MacIntyre-Kemp queries Facebook valuation
News that Facebook is now valued at more than Boeing at $50bn has sparked concern in some quarters that the social media titan may be overvalued.
Some analysts, including Lou Kerner of Bloomberg TV, are optimistically estimating that by 2015 Facebook will account for 20% of all page views, giving them 20% of all internet advertising revenue – a whopping $22bn.
If and it’s a big if, the social media site can achieve such ubiquity then it will command a $200bn valuation, netting a healthy return for today’s investors.
But is this realistic or merely the tell tale signs of another inflating bubble? The Drum sought out Gordon Macintyre Kemp of Intelligise Social Media Marketing to try and find out whether we should listen to the optimists or the pessimists.
Kemp said: “It won’t happen. If you look at every other social media platform from Bebo and MySpace to Friends Reunited they have all failed after failing to commercialise.
“Facebook might be taking a little longer but it’s a social networking site, not a social commerce site. It wasn’t supposed to be a site where you order your Starbucks coffee.”
A veteran of past dot com bubble’s Kemp is happy to take the long view, he observes: “If I had £1m to invest, I’d put it in LinkedIn.”