O potencial económico dos Social Networking Sites

Quanto vale um social networking site? Será que estamos perante um fenónemo semelhante ao boom da Internet nos anos 90? Estas e outras questões são analisadas de um ponto de vista económico na Slate Magazine.

O artigo
$1 Billion for Facebook? LOL!
Is the social-networking boom a replay of the '90s dotcom bubble?

By Daniel Gross
Posted Thursday, Sept. 28, 2006, at 11:24 AM ET

The "social-networking" gold rush continues. Last year, MySpace was acquired by News Corp. for $580 million in cash. Now the other big social-networking sites are the subject of rumors, deals, and transactions. Yahoo! was interested in acquiring Facebook for $1 billion, but the company's youthful founders are holding out for more. Warner Music earlier this month cut a revenue-sharing deal with YouTube. In August, Google and MySpace struck a $900-million agreement for Google to sell ads on MySpace.
The Dow's at a record high, youthful entrepreneurs are minting dotcom fortunes, and big media types are talking about "monetizing eyeballs"—close those eyeballs for a moment, and it almost seems like 1999. Back then, big media companies threw huge amounts of cash at the hot new things on the Internet: portals and online news sites that had impressive traffic figures but not-so-impressive profit-and-loss statements. Disney spun off Go.com; NBC created NBC Interactive; CBS helped form CBS Marketwatch.com. The trend peaked when Time Warner accepted the inflated currency of the ultimate eyeball business—AOL—and entered into its disastrous 2000 merger.
So, is the mania for Facebook and MySpace different than the lust for portals and online news sites seven years ago? No, and yes.

in Slate.com - Moneybox