Facebook has risen to become the third-largest Internet business, passing by venerable giant eBay. Their current value, according to Bloomberg, is now at $41 billion, a couple of bills ahead of eBay’s $39.3B. At least, that’s the latest guess.
Google and Amazon still reign supreme in the number 1 and 2 spots with a huge gap between them and Facebook. Google, Inc. is valued at $192.9 billion while Amazon is worth $74.4 billion.
This Facebook valuation, of course, is based on secondary market trading since Facebook has not yet done an IPO. As Business Insider points out, this secondary valuation is despite the social media giant’s expected revenues of only $1.5-$2 billion this year.
Not long ago, the Wall Street Journal was tossing around numbers for a Facebook IPO offering anticipated for 2011. They valued the company at $35-$40 billion (in market capitalization). At that time, Facebook had only taken in about a billion dollars in venture capital and small secondary market stock sales.
Eventually, of course, the social media powerhouse will go live on Wall Street. It will most likely be one of the most-anticipated initial offerings to have ever hit the public market. Until then, all of this valuation guessing is just fun mind games.
So, eBay, you can stay in the number three spot. For now..
