Facebook's valuation (in Whoppers)

[pavel_lishin]

With the limit of one burger per customer, the maximum value is (users * whopper_cost), bringing the ceiling to 360 million dollars.

It should actually be a little less, since at some point there will only be 9 users who will have missed out on the flurry of unfriending, like victims of a fattening ponzi scheme.

[sam_in_nyc]

Untrue about the last 9 users. Every user can have more than 10 friends.. meaning every user can get a whopper.

That's 100,000,000,000 calories (50,000,000 days worth of food for a 2000 calorie diet), for anyone who's into counting calories.

[run4yourlives]

In my mind, Facebook's value is 0 until it can demonstrate profitability.

This whole idea of it not being big enough yet is asinine.

[shawndrost]

Facebook made ~$200mm in 2008. It's pretty clear they could profit on those revenues, and instead are choosing to invest in further growth (with outside capital). Why is the parent comment's belief so widespread here on hn?

[eru]

Facebook can be made profitable right now: Just display lots of ads on it and sell all its (user) data.

I guess the side would not last long with this approach, but it would make a few dollars in the next days.

[svjunkie]

How did he arrive at the assumption that the connections are where Facebook derives the majority of its value? Doesn't most of its existing targeted advertising revolve around user-volunteered information, not information about users' connections?

Facebook is interesting in the event that any of its concepts around creating value really manage to take off. The concept of an open platform for app development could provide a model for next-gen end-user computing (barring net neutrality issues and the tubes getting clogged, etc.). Also, the virtual goods being exchanged on facebook and other online communities make up a billion dollar industry (http://www.marketingvox.com/virtual-goods-make-for-billion-d...).

[tlrobinson]

Burger King has a damn good viral marketing agency if they can get Hacker News to vote up two submissions about them in two days.

[durbin]

This guys reasoning is faulty and he doesn't even know how facebook friendships work, so why would anyone take his funny valuation seriously? waste of time.

[MrRage]

Are you trying to be ironic?

[indigoviolet]

ha.

a) nothing prevents you from re-adding those friends b) let's see you offer $12 for someone to stay off facebook forever.

[ed]

I bet most users wouldn't leave facebook for $12. Interestingly I doubt most would pay $12 for the service, either.

[ivankirigin]

the network effect means that the top layer of connections are actually more valuable. But for individuals, the last 10 connections are either strangers (useless) or people you just met that you want to know better ( very important ). So this linear analysis is pretty bad. A slightly different algorithm could yield $180M or $18B.

[cvg]

I think he's off here. Rather than 10 users being worth one whopper. I think it should be 10 connections are equal to one whopper. This would make FB worth a lot more than Kottke's $1.8 billion.

[zain]

Did you read the article? He establishes that on average, FB users have 100 connections, and derives 5 whoppers per user from there.

[alex_c]

That is how he's calculating it. 1 user = 100 connections (on average), divide by 2 because the connections are two-sided, 50 connections, 5 whoppers per user.

[jwesley]

Ha. As reality based as any other Facebook valuation.

[KevBurnsJr]

I LoL'd