Remember all that hype about facebook being worth over $15 billion when MSFT bought a stake in the company, well now figures suggest its worth $3.7 billion, I think the company is worth no more than $500 MILLION. This site is all the hype right now and will FADE AWAY just like all the other 2.0 sites that come and go. mark Z should have sold out to yahoo when he had the chance, but of course GREED gets the best of everyone and now no one is willing to pay anything more than $500m because thats all the site is worth. Facebook: We were worth $3.7 billion Posted by Larry Dignan @ 5:14 am Facebook reckoned that it had a market value of about $3.7 billion in an appraisal conducted after it sold a 1.6 percent stake to Microsoft that implied a value of $15 billion for the social networking outfit, according to the Associated Press. The Associated Press discovered Facebookâs own assessment in court documents. Whatâs really comical is the way the AP found Facebookâs appraisal, which was mentioned in a June hearing as a long court battle with ConnectU was winding down. ConnectU sued Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg for stealing the social networking concept from three classmates. The AP says: Facebook fought fiercely to keep the details of its market value and the ConnectU settlement under wraps. Before last Juneâs hearing, Facebook lawyers persuaded Ware to remove reporters from a San Jose courtroom so the final details could be hashed out in private. Large portions of that hearing are redacted in a transcript of the June hearing, but The Associated Press was able to read the blacked-out portions by copying from an electronic version of the document and pasting the results into another document. Now thereâs a trick worth trying out on future redacted parts of court documents. In any case, Facebookâs valuation still remains a bit of a mystery. ConnectU, which settled with Facebook for $20 million and 1.25 million shares, obviously wanted the Microsoft valuation of Facebook at $15 billion so it would get more dough. Facebook was low-balling. And today Facebook is most likely worth less than its appraisal.
Even if its only worth $100 million, its still worth more than the entire US auto industry and banking system combined. Runningbear
I don't think we can compare. Buying the auto and financial companies are more costly than the sell price since you need to assume some debts and cost of running business. While Facebook didn't have much liability. So you end up paying a lot more for the auto or financial company.