Facebook can have 900m pairs of eyes. Doesn't mean they will have a lot of money.

That's pretty much exactly my point.

Worth must be based on something, that's why we have things like P/E ratios and shit, to help the market decide valuation. But my point was that FB apparently made ~$1B last year, and suddenly they're supposed to be worth 100x that when they go public? It never added up.

And my statement above was born of the fact that FB's product is its 900m users (plus whatever perceived growth) and their customers are companies who want to hock their goods at those users (and other things like selling user data to market research companies or whatever else, but you get the idea). You can look at a car company's ability to get product to market and selling that product and making a profit to guide your hand on stock valuation. But how can anyone say that FB's 900m users (+growth) will be able to be monetized in a way that makes the company worth $100b on the market?

That's my issue with the whole thing. It simply doesn't make sense. It never did.

On the other hand, I feel a similar way about Apple ("How can they sell the same product to the same group of people every year and that not make the market nervous?") but I've been completely wrong about them for a few years now. They've just been inexplicably bulletproof.

I'm not saying I'm right, I'm just saying that the FB thing blows my mind.