Ulanoff on Facebook Valuation

PC Mag Editor in Chief Lance Ulanoff has an interesting column online about whether Facebook can possibly be worth the $15 billion figure that's being thrown around. From the column, it sounds like he's had some frustrations with little things about the social network, and about the lack of that one killer feature that makes Facebook worth his time.

"My big problem with Facebook is that I haven't had a "eureka moment." A moment of realization in which I say (preferably out loud), "Wow, I am so glad I have Facebook! Without it I couldn't have..." That hasn't happened. I wonder if it ever will."

I have "Eureka moments" with Facebook all the time. The killer feature is that Facebook lets me keep track of my friends without requiring, you know, actual interaction (who has time for that??). And their news and updates come to me via the News Feed instead of me having to track it down on a hundred different user profile pages. That might not sound like a big deal, but MySpace users know what a pain it is to keep track of friends by constantly having to click around the site looking at profiles. Facebook's privacy features are also great (including the double-verification that annoys Lance).

That said, I can't see how Facebook is worth $15 billion. Remember when YouTube was sold for $1.6B? That was only a year ago this month, and reading over the analysis at the time, nobody thought Google was getting much of a bargain, even though YouTube had an enormous userbase and plenty of feasible options for making money. Facebook also has a huge userbase--all of whom love that they aren't bombarded with ads like they were when they were MySpace users.