How is it a pitch to buy? If anything, it's a pitch NOT to buy. $1 billion/quarter revenue (and $210M profits) doesn't justify the $100 billion valuation. Not even close.
Consider Google, valued at $200B has a revenue of $10.6 billion/quarter, and $2890M in profits.
I don't think anyone would seriously buy based on the current figures. If you buy Facebook today, you're hoping for exponential growth over the next few years, at which point you can either sell at a profit or take dividends (if Facebook ever pay them - US technology companies don't tend to pay out much).
If you want a return now, you could just buy shares in a utility company for a fraction of the price, since they already make multi-billion pound/dollar profits and distribute large chunks to shareholders.
People forget that Facebook still can be Google killer. They can reveal a better search (since their search function is used more than the Google's one).
Even easier task for them would be creating an ad content network similiar to AdSense since they can provide way more information about a visitor than Google's tracking.
This is precisely why Larry Page tries to shove Google plus into everyones throat.
Their search function is used more than Google's? How do you possibly arrive at that conclusion? The only instance where I would possibly use Facebook's search function is if I'm typing in the name of one of my friends. On the other hand, the main reason I use Google, and do so many times every day, is for the search functionality.
Facebook Search is surely the most widely used function of the website. I myself have facebook set to be my homepage, therefore it's handier to just type anything I want in there - rather than having to visit google first.
What? How? I'm genuinely curious now. When you search on Facebook you only get results that are Facebook pages. You can't get Wikipedia entries, Stack Overflow questions, other companies' websites, programming language documentation, or anything that's the usual results of what I search for on Google.
What do you generally search for, and how can Facebook serve you relevant hits?
> When you search on Facebook you only get results that are Facebook pages.
Actually, you can get web search results on Facebook through Bing. It is one of the side tabs on the search page. But I can't imagine many people doing that.
Yeah I was aware of this functionality, it's definitely far too clunky for most users though to go through clicking on that at the side of the page when most browsers now allow direct search through the address bar with the search provider of your choice.
Well, thanks for the downvotes - this probably did not add to the discussion?
All of the 3 points are true. Facebook search form (that used to find friends) is used more often than Google's search. If people at Facebook can think of a good way to force people to search the Internet through the Facebook, they can get quite substantiable share of the search market. Many people have set the Facebook as their homepage.
Facebook enables better targetting. You can't for example target specific age groups with AdWords
Google plus was a response to Facebook, contrary to what Google's PR team tries to estabilish.
Since you brought it up, the reason I downvoted you was for lack of citation, and adding a couple of questionable insights posited as facts.
After reading your assertion, I Googled for the volume of Google search queries, and ran into this article -- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3928298 (that I just submitted) -- which contradicts your claim, stating that Facebook search volume lags behind the other five big search engines.
On what grounds do you assert that it's true?
It wasn't a factor, but I'd also question whether or not Facebook enables better targeting. I'll concede that they have strong targeting, but I don't know that anybody can say for certain that it's 'better' than Google's, especially as Google can target ads based on what you're looking for at that particular moment.
Facebook might know that I like comic books, or Elmore Leonard novels, or what have you, but Google knows that "I want more information about vacations to Fiji". Which is the more powerful target? The latter, I would guess, especially as I already have suppliers for my other interests.
Facebook already has a "search engine" in their search box. You say no one uses it because it's not good (not sure that's true), I say no one uses it because Facebook is not the place where people search for things on the internet.
Remember that Microsoft made it very convenient to use MSN Search for many years by setting it to the default home page and having it in their search box of IE. It didn't work, people typed google.com and did their searches there.
And you're wrong about advertising. Facebook's is valuable but it will never be as valuable as that of people who are searching for something with the intent of buying that thing.
