The real dollar valuation of the company is expected near the IPO, which is expected somewhere in May or June.

However, Facebook has other plans in the pipeline, to take the company from a mere social network to a tech giant like Google and Microsoft. These plans include updates on the website, a smartphone and its dedicated operating system.

These steps although show offer future prospects for the company but they are also quite bold in nature. Recently, Facebook had been nudged by the Federal Trade Commission for the security faux pas in the privacy settings and the sharing of user data by third-party applications. However, the company managed to sneak out of the situation undamaged, without a bunch of warnings from FTC in case of any future mishandlings and bugs.

Facebook’s recent step of going public is also not without any risks and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has knowledge of it and if he did not, the recent example of Zynga, an online gaming portal and applications developers, has set the precedence for this year’s IPOs of technology companies. Zynga’s IPO did not go well as predicted and expected by the company. Even to date, the company’s stock performance is moving at a snail’s pace.

Moreover, word on the street is that Facebook is planning to launch its own smartphone later this year, or at beginning of 2013. The company’s strategy tows the same line as Amazon, which unleashed its $200 tablet last year. The Facebook smartphone will allegedly be Android-powered but it will be massively tweaked to likings of the social network.

This might bring innovative product to FB’s portfolio and might also please investors with solid commodity for sale but the market is already saturated with smartphones from Apple’s iPhones to Samsung’s Galaxy line-up to HTC’s Windows Phone and Android phones. The company will certainly face fiercest competition in the market.

However, these strategies will undoubtedly showcase Facebook’s potential to compete in consumer market and if successful, it can become the Google of this decade.

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Posted by Usman Khalid on Feb 3 2012. Filed under Business, Sci-Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.