Facebook and the Digital Cemetery
Published in Les Echos
(France) on 4 January 2011
by David Barroux (link to original)
Is Facebook actually worth $50 billion? Facebook is a start-up company, barely five years old, generating about $2 billion in sales and making a mere handful of dollars in profit. Can such a company carry the same weight in the stock market as the widely profitable industrial giants BMW or Boeing? Prudent investors such as Goldman Sachs or the Russian company, DST, who have recently gambled on this Internet phenomenon, seem to believe in it. Facebook, which derives its strength from its 600 million members and its quasi-global influence, is not exactly a company like all the others. Under the leadership of Mark Zuckerberg, it continues to grow at a very impressive pace, constantly extending the reach of what has become the first parallel universe of cyberspace. In this essentially self-sufficient digital world, each member can recount his or her daily life, discuss, share photos and videos ... in short, maintain a permanent link with a range of friends and acquaintances. The force of Facebook is such that even Google fears this looming competition, which does not allow the search engine to scan the personal content sheltered there. What happens on Facebook stays on Facebook. So the economic bet placed on this company is that, in the figurative tomorrow, it will be able to make money on the large mass of data about its users.
The bet is not without reason, but neither is it yet won. Of course, Google saw its overall worth multiply by six since 2004, but the digital cemetery is equally full of fallen stars. From Alta Vista to Second Life, Myspace to Hotmail, more than one nugget of the Web has run aground by trying to turn its success into gold. In terms of its size, its accumulated strength, and its addictive nature for some, Facebook would appear less vulnerable. But Internet users have more than once proven their inclination to rebel when Facebook yields too much to commercial temptation. And especially of note in our digital world, technological innovations can be transformed in just a few months, resulting in global-scale rupture. Perhaps the future Facebook rival does not yet exist, but it could very well burst in before Zuckerberg's group has opportunity to justify its economic worth.
The bet is not without reason, but neither is it yet won. Of course, Google saw its overall worth multiply by six since 2004, but the digital cemetery is equally full of fallen stars. From Alta Vista to Second Life, Myspace to Hotmail, more than one nugget of the Web has run aground by trying to turn its success into gold. In terms of its size, its accumulated strength, and its addictive nature for some, Facebook would appear less vulnerable. But Internet users have more than once proven their inclination to rebel when Facebook yields too much to commercial temptation. And especially of note in our digital world, technological innovations can be transformed in just a few months, resulting in global-scale rupture. Perhaps the future Facebook rival does not yet exist, but it could very well burst in before Zuckerberg's group has opportunity to justify its economic worth.