Recently there have been some new estimates over Facebook worth. The new estimates are looking at Facebook being worth between $1 billion and $1.1 billion in revenue this year (2010), a big increase over the $710 million estimate from The Wall Street Journal a few months ago. In all actuality, Facebook, the world’s largest social networking site could have made anywhere from $600-$700 million in 2009.
As Facebook is a private company; they are in no way obligated to release their financial information that is why these are all estimates as to the worth of Facebook and the annual revenue it brings in. The estimates and legal work were provided by Inside Facebook and offer a clear picture in what is a murky subject.
The way that Inside Facebook came up with these estimates was by breaking down Facebook’s 2009 revenue into four distinct areas: brand advertising, performance advertising, Microsoft advertising, and virtual goods.
From what was discovered, revealed that Facebooks largest revenue stream came from performance advertising, which was nearly half of Facebook’s $700 million revenue in 2009. Following closely behind was brand-based advertising, which accounted for approximately $225 million in revenue during 2009. Microsoft revenue came in at $50 million, while virtual goods only brought forth $10 million according to these numbers.
What is really unique and interesting about these 2010 revenue estimates is that as Facebook is pushing out tons of new revenue sources that can drastically increase the revenue amount for 2010. This includes optimizing their advertising algorithms, hiring a larger staff to manage brands, and a big push to Facebook credits. Combined, these make it very possible for Facebook to easily exceed $1 billion in revenue in 2010.
As Facebook has expanded at record paces, most surprisingly the increase of 400 million users last month alone, it still has a long way to catch up to media giant Google. If Facebook can monetize social media to its maximum potential through websites and apps then the possibilities are endless.
About Brandon Leibowitz
