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Hi Rob,

The below may be near sighted, but I think Facebook is a much bigger mountain to move than Yahoo.  As a disclaimer, I was too young when Yahoo was beaten by Google to have a nuanced understanding of why and how it happened.  

I think Facebook has actually done a great job with their mobile product, in providing bit-size content and a UX that lets people consume a lot of it very quickly. I saw statistic (cited below) that 47% of an average users time on smartphones is spent on Facebook.  Facebook seems more like a leader than a laggard in this space.  I know there is an argument that Facebook isn’t natively mobile, but its difficult to imagine Facebook shedding their large lead in mobile so quickly. 
Additionally, a new social network needs to be so much better than Facebook, because size is apart of Facebook’s its value proposition whereas Yahoo could be, and was beaten by a better algorithm and UX.  Objectively, Facebook has 800M members and that it has 1 in 4 pageviews in the US on the internet, which no other internet property can touch.  From my own standpoint, there is no other social network that comes close to having the same number of my “friends” as Facebook nor the same amount of  engagement and activity across that broad demographic of my network as Facebook.  In my next largest social network, Twitter, I only follow 90 people, and am now removing people when add new ones.  I have not adopted Google+ and when I do use it, its stealing time from Twitter and Quora and almost none from Facebook, because I have used Twitter/Quora/Google+ for my interest “graph” and Facebook for my social “graph.”

I think your point on network fragmentation is a great point, though, I don’t think Facebook needs to do all of those things, and I don’t feel that it is being picked apart as something like Craigslist.   
Regarding valuation, what value do you feel comfortable buying in at, because I don’t think either of us will be able to buy in the primary offering, and I think the sense is that it will shoot over $100B!
I like the new look of your blog by the way.Billy
Citation for 47% of smartphone time: https://twitter.com/#!/Bill_Gross/status/163785148469481472 Citation for 25% of internet page views: http://weblogs.hitwise.com/heather-dougherty/2010/11/facebookcom_generates_nearly_1_1.html

Good post Rob. While I am definitely skeptical about their potential talent exodus and essentially, Zuck’s ability to retain his talented employees, I had a couple of thoughts regarding your other topics:

Re: Network Fragmentation - Sure, Instagram is a better place to share photos and Pinterest is for curation. While Facebook will never have a photo effect for its uploaded photos or a social curation value that of Pinterest, the fragmentation of these different “niches” spur off of Facebook, itself. For the first time in web, there is a central and personalized place where all of your most interesting and engaging activities are shared and take place. Facebook *is* the center of the web. The social graph ecosystem that Zuck has been talking about since ’06 *is* going to be the web.Quietly, Facebook has been shaping into what will ultimately end up becoming your web. Notifications from web-apps pinging into your FB, the rise of the Open Graph applications. While Facebook’s user growth will slow down tremendously, its value will only rise exponentially as new niche sites like Pinterest, Instagram, Path feed into Facebook. ie. Mobile apps integrating with Facebook’s app.

Re: Not Natively Mobile - Facebook just recently started to allow other apps to integrate with its mobile app to display notifications from other apps. While it’s only in its beginning stages, give it a year, Facebook’s app will grow out its ecosystem and the ecosystem will end up feeding back into Facebook as integration with FB’s app will become a major source for user retention for 3rd party apps.My concern for FB is whether or not they will be able to capture the *revenue* from their crazy usage of the mobile apps (47% of usage – I read somewhere recently… whether or not it’s correct, doesn’t matter, its app is being used heavily) as they do on the web. *Mobile’s lack of real estate is what’s tough.* With the average mobile screen only able to show 2.5 “stories” compared to ~4 stories on computer screen, they won’t be able to monetize through the side ads like they have on web, and they will have to be very careful about placing ads into the Newsfeeds on mobile devices.

Re: Advertising Effectiveness - This has two parts. I definitely agree that running advertisements on Facebook sucks. However, I also believe people complain about the lack of advertising effectiveness on Facebook because – frankly – social media marketing is new. No one truly understands or knows what it’s best suited for from a marketer’s view. Personally, I think FB Pages are *the* place to educate and nurture potential customers into trusting your brand/business (which no other ad mediums can provide) who will end up customers and hopefully advocates for your business. But, in order for this to happen, there needs to be a method to TRULY be able to track ROI like you can today with SEO.Also, while I’m sure this is very far back in the product pipeline, Facebook Credits will end up playing a HUGE part in creating a revenue source that will be greater than ads. Facebook controls the Newsfeed – *the* most valuable digital real estate for marketers today. They can harness that and capture revenue similar to how Apple captures 30% of proceeds from iOS apps, if they can truly integrate FB Credits into the UX – and execute on it well. I would bet sometime this year, Facebook is going to make a big play on its Credits product (and not some half-baked product like Deals was).

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