weeks - 5:04 pm on Jul 6, 2009 (gmt 0)

Hey, me too, BillyS! (Exactly what I thought.)

Seriously, this was interesting:

"This calendar year they'll do over $500 million," Andreessen said in an interview, noting that Facebook has more than 225 million users, so revenue per user is still small.

OK, that's $2.22 a user in income a year; less that 19 cents a month. Knowing what we know about scale (a some point, big is more dollars in cost, not less), are they making a profit?

It would seem they could do much better easily. But, reading what is said here, maybe not. Their next step is not obvious to me. Maybe sell out to Pepsi or Coke? That is someone who would like to have their brand in front of millions each day. OK, but at what cost? Would they (maybe with a couple of others) be willing to pay for what it takes to run Facebook? Would be it worth it? That's the question. And the answer is,...

Facebook lacks context. Ads are sold in context. Google is good at that. Newspapers less so, but better than Facebook.

Even TV ad are sold in context. Sports and beer are together not just because men watch sports and drink beer. Cars are sold on dramas because of the environment and who watches, both. Facebook is...there are few overarching contexts a marketing person would be comfortable with using.

[edited by: weeks at 5:09 pm (utc) on July 6, 2009]