4 ms·

No, it doesn't make sense. You've explained Pinterest as a marketing company that happens to have 70+ million willing participants. Now explain to me how in the

No, it doesn't make sense. You've explained Pinterest as a marketing company that happens to have 70+ million willing participants. Now explain to me how in the context of the human race, being able to push a product to those 70+ million users is worth EDIT: about as much as SpaceX. Just because it makes sense in the current model doesn't mean it makes sense.

aetherson 12y ago
You want him to explain the entire global economy in a comment thread? That seems a little unreasonable. What's the actual substance of your complaint? Are you worried that Pinterest can buy Armenia? It can't. Are you just offended that two not-very-comparable numbers are X > Y instead of Y > X? That doesn't seem like a big deal to me. Are you complaining that Armenians are poor? That's perhaps a big deal, but we don't know how to make poor countries not poor.
- jsmthrowaway 12y ago
  I'm not complaining about anything. I'm saying perhaps we overvalue marketing in general.
  - fadsasda432 12y ago
    I agree with that. We live in a marketing bubble and the power of advertising will decrease a lot in the next years as new generations will just get more and more immune to it. Which is actually a good thing.
jaronheard 12y ago
Misleading comparison. Armenia's GDP is the estimated economic worth produced annually by Armenia. Pinterest's valuation relates to the economic value produced by Pinterest for all future years, not annually.
- jsmthrowaway 12y ago
  I get the feeling no matter what comparison I make, you'd call it misleading, because that's really splitting at hairs. The thrust of the comment and the point of referencing Armenia's GDP was the scale of the figures. I've now edited it out since apparently nobody can address my point without slapping around the GDP comparison, as if it's important I get every word of my comment exactly right regardless of the point. Imagine what the $11 billion one would spend to purchase Pinterest could do in other areas, such as the developing world, our inner cities, public infrastructure. That's the point. Is that up front enough and leading you in the right direction, or am I still being misleading? Put another way, why do we value an online marketing tool at $11 billion and people efforting some real change like feeding starving children have to struggle for a meager five figure grant? And why are people here so hell-bent on feeding into it and silencing people like me who just have questions about it? Am I the only one that has ethical questions about spending my engineering career contributing to a market that values image distribution to push products and fuel consumerism at about the same order of magnitude as SpaceX? You can look at me with a straight face and say that Pinterest deserves to be valued at $11 billion for what, its user count? Its potential to open up new revenue streams for advertisers? Same with Snapchat, same with Instagram. I feel like our priorities are broken, and that's all I'm saying, and as much as all of my comments are flirting with being grayed out, it feels pretty hopeless and depressing to be the only one, apparently.
  - jaronheard 12y ago
    I'm not trying to split hairs, it's a difference of 10x magnitude at least. It's a pet peeve of mine when people compare annual amounts to present values. I'm actually sympathetic to your argument about what society values, but if you want people to listen to what you are saying, you might want to be a bit more careful making comparisons like that.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
  - bottled_poe 12y ago
fweespeech 12y ago
To put this in perspective, the population of Armenia is ~3 million. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/am.html https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/... Tbh, the fact that the advertising value of a company in the first world is worth that much is kinda silly imo. However, it makes your target unclear. Is it the fact that Armenians are so poor per capita?

aetherson 12y ago

You want him to explain the entire global economy in a comment thread? That seems a little unreasonable. What's the actual substance of your complaint? Are you worried that Pinterest can buy Armenia? It can't. Are you just offended that two not-very-comparable numbers are X > Y instead of Y > X? That doesn't seem like a big deal to me. Are you complaining that Armenians are poor? That's perhaps a big deal, but we don't know how to make poor countries not poor.

jsmthrowaway 12y ago
I'm not complaining about anything. I'm saying perhaps we overvalue marketing in general.
- fadsasda432 12y ago
  I agree with that. We live in a marketing bubble and the power of advertising will decrease a lot in the next years as new generations will just get more and more immune to it. Which is actually a good thing.

jaronheard 12y ago

Misleading comparison. Armenia's GDP is the estimated economic worth produced annually by Armenia. Pinterest's valuation relates to the economic value produced by Pinterest for all future years, not annually.

jsmthrowaway 12y ago
I get the feeling no matter what comparison I make, you'd call it misleading, because that's really splitting at hairs. The thrust of the comment and the point of referencing Armenia's GDP was the scale of the figures. I've now edited it out since apparently nobody can address my point without slapping around the GDP comparison, as if it's important I get every word of my comment exactly right regardless of the point. Imagine what the $11 billion one would spend to purchase Pinterest could do in other areas, such as the developing world, our inner cities, public infrastructure. That's the point. Is that up front enough and leading you in the right direction, or am I still being misleading? Put another way, why do we value an online marketing tool at $11 billion and people efforting some real change like feeding starving children have to struggle for a meager five figure grant? And why are people here so hell-bent on feeding into it and silencing people like me who just have questions about it? Am I the only one that has ethical questions about spending my engineering career contributing to a market that values image distribution to push products and fuel consumerism at about the same order of magnitude as SpaceX? You can look at me with a straight face and say that Pinterest deserves to be valued at $11 billion for what, its user count? Its potential to open up new revenue streams for advertisers? Same with Snapchat, same with Instagram. I feel like our priorities are broken, and that's all I'm saying, and as much as all of my comments are flirting with being grayed out, it feels pretty hopeless and depressing to be the only one, apparently.
- jaronheard 12y ago
  I'm not trying to split hairs, it's a difference of 10x magnitude at least. It's a pet peeve of mine when people compare annual amounts to present values. I'm actually sympathetic to your argument about what society values, but if you want people to listen to what you are saying, you might want to be a bit more careful making comparisons like that.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- bottled_poe 12y ago

fweespeech 12y ago

To put this in perspective, the population of Armenia is ~3 million. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/am.html https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/... Tbh, the fact that the advertising value of a company in the first world is worth that much is kinda silly imo. However, it makes your target unclear. Is it the fact that Armenians are so poor per capita?