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Currently, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are all in the red. They have enormous value because of their potential to make gobs of cash due to the amount of eyes

Currently, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are all in the red. They have enormous value because of their potential to make gobs of cash due to the amount of eyes that look at them everyday. The problem during the dot-com boom/bust was that ideas that were basically crap (aka. had no real users, nor much potential to get them) were getting wayyyy too much money, and were often being started and led by business types who thought they could just hire some programmers and their ideas would spring to life and make them infinitely rich. FB/YT/Twitter are all in a very different position and actually have potential to make their investors infinitely rich in the not too distant future.

RyanMcGreal 17y ago
FB/YT/Twitter ... have potential to make their investors infinitely rich in the not too distant future. Yes, but how? And what is stopping them from doing it already? Edit: I understand that Google is working on algorithms that will let them parse content from videos so they can include targeted ads (I've heard it suggested that Google's free 411 service is an exercise in collecting speech samples for just this purpose).
- nir 17y ago
  Facebook and YouTube have a lot of user who spend a lot of time there. This at least makes an ad model possible. Twitter does not have that, especially considering how long it's been around (it was launched about 6 months after YouTube) and how unbelievably overhyped it is, and a large share of the users it does have are spam accounts. Only time will tell, but I think along with "make their investors infinitely rich in the not too distant future" there's also a strong option of "completely forgotten in the not too distant future".