Twitter Inc (TWTR) vs. Facebook Inc (FB): User Worth

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Analysts and experts have been trying to determine how much a Facebook like is worth for some time, but how much is each user on the social network worth? As it turns out, users of newly public Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) are worth slightly more than those of both Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) and LinkedIn Corp (NYSE:LNKD)—if you’re looking at this according to each company’s market cap.

Twitter Inc (TWTR) vs. Facebook Inc (FB): User Worth

Twitter users were worth $110

Forbes contributor George Anders estimates that Twitter users are worth $110 apiece. So how does he come up with that? He started with the company’s current market capitalization of about $25.5 billion. Since Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) has 232 million monthly active users, it works out to each one being worth $110.

Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) isn’t doing a whole lot worse than Twitter in his calculations, but its users are still worth less than Twitter’s are. Facebook’s market cap is around $117 billion, and it has $1.19 billion monthly active users. The resulting valuation per user is a little over $98.

LinkedIn Corp (NYSE:LNKD) comes in third place among the major social networks, with each user being worth a little under $93. That’s based on the company’s market cap of $24 billion and 259 million active users.

Are his calculations correct?

Of course the big question on this topic is what monthly active users are worth to whom. How much are users of these social networks worth to advertisers? Of course it depends on how successful their individual campaigns are. But to investors, Anders’ calculations would be about right on. The only problem lies in how investors view what users are worth to Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR), Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) and LinkedIn Corp (NYSE:LNKD). Calculating according to market cap is a simple way to estimate the value of these users, or at least how much investors think they are worth, but in reality, this question is far more complex. There are more factors to consider here.

And don’t forget that Twitter’s market cap is changing quickly since it debuted on the stock market just yesterday. The company has already shed almost $2 billion in market cap since those calculations were done, and this calculation is one that’s going to be changing constantly, at least in the near term, mostly because of emotional buying linked with the company’s IPO this week.

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