Could STEEMIT, Inc. ever be an Acquisition Target?
Facebook announced the acquisition of TBH, an app for polls and social media start-up, the week of October 17, 2017. This had me wondering, could Steemit ever be an acquisition target, and would that make the token owners all millionaires (perhaps not me with my 30 SP, but you)?
Sourced linked at bottom of this article
TBH, I've never heard of TBH?
TBH is an app that allows teenagers to create anonymous polls and give anonymous compliments to one-another. The app was released in August and has over 5 million downloads in the Apple App Store.
A Sense of Community or a Take-Out?
According to the Washington Post article, TBH's positive theme of anonymous compliments is in line with Facebook's overall mission of building communities. According to Yahoo Finance's article, FB was likely drawn to the app due to its young userbase. In my personal view, while this could be true, there is another angle.
The fact that this App has only existed for a few months prior to acquisition raises an eyebrow. The rapid growth in the app is also a factor that makes TBH an attractive acquisition target. Perhaps FB is jumping on new opportunities to buy popular companies before they become competition (look what happened to Snap Chat). Effectively, to acquire an early, successful company and monetize/scale the company is better than fighting with it down the road.
How much did TBH get paid?
The financial terms of the deal were not reported, however it sounds like the price is under $100 million, which is very far from a unicorn status. I can recall cringing when FB acquired What's App for 19 Billion (predominantly through share dilution), today in 2017 we are in the early innings of montezation. To be honest, TBH could just be a short-term flame like the Fidget Spinner. Further, for all we know TBH could grow so rapidly that it does not have enough moderators to filter all of the nasty polling ideas that the internet could think of, and the idea just implodes (yes, the app actually moderates the polls before allowing them). Do we honestly expect that TBH will never have any "Roast me polls."
Could Steemit, Inc. be acquired?
I don't have a crystal ball and I am not an investment banker. However, I do know from research there are so many great plans ahead for Steemit with SMT, and there is continuous user growth (at approximately 400k users, and 25-30k daily actives credit: penguinpablo). If Steemit simplifies the account creation process and eventually goes viral to attract users in the millions, it is possible the Steemit becomes attractive to the Social Media Unicorns.
I own STEEM Tokens, does that make me an owner in Steemit stock, and a potential millionaire on a take-out?
Bad News: Steemit, Inc. is a privately owned corporation; it is not publicly traded. When you own STEEM tokens (STEEM, SP, SBD), this does not represent an ownership interest in Steemit Inc.
Good News: If Steemit, Inc. was ever acquired by a Social Media giant, the benefit that STEEM token owners would most likely received is the hopefully significant increase in the value of the STEEM tokens. This is no guarantee, but I would hope an acquisition by a Social Unicorn is validation of the value in the platform.
Takeaway
Social Media is a very young industry. Cryptocurrency is an infant. There is interesting opportunity down the road.
Sources
Information regarding FB's acquisition
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/facebook-fb-announces-acquisition-popular-154603840.html
Information regarding Steemit, Inc. and STEEM tokens can be found in the FAQ section of Steemit.com
Disclaimer I own shares of Facebook. This article is not personal investment advice regarding any public or privately traded company, or cryptocurrency; do your own research. No one should base their decision to investment in any company or cryptocurrency on the contents of this article.
Picture Credit
It's a very interesting prospect, and I'm glad it's clarified. When we've been marketed as being stakeholders of the company, it's definitely easy to mistake that as being stakeholders of Steemit Inc. I've seen a lot of people preaching that all of us have a say regarding the direction of Steemit, but in reality we don't. I hope this reaches the eyes of many people so that they could adjust their expectations.
Agree the prospect is interesting. To Steemit's defense, I feel the distinction between token owner and shareholder isn't deceptive or hidden (it is there in the FAQs), rather it just may be overlooked. I see the real value in the tokens accessible to all (vs. owning shares of the entity).
Oh yeah, for sure. Not saying Steemit Inc is being deceptive at all, it's just that I've seen people misinterpreting it as us having a stake in the company. A hype machine has been rolled out piggybacking on that assumption. People not in the know would immediately think that they have a hand in the decision-making, but it's truly not the case.
yeah but facebook would have to do KYC for the rewards giving up(tey way to huge). Steemit gets away with it for it does not give away anything the blockchain does. and the fact that steemit's contents are decentralized i can make my own steemit if i wanted too. like busy.org does.
steemit does own the domain names,and email for users. And the way the site looks but other than that nothing much could be used by facebook.
facebook is better off just making a erc token that works like this=
Upvote=erc token
downvotes= less erc token on posts...?
more erc token you lock up more your upvotes are worth.
Facebook sets the value or is a token in an exchange facebook would probably pull a tether and make the token worth $1. They have the ad money and data to pull it off.
Interesting point, big business can always copy a smaller business with all the leverage they have. However, that risk alone doesn't stop small potatoes from turning into Unicorns!
@sames - can you use your steemit login on busy.org? Is it able to access the same blockchain?
Yes.
yes
This post has received a 2.45 % upvote from @drotto thanks to: @cryptotax.
Like you I have never heard of TBH. Probably one of those fads that will come and go the buyer would have lost money buying it! Steemit is here to stay and would be difficult to buy out . If someone wanted Steemit, they can probably clone their own version since the Steemit codes are open sourced, it will much cheaper and they can be whales fro m the get go!
Sounds good, but I hope not. Facebook is already dominatedthe social networking space. Steemit, with its specific business model, is becoming the best alternative social media place. We all need some freedom & choices.
Steemit Inc. is just a website that is a frontend to the STEEM blockchain. The code is open source and anyone could clone it. AFAIK Busy.org gives you the exact same access to the data SteemIt has - it's all on the blockchain AFAIK except for a bit of temporary data that is stored in on browser data store.
And they obviously can "acquire STEEM" itself unless they buy all the STEEM tokens and take over all the witnesses. More likely they might invest in buying a lot of STEEM and then using SMT in some way. However as others have pointed out - they are a big enough company that they could just clone the STEEM idea and launch FACE blockchain along with FMT.
Acquiring Steemit might be something they would try just to acquire expertise. Hopefully @dan and others have made enough in their blockchain ventures so far that they would have to be give a ludicrously high offer to make that FB's worthwhile. Then again FB did pay what $20B for WhatsApp - but they had 450 million users at the time of acquisition. Steemit has only hundreds of thousands (300K MAU).
Good points thank you very much.
This post has received a 0.41 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @cryptotax.
Hi, @cryptotax,
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My article is directly related to Steemit and social media in general. I actually discuss FAQ's from Steemit in the contents of my article, so I don't see the point in flagging this article.
Also, this isn't the first time I've used the Steemit tag as I am writing a series on tax considerations for Steemit users.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@cryptotax/are-steemit-author-and-curation-rewards-taxable-usa-edition
https://steemit.com/steem/@cryptotax/are-steemit-rewards-taxable-in-the-usa-part-2
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Interesting post however I never heard that app.
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