Comments on: Why Facebook Needs Money: Data Centers

By: Unknown

Unknown — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 22:33:48 +0000

Server infrastructure is approximately $1 million per megawatt. Most large-scale users replace servers every 2-3 years.

By: Deft Labs » Blog Archive » Social Platform Proximity: Follow-up

Deft Labs » Blog Archive » Social Platform Proximity: Follow-up — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 14:54:46 +0000

[...] looks like Facebook is expanding to the East Coast. GigaOM posted an entry about Facebook securing 10,000 square feet of data center space in Virginia. If your performance requirements are critical you may still want to consider the move [...]

By: TechCrunch en français » [fr] Rumeur du jour: FaceGoog ou MsnBook? Annonce imminente

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 13:52:57 +0000

[...] va avoir des besoins de financements très importants à courts. Comme le précise Om Malik le traffic exponentiel constaté sur le site créé des besoin importants en infrastructure [...]

By: Dhiren

Dhiren — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 13:08:08 +0000

Hey Om, Well I left a comment here as to my little suggestions to improve user experience on gigaOM.com. One of the points was to remove moderation on comments and then days later I saw no moderation on comments(the message that your comment will be evaluated before posting), so I thought that maybe my comment got noticed.

By: Tiny Planet » Links o' the day

Tiny Planet » Links o' the day — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 12:27:41 +0000

[...] Why Facebook needs money: data centres. The snowballing social networing site has taken out a lease on a 10,000sq ft facility to house data servers. [...]

By: Om Malik

Om Malik — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 05:37:01 +0000

fPhone…. now that’s hot ;-)

By: Om Malik

Om Malik — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 05:36:48 +0000

Dhiren I don’t understand what you are tlaking about? Can you elaborate so I can answer your question properly - thanks

By: Keran

Keran — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 20:21:23 +0000

Don’t forget the much under-hyped “Facebook Phone” any self respecting Tech company has a phone right?

By: Tom Carter

Tom Carter — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 20:03:48 +0000

You can also get a good sense of how things are going by listening in to the conference calls of Equinix and Savvis. The space is prone to boom and bust cycles but we are selectively investing in this space (co-location data centers and hosting) right now.

By: anonymous42

anonymous42 — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 19:30:06 +0000

Thanks for bringing this up Om,

One thing that gets ignored in this web2.0 hype is cost of infrastructure.
1. Cost per page served is increasing.
2. Page served per advertising dollar is increasing.
3. Intelligence of web applications is increasing. More intelligent the application is, more expensive is the infrastructure.
4. search and adwords was the most high margin business to be in. Newer applications like Video, online collaboration and office applications, Interactive Flash/Ajax/AIR applications require higher infrastructure costs.
5. Think about it Google pays $300m in just electricity costs and its increasing 30-40% per year. We are not even talking about cost of facilities, servers and network.

One thing people always miss with Web applications is, Viewership, userbase all grow exponentially and the moment they hit the peak they start declining(Next cool thing takes over). There is no such thing nice steady plateau. But, all valuation models assume a steady plateau.

By: Prashant

Prashant — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 19:01:03 +0000

i feel this was a more suitable case for EC2 and S3. AMZ should have gone for this deal . they could not have got any better validation for their technology.
what do you think ??

By: Dhiren

Dhiren — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 18:48:19 +0000

Thanks Om…Looks like you did notice my comment as I don’t see any moderation before comments are put out.
I deserve a “thank you” from you, atleast?

By: Dhiren

Dhiren — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 18:46:30 +0000

Facebook can’t be like google..here is why
Facebook is a social network - they come and go all the time.
They opened their door to all applciations —it sounds pretty slick but any smart programmer would design his application to do just that.
They have less substance and more gloss.
History has shown that social networks breath for no more than 3-5 years.

By: Denis

Denis — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 18:34:17 +0000

DuPont Fabros (DFT) is scheduled to IPO tomorrow (10/19). That might be one way of capitalizing on Facebook’s growth.

By: Come on OM...

Come on OM... — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 18:31:01 +0000

OM…Last week they needed money to fight the NY Attorney Generals’ Supenoa and the potential onslaught of claims around their lack of action against reported child predators, this week its data centers…if you throw out any more speculations you are bound to be right eventually…then you can claim you were the first to report…nice work!

By: Chuck

Chuck — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 18:02:24 +0000

Ever wonder why Virginia became the Data Center Capital of the world? One word: Dulles - When you go from 35M to <10M subscribers that you don’t need all of those data centers any more.