Facebook is now worth more than Amazon and Coca-Cola

Much  to the surprise of many, Facebook is now worth more than Amazon, IBM, Coke, it is the 15th most valuable company in the world. Some may call it a bubble, a crazy P/E, but however way you look at it Facebook is hugely successful. This is in my view a key reason for their success.

One of the most common criticisms of Facebook is that there is a bias towards positive news. That people tend to post many more good things than bad things that are happening to them. That few post such things as “my life sucks and I don’t know where I will get the energy to go to my boring job tomorrow”. But maybe that is actually a significant part of the success of Facebook and why it is so popular, the tendency towards good news. What Facebook made clear is that people wanted good news.  The alternative to Facebook is media news and they have exactly the extreme opposite bias. In media almost all news is bad news.  After a lifetime of bad news people were craving for a new form of media focused on positivity. And friendship was the missing link to make positivity feel real. It is the combination of proximity and positivity that makes people want to be on Facebook. Facebook nailed it and is now worth close to $200bn.

(Photo: WebProNews)