The Japanese version on MySpace is called Mixi and it recently launched had an IPO on the Nikkei stock market. Much has been made of the values that owners are putting on Facebook and YouTube, but these valuations are nothing compared to that of Mixi.
Mixi has only about 5 million members and its recent stock market value was about $1.9 billion! CNET asked:
What does this mean for U.S. social networks? A lot or nothing, depending on whom you ask. Based on revenue projections and other factors, Forrester analyst Charlene Li wrote, “A rough back-of-the-envelope would value MySpace’s 100 million users at $20 billion and Facebook’s 7.5 million users would be worth $1.5 billion.
A lot of web 2.0 owners would like to see that envelop! The more I see these crazy valuations the better the deal that Murdoch got for MySpace looks.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I have a hard time believing that myspace is really a 20 billion dollar company…is each user really worth 200 dollars? (This is, of course, not removing the number of spam profiles….and I can’t even begin to imagine how many myspace profiles are simply spam)– that brings each user up to roughly 250 dollars in a value. (rough guesstimate)
am I missing something here. Everything I’ve read on Myspace advertising ROI screams that is worst than worthless. Where do they get this value?
I agree Paul. The valuation does seem a little high to me. I take valuations of companies that are 3-5 years out with a lot of salt as they never figure in any negative news.
Deal Breaker has some good quotes on both sides of the MySpace valuation. The URL is
http://www.dealbreaker.com/2006/09/what_is_myspace_worth.php