Google This: Your ‘NET’ Worth

Contributed by Joule Group CEO Jesse Capon 

Hey, you have a really great personality. 

Heard that one before? Thought so. But seriously, you’re pumping out the story of who you are on a daily basis through Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, Twitter, and obviously your super cool personal foodie blog. 

Surprised that Google is included? You shouldn’t be. It’s such a pervasive tool. In fact, the greatness of its tracking algorithms alone means it may as well be the officiate at your next wedding (‘cause it probably knows better than anyone else why the first one didn’t work out…) 

Somehow, most of us always manage to forget that Google is a website and not, well, the entire Internet. They’re allowed to do what they want – within the law – as long as you’re choosing to use their service. Same with any of the other big names listed above.  

So here’s some fun math:

Twitter has about a $25.5 billion stock market capitalization on the NYSE. The company has 232 million or so users, so boom, if you tweet you’re worth about $110.

At Facebook, the market cap is about $117 billion, and they’ve got 1.19 billion users. So Zuckerberg seems to only think you’re worth about $98.

LinkedIn’s market cap is right around $24 billion and they have 259 million of us looking to score contacts. So over there we each tap out around $93. 

Google, meanwhile, is crazy valuable and most people think ridiculously over-capitalized. But we digress… 

The catch is, it’s difficult to wrap your Google worth up in nice neat round bundle because Google’s a website that doesn’t require an account. So the math is based more on the number of searches executed and the ad revenue per active user. Google says about 300 million people use the Google+ content stream, but that doesn’t reflect on the number of general searches, etc. 

Here’s a chart that basically sums up a quarter of 2013 in direct ad revenue by the giants (remember, Google owns YouTube): 

Take from this chart what you like, but if the bean counters are valuing you at just under $100 at Facebook with your $25 per year ad revenue, then at Google it’s pretty safe to say you’re valued at well above $200.  

While common practice, using ad revenue to generate a baseline value is far from a perfect science. What needs to be kept in mind is that these are publicly traded companies that are only as valuable as the number of people willing to continue buying and selling their shares. So every bit of info is polished in favor of increasing the market cap and maintaining or growing trade.

The take-away? The next time someone says you have a really great personality, try to keep in mind that it’s actually worth something. 

Just maybe not to you. 

#LYNL | (Live Your Notable Life)

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