With all that IPO cash in hand Facebook could really have a night on the town, perhaps even watch the fat lady sing?
Given the bad press over their profit reports and legal actions from investors, I’d be tempted to do anything that’s a change of topic from ‘stock prices’.
Why buy Opera?
That’s actually not too hard to answer as a nerd or as an investor.
Opera is real technology and has actual value. Something FB needs to be snatching up.
The main reason: Opera has always provided some of the best mobile browser software. My first experience with Opera Mobile (5.1?) was back in 2006 on an HTC Apache (X6700).
I remember installing Opera on my Windows Mobile phone and back then the 1x connection speeds were barely better than dial-up and data prices were just unthinkably bad. Opera Mobile not only pre-compressed the data for me, it would compress data my phone couldn’t render, like simple Flash video/animations and even let me painfully navigate Flash based menus.
That’s right, I was able to interact with Flash based content on a mobile phone before the iPhone was a twinkle in Apple’s.. erm.. eye. That’s how long Opera’s been providing must-have solutions to the mobile market.
Opera is more than just a very popular/powerful mobile browser with unique features… Opera is one of the most complete browsers available on the PC today.
SEO TIP:The turbo feature acts as a proxy to avoid identity issues on most sites.
Unless you are on a secure site or a site that you’ve configured specifically to pass your identity, Opera’s Turbo mode will send requests to Opera’s proxy server instead of the website you are on. The responses come back to Opera, get heavily compressed, and then it’s sent back to you. This means that Opera’s proxy IP is making the requests, not your computer’s IP. Handy dandy!
The IRC client is great and requires almost zero setup/knowledge to jump into discussions with really nerdy (and often brilliant) people.
I used to be a die hard user of mIRC, I even used it to author some scripts to create the first DOS network (SuperKill) myself and my nerdy friends from around the world had ever heard of. Today I happily use Opera’s IRC client because it’s zero hassle and it’s built into a product I already use.
Opera’s HTML5 Date PickerOpera also has some of the most complete HTML5 implementations of any desktop browser.
It makes sense that if you have to to know how to render/handle HTML5 tags for mobile use, it’s not hard to extend that support to your desktop users.
An input element with a type value of ‘date’ should illicit a date selection box, but of all the major browsers on the market, Opera is the only one that recognizes and supports these elements by default.
Opera’s other features are just as thorough and well developed as it’s core functions. Opera’s application page allows you to turn your Opera browser into a media player/streaming host, file sharing hub, webcam server, private photo shares, web proxy, messenger, etc..
If Opera had been made in Sweden vs. Norway we’d have to dub it the ‘swiss army knife’ of browsers, but for now we’ll have to look at it as the ‘concert of awesome’ for those times when you want one program to do everything.
Why NOT buy Opera?
Price. Plain and simple.
Google is a major partner in Opera, and is the default search engine for the Opera browser. If there’s a bidding war to purchase Opera, Google’s not going to let FB buy it cheap, nor will the other competitors in this arena of mobile/social web dominance.
Right now top financial teams from banks like Norway’s DNB have speculatively estimated Opera at a value of between $1 billion – $1.35 billion.
This is a value based on Opera share prices, and the stock was on a 17.2% rise this morning and hasn’t stopped climbing, with Google finance putting it up at 30.23% currently!
In fact, if you want my personal opinion, at this stage of the game, with FB’s intentions very clear, I’d say the whole deal will hinge on price alone since it’s a sound decision to buy, but only if the value holds.
I’d say you could take that to the bank, but I’m neither rich nor financially skilled, I’m just a nerd that’s been around for a long time. 
SEO news blog post by
Ryan Morben @ 11:54 am
