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Comment by d4nt | Hacker News Reader

I doubt it, the P/E ratios of most tech companies is no way near 1999 levels. But there are some isolated examples of irrationality. I don't know anyone who seriously thinks Facebook is worth $70bn (i.e. more than Sony).

I suspect the low interest rates are pushing a lot of private capital into higher risk but 'cool' areas.

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You do now; I think Facebook will add more global value than Sony in the next 10 years.

I agree: Sony's consumer electronics division has produced a steady string of losers lately, and they're having a rough time competing with Apple. I'm not sure what their other divisions are doing, but it's been years since Sony was hip.

Facebook, on the other hand, is sucking up a huge fraction of the hours spent online by hundreds of millions of people. If you consider them as an advertising-supported entertainment company, they're doing great. Facebook's revenues are still only a couple of billion dollars per year, but they should be able to monetize more of their traffic over time.

Note that I haven't run the underlying numbers on either company. But from 10,000 feet, it's [edit: not] automatically clear that Sony is worth more Facebook.

"...it's automatically clear that Sony is worth more Facebook."

Really. That's quite a claim. I derive almost no value from Facebook, and I mainly have a profile to let people know I actually exist. I know many people in the same boat. I couldn't care less if they folded in the morning.

There was a guy here on HN a while back saying that his business saw absolutely no ROI from Facebook ads, because people simply don't click on ads - they are on Facebook to chat with friends, not buy teeth-whitening products or whatever. That guy reckoned a lot of people are trying Facebook ads because every business must be 'social', it's the thing to be seen to be doing. Once enough business get burned, word will spread and Facebook will lost a lot of ad revenue. Just one guy's opinion, but it makes you think. There was another article saying Facebook is like a nightclub that is currently the cool spot to hang out, but it will inevitably lose it's lustre and go the way of MySpace. People will migrate to the Next Cool Thing™. Again, just one more data point to consider.

Since you ended with a bold claim, I will too: that within ten years, Facebook will be almost forgotten. Sure, it will still have traffic (so does Bebo and MySpace) but it will no longer be picked up by TechCrunch and mainstream media.

Sorry, my final claim as originally posted was incoherent, and the exact opposite of my actual argument. You may have misread my final claim, which is unsurprising, because it made no sense. I've edited it appropriately.

I've heard mixed rumors on Facebook advertising: Not all the stories were quite so grim. As for the future, I've seen a much larger number of non-technical users (especially older adults) using Facebook than ever used MySpace, etc.

Personally, I don't use Facebook much, because their privacy policies keep changing.

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