Why Facebook is over valued
Recently there was a discussion in a forum on the valuation of FB. At 33 Bil and around 165 PE, I strongly believe, FB is over valued, especially given the fact that they have very little room to grow in terms of number of users, I think FB has passed its best.But there was an interesting point that came up, FB is not just an SNS, its more of a platform now. I would like to agree to that point, but still there are some limitations that are inherent in FB's design.
1. CTR for their text ad is so bad, around 0.1% is what I hear and I have personally seen 0.15%. This is mainly because of one reason. when i am using a search engine for info, I am more likely to click on an ad that is relevant to me search, as I am looking for info. In an SNS, I dont go to get info, instead I go to check on what my friends are doing. So I have enough things that are attractive to me in that page rather than a small text ad in a corner of my screen.
2. Though it is true that FB is now more of a platform, not sure how much they earn from being a platform and does that revenue actually justifies 33 Bil valuation.
3. Last year, in its main market, US, FB has grown by around 32%, but they have grown by over 100% in non US market, this means that their net marketable user base has come down by 39%. This is not good news for FB as they will not be able to find enough inventory to deliver to the non US users.
4. The search capabilities of FB again is not up to the mark. I am sure they are trying to perfect their search algorithms, but they have a long way to go in that.
So, as per my opinion, its not going to be the privacy by the CTR that is going to be the Waterloo for FB. Lets wait and see...
