These two businesses are in entirely different industries. Not only that, they have very different market characteristics. Ford is a capital intensive industry

These two businesses are in entirely different industries. Not only that, they have very different market characteristics. Ford is a capital intensive industry that reminds me of Berkhire Hathaway - the textile company that Warren Buffett could never figure out how to make money from. It has competitors everywhere making relatively undifferentiated products. Facebook on the other hand, is more like a media company. It has 1 billion eye balls who spend an average 30 minutes a day on its site on user-generated content. If you were a TV station, how much would you be valued at with that kind of metrics? FB has a beachhead in the sense that it is a marketplace of users who create content, and users who view them. This makes it incredibly sticky and also difficult for a competitor to come about. The downside with FB is that audiences can be fickle. If they think FB is a fad, they will start leaving. Therefore, FB had to establish itself as a habit-forming medium, like e-mail, so that people constantly reengage with it.