Matt Maroon: The Anti-Social Graph

There're only two questions that are important for trying to put a price on Facebook:<p><pre><code> 1) How much are Facebook users worth to advertisers (brand and/or CPC) on average and in aggregate? 2) How much is the data Facebook has (the social graph, demographic information) worth to third parties? </code></pre> Matt's answer to both, based on his recent two articles, is "right now, not much relative to the internet heavyweights." That actually isn't controversial at all.<p>There's a lot of optimism about Facebook's future, however, that allows people to argue against Matt based on the "just wait until you see what they come up with" line of reasoning.<p>I'd be interested in hearing from both sides about this <i>future</i> Facebook. As in, what facts, specifically, might change about the world that would make Facebook worth $15 billion, and how likely is it that those changes will come about?

I think he makes a good point about the apps. There are literally thousands of apps and when I was involved in Facebook app development I saw _nothing_ that used the social graph for anything interesting.<p>I actually started a social news system inside Facebook (called Wildfire), the idea was that stories would only get voted up if people passed them from friend to friend. It went nowhere, perhaps that was my fault.<p>Has anyone seen a really cool Facebook application?

<p><pre><code> "That’s true, but it’s even more fashionable (at least in tech circles) to say that Facebook is the next Google, or that Facebook is building the social graph which is worth a lot for some unknown reason and they’ll monetize it later." </code></pre> I submit the comments on this very thread, and this previous thread (<a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=160408" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=160408</a>) as countering data points. It's extremely fashionable to call Facebook a spammy, me-too, useless, overhyped social network that has jumped the shark.<p>At least in tech circles.

I'm always hesitant to bet against anything Buchheit says. But, I really don't get the appeal of Facebook (this is probably why I do systems management apps instead of social network thingies).<p>I do know, however, that many large companies have historically paid very large amounts of money to know as much about people as Facebook got people to volunteer to give them. There probably is significant value in this information. It's stupid to think that the #2 social network is worth 30 times the #1 social network, but it'd also be dumb to wholly discount the value of all of that data.

Matt, here's an example of money in the social graph: What movies have your friends and their friends put in their netflix queue? Friends of friends might have interests similar to yours, and you might end up renting a movie you might not otherwise have rented.<p>Friend-of-friend recommendations have a tremendous commercial potential, whether Facebook or FriendFeed have realized them or not. My example above is actually from FriendFeed:<p><a href="http://friendfeed.com/search?q=&#38;service=netflix" rel="nofollow">http://friendfeed.com/search?q=&#38;service=netflix</a><p>Beware of using "If P then the Facebook guys aren't imaginative" as proof of not P. Also, don't use examples of the usefulness of the anti-social graph to negate the usefulness of the social graph.

More classic MM haterade fuelled ranting. keep swigging. (with credit to aston)<p>But I like the article a lot. Facebook now feels like the warm up to something greater. (and probably smaller)<p>The identity thing is no longer an advantage for them since they opened up beyond schools and coroporates. It is socially engineered toward real identities, but that's all.

New Onion headline? "Area man constantly bringing up how overhyped Facebook is"

Good point about spam. Facebook turns your friends into spammers, which isn't helpful.

Question to Matt: How much do you think your yc startup draftmix is worth?<p>How much would it be worth if it came preinstalled on every facebook users profile... with social aspects built in... and with the name brand of facebook behind it?<p>Facebook is worth a ton of money because people under 30 with money visit it several times a day... and its not like other sites like cnn or espn.com or whatever because there friends are on it and there is an emotional attachment to it.

facebook has become a useless spam machine. Doesn't work for me anymore.

I have to agree with Matt on a lot of points here. As soon as I heard the phrase social graph, my BS buzzphrase filter peaked.<p>Never been on facebook and I wouldn't say they are worthless, but $15 bill valuation for a second place player doesn't make sense to me. Then again, a lot of other things don't either.

MM is doing the wrong startup. He should be writing more and I bet he will have a decent size audience. Although i think he mostly likes to be on the opposite side just for the hell of it, i still like to read his post and sure knows how to defend his views by backing them with data. MM is sure making or writing "something people want": controversy.

I couldn't agree more. Glad to see someone make the point clearly though, I wouldn't have wasted as much time on the topic.

This is pretty misanthropic. I enjoy using Facebook.