When I read the article on Mashable about Facebooks revenue, I thought the company is growing really well. However, after just one minute my mind started to wonder if this is really true.
I know Facebook is just building a business, and I know they started ramping advertising up just recently, and I know revenue is not their primary focus. But come on, $500 million? To put the big numbers a little bid more into perspective, just break it down a little…
If Facebook is making $500 million this year in revenue, this will mean…
- Facebook is making $41.67 million per months
- Facebook is making $9.59 million per week
- Facebook is making $1.37 million per day
- Facebook is making $57 K per hour
- Facebook is making $951 per minute
- Facebook is making $15.85 per second
That sounds pretty good. However, if you look at the revenue per active registered user, it sounds pathetic.
If Facebook is making $500 million this year on a user base of 225 million active users, this will mean…
Facebook is making less per user in a year than minimum wage per hour!
There are practically two ways Facebook can increase revenue:
- Get more bodies into the door. More active users will generate more page views, more ad inventory to sell.
- Get more revenue per ad sold. Higher ad prices will raise the revenue per active user.
To bring Facebook up to minimum wage standards, keeping the number of active users constant, the revenue would have to grow from $500,000,000 per year, to $15,768,000,000,000*!!! How would you say this..? 15 trillion 768 billion dollar?
I’m confident Facebook is growing fast and will generate tons of revenue in a couple of years. I just wonder how fast they will show improvements in this field. But in the mean time, let’s put these numbers into perspective!
* The calculation against minimum wage is not completely fair, as a person only works for 8-10 hours a day, where the calculation here is based on working days of 24 hours, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. It’s flawed, but still it gives a perspective on current revenue and the need to grow bigger, faster!
