RWW’s
article on FB’s new financing round shows a valuation of USD 10bn for
Facebook. This puts it at a multiple of USD 50 per user (assuming 200m active users,
the last figure I heard off). This figure compares to recent (and not so
recent) multiples:
- Twitter (February 2009 series C) : ~40$ per user (or ~75$ per active user with a different number crunching but not comparable to the other figures below)
- Xing (March 2009 market capitalization) : ~25$ per user
- LinkedIn (June 2008 series D): $ ~40 per user
- Beboo (March 2008 trade sale to AOL-TW): $ ~40 per user
- YouTube (2006 trade sale to Google): $ ~30 per user
- My
Space (2005 trade sale to Newscorp): $ ~35 per user
These
multiples are pretty stable across transactions and over time in the range of
$30 to $40 per user. Demographics and geographics user mix differences should translate into
multiple's differences as pointed out in TechCrunch’s post on the topic. In this light, Facebook’s valuation seems on the high
range but not completely out of order compared to those benchmark multiples,
especially knowing that it’s the market leader and the past months impressive
growth.
The question is whether these multiples make sense or not from an “operational ” perspective. Mark MacLeod had made some back of the envelop calculation here on Twitter and triggered an interesting discussion. On the other hand as long as there is a market for it…

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