The long-awaited Facebook IPO happened today with basically a whimper. Several of the investment banks behind the IPO had to step in to support the newly minted stock lest it fall below the $38 asking price.

Some pundits are spinning this as a good thing -- Facebook isn't starting off in bubble territory that will later crash. Others are painting a more gloomy scenario pointing to a valuation of $104 billion for what really amounts to a giant advertising company.

Having been through the previous tech bubble and watched many high-flyers lose 75% - 90% of their valuations in the space of one year, I count myself in the latter category. Yes I use Facebook. Yes I play along with "liking" things. Yes a lot of my friends are on Facebook. The real issue is how all that activity translates into hard dollars.

By definition, Facebook's income is derived in similar ways to Google's core search product. Displaying ads tailored to the user. My big concern (and the concern I had during the last tech bubble) is, do people really click through those placed ads and BUY something? And even if they do, is there enough BUYING to justify the cost-per-click?

While I'd never consider myself a typical user of anything, I have NEVER clicked a single Facebook ad. Asking my friends the same question, they don't either.

So what you have is this huge "free" resource that lots and lots of people use but where's the long-term business model that's going to create value for those paying the freight (advertisers and game integrators)? Is there one? Are Facebook eyeballs REALLY worth $104 billion? Keep in mind that's about 1/2 of Microsoft's market cap. And they actually produce products that make people productive (XBox and Windows Vista aside).

One thing it says is that our societal values may be seriously skewed. At no time in history have we placed such a high premium on what boils down to a leisure activity. What happens when a fickle consuming public gets bored with FB or finds a newer, better alternative? Oh and advertisers, are those Facebook clicks REALLY worth it?

Anyway, I could never figure out why .JPG files from Mac users mostly come in as inline graphics (displayed within the body of the email) rather than as discrete attachments which you can save. Actually, I never paid it much attention since you can always just right-click on the image and save it out as a .PNG (or .BMP) file. Plus, a lot of folks put their work into ZIP files to consolidate them which doesn't create this issue in the first place.

However, today a friend of mine mentioned (in an online forum) that he was having trouble getting his photography work to some of his clients (mostly TV stations). They'd get the images inline regardless of the settings he used (text or rich text, attach or copy/paste) and they couldn't figure out what to do with the result. Apparently right-clicking and saving as .PNG was too high-tech for them plus what the heck is a .PNG file anyway? ;-)

After helping Mike play with a bunch of test messages and researching the issue on the web, we mostly came to the conclusion that Apple Mail just plain sucks at image attachments. Both Outlook and Mozilla Thunderbird behave nicely with each other handling attachments in plain text messages and HTML messages correctly. They also handle inline images much the same way. However, nothing my friend did in Apple Mail would let either Thunderbird or Outlook see jpeg images as attachments.

Bottom line for Mike to get his work to the stations as they require it is to either get another mail client or use their dropbox systems (a pain in the butt). By the way, Apple Mail to Apple Mail apparently allows you to save these images like they are attachments so if you're a member of the Cult of Mac, you won't notice anything wrong. (Must just be those dumb Windows users, right?)

The mind numbing technical details

You can skip the rest of this article if you don't care about HTML or other tech junk. Otherwise, press on...

In looking at the source code for emails he sent with image attachments, we could see clearly that no matter how Mike sent the message, Apple Mail would convert it to a bastardized HTML format and tag the attached images as "content-disposition: inline".

Here's a look at the Apple Mail message source:

FROM THE HEADER:

Content-type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="Boundary_(ID_a1SivF0cvLfCNrOHa0U0Iw)"

FROM THE BODY:

--Boundary_(ID_a1SivF0cvLfCNrOHa0U0Iw)
Content-type: text/plain; CHARSET=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

Plain text option. Jpeg attached.

--Boundary_(ID_a1SivF0cvLfCNrOHa0U0Iw)
Content-type: multipart/related;
boundary="Boundary_(ID_T38Q9U3voRPT65Vz1M1sEg)"; type="text/html"


--Boundary_(ID_T38Q9U3voRPT65Vz1M1sEg)
Content-type: text/html; CHARSET=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

<html>
<head></head>
<body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">
Plain text option. Jpeg attached.

<div>
<img id="0cd387e5-61ea-41e1-a43d-239ca7069bd3" height="333" width="500" apple-width="yes" apple-height="yes" src="cid:4E00FF68-5DD3-4A5F-88C8-AD96E3D1D9E1">
</div>
</body>
</html>

--Boundary_(ID_T38Q9U3voRPT65Vz1M1sEg)
Content-id: <4E00FF68-5DD3-4A5F-88C8-AD96E3D1D9E1>
Content-type: image/jpg; x-unix-mode=0644; name=Pic6.jpg
Content-transfer-encoding: base64
Content-disposition: inline; filename=Pic6.jpg
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (image data removed)

--Boundary_(ID_T38Q9U3voRPT65Vz1M1sEg)--

--Boundary_(ID_a1SivF0cvLfCNrOHa0U0Iw)--

You can see clearly that what started as a "plain text" message is actually a two-part message with a plain text part AND an HTML part. Uh hmmm. That's just wrong on so many levels. Some mail programs refer to this as "compatible HTML" (which is apparently what Apple is doing). They generate HTML with a part that will be ignored by simple plain-text only mail clients. But it's NOT plain text.

To compound the stupidity here, Apple clearly tags the image that's been attached as "inline", which pretty much guarantees that it's going to be displayed inline and not as attachment. I dunno, maybe that's Apple trying to do the thinking for its users but again, it's wrong.

FROM THE HEADER:

Content-Type: multipart/mixed;

FROM THE BODY:

boundary="------------000208000208080700070400"

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
--------------000208000208080700070400
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Test message.

--------------000208000208080700070400
Content-Type: image/jpeg;
name="test.jpg"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-Disposition: attachment;
filename="test.jpg"
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (image data removed)
--------------000208000208080700070400--

So, are there any work arounds? Sadly no. As one Mac site says, the workaround is to zip everything. Then Apple Mail won't try to think it's smarter than both it's users and recipients.

PR Pro's Guide to Facebook

Keep in mind, not all companies NEED to be or even SHOULD be on Facebook. For example, pure B2B organizations may not see any benefit from Facebook and maintaining your FB page, comments and customer interaction could simply be a big time suck.

However, IF you have strong consumer orientation and need interaction with large groups of potential customers, then a Facebook page may be just the ticket to higher sales. A few businesses that benefit from the enhanced exposure might include:

• Restaurants
• Service businesses (auto shops, cleaners, landscaping, remodeling, travel agencies)
• Consumer product companies
• Retail stores (single or chains)
• Non-profits or donor-based organizations
• Advocacy groups and political parties

Just make sure that when you start down the Facebook path (or Twitter or Google+) that you have adequate resources to maintain your page AND follow-up with those people who take the time to support you! Your inaction or failure to keep things "fresh" could hurt your image more than if you'd never done it in the first place.