And you thought that web 2.0 would never bring in a dime. According to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook will earn around 710 million USD in 2010.
That is likely enough to cover the endless capital expenditures that the company is forced to deal with, and push the social networking into enough profitability to finally approcah an IPO in a direct fashion.
Surely Facebook could juice a few stacks of ten million apiece in profit, finally legitimizing the business in the eyes of not just Wall Street, but big business en masse.
As we reported, Facebook has just ran past 350 million users, or some 5% of the global population. With growth, users, and revenue like this, who can stop the juggernaut?
This is of course makes the difference between Facebook and Twitter even more palatable. Twitter, valued at some one billion, makes nearly nil revenues. Facebook, is on the other hand is valued at billions, but with hundreds of millions in revenue. I know where I would invest.
H/T to Adam Ostrow for finding this.
Totally different business models. FB is developing a business with positive cashflow and a working operational business model. Twitter on the otherhand is a clear build, grow and sell business. Everyone knows one of the big boys will snap them up in the next 18 months. Diggs loss is going to be their investors gain.
I don’t know if 710 milion in revenue is that good for facebook. Linkedin (the other SN cited by WSJ) has less than a tenth of facebook users and its revenue is a little less than a third and, not worth to say, while facebook is the second most visited site in global rank, linkedin is just 42th. Each user bring fb a couple of dollars per year and that means that not so many people click on ads. I think that fb, as twitter, has still to undestand how to fully monetize her success. If is the second global top site her revenue should be compared to other’s in the top ten.