Microsoft buys into Facebook - $240m for 1.6%. Facebook worth $15 billion
Microsoft finally took the plunge into Facebook, acquiring 1.6% of the fast growing social network for $240m. That values Facebook at $15bn, or around $300 per registered user.
By comparison
- When Google bought YouTube they paid the equivalent of $21 per registered user.
- News Corp bought MySpace at the equivalent of $6.37 per user.
- Bebo has repeatedly refused offers, the highest of which would have represented $25 per user.
- Skype (slightly different) went at $30 per users.
- Friends Reunited, went years ago at $20 per user.
This sort of valuation represents the changing perception of what communities of users like Facebook are worth, when News Corp bought MySpace everyone thought they paid too much, and now this. The big difference of course between MySpace and Facebook is the extent to which users are engaged deeply and daily with the latter. There is no doubt that Facebook users are way more engaged with the site than the MySpace crowd. Facebook presents a big opportunity for online advertising, in part because it collects detailed information about its users — such as their hobbies, favorite music, location, age, and gender — that can be used to place highly targeted ads.
Here are some useful stats:
* More than 49 million active users
* An average of 200,000 new registrations per day since Jan. 2007
* An average of 3% weekly growth since Jan. 2007
* Active users have doubled since Facebook expanded registration in Sept. 2006
Source: http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics
Here is the Wall Street Journal article that reported the news: here
Another point to consider is that with revenues of £150m (according to those familiar with the company) and 50m users, that means Facebook is earning around $3 per user. Prior to this metric, previous stats that I had gathered in relation to a number of social networks put the average per user revenue at around $1.26.