<![CDATA[Gawker: valleywag, stupid money]]> http://tags.gawker.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/gawker.com.png <![CDATA[Gawker: valleywag, stupid money]]> http://gawker.com/tag/valleywag/stupidmoney http://gawker.com/tag/valleywag/stupidmoney <![CDATA[The billion-dollar backlash: Even Mark Cuban thinks it'd take a moron to buy YouTube]]> The first naysayers to come out swinging against the crazy valuations of sites like YouTube ($1.5 billion), Facebook ($2 billion), and MySpace (a ricockulous $15 billion) are reporters and bloggers, and a few analysts known for a healthy cynicism. Slate writer Daniel Gross, for example, today praised the role of skeptics in the social-network-valuation boom. But who'd expect Mark Cuban to join them?

Cuban, the billionaire owner of the Mavericks, investor in blogging company Weblogs Inc., and host of a failed reality show aping Trump's "The Apprentice," made his billions in 1999 by selling online video startup Broadcast.com to Yahoo for $5.7B in stock. Now a man who owes his fortune to a puffed-up valuation is calling out YouTube, saying, "anyone who buys that is a moron."

Cuban delivered a whole little rant to attendees at New York's Advertising Week. Reuters quotes him: "There is a reason they haven't yet gone public, they haven't sold. It's because they are going to be toasted."

Slight caveat: Cuban needs to brush up on his numbers. He asked, "Somebody puts up something really good and you get, what, 60,000 viewers?" Actually, it's not hard to break a million. But since Mark's an expert in worthless but overhyped companies with ludicrous sale prices, we'll take his word about YouTube being toast.

Only a "moron" would buy YouTube, says Cuban [Reuters]

]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=204072&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Oh yeah? MySpace is worth twentyeleven gajillions!]]> Oh great. A Wall Street analyst wrote to his clients that MySpace could be worth $15 billion in the next three years, after meeting with suits with its corporate owner, Fox Interactive. Now he's quoted in Reuters and all over the press.

Mr. Expert also said MySpace video ads currently run as high as $35-40 per thousand clicks, which would bring in plenty if the vast majority of MySpace pages viewed had video ads and not that annoying 50-cent CPM "swat the mosquito" banner ad.

Quick, quick, make your own MySpace valuation and justify it in the comments!

MySpace value could hit $15B [Reuters on CNN Money]

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