The user base is growing at something like 200% a year. In five years, they'll have over 32 billion users. Just figure out a way to make one or two dollars off each user...that can't be so hard, right?
Unfortunately there's a hard cap on the number of potential users in the world. There's about 7 billion people in the world right now, even if we're generous and suggest that 50% of the population are potential users you're limited to a 3 billionish maximum. They currently claim over 500 million active users, which means they're already at 1/6 of their maximum. Furthermore, the law of diminishing returns suggests that their growth will slow as they get close to their population limit. So unless they can figure out how to monetize those users in some significant way I can't see the potential for revenue being close to what the current evaluations are suggesting.
Irony is no fun when it is explained.
Ironically that was sarcasm anyway.
You're right! I'm so terribly sorry for getting my words all confused. It's a great thing that HN has such sharp and savvy editors like you to set shmucks like me straight.
You're very welcome :-).
Yeah, I figured it was, but I wasn't completely clear on it, so I commented.