First Walt Mossberg and then Kara Swisher. It seems they both share my views on Yahoo! mail and Facebook respectively. Jokes apart here is the hottest topic in the silicon valley related to its new poster child "Facebook". Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook values his company at $15 billion over net earnings of $30 million. It is an amazing self-promotion. And, everyone in their right mind are puzzled. Rightly so, Kara Swisher at Wall Street Journal has been pulling legs of investors who believe in the hype. Here is the article she wrote 10 days ago. Also, she was kind enough to quote my comments in her followup column here.
But for convenience here they are.
“Very good analysis Kara. Most grown ups agree with you. I’d like to mention a point that you missed: “Growth in the international market”. Google gets 45% revenue from international market. Facebook doesn’t have that kind of growth prospects internationally and given its inability to monetize in the US it is definitely not worth $15 billion. Facebook has no presence in Europe, China, India or Brazil. Bebo in Europe, Orkut in Brazil-India and MySpace in China are formidable. Also, people forget that Google was already making $3 billion in 2004 when it took the IPO route.
If Facebook goes for IPO route; I’d buy shares and sell within 1 week before the bubble bursts.”
Let’s see who get the last laugh. Either way I have figured a way to make fast money using Facebook. 
