A month or so a go Facebook did its IPO and made a killing (big surprise). Many people became instant millionaires or billionaires, but for the most part everyone else got screwed. At the moment Facebook stock is trading at about ½ it’s initial price the day it went public. 

I thought long and hard about buying shares, or even 1 share. I’m sure many people had dreams of Apple or Microsoft and how cool it would have been to buy shares in the early days, but a couple things kept me from jumping into that pool. 

• As a user of Facebook, I don’t understand why they want me to pay to advertise my business page while my posts are never seen by all my followers. Shouldn’t all my followers see everything I post?  Isn’t that the reason you follow someone? I get that companies need to make money, but can’t they think of something else. Feels kind of like extortion to me. 
• The complete lack of attention to a mobile app blows my mind. People are racing to get smart phones, iPads, tablets, etc, but for some reason the Facebook app on my phone and iPad crashes constantly (when it’s not freezing or doing other unexpected things). With the amount of money and resources Facebook as, why don’t they have the best app on the planet? It seemed to me that any social media company that doesn’t want to devote (enough) resources to the mobile market either doesn’t care or just doesn’t get it. Maybe they all spent too much time writing code and never stick their head into the real world (where their users live). 
• Of course there’s the tired old stories about Facebook using people’s data and making weird policy changes without letting users know. I guess I’ve come to expect that by now. 
• We’ve seen other companies that were big and awesome, like Yahoo and MySpace. I suspect the next ‘big thing’ is sitting out there right now in some kids’ brain.

I was on the fence right up until trading started, and that’s when I read an article on the internet that Warren Buffet was an adviser to Facebook, but that he wasn’t buying any shares. I figure if he wasn’t jumping in, I wouldn’t either. Turns out he was right.