Facebook shares are going for $23 a pop in a 100,000 share auction at SharesPost this Thursday. A private investor tells Forbes that's 77% higher than he paid only three months ago.
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Facebook's implied valuation on SharesPost is $43 billion.
SharesPost isn't the only company cashing-in on Facebook-mania.
A couple weeks ago we wrote about a new cottage industry of companies formed solely for the purpose of holding Facebook stock and then selling stock in those derivative companies.
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Why is Facebook hype so strong right now?
Some ideas:
- Tremendous user-adoption. The site now has well over 500 million uniques.
- Revenue traction. Last spring, we heard Facebook revenues could cross $2 billion this year. Who knows where the projections are now.
- Some very successful industries are being built on top of Facebook – group-buying and social gaming – and Facebook is collecting "taxes" on those industries. In social gaming, Facebook collects 30% PLUS marketing expenses.
- Facebook keeps hosting press conferences for product rollouts and press keep attending them.
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Some reason hype shouldn't be so strong?
- We have no real idea if Facebook revenues are actually near $2 billion. The company is private and doesn't have to report numbers to anyone.
- Groupon and its clones buy lots of Facebook ads, and we don't know if group-buying is a sustainable advertising model. Some local merchants say it kills their margins.
- Zynga and the other social game companies are desperate to find a way to live off Facebook. Google is supposedly building an alternative.
Meet the (soon-to-be) Facebook billionaires >>
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