While at a credit card conference recently, I met up with a data analytics expert. He talked about how companies like Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) have dominated their sectors because of their mastery of creative algorithms (for example, somehow Amazon seems to know the books I like).
Well, he also talked up myBarackObama.com. He thought this was the future of marketing; that is, using social networking to supercharge monetization.
He has a point. In fact, a recent piece in Bloomberg.com has some good thoughts on this.
Keep in mind that myBarackObama.com has extensive profiles on about 800,000 people. What's more, as members continue to interact with the site -- in terms of comments and so on -- the database gets stronger and stronger.
In other words, myBarackObama.com is a high value asset that could be instrumental for the Democrats in future elections.
OK, so what might myBarackObama.com be worth? If you look at the valuations of social networks like Facebook, the figure is likely to be substantial (by the way, Obama's Facebook page has 790,000 friends). And according to the Bloomberg piece, the estimate is that the market value is about $200 million or so.
Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook
Five winners of a weak dollar: SBUX, PEP, AAPL
Twitter valuation off by half: NeXt Up Research
Comfort Zone Investing: The unmighty dollar
