Comments on: Bored silly by Facebook's valuation. Twitter's, too

Maybe bloggers and reporters have too much time on their hands, but the valuation speculation-fest is an obsession that doesn't merit the attention it continues to command.

[Dylan_Wisor]

I, for one, enjoy listening to your non-computer savvy people saying, "That worldwide website is worth umphteen gazillion dollars? That's positively outrageous! Would you like a hard candy?" The only thing I enjoy more is when the pseudo-computer savvy people scoff at their illiteracy because that's what all the cool bloggers are doing.

...

Nah, you guys are right. I'm tired of hearing about this stuff. Twitter is a demigod, we get it by now.

[jmcgrath35]

I'm bored silly of it too. Also of blog posts about it.

[gregorytga]

I'm actually kinda curious how all the venture capitalists feel about multimillion dollar investments into widget makers. Facebook effectively quelled the onslaught of crapware by putting the app notifications in the background and forcing more rigorous regulations on app functionality/behavior. I can't imagine there's as much money to have in the micro-economies of app developers save for maybe a select few. Stamping a value on FaceBook seems less trendy luckily.

[WeCanDoBIZ]

I could not agree more.

I was forced to comment yesterday on an article I read called "Social networks in freefall" or somesuch which suggested that Facebook has gone down from a value of $15Bn to $3.7Bn, and Twitter in the space of weeks went from the $500M Facebook stock offer to the $250M recent funding round. No mention at all of 900% user growth rates, but then I guess that doesn't fit with the headline.

Whenever anyone asks what such companies are worth, I point them to the most reliable data, that from the public stock listing of XING in Germany. This is a social network valued on the same basis as any other public company -- by the market itself. 7 million users, 35M Euros revenue, EBITDA of nearly 13M Euros and a valuation of 156M Euros (today). That is a healthy company in these times, but yet still sensibly valued.

Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz

[tommyboy1313]

Spot on.

So much self-adulating silicon valley hype about one company that is the new friendster, no, myspace and another that enables online status updates which is now a feature of facebook and every other social network anyway. Friendster was usurped by MySpace which was replaced by Facebook and Facebook will be replaced by so and so. Someone *still* might buy twitter just to say they did a deal, but they still don't have a business plan 3 years later.

Social networks are fad-driven. Facebook has built the most sophisticated platform, but user switching costs still aren't high enough for them to not be replaced by the next cool-kids thing.

Valuation? Pffffffffffffft. As if private valuation is a highly correlated predictor of exit value. If it were, all of us start-up folk would be swimming in cash!