I received an email this morning from a person who disagreed with my graph comparing Ford to Facebook in terms of market value. (
http://bit.ly/MacHmz)
His argument was that Facebook's growth potential is enormous. The same argument was made by many people who commented on the graph.
While I agree that Facebook will grow, they are only making $1.21 per person ...and they seem to be stuck at that level (it was $1.26 in Dec 2010).
That means that in order for Facebook to earn the same as Ford, they would have to reach
7.7 billion people - 110% of the entire population of the planet, or 300% more people than there are on the internet.
If we instead compare it to Google, they would have to reach
8.3 billion people. And compared to Apple they would have to reach
22.5 billion people. ...or 321% of the total population of Earth.
If we instead look at revenue, the picture is even worse. Facebook would have to reach
33 billion people to match Ford, 9 billion people to match Google, and 26 billion people to match Apple.The problem is that people only look at the growth trend itself (which looks to be impressive). But in so doing they don't realize that Facebook already has a 40% internet penetration - worldwide. That's impressive, but it also means that its growth is somewhat limited.
The only way for Facebook to succeed, at its current market cap, is if they can raise the $ value per user, and so far they have been completely unable to do that.
Maybe Facebook should invest in NASA's Mars program and see if they can find several billion martians :)
via Plus Public Activity Feed for Marlow Weston https://plus.google.com/114347423852608167600/posts/aqv27UUHUM3
