This week, Doug and I discussed NewsCorp's buyout of InterMix (MIX), owner of MySpace, for $580m as well as the future of the profile space in social networking.
A note on the InterMix buyout: NewsCorp not only paid a 42% premium over today's market closing market capitalization of $406.99m for Intermix, but paid about $21.07 for each profile. Here are some very rough calculations of what happens when you apply that profile valuation to a few other social networking platforms:
Number of Users |
Valuation | |
300,000 |
$6,321,000 | |
2,900,000 |
$61,103,000 | |
7,732,113 |
$162,915,621 |
This in contrast to the $81-$100m valuation of TheFaceBook (depending on whom you trust regarding an undisclosed ownership stake, but based upon a $13m buy-in) by Menlo Park-based Accel Venture Partners about two months ago. As stunning as NewsCorp's bid may be, then, we may be starting to see variability in valuation of profiles depending on the audience that the profiles describe. More on this to come. For now, you can grab the podcast by clicking here (2.6MB, WMA).
Mark Pincus' "PeopleWeb" blog post can be found here.
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