[LINK] Is Facebook desperate?

[Jim Birch]

Facebook had a peak valuation of USD100 billion - now about half this -
with tangible assets of a bit of code and a bunch of servers.  Their main
paying customer is investors.  The blue sky value of the company is in the
billion users who want to hang out together but are used to getting the
product for free.

To support this valuation, Facebook would need to be making tens of dollars
per active user per year and it's a bit hard to see how this might happen.
It takes a lot of targeted margin ads at fractions of a cent per view to
make this kind of money.  And not make the site annoying or intrusive.  If
they can do something that users are used to paying real money for - ie,
selling stuff - they might have a real chance.

- Jim

Jim Birch
e: planetjim at gmail.com
m: 04 1243 1243



On 21 December 2012 11:29, Jan Whitaker <jwhit at janwhitaker.com> wrote:

>
> http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/facebook-charging-for-access-to-your-inbox-20121221-2bq9q.html
>
> Facebook is starting a new ploy to raise money: charge marketers (or
> anyone) a $1 fee to send messages to someone's mailbox with whom the
> sender is not a 'friend' (whatever that really means in Facebook's
> dictionary). Is this a sign of desperation to save their bacon? The
> Web2.0 bubble bursting?
>
> Jan
>
>
> Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
> jwhit at janwhitaker.com
> blog: http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/
> business: http://www.janwhitaker.com
>
> Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or
> sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.
> ~Madeline L'Engle, writer
>
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