[jonknee]

From what I read last year's revenue was ~$800M and this year is looking like $1.2B. I hit it right in the middle. Regardless, this is revenue and revenue gets you shit on Wall Street. No one knows what their profit is, but even if it's in the $250M range (which I think is about 5x high), it still has to increase ~10x to get into the territory that a $100B valuation would need.

They're also quickly running out of people with money to register, so I doubt we'll continue to see such huge growth. Not saying they won't make a great business out of it, but tantalizing would be hires with a $100B valuation seems pretty shady to me.

[rokhayakebe]

Rumor has it, it's more like 2B.

[jonknee]

Sweet, so they only have to raise that 50x before it's not a ludicrous statement. All they need to do now is get 25 billion people with as much money as the current 500m do signed up and they are good to go.

[NZ_Matt]

No, you are assuming that Facebook have already reached their maximum revenue per user. Facebook's revenue potential is massive and is only going to go up.

[jrockway]

Indeed. Advertising is the easy way to make money, but I see a lot more creative ways to sell their social graph.

One would be to sell it to credit-rating agencies and insurance companies. If all your friends have totaled their cars and defaulted on their loans, then you aren't going to get one either. The only problem with this is that it's extremely evil (because even non-users of Facebook can be fucked by this, thanks to the "steal all of your email addresses" import method), and that there aren't very many banks and insurance companies.

Another model I see is using the photo service and the photo graph to help the police solve cold cases. Match the artist's sketch to the Facebook photo database, find some matches, and talk to their friends. Also very scary and evil, but potentially profitable. "Won't someone please think of the children?"

Anyway, once Facebook feels like they have a fairly complete graph and don't need any more users, then the money making can really begin.

[chopsueyar]

Any more unlawful ideas for Facebook revenue?

[jrockway]

Yeah. Using the Facebook graph to price health insurance. Has your girlfriend slept with someone who slept with someone who slept with someone who has AIDS? That will be $100,000 per month kthx.

[zuckerborg]

Yes, because they need $100 billion in revenue to be a $100 billion cap company.

[jonknee]

Depending on their profit margin, yes they do. Revenue is worthless. They aren't making much money now and will have to make tons to be worth $100B. They're not a huge number of people with money left to register, so it's up to making more with what they have now. We'll see I guess.