"A burbled value of $100 billion would price [Facebook] at an earnings multiple of 100 to one."

"Fast-growing Apple is currently valued at 13 to one. Google is valued at 20 to one. Facebook isn't LinkedIn or eToys or even Google."

Like a bank, it must care about its dignity and an image for stability because of its intimate relationship of trust with its 845 million members, who know their unparalleled cache of personal information is about to turn Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg into a billionaire 24 times over.

So far, Mr. Zuckerberg and colleagues have been more cautious in exploiting customer data than they get credit for. But let us be frank: There is no way the company can grow into such a gargantuan market value by adding even hundreds of millions of new members if it continues to extract only $1 in profit per year per user.

ADDED: In evaluating the worth of Facebook, can we take their judgment in interior design into account?



That is Facebook's own photo, so they are not ashamed to go out into the world looking like that. Disturbing! Those paper lanterns projecting out into the doorway or stuck back behind a trashcan and a rolling chair. The diagonal stripes on the carpet and continuing — miniaturized and de-diagonalized — on one wall. The horrid clock as the only thing hanging on the wall. I couldn't work in an environment like that, and yet the 2 individuals sitting on that crappy brown sectional couch are both billionaires. And they are billionaires in the business of creating something that will occupy the visual field of hundreds of millions of human beings. Something is terribly wrong!