Joe Nocera, "Facebook’s Brilliant Disaster": Good Investors Are Patient, but Patient for What?

I agree that to be a good investor, one must be patient; however, there must also be medium and long-term goals.

In his latest New York Times op-ed entitled "Facebook’s Brilliant Disaster" (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/26/opinion/nocera-facebooks-brilliant-disaster.html), Joe Nocera observes that Facebook’s stock is now more than 17 percent below its $38 offering price. Nocera concludes:

"I could easily make a bullish case for Facebook — with its 900 million users, and its wise-beyond-his-years chief executive. I could just as easily make a bearish case: Maybe Facebook will never figure out mobile. Maybe its moment will pass before it ever becomes the kind of technology juggernaut that Microsoft once was, or Google is. But being either bullish or bearish requires making a judgment that is years away from being revealed. For bullish investors, it means holding the stock patiently, waiting for the judgment to pay off. That’s what good investors do.

Instead, virtually everyone who bought Facebook on that first day was making a one-day, get-rich-quick calculation. It didn’t work out. Too bad."

Sorry, but I'm confused. Now that Facebook's coffers are flooded with cash, what is the value proposition? Will Facebook now be better able to engage in data mining and improve targeted advertising among the hundreds of millions who have created Facebook pages?

First, I must admit to my prejudice: Although I have a Facebook page, I barely visit it and have only a handful of Facebook "friends." Perhaps this also reflects the fact that in my other, "real" life, I have only a handful of close friends, whom I trust and with whom I share intimacies. I have no interest in sharing what I do - which many would find boring, e.g., growing brocolli - with the rest of the world.

Sure, two of my three children are active Facebook users, but I wonder when the next fad will come along, and whether Facebook will lose its fizzle.

I believe that Facebook caters to narcissism, which is epidemic in today's world, but I question whether Facebook will be able to continue to corner this capricious market.

I agree with Nocera: Good investors hold their shares patiently, but in today's world there is no patience. Moreover, in the case of Facebook, toward what end should investors be holding their shares patiently? Until the last teenager in Mongolia has created a Facebook page? And what then? What abiding benefit will Facebook bring to the world?

Literally, I don't buy it.