And The Bubble Rolls On... Facebook Wants $2 Billion
from the blowing-money-flavored-big-league-chew dept
Business Week's acting like it's got a scoop that social-networking site Facebook is holding out to sell for $2 billion. Facebook's been in play for a while, though, and apparently people are having a hard time justifying the valuation and figuring out exactly why they should buy the company. Does this sound familiar? It's exactly what happened with Skype. A company with unknown financials -- but huge buzz, a hard-to-quantify metric -- starts getting talked about in a faux bidding war through the press, with a price tag of $1 billion, then $3 billion, then ends up selling for as much as $4.1 billion despite legal uncertainties and the lack of an apparent, cohesive strategy. Facebook's social-networking cohort Myspace sold for $580 million, despite questions about its real value, and it gets roughly four times the monthly page views of Facebook. Still, it wouldn't be surprising to see somebody dump the $2 billion for Facebook because they don't know any better, don't understand it and because they're afraid of missing out on this whole social-networking thing, even though the signs are gathering that these sites are little more than fads.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
If I Had $2 Billion
With a site like MySpace/Facebook, you're basically buying their user base + a realistic shot at their demographic. It may be that a Viacom would believe in their 5.5 billion page views, but I'll stick with the cheese, Monty.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
enough bubble references
The web is part of our economy now, and there are thousands of profitable web businesses, and yes some are worth billions.
'The bubble' was not some sort of permanent lesson that web properties in fact have no value. It was just a long-expected market correction in the learning curve of a major new investment sector. Move on...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Look at the price of domains
The domain name is vacant, but the going price is $2500 right now...thats just for a name so I imagine an already profitable business could sell for quite a bit.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: enough bubble references
I get really tired of the fairly recent phenomena of people whining on Techdirt. If you want to whine about the site and/or content please feel free to head over to slashdot.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: enough bubble references
Yeah, me too... what's the deal with that?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: enough bubble references
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: enough bubble references
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Why? Because whereas myspace's main userbase is uneducated high school kids (with many exceptions, of course), facebook caters to college students with much, much more earning potential. Everyone (and I mean everyone) I know at a major college uses facebook daily. It has replaced IM for generally keeping track of friends. If Myspace is worth half a billion, facebook is worth at least $1billion. Assuming the benchmark is valid.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: enough bubble references
God I hate when people post nonsense like this. Quit whining about people that point out people that whine about whiners; enough is enough!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
Especially since a sizeable portion of these college students now have credit cards of their own and little experience at managing money. Some of these students will invariably spend with reckless abandon.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
1st im on myspace and facebook. their both retarded but if anything, atleast anybody can join myspace while facebook is so closed doors.
again, $2 Billion? wtf
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: enough bubble references
Why does CPA pricing models for advertisement have a much higher price than CPC model ?
Simple better rate of conversion.
Contention being that marketers would have a higher interest in Facebook due to the correlation between spending power and education.
Its simple more efficient targeting as compared to some of the larger players.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
facebook
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Complaining/enquiries
THANK YOU VERY MUCH
DIANE BOWLES
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Diane, are you on crack?
[ link to this | view in thread ]