

Is Flickr Worth $4 Billion?  - buckpost
http://www.markevanstech.com/2008/05/08/is-flickr-worth-4-billion/

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hooande
This article should have been titled "If we assume a 25X sale or Flickr
selling every ad unit At $5 CPM then this post isn't linkbait"

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Harkins
Flickr is worth 4 billion because he guessed at its freemium conversion rate
and the introduction of advertising, then ran it through a multiplier chosen
by a guy banned for life by the SEC? At the least, this is unpersuasive.

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narendra
There are several factual inaccuracies in his post and unreasonable
assumptions.

1) I believe that Flickr sold for $17 + a small earn out. The only authentic
data on this is a post by Rafat on paidcontent.org.

2) You can't get at potential freemium subscribers by total uniques! Most
Flickr viewers are not Flickr members! You need the actual uploader count and
then at the very very best 1% might pay.

3) The ecommerce number is probably significantly off (2-3x) because Flickr is
all about online sharing.

4) Flickr is huge but unfortunately is losing community aspects to other
channels now like Facebook and twitter.

5) For another comparable, Webshots sold late last year for $45M and was
probably 3x revenue.

Ultimately, Flickr has a pristine brand, leads the photo sharing category, so
I'd guess it deserves a premium above photobucket so if Yahoo decided to sell
then maybe $300-350M.

The bottom line is that there will never be big money in photos.

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iseff
Am I the only one who is amazed that Compete has Flickr receiving same amount
of unique visitors per month as Facebook!?

Every single one of my friends uses Facebook, yet I'm one of the few who use
(and even know of) Flickr.

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rp
The one thing that stands out in this analysis is the author's almost casual
statement that Flicker users regard "Flickr as their property and are
resistant to change of any kind." Given the recent flap over adding video to
the site, which is an individual user's choice, what would kind of noise would
people make if ads started popping up on Flickr even if people could opt-out?
The issue of how user's seemingly arbitrary whims may obstruct monetization of
community sites seems to begging for further analysis.

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diego
I find it interesting that some people still pay attention to what Henry
Blodget has to say with regard to valuations. The "25X revenue" as a generic
formula is nonsense, not even worth debating. This type of thinking is what
inflated the first dotcom bubble.

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rationalbeaver
Nope.

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redorb
Yahoo owning Flickr allows them to dominate the photo sharing market ... just
as google owning YouTube..

\- owning something that has a moat (its user base) is definitely worth a lot,
I put Flickr at 1.6bn

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josefresco
I read a while back that Flickr's conversion rate for the "pro" accounts was
dismal, as in less than 1%. Sorry no linky to back that memory up but there's
no way it's even close to 10%.

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TrevorJ
It is is somebody writes "four billion" on a check and hands it to them. Heck,
money's not worth anything unless we agree it is anyway.

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flupkear
I think it don't worth $4 million, this is ridiculous

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damon
Is it April 1st?

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eghanvat
Maybe

