It's great for the people who founded Facebook, but personally i don't understand Facebook's valuation other than the networking effect. To me it's ridiculously overpriced. I wonder if that would make me less suitable to be a startup founder.
broadcast.com was once worth 4b, amazon.com is worth 40b
heck the value of google has INCREASED 50b in just the last 6 months
facebook is a VERY important site. where else can I go on the internet to place ads targeted to a location AND interest. An insane percentage of those under 25 have fb accts, and the whole next generation will be locked into fb as they follow their older peers.
The banner ads aren't where they make their money, it's in the mini-feed ads and the sponsored groups and beyond. Yesterday, Axe sponsored a free gift on Facebook and now 250,000 profiles are permanently decorated with an Axe advertisement.
Just wait until Axe realise their ROI is practically 0.
Perhaps they can make it work, I don't know.
I do know that when I started seeing adverts in my mini-feed I thought "For god sake it goes downhill now, I don't think I shall be using facebook much longer"
Google made a great business model by placing relevant adverts along side natural search results. People click on them because in some cases, they are what they wanted to find.
Facebook advertising 'Axe' in my minifeed (Which is supposed to tell me whats going on with friends etc), is totally wrong. It's like a popup. It's in no way relevant.
No one will click on it/care about it, and it'll just drive users away to whatever's next.
"An insane percentage of those under 25 have fb accts, and the whole next generation will be locked into fb as they follow their older peers. facebook has the internet on lock"
