Even though it has yet to be monetised, micro-blogging site Twitter should be worth between US$5bn and US$10bn, prominent tech blogger Robert Scoble has claimed.
“Twitter is underhyped,” blasts Scoble.
“I’m now convinced that Twitter has locked up a whole raft of businesses and that Twitter is actually worth five to 10 billion dollars,” he added.
Scoble goes on to say that Twitter has taken over the business world and “this should be very worrying for other companies like Google, Yelp, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo and others.”
As recent as June of this year, TechCrunch.com estimated that the site as worth about US$1.7bn and came up with this figure by drawing the conclusion that if Facebook’s US$10m investment valued it at US$200bn Twitter’s funding to date placed it in this ballpark.
Only last year Twitter turned down a buyout offer of US$500m from Facebook, which sparked debate over how much it was actually worth.
Scoble is basing his valuation of Twitter on the reckoning that influencers, including businesses and Hollywood celebrities according to him, are pushing Twitter as a communications tool in a way that facebook and other services cannot compete with.
“Facebook doesn’t have a way for you to track all mentions of your business,” explains Scoble.
“Facebook has even less permanence than Twitter does and that’s a low bar to crawl under (Tweets are only accessible for a few days on Twitter Search, while on Facebook once they roll off your home page they are nearly impossible to find),” he added.
By Marie Boran
