The proliferation of ad networks in the advertising arena + the economy putting downward pressure on ad pricing seems to have swung the pendulum back to the side other side where scale or the fat tail is once again trumping the long tail and to me where the gold may lie in Facebook is in the data and metrics beneath the ad clicks and usage that they have at their disposal on their users. I could be wrong on this one, but is there any one single entity outside of Yahoo that could boast the same-in terms of having proprietary access to this much detailed information on such a large number of people?

I do sincerely appreciate that you have allowed my comments. Thanks!

If your source has financial and budget data, he/she probably also has Facebook options, so this data is highly dubious.

I would be skeptical of these numbers if I was reading the full certified audit of Facebook by a major accounting firm.

“But Facebook made a little less than $300 million in 2008, came within five to ten percent of breaking even, and closed the year with more than $300 million in the bank, according to reliable sources.” — not from Facebook.

“Based on a budget the company set at the end of last year, it is on track to make a little less than $400 million, I hear….” — not from Facebook.

Twitter is looking at charging, but there are business who are integrating marketing and customer services apps into it and placing a value on their Twitter account. Might corporations do the same for their Facebook pages?

Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz

On their best day, Facebook has had about a $5B valuation, which is still pretty decent. Despite them almost (but not actually) breaking even once, I don't see the long-term potential here. Online advertising dollars and success rates are slowing down everywhere. Building an ad-funded site is the web 2.0 bubble of building a .com site and thinking somehow the valuations will just come. We're approaching the end of the ad-funded-site-as-a-business-model phase.

I expect to see Facebook try to become a cloud computing vendor next, after they overbuild and are left with too much capacity.

Its like adsense, except the ads are less relevant and usually bordering on Fraudulent. Woohoo!