Investors left holding the worthless scraps of paper that the Pets.com stock became after the dot-com bubble burst can tell you that figuring out the worth of a Web property can be a tricky proposition. With companies liked LinkedIn, Groupon and Pandora going public and making millions – or billions – on an almost daily basis, media pundits are worried that another bubble may pop soon. Cautious investors trying to stay ahead of the game measure a Web property's worth by its users' worth. So what are you worth to some of the biggest sites on the Web?
The Indian version of Technology Review took a peak at some of the numbers. The publication quotes Bijan Sabet, a venture capitalist who says that a viable startup should make at least $2 of revenue per user, per year. Of the companies the study looks at, only Twitter fails to meet that number out, although Pandora toes the line at $2 exactly. In fact, the worth of individual users hovers around $2/ea for most of the web properties out there. Only Groupon and Google enjoy high user values, in fact.
At almost $80 a head, Groupon blows away the competition in per user revenue, but Technology Review says not to look too much into that, since Groupon users tend to buy expensive deals from the company whereas other companies often rely solely on ad revenue. Google generates almost $30 from every user, and Facebook game maker Zynga comes in third somewhere around $5 per user We're kind of scratching our heads at how some of these companies are raking in the cash with blockbuster IPOs when they're only making around $2 per user per year, but to be fair, economics were never our strong point.
Technology Review says thanks to its gargantuan user base and high per-user revenue, Google is far and away the most valuable Web property around. Facebook is rated as the second most valuable property, with Zynga and Groupon tying for third.
Image Credit: Technology Review
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