Did UGC Fizzle Take Down VCs?

Ashkan Karbasfrooshan — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 20:38:47 +0000

In November 2006, I commented about eMarketer’s then-projections for social networking revenues. When I wrote that, I said if these figures turn out to be true, then Facebook would be worth $2.275B… by 2010. Read for yourself here. Between then and now, we lost our marbles and [il]logically extrapolated MSFT’s $240M investment in Facebook for 1.6% to project a paper value of $15B for the social networking site, justifying Facebook’s refusal to accept offers ranging from $800M to $2B (Viacom, IAC, Google, MSFT and Yahoo!).

Today, judging by the market for Facebook employee shares, some can argue that Facebook is worth $2B. Judging by the fact that the very same eMarketer has totally deflated its own projections for social networking revenues, that figure is far more plausible than anything near the $15B figure:

That’s right, as a result of user-generated content and social networking sites being totally rejected by marketers, eMarketer earlier forecast of $2.15B by 2010 has been replaced by a more realistic but somber one: a paltry $1.64B by 2013.

It must really suck to be your average, run of the mill VC who expected social networking to “change the world” and make billions. No wonder why they’re frozen into fear and inaction for the bulk of 2009.

You can blame the economy all you want, I blame a lack of common sense.

HipMojo.com

Did UGC Fizzle Take Down VCs?