[snarfy]

Consider Facebook's valuation and then consider how they actually make money. Do they even make money outside of advertising, and is that advertising over valued? How many advertisers have already pulled out of Facebook ads due to ineffectiveness?

A lot of these companies are valued solely on the number of users, and little to due with anything else. Maybe someday they will spin it and turn all those users into profit, that seems to be the dream. It's not always a viable reality.

[fecak]

The amount of data Facebook is able to collect on their users is the difference for them, and the value of data for hundreds of millions of users is hard to quantify.

[eggie]

facebook's core offering is slowly walking towards the exit: http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F02y1vz.

Much of that valuable data stands to stale.

(edit: how do i link.. oh man)

[thumper]

That seemed pretty convincing, but then I added some comparison terms like "instagram" and "snapchat"... they are hardly a blip. I think that argues that the world is going mobile, but then maybe google trends isn't a fair way to measure who is walking where.