I guess with some of these startups though the ground is so untrodden that's it would be impossible to come up with a way to value them other thinking about things like future monetisation of users.
Without it's users, Facebook is worth very close to $0. With it's users? who knows?
Without it's users, Facebook is worth very close to $0. With it's users? who knows?
Well, one way to look at that question is to ask how much revenue they make per user (ARPU) and how much profit right now, and how much they could scale that. Obviously these numbers can be manipulated, and are likely to be optimistic if anything, but it's a better starting point than trying to work out numbers based on what someone paid for 10% of shares, or what someone paid for Instagram, or what they would make if they managed to charge their users a subscription (unlikely in the extreme).
Given their business model (ad supported), the fickle nature of their users, and their strong free competitors (Google, Twitter etc), I personally don't think they are worth $44 per user (assuming 1B users). I think the ARPU is around $1, that's not great, and not likely to grow hugely.
Without it's users, Facebook is worth very close to $0. With it's users? who knows?