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Comment by ljlolel | Hacker News Reader

The point is that these are small markets (funny shirts) compared to stuff that actually makes lots of money (cars).

Funny shirts do not a $100 billion company make.

If I had to guess I'd say a very large portion of Google Ad Words revenue is made up of Funny Shirts. Or San Francisco Dog Walkers or Faucet Sales in Portland.

You're digging yourself into a hole with this position. Very successful advertising businesses are built on small niche advertisers. (valpak anyone?)

The question for Facebook is whether there's enough of these successful advertisers to make a 100B business.

Because you go to Google when you want a dog walker or new faucet, you don't go to Facebook.

You don't really have to guess. Last I saw something like 15% of Facebook revenue was Zynga-related. So it's likely they're truly worth a quarter of their current valuation or so, on the basis of funny t-shirts and social gaming writ large.

Jonkee is right. Intent to purchase is the difference

no, man, you don't understand: this is the genius of economy 3.0, where we all make money by sitting on our ass playing xbox 360 and selling farmville ads for funny, made-in-china t-shirts.

Does GM get better ROI on its TV commercials that I skip with my DVR than it could with Facebook ads that just sit there on my screen glaring at me?

I can only skip commercials if I've recorded the show. If I want to watch live (sporting events!), I will eventually have to sit through commercials.

Facebook ads, on the other hand, I block in real time and don't even remember what they look like.

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