Brace yourself: The 2.0's are coming!
The Web 2.0's, that is. Here's the rundown on all the social media IPOs in the works. Exciting times to be in the market.
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Demand Media, quite possibly the most anti-social of the social IPOs is about to raise $1.25 billion in a Goldman-led deal later this month. Demand Media is a content farm, they hire destitute writers to make horrible articles on things that people are searching Google for. It's a disgrace and everyone involved should hate themselves. If you invest in this spam company when it comes public then you are part of the problem.
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Joshua has been managing money for high net worth clients, charitable foundations, corporations and retirement plans for more than a decade.
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We should also mention potential deals like Renren, supposedly the largest social network in China as well as Nuomi, the "Chinese Groupon". I will not be investing in these, maybe I'll trade 'em.
Skype's out there too but I look at it more as a communications company than a social media name so we'll save that for another time. It's going to be gargantuan.
The big one, obviously Facebook, is a 2012 story but expect to hear about it every week until then. Valuation right now based on recent investment rounds and share sales on the Silicon Valley Wild West Stock Exchange is said to be $56 billion or so. Just to put that market cap in perspective, it makes Facebook a "bigger" company than CVS, Caterpillar, American Express, Target, Boeing, Fedex, Nike, DuPont and Walgreens. Updated: TechCrunch is now reporting that shares are now changing hands at $70 billion. Why not?
And then there's Twitter, my personal favorite. Not my favorite as a business because I have no idea how they'll make money, but my favorite as an institution. I wish we could just turn Twitter into a utility where all users pledge a few dollars to a year just to keep it running. And to stop them from having to put ads all over it. CEO Dick Costolo says an IPO is "way out in the future" but my bet would be that someone buys it. Valuation talk is $4 billion but I think Google would pay double. Twitter is like Youtube to them - they may have no idea how to monetize it but they can't afford to let anyone else have it.
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