Q of the Week: How Big Will Facebook Get?

Expectations for Facebook are reaching stratospheric proportions. TechCrunch reported that shares of the company on the secondary market are now trading at $34, giving the company an $84 billion implied valuation. It’s tricky to extrapolate valuations of companies that only sell a small sliver of its shares, but the nonetheless it’s clear that Facebook will have one of the largest initial public offerings in history when it goes that route. Michael Lazerow, CEO of Buddy Media, a platform for brands on Facebook, believes this is just the beginning. He says Facebook will become one of the most valuable companies in the world. By his math, if Facebook matched Yahoo’s relatively low $7 annual revenue per use, it would generate $4.5 billion in revenue. Let’s say it matches Google’s $22 in revenue per user and grows to 1 billion users. That would be a staggering $22 billion in revenue per year.