Some financial bloggers are buzzing about Facebook’s purported June rate card, which has been obtained by Valleywag. The card shows that Facebook is charging an initial rate of $300,000, over three months, for a sponsored Facebook group. That is double the rate the company was apparently charging in February, according to another rate card published in Valleywag earlier this week.

Sponsored groups are just one way Facebook says it can help companies get in front of its network of interconnected users. So what does this mean for Facebook? Henry Blodget at Internet Outsider did some back of the envelope maths and came up with this:

Let’s see, 150 group sponsorships times $300,000 per sponsorship for three months ($1.2 million per year), and you’re at $180 million in revenue.  And that’s before the home page sponsorships.  And the $200 million three-year display deal with Microsoft.  Etc. […]

So here are some updated Facebook revenue estimates:

2007:    $150 million ($200 million? $250 million? Who cares?)
2008:    $750 million
2009:    $1.5 billion

As Blodget himself points out, big customers are likely to get a substantial discount on the $300,000 price. Any way you slice it, though, it’s clear that Mark Zuckerberg and his crew are onto something big.

August 1st, 2007 in Uncategorised | Permalink