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"Here's one of the more painful parts of taking a company public: You have to make an honest assessment, in front of the whole world, of all the things that could kill your business. Facebook is no exception.\nIn its SEC filing, as required by law, the company outlined a whopping 35 \"risk factors\" that could \"materially and adversely affect\" Facebook. It's a comprehensive list of every threat the social network currently faces. Some are head-slappingly obvious (they could lose users and advertisers), while others are more revealing (Facebook isn't making any money from its mobile platform \u2014 so what if that grows and web users shrink?)\nThat may seem like a lot, but not in comparison to recent tech IPOs. LinkedIn listed 42 risk factors in its filing, Zynga offered 44, and Groupon had 55. \nDoes that make Facebook a better bet for investors? You be the judge. What follows is a summary, in plain (or at least plainer) English, of the things Facebook says could kill it. \nIn other words, here is every single little worry that keeps Mark Zuckerberg up at night. We've bolded the ones that sound particularly troubling to us. \n1. We could simply lose users, or fail to add new ones.2. We could lose advertisers \u2014 and new technology may let users block ads.3. Facebook's mobile platform doesn't show ads \u2014 so the more that grows, the worse for us.4. The platform for Facebook apps might not be successful.5. The competition from Google, Microsoft and Twitter could heat up \u2014 not to mention other social networks around the world.6. More governments could restrict access to Facebook.7. Users could turn their noses up at new products.8. The Facebook culture is all about rapid innovation and getting users engaged \u2014 and that could come at the cost of profits.9. Unspecified future events could tarnish our brand.10. Bugs might give people access to users' information that they're not supposed to see.11. The media could turn on us.12. Our quarterly financial results could be difficult to predict.13. Zynga accounts for 12% of our revenue. If we part ways, that could seriously hurt us.14. Our revenue grew by 88% last year \u2014 and that's simply not sustainable. Growth is bound to decline.15. The U.S. laws and regulations we're governed by could change or be reinterpreted.16. If our patents and copyrights aren't granted \u2014 or aren't effective \u2014 it could seriously hurt us.17. We have some patent lawsuits on our hands that could end badly.18. We're also involved in class-action lawsuits, and we could lose them too.19. Mark Zuckerberg has a massive amount of shares, which concentrates power in the hands of one man.20. There's a complicated tax liability connected to a particular kind of stock unit we gave out \u2014 one that will be taxed at 45%.21. If we need more rounds of investment, the terms might not be reasonable.22. Costs might grow faster than revenue. 23. A lot of our servers are handled by third parties, and they might be disrupted.24. We've started building a lot of our own data centers to handle traffic, and we've got limited experience doing this kind of thing.25. Our software is incredibly complex and may have a lot of bugs.26. We can't say for sure that we'll handle our growth effectively \u2014 we have more than 3,000 employees now, and that could spin out of control.27. If we lose our leaders, like Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg, that would really harm us.28. People might sue us over all sorts of stuff posted on Facebook \u2014 intellectual property, copyright, defamation, and so on.29. Viruses, hacking, phishing and malware. Oh my. 30. Payment systems in Facebook apps could mean new government regulations.31. We're continually expanding abroad, and we may not understand all the risks in new countries.32. We're planning to acquire lots of other companies, which could disrupt everything at Facebook.33. We might default on our leases or our debt.34. Our tax liabilities, in general, are bigger than we thought.35. U.S. tax code reform, if it happens, might hit us where it hurts. \n\n\n10 Big Facebook Investment Risk Factors\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n1. Competitors\n\n\"Users increasingly engage with competing products.\"\nImage courtesy of Flickr, Mukumbura\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n2. Product Failure\n\n\"We fail to introduce new and improved products or if we introduce new products or services that are not favorably received.\"\nImage courtesy of Flickr, Mr. T in DC\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n3. Ad Overload\n\n\"We are unable to successfully balance our efforts to provide a compelling user experience with the decisions we make withrespect to the frequency, prominence, and size of ads and other commercial content that we display.\"\nImage courtesy of Flickr, Josh Liba\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n4. Privacy Concerns\n\n\"There are changes in user sentiment about the quality or usefulness of our products or concerns related to privacy andsharing, safety, security, or other factors.\"\nImage courtesy of Flickr, subcircle\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n5. Government Regulations\n\n\"There are adverse changes in our products that are mandated by legislation, regulatory authorities, or litigation, includingsettlements or consent decrees.\"\nImage courtesy of Flickr, Joe Gratz\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n6. Lack of Paid Advertising\n\n\"Decisions by advertisers to use our free products, such as Facebook Pages, instead of advertising on Facebook.\"\n\"Loss of advertising market share to our competitors.\"\nImage courtesy of iStockphoto, travelif\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n7. Lack of User Interest\n\n\"We fail to introduce new and improved products or if we introduce new products or services that are not favorably received.\"\n\"There are changes in user sentiment about the quality or usefulness of our products or concerns related to privacy and sharing, safety, security, or other factors.\"\nImage courtesy of iStockphoto, domin_domin\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n8. Poor Content Prioritization\n\"We are unable to manage and prioritize information to ensure users are presented with content that is interesting, useful, and relevant to them.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n9. Negative Press\n\n\"Adverse media reports or other negative publicity involving us, our Platform developers, or other companies in our industry.\"\nImage courtesy of iStockphoto, drxy\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n10. Users Opt Out of Advertising\n\n\"The degree to which users opt out of social ads or otherwise limit the potential audience of commercial content.\"\nImage courtesy of iStockphoto, freie-kreation\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAdditional Facebook IPO Coverage\n\nFacebook Files for $5 Billion IPO\nFacebook IPO Reveals How It Made $3.71 Billion in 2011\n10 Giant Things Less Valuable Than Facebook\nZuckerberg to Potential Shareholders: Facebook Is on a Social Mission\nFacebook IPO Filing Flings Open the Social Network Kimono\nFacebook: Zynga Generates 12% of Our Revenue and We Need Them\nSheryl Sandberg Was Facebook\u2019s Best-Paid Employee in 2011\n"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2012/02/01/facebook-here-are-the-35-things-that-could-kill-our-company/>