Report: Many Americans Question Facebook's Lasting Power
Facebook has generated enough market excitement that experts said its public offering debut would easily attract total buys that would kick up the company's value at around $100 billion.
But is it possible for the social networking site to actually last longer than its predecessors?
Most residents of the United States, where the billion-dollar company is based, do not think so as shown by the data collected by GfK Roper Public Affairs and Corporate Communications for The Associated Press (AP) and CNBC.
Of the more than a thousand respondents in the survey, which AP said was conducted from May 3 through 7 this year, more than 50 percent believed that Facebook will eventually fade away soon enough and follow the way of My Space, Multiply and Friendster - social media sites that attracted millions too prior to the 2004 founding of Facebook by Mark Zuckerberg and his Harvard buddies.
Since Facebook's entry's into the competitive tech world, it has earned billions and made into billionaires the young creators behind the hugely popular Web site and crashing into Wall Street could potentially fatten more their holdings and give ordinary investors the chance to bite into the pie revenues.
The question begs though if buying a Facebook share that could cost as much $US35 per issue would be worth the trouble.
Thirty per cent of those polled have expressed belief that the firm's asking price was fair enough, the joint AP-CNBC survey said, but another 50 per cent holds the impression that Facebook has set the price level too high for a market newbie.
About six of 10 also asserted that the company run by Mr Zuckerberg carries a generally bloated value, indicating that would-be investors could be courting disastrous losses by putting their money behind Facebook.
Mr Zuckerberg, by the way, appears to enjoy the confidence of the survey participants belonging to his age bracket that ranges from 28 to 35, which means a great majority of them were sold to Facebook's current corporate set-up of being ran by a relatively young executive, who opted to skip getting a degree at Harvard to devote his full energy on the company.
So far, the Zuckerberg magic has worked and under his watch, Facebook has graduated from being a start-up to one of the tech titans that normally clocks billions in revenues, with its Q1 results for the current year already breaching the $1 billion.
Not bad indeed for a three-month run and coming from a man whose uniformed hoodie on recent market roadshows earned criticism from the suit-wearing population of Wall Street.
For them, Mr Zuckerberg was deliberately downsizing the image of respect that the market has been used to but for about 66 per cent of those asked by GfK researchers, the young CEO is fit enough to take charge of running Facebook's public foray, just one of the tasks that he's been doing in the past eight years.
Consequently, among Mr Zuckerberg's age contemporaries, about 50 perc ent of them think that investing in Facebook would be a wise move, which AP said was concurred by 55 per cent of middle-age respondents.
Almost expectedly, senior Americans do not extend overwhelmingly nod on Facebook or the man behind its operations, with about 46 per cent entertaining doubts if the Internet company could actually stretch further its existence like what Apple, Google and Microsoft did in the past.
The challenge for Mr Zuckerberg for now is to prompt for more people to 'Like' him and his company as Facebook takes on its new mission of piling up more success, this time by courting the cooperation of those willing enough to put their money on the firm.