Bronte Media is a blog on startups, internet business, and investing, with posts on Facebook, ad networks, and secondary markets.
HN commenters debate its views on secondary market valuations and Facebook, and cite its post estimating 4chan's revenue.
2. The bond and equity markets are based on sound regulation, transparency, and quarterly statements. Facebook has none of those things when it operates in the dark of the secondary markets.
3. Again, these premiums are based on outstanding shares traded under the transparency of the public stock market. See Secondary Suckers for a nice take on the perils of the secondary market: http://www.homethinking.com/brontemedia/2010/09/17/secondary-suckers/
4. Do you have their P&L handy to back that up? If the valuation was so wonderful and they were raking in the profits, then taking series E funding three months ago doesn't make much sense.
There is a relevant difference between valuations derived from secondary markets and public markets. Investors in secondary markets rarely have clear understanding of real financials or the capital structure of the company. This is a good writeup: http://www.homethinking.com/brontemedia/2010/09/17/secondary-suckers/
Also, Chicago has lots of smart people, and I agree with you that FB is well positioned to make lots of money.
The closest I can think of is a short on QuinStreet (NASDAQ: QNST), which is a public lead-generation company highly reliant on marketing money from private universities. Online advertising firms in general would take a hit since education is a major category.
See the analysis and presentation here:
http://www.homethinking.com/brontemedia/2010/05/27/online-education-subprime-2-0/
Ads. But sites like 4chan is more of a community-focus site and they don't really focus on making money. Here is a post about 4chan's revenue:
http://www.homethinking.com/brontemedia/2009/02/22/4chanorg-300m-page-viewsmo-about-6k-in-revenue/
The revenue is enough to cover the hosting plus maybe a few hundreds extra. That's all.