Social value

$15 billion for Facebook doesn’t sound so crazy when you consider this: A Deutsche Bank analyst says that a newspaper reader in 2004 was worth $964 a year. Today, that’s $500. Facebook’s 50 million active users translates to $300 per at that valuation. And newspapers are shrinking while Facebook is growing by 200,000 new users a day. A day. And those users spend an average of 20 minutes each day inside the site vs. 41 minutes a month on newspaper sites, says DB.

By the way, the analyst says newspapers will come back into the black in 2012 but I see no rationale in theh E&P story for that prediction.

(Link corrected. Thanks, friends.)