The latest from TechCrunch
- Apple: Actually, $50 Billion Isn't Cool Either. You Know What's Cool? $300 Billion.
- Need More Proof Quora Is "Blowing Up"? Meet The Quora Button
| Apple: Actually, $50 Billion Isn't Cool Either. You Know What's Cool? $300 Billion. | Top |
| Last night, the Internet was set ablaze by the news that Facebook was taking more money at a valuation of a cool $50 billion . That’s massive. But it’s actually only 1/6th of the value of another closely-watched company in the tech space: Apple. Apple hit the $300 billion market cap milestone today after their stock surged 2 percent to open 2011. That makes them only the second public company with such a high value, the other is Exxon Mobil . Apple, obviously, had a very impressive 2010. A year ago, they were the fifth most valuable public company at “only” a $213 billion market cap. At the time, they were still over $40 billion behind rival Microsoft in the tech space. That changed in May when Apple zoomed ahead for the first time since the early days of the companies. Since then, Apple has padded their lead, and they’re now $60 billion ahead of Microsoft — now the second most valuable tech company. So can Apple take the top spot? Well barring any (god forbid) sort of oil incident, it would take at least as good of a year as they had this year — and maybe better. Exxon is currently valued at $375 billion. Their stock has surged over the past 6 months adding something like $100 billion to their market cap. At the current volume, Apple’s stock would need to be trading at about $410-a-share for them to pass Exxon. The stock is currently at just under $330-a-share. But a year ago it was around $210-a-share, so another killer year could do it. But again, Exxon’s stock shows no sign of slowing down either. So it may take Apple at $500-a-share to do the trick. That’s probably too tall of an order for this year, even with the iPad 2 and Verizon iPhone on the horizon . Shifting back to Facebook, obviously it’s not fair to compare a private with a public one. But it is interesting to see their assumed value in the perspective of their tech peers. At $50 billion, Facebook is already worth more than Yahoo and eBay, both of which are public. They’re behind Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Apple. But if and when it’s determined that they should IPO (or if that’s determined for them by the SEC), that value should change quickly. Of course, Facebook’s revenues for 2010 are expected (at the high end) to be around $2 billion. For some perspective, Apple’s revenues were $20 billion just last quarter . They’ll be even higher for the quarter closing in a few days. Apple could be approaching $100 billion in revenue each year, up from $50 billion (again, Facebook’s overall value) a year ago . For some better perspective, as of last quarter, Apple had $51 billion in cash (and cash equivalents) in the bank. CrunchBase Information Apple Facebook Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Need More Proof Quora Is "Blowing Up"? Meet The Quora Button | Top |
| While co-founders Adam D’Angelo and Charlie Cheever are famously quiet about Quora’s user and traffic numbers, blogger Semil Shah has discovered something even more indicative of the site’s entrance into A-List status — A Quora button right along side that off Facebook and Twitter on startup BankSimple ‘s website. A sign of an impending Twitter moment ? Says Shah, “As much as older brands may resist, the rising tide behind Quora’s popularity will reward those businesses who choose to embrace this trend rather than learn lessons the hard way, too late.” If you’re on Quora and have signed up for email alerts, you probably noticed a massive influx of “follow” emails over the past two weeks, including some unlikely ones from top brands . This userbase expanision is hard to ignore, culminating in Quora surpassing 25K daily unique visitors during the last week of December, according to Google Trends. Some tech pundits are blaming the notorious Scoble Effect for the explosive growth, but Quora has seen this kind of spike before (sans Scoble) last year right around Thanksgiving, when just like Christmas, people have more free time to futz around on the Internet. While Cheever admitted in a Quora thread that “a number of things going on at the same time, including these blog posts” are responsible for the growth, D’Angelo tells TechCrunch that the Google Trends numbers are “off” and that this oft-referenced user chart is also inaccurate. Perhaps the existence of bootleg “Follow me on Quora” buttons are more evidence than any analytics of the site’s having hit already mainstream? When asked whether if they plan on making official Quora buttons or adding even more social “Tweet this question” type features anytime soon, D’Angelo stated, “We haven’t prioritized that use case yet. we have our hands full just keeping up with growth.” Just like in the case of the Quora Chrome extension , hardcore Quora fans have come to the rescue. Quora uers who want to stay ahead of the curve, can download an unofficial button here. Update: Need even more proof Quora is “like Twitter in 2008″ ? It’s down. CrunchBase Information Quora Information provided by CrunchBase | |
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