What's a blog worth? Try $100 million. That's the prevailing wisdom regarding The Huffington Post, a political blog-cum-Internet newspaper that has proved popular with liberal voters.
This week, the blogger announced $25 million in new funding that, according to sources quoted by The Wall Street Journal's Kara Swisher, values the firm at a little "south of $100 million." If correct, it's a coup for the site, albeit an unsurprising one.
Consider the timing. Questions linger over the short-term health of online advertising, which could impede Google's (Nasdaq: GOOG) quest to become a new media mogul. Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), meanwhile, denied showing interest in Yahoo!'s search business, and Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) killed its Alexa search engine. Taken together, these reports suggest there could be fewer opportunities to monetize blogs in the not-too-distant future.
Even so, The Huffington Post's valuation appears reasonable, given what the Web's social superstars -- Facebook and recession-proof Twitter -- fetch today:
|
Company
|
Employees
|
Valuation*
|
Value Per Employee*
|
|
The Huffington Post
|
46
|
$100
|
$2.17
|
|
Twitter
|
30
|
$150
|
$5.00
|
|
Facebook
|
700
|
$3,750
|
$5.36
|
Sources: Press reports, TMF estimates.
*In millions.
All three are news aggregators in some form but, of them, only the Post specializes in creating content. How does the site stack up against old-media rivals? Pretty well, I'd say:
|
Company
|
Employees
|
Market Cap*
|
Value Per Employee
|
|
Lee Enterprises
|
8,100
|
$37.4
|
$4,617
|
|
Journal Communications (NYSE: JRN)
|
3,750
|
$120.97
|
$32,258
|
|
McClatchy (NYSE: MNI)
|
14,307
|
$161.57
|
$11,293
|
|
New York Times (NYSE: NYT)
|
10,231
|
$1,050
|
$102,629
|
|
Gannett (NYSE: GCI)
|
46,100
|
$1,950
|
$42,299
|
Sources: Capital IQ, Yahoo! Finance, TMF estimates.
*In millions. Please note that here, value per employee is not in millions.
Color me unsurprised. Old media isn't as crucial as it once was. Twenty years ago, as a young sportswriter, I was stringing together awful clips in exchange for soup money. Now I write for soup and sandwich money for a family of five.
And slow, stodgy, just-the-facts old media is being replaced by real-time, edgy, sometimes erroneous, yet increasingly valuable new media -- including outlets like The Huffington Post and (ahem) The Motley Fool.
Get your clicks with related Foolishness:
Follow along with the Global Gains team as they travel to key business centers in China to uncover the very best investing opportunities! Sign up here to receive their FREE dispatches from the road.