Is Facebook worth as much as YouTube?

I see facebook being picked up for at least a Billion within the year. Let’s go Mark!

MindPetals.com

>Don’t get why you speculate about this. YouTube did it – and everything else – for under $10M, more or less. So why would someone have to be “really smart” to build the tech for under $100M?

Because big companies always spend more than small startups to do the same thing. Also, by the time Microsoft clones YouTube properly, the traffic on both sites will be much larger than it is today.

Chasing other people’s taillights means you gotta spend more than they did to catch up.

How much did Microsoft spend to clone Google (it took, what, eight years?)? Hint: a LOT more than Google spent to build Google.

Bernard: >No exec in any industry would listen to that advice.

Which is why we see companies who miss disruptive technologies. The same execs turned down Woz and Jobs when they were showing around their Apple I. That’s OK, you keep talking about “business value.”

I’d rather be on the bleeding edge of user behavior. It’s more dangerous there (you might get cut cause you bet on the wrong technology) but it’s also more fun than being a “suit.”

Personally, I don’t need MS Office anymore. I don’t buy in to the continual upgrade cycle that is MS Office. A free, online, evolving set of apps is what I like.

No, I don’t need evolving web apps – I need real apps I can use in my business now. I don’t want to store my financial statements in spreadsheet somewhere around the web. I don’t want to store my business plans as a text somewhere around the web. And I want to do powerful and fast calculation, graphs and other Excel features. I’m beyond the point of screaming WOOOOOW when I can change a color of cell in some AJAX spreadsheet.

100 million to build youtube like technology, you got to be kidding…a similar clone can be build for less than 25k even here in america in just a month or so.

Gopi: the fact that you think you can build YouTube for $25,000 shows you are totally clueless about how much it takes to serve out hundreds of millions of videos every day. Absolutely clueless.

Jack: Office ain’t going away. I use it a lot too. But, in business, what matters isn’t what is. It’s what will be. It’s the growth that matters. After all, in 1976 the entire computing world looked a lot more like a mainframe than a PC. If you told me “the only computer anyone needs is a mainframe” you would have been ABJECTLY WRONG!!

I’ve already replaced about 40% of my Excel usage with Google Spreadsheets. Why? Cause collaboration is a more important feature to me (since my employees work out of their homes an hour away from me) than pretty graphs.

You’re also assuming Google isn’t working on making Google spreadsheet better. It’s already improved in the few months I’ve been using it.

Does Office improve every few months? Didn’t think so.

“I’ve already replaced about 40% of my Excel usage with Google Spreadsheets. Why? Cause collaboration is a more important feature to me (since my employees work out of their homes an hour away from me) than pretty graphs.”
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Percentages are nice, but how about some hard numbers. I’m guessing it’s 2 spreadsheets out of 5. Guess what, business have thousands of spreadsheets that they rely on, and sorry, Google’s websheet applet doesn’t get it done.

BTW, there are other web spreadsheets that were around before Google’s lame effort, and they blow Google’s websheet applet away. Why didn’t you convert your spreadsheets to those instead? Oh, the “google” name. Ah, I see.

You need to drink a pot of black coffee to wakeup from the brainwashing that Google put you in. Or get out of Silicon Valley, your perspective has gotten seriously warped since you went there.

“Wow, Robert. This sounds like you turned 180 degrees on this over the last few months. Is it coincidental that when you touted how many blogs were there you were working for MS?”
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I think you have it wrong. Robert has always trashed MSN Spaces and Live Spaces.

Braveheart: why don’t you link to some of those Web spreadsheets that blow Google’s away?

Robert,

Facebook may have more leverage with the way their page view numbers have been looking in the last month. If you’re interested, I wrote about that this morning at Inside Facebook (http://www.insidefacebook.com).

-Justin

Robert,

Facebook may have more leverage with the way their page view numbers have been looking in the last month. If you’re interested, I wrote about that this morning at Inside Facebook (http://www.insidefacebook.com).

-Justin

That’s a great post, Robert. I agree completely.

It’s amazing to me how technology companies still assume they know how to reach audiences, just because they can create tools and software. Nothing has really changed since the 80′s then? “If I can create this utility that lots of people use, then (fill in the blanks)”

We’re living in a media-rich environment! Video and music is becoming more and more connected to the internet. I hate to burst anyone’s bubble, but bein’ the “King of Search” will only get you SO FAR. Google knows that. They know that the advertising money ORIGINATED in television, radio and print, and most of it still remains there -

http://www.vss.com/pubs/pubs_cif_highlights.html

So google is going after content. That’s practically a no-brainer.

Why is it so difficult for technology companies to make this transition? a) they think they know better, b) they don’t understand how to maximize revenue streams of copyrighted material (i.e. work with music companies and studios and networks), and c) they don’t know how to acquire/create video/music content which audiences want to see.

That’s why I still think it’s the networks and studios that will soon grab a significant presence in online content. They are aligned with print and internet media. They’re developing online strategies to transition their content to the web. AND they’re committed to not losing a SINGLE PENNY of their advertising dollars in the process. Why do you think after every LOST episode, there’s a link to ABC.com for their American Express promotion?

Now, I’m not suggesting that technology companies suddenly get into the TV business…but the conceit that there are “no lessons” to be learned from the TV/movie content development/acquisition/distribution business is ludicrous.

Companies like Microsoft will continue to live in a bubble, while while the advertising dollars flow in the opposite direction. It’s as simple as that.

Robert thanks for the interesting insight over at my blog where you ask “Tell me, is the $3 million for a minute of Superbowl ad time worth it?”

The answer of course is no, it’s not at all. There are exceptions but look at how poorly many of the bubble dot coms did despite major TV exposure.

The Video Advertising emperor has some clothes, but they are cheap clothes, and those are not 1.6 billion dollar shoes he’s wearing.

I’m not speaking in terms of “all” and “every” that you were. Acquisitions have to be grounded in terms of value whether long-term or short-term. While I might question the pricing of YouTube, I agree with the strategic and business decisions behind it. I believe in the long-term growth of online video advertising and the strength of YouTube’s community. I still question some acquisitions, such as Upcoming.org or Skype, for their long-term value to Yahoo, eBay, and others.

OK, if you are right (and I think you are) about Google building a moat to protect their ad empire then do you agree they’ll wind up with Facebook as well as Youtube?
http://joeduck.wordpress.com/2006/10/12/prediction-google-will-buy-facebook-for-about-11-billion/

@55… “I’d rather be on the bleeding edge of user behavior. It’s more dangerous there (you might get cut cause you bet on the wrong technology) but it’s also more fun than being a “suit.””

God! you get more clueless by the post. No wonder the execs at MS never listened to you. You realize it’s not YOUR money you would be spending, right? So you better be goddamned certain you’ve done your homework can justify spending THEIR money on bleeding edge technology. Again, with such an irresponsible position it’s a wonder anyone paid any attention to you at Microsoft. There are “suits” for a reason. They are usually the ones with the brains for smart business decisions. So, please! Continue to refuse to wear a suit. If fits your description well.

YouTube’s technology could be built for “$100m or less”? Talk about an overestimate. Try $10m or less, tops.

I’m curious to see if Google can monetize YouTube traffic w/o alienating the user base. If they manage to do this, the deal might pan out. At the very least they’ll be able to serve text-based contextual ads which is a primary revenue driver for them right now. Since advertisers can choose to do this on a CPM basis through site-targeting (rather than CPC basis), even if YouTube users don’t click, advertisers will flock to build ads specifically for YouTube. Don’t forget Google also serves image and video ads. Perhaps they’ll embed video ads directly into the uploaded videos? I think that’s questionable.

I’m wondering if Google will create a system which serves up “related” video content that are ads. If users have the choice to click on them and can post text or video comments, they might choose to watch the videos. This, in turn, would keep the ad content creators on their toes and might lead to some really good content in ads that are treated almost like existing related videos. This could help advertisers’ videos go viral and the whole deal might turn out to be a huge success.

OTOH, if YouTube users feel that ads are being stuffed in their faces, they’ll find another video-sharing site to use. Short term, I doubt we’ll see many changes on the front end. Google will probably tackle scaling the backend systems first. But, hey, money saved is money earned.

Two other thoughts:

1) YouTube beat the pants off Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft. Don’t you think you’d want to hire these guys? How much are the people themselves worth?

2) If Google can somehow insert its brand into the YouTube experience w/o damaging the existing YouTube brand, they might get existing YouTube users to use other Google products. IOW, they’re buying potential ad revenue beyond the YouTube platform. What’s that worth?

robert, can we have a small graph of your website hits over the past week?? lol whenever it goes down you come out with a microsoft bashing post and only whenever you do such stuff do you have so many replies and ppl bother reading it.

1) You have not read the full article of balmer.

2) “Braveheart: why don’t you link to some of those Web spreadsheets that blow Google’s away? ”

Funny I wonder how on earth can you talk like a big web 2.0 guy when you dont have knowledge on this. Zoho suite makes google bite the dust.

3) “I’ve already replaced about 40% of my Excel usage with Google Spreadsheets. Why? Cause collaboration is a more important feature to me (since my employees work out of their homes an hour away from me) than pretty graphs.”

The first motive obviously is your company does not earn so much profit to give you all one. Second, you dont do a lot of excel stuff. A sheet with 10-20 rows is not what we are talking about. Most people who is excel use it for complex analysis. Reg. collaboration have you ever heard something about sharepoint???

4) ” Why we love YouTube isn’t cause we can watch other people’s videos. It’s cause we can upload our own lame videos!!!”

Again dont generalize with a “we”. I can assure that a lot of ppl i know have never uploaded even a single video into youtube. We go there to watch some movies (lol you get them in 7-8 parts), or to watch jon stewart. I am sure 90% of youtube users go there to watch videos. Well I can prove it by the simple fact that there are so many visitors every day, but the percentage of videos uploaded (that to personal lame videos”) is very very less.

5) “Back to Facebook. Is it worth as much as YouTube? I don’t think so because only college students associate with that brand. With YouTube everyone from 80-year-old friends to my son were using it and talking about it. Facebook is struggling to make its brand interesting to non college students. So far it has failed, which is why I don’t think it’s worth as much as YouTube”

Well facebook might be one of those long term shots worth a try. I am sure these college students would still like to keep in contact with their friends once outside school.

6) Reg. myspace. It has survived so long inspite of all the child predators and threats by sentors to ban it from schools…the reason Fox the mother company is a bush spokesman. Well a ban on myspace once a democratic senate or president comes will burst the myspace bubble…Hint: Remember how the stock market for online gambling companies fell??

7) “Warren Buffett doesn’t buy any tech stuff because he doesn’t understand it.”..

That is exactly what makes him a perfect intelligent businessman. I am sure that you are not aware of the various issues that the management has to face on legal charges. We all know how much ppl love suing microsoft for every stupid stuff…buying youtube would have been the biggest microsoft mistake. Let us wait and watch the media companies come behind google. They escaped many lawsuits just coz they had no control on the search content…but this they obviously have lots of access
Again say if google does manage to increase its search percentage a lot to around 84%. Then they are ripe for an anti-trust. They have every power on earth to manipulate on what we see and what we dont. Politicians especially wont be happy (ever tried to search for failure in google ??)

9) The last point, fast internet access in the largest and growing IT markets like India and china is very less. And these web 2.0 applications have no chance of making any inroots there.

Again before i end, i am really interested in seeing your website visit log for the past one week till today just to see how much traffic a Microsoft FUD article can bring to your reducing traffic….

ok here starts everything…

http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1921154,00.html

I don’t normally go to YouTube; I see YouTube vids embedded in other sites and blogs. Such embedded vids don’t have ads associated with them. Are those now going to be plastered with ads all over the place? If Google does indeed try to shove ads down people’s throats, I can easily see a YouTube competitor coming out of nowhere and taking over YouTube’s traffic.

I use Facebook. I think what might make Facebook more appealing is that those who are college students are going to graduate and they might get their friends who don’t use Facebook to join. And they might not be in school. That’s probably more important than some person who’s never heard of Facebook joining. It has to be word of mouth.