STATS: Value of Blog versus Social Network

The Difference Between Wordpress and Facebook

Is about $14.8bn according to the publicly available information about the most recent financings of the two companies ($15bn for Facebook and $200mm for Automattic).

But consider this comscore chart of unique visitors over the past year.

It's a very similar growth trajectory, driven largely by the same phenomenon - the creation of personal spaces on the web by people who want to engage with others.

So why is Facebook worth $15bn and Wordpress is worth $200mm? Well for one, Facebook controls the advertising inventory on the pages it serves and Wordpress does not. And for another, Facebook has built a "soup to nuts" social network with powerful viral channels (which they are cutting back on) and Wordpress has not.

But trust me on this one. The blogging revolution is the adult social network whereas Facebook style social networking is for teens and college kids. This gap will narrow.

As Usual Google Is The King Dog [A VC]

from Venture Capital by Fred

Jason Goldman at Twitter used to be the Blogger product manager at Google. So when he saw the comscore chart on my wordpress vs facebook post yesterday, he asked what comscore's numbers are for Blogger. Here they are. As usual Google is the king dog. 190mm unique people saw a blogger served page last month. That's >20% of every Internet user in the world. Wow.

Ed: Thus, Blogger is worth $600 million to Google - not even on the radar screen.