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| Sad that “Houston Dads Go Back to College” is missing |
Of course the big IPO news this week is Facebook’s public launch and the latest round of estimates places its value at the IPO somewhere in the $100 Billion range. Unbelievable! No, seriously, that’s completely unbelievable, bordering on insane. At nearly 100 million users, that’s a value of $100 per user. None of those users actually pays for a subscription to Facebook, but they are all bombarded with ads (at least those not creative enough to add an “ad blocker” to their web browser), and play silly games that they may, or may not pay to play. I’m sure some have paid over $100 to play these games, and some have clicked on those ads for gout treatments, but, no one that I know of has shelled out a dime or clicked on a single ad.
Now, my evidence is purely anecdotal, but I’ve been trained that if something sounds too good to be true, that’s usually because it is. Whether it is believing that your house will increase 10% a year in value, every year, year in, year out… or, that having a law degree will guarantee you an awesome job once you graduate… or, e-discovery will be a law firm cash cow forever… if something doesn’t pass the smell test, it’s probably because something is rotting inside it.
I’ve put the actual ad that popped up on the side of my Facebook page this morning. Usually I get some hipster-looking “Houston Dads Go Back to College” ad, but that was missing this morning. Is there anything listed here that someone would actually click on?? (Granted 61K apparently like that Gout Study!) General Motors has already pulled out of Facebook ads, can the site rely upon “class B” advertisers to keep revenue growing forever?
Don’t get me wrong. I am a Facebook fan. I jump on there and update my status almost everyday… sometimes multiple times a day. I know there is significant value in this product, and that having 100 million users makes it a multi-billion dollar product. However, $100 Billion? sniff-sniff… no, I don’t think so. However, there seem to be bankers out there and investment brokers that will pump that amount of cash into the company in return for stock with the idea that it will continue to grow at some double-digit amount forever. sniff-sniff… that just doesn’t smell right.
According to Facebook IPO math, we should go public with this blog and Toby, Lisa and I could split the $250K ($100 x 2500 RSS feed subscribers.) It wouldn’t be enough to retire, but we could bank-roll the 3 Geeks Bar & Grill that I’ve always wanted to open. This would lead to Toby and I having our infamous 3-beer solutions every night, night in, night out, forever… eventually, we would take over the world. sniff-sniff… actually, that smells pretty good.