Is Facebook worth $10 billion?
Or how about $15 billion? That’s the valuation Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly seeking. According to reports, Zuckerberg was seen heading to Seattle to meet with Microsoft about buying a stake in Facebook. Google is also considered a suitor.
Whether Facebook is the face of a new Internet bubble or of the coming paradigm in online advertising is a question that analysts, investors, and other inquisitive types seek to answer. I am not going to attempt to answer it but I will say this: I’m not a big Facebook user. For me, Facebook doesn’t offer enough value for me to participate on a significant level at this time. Sure, I have a profile, and I believe social networking sites and user-generated content have a future on the web. But I question whether the soaring popularity (and hype) that has made Facebook so strong — 42 million users currently — will be able to support the aspirations that its founder and prospective advertisers have for it.
Facebook’s numbers in the past year have been encouraging, with a significant increase in users aged 35+, as the site shifts out of the college-age demographic it started with. Still, I’m not convinced (yet) that the platform, or others like it, can become hubs through which their users experience the web. Remember the hype over web portals? By opening up their platform to 3rd party developers, Facebook seeks to create the Web 2.0 version of one. Facebook has become a Web 2.0 darling, and how this story unfolds bears watching.