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Comment by beoba | Hacker News Reader

Mashable's own article says the $800M is a "run rate" number. It's really Enron-style accounting:

"Run rate is a tricky number, though. It’s a projection of what the company would make if you extrapolate from its most recent revenue numbers. Depending on the time frame used, the calculated annual run rate can vary significantly."

If my income keeps growing at this rate, I'll be a trillionaire in no time!

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Run rate is about quantities, not rates. If you made $10 in Jan, $40 in July, and $160 in the next Jan, then your run rate would be $1920, (12 x $160), not projecting 4x growth per 6 months forward.

Using that math, I've already 'earned' many millions in my lifetime, even though I've only been out of college for a couple years.

And that number gets even more exaggerated if I choose to base the calculation off a month where I got a bonus.

My point stands; it's fabricated revenue.

It's a well understood and useful concept. Let's say you work at a job making $120K. Then in November, you start a new job paying $180K. Would you think that you make $130K (the amount you actually earned that year) or $180K (the amount you expect to make going forward)? Is the extra $50K fabricated salary?

How else would you communicate fast growth in revenue? Also, since run rate is well understood, people don't use it for exceptional or one-time events like a bonus. For example, Groupon didn't claim to be raising money at $12B/yr since the big raise was a one-time event.

It doesn't communicate growth -- there is nothing to compare against. If you were going to do that, you'd simply provide a something like YOY% change in revenue.

A run rate is just inflating/fabricating PAST revenue by speculating on the FUTURE. Refer to my helpful chart:

  |  / <- SHOW THIS NUMBER TO INVESTORS, PRETEND IT WILL GO ON FOREVER
  | /
  |/   <- HIDE THIS NUMBER, TOO LOW
  +---

Wow, a handy ASCII chart that disproves the entire concept of investment. Congrats!

Mark-to-market accounting (Enron-style) is analogous to Groupon booking $3.5b in revenue in Q12011 because their valuation jumped from $2.5B to $6B this year--something they could never realize unless they sold, thus is null. Run rate is speculative, but far more rooted in reality.

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