Facebook's Spying on you

[The Great Danton]

Originally Posted by Negotiator

Whoa whoa whoa, let's get some numbers straight. Facebook has not said they're worth a quarter trillion. Microsoft paid $240,000,000 for a 1.6% stake. At that rate, Microsoft is saying that 100% of facebook is $15,000,000,000. That said, I've soured a bit on the seemingly inevitable IPO. The darling of the tech world apparently had some bugs they weren't telling people about.

No kidding.

[AdmiralAkbar]

Originally Posted by SpartanGreen78

Google doesn't make the lion's share of it's ad revenue from google.com and the ads it places there. It makes its money from ad-words and the google-ads that people place on their own sites. Which, once again, is mostly based on impressions.

But yes, the game changes once the company is public. Right now--the profit motive is personal--they can expand as much as they want to make $$. But once there are shareholders, then the profit motive changes.

The point is currently, Facebook utilizes a majority of 100% text ads, most of which do not even have the destination site in them. If I were to click on the "$100 a night hotels in NYC" link, I could be taken to hotels.com, priceline.com or anything else. They have achieved no branding at all by putting that ad there.

While you are right about the Google "ad-words" making a tidy profit, they also make a huge profit off the "Sponsored Links" at the top of your search. Go to Google and search for hotels, and check out the first 3 links (all of which are probably relavent to what you are looking for, and probably what you were looking for anyway). That one click on the "Sponsored" Expedia.com link just made 100-1000 times what a page view on Facebook did.

[hexydes]

Originally Posted by AdmiralAkbar

The point is currently, Facebook utilizes a majority of 100% text ads, most of which do not even have the destination site in them. If I were to click on the "$100 a night hotels in NYC" link, I could be taken to hotels.com, priceline.com or anything else. They have achieved no branding at all by putting that ad there.

While you are right about the Google "ad-words" making a tidy profit, they also make a huge profit off the "Sponsored Links" at the top of your search. Go to Google and search for hotels, and check out the first 3 links (all of which are probably relavent to what you are looking for, and probably what you were looking for anyway). That one click on the "Sponsored" Expedia.com link just made 100-1000 times what a page view on Facebook did.

Correct. I think the bottom line is that Google has a means of making money off of ad-content that can survive changes in the market (via making money off of other 3rd-parties when the current ones aren't profitable anymore), whereas Facebook has basically one revenue stream (embedded ads), and if that dries up, then they are basically a free service that is not generating any income.

[ISparticus]

VentureBeat » Facebook buying Plaxo?

I think they'll have no problem generating revenue...look at the eyeballs they'll be getting now.