Yes I use Facebook but I don’t put private data on it .

Dheeraj, great point. With that in mind I wonder what the price point will now be for options given out to their next 700 employees. It might make it hard to hire.

It they set an option price lower then 15B’s then the IRS would be justified at looking at improperly booked revenue on MSFT’s ad deal with FB.

Also if the hedge fund 500 ever does show up, I would not be surprised if it wasn’t directed from a fund holding many of the billions “the MSFT boy’s” have holed up some where

Facebook Taps Into Hedge Funds For $500 Million More? If Facebook doesn’t become the future of online/digital community based collaboration and communication, this week will be remembered as the week that Facebook sparked the dot-oh crash. Brand Noise…

The overall value, does not come from the posts alone….but by the wide variety of user opinions.

It is as if a room full of analysts are ripping-out the facts about the talked company and then I go out with the full picture..i really do not mind if the post did not cover everything…in fact most of the times…the post just decides what the room is going to talk about today…thats all.

http://www.meetingflex.com
Video+Social Networking

Lots of ruckus about Microsoft’s $240 million investment, supposedly valuing Facebook at $15 billion.
Microsoft’s original ad deal was for 3 years (ending in 2009). That was their original relationship with Facebook.
So Microsoft spent $240…

I am interested in seeing how FB deploys the $$$. Looking forward to google’s response……

Jon

I said: The CTR from Google is no where near CTR from ads from other sites.

What I meant was: The CTR from ads from other sites (including social networking sites) are no where close to the CTR from Google. Google CTR is even a lot higher than Yahoo’s CTR.

To gauge the true valuation of Facebook, FB should reveal their CTR and compare that to Google or Yahoo’s CTR so that the public will know what the company is worth since their sole revenue is from ads. This should stop all the “high schoolish” statement comparing Facebook to Google.

I’m not convinced yet about Facebook as an advertising platform especially when Facebook has been coy in revealing any significant advertising effectiveness data such as CTRs. Google works well as an advertising platform because users are proactively searching for information, products, services, and a plethora of other things while related ads are served via Adwords.

What are users searching on Facebook? It seems users are mostly there to socialize not proactively search which probably explains why social networks deliver such poor CTRs at this point in the game. Just because ads match personal data profiles isn’t enough by itself for it to be a robust ad platform if the users aren’t searching for squat. I hope the true picture of Facebook’s effectiveness as an ad platform emerges before it is too late. If Facebook is able to IPO with such a shroud of mystery regarding the success of advertising on their platform, then a lot of people in the secondary markets may get burned ala Internet bubble 1.0. Facebook investors & execs have been very smart about fueling the hype but I hope public investors are smart enough to learn lessons from the past regarding buying into the hype. Facebook is the sexy company right now but numbers should drive how much a company is worth not hype.

People do click on Facebook ads, and to a much greater degree than Google’s *contextual* ad system (as distinct from their search ads which have 2.5-3% CTR on average).

-SearchQuant

Take a look at Fox Interactive’s numbers … where is the 1 billion?

The deal with Microsoft essentially is a round trip transaction. Yes theý “invest” 250 mm, but guess what, they are guaranteed to get this back in “revenue” from FB. FB agrees to give up a small shareholding for this, so that they can then proclaim their 15 billion valuation and the fact that MS invested at that amount.

Sorry, the winner in this deal is MS, and to a certain extant existing FB shareholders, who would be happy selling out at 10% of the purported “valuation”, since this limits their donwside even more.

The losers … anyone in the public that invests post IPO, and any new FB employees. Guess what, your options may get set at the 15 billion “valuation”meaning, there is not much upside for you.

How many times have you clicked on an ad on Facebook?

I have posted ads on other websites including social networking sites and have my adsense ads on Google 24×7. The CTR from Google is no where near CTR from ads from other sites. Our eyes have been trained to ignore ads on social networking sites. People come to Google to search for a service and they click on ads. People go to Facebook not to search for service or look for a company, they are looking to socialize.

It is almost scary to think that there are people who think Facebook can compete with Google Adsense. There is a reason why Facebook will not reveal their CTR.