Fred Destin

The speculation is reaching fever pitch, with the old number of $700M being mentioned again on GigaOM, and a great set of comments is raging on TechCrunch.

So let me hazard a few numbers:

• Metacafe must have about 15M Real Uniques in total, judging by the PV numbers
  
• A UMV is worth somewhere between $50 (YHOO) and  $16 (CNET)
• YouTube  was $23 / UMV at the time of acquisition
• And Metacafe is not growing so no premium for growth
• Metacafe has less reach than YouTube in all markets
• So $250-300M sounds like the right range

As for the $700M, that is supposedly where the bankers initially pitched the deal.  Probably thinking about Facebook’s cool $1BN rumour.

[UPDATE: yNetNews is more definitive about the price being $200M.  The orginal Globes story adds the drama of a sudden departure of founder for the US "to close the deal", thought they should check their facts — Sequoia most definitely is not behind Meta :-)]

[UPDATE: Pete Cashmore says $200M is a steal.  I agree the low end of the range is cheap, but I don’t think the 17M unique he reports are worth $600-700M.  I really cannot see why the buyer would pay a premium per UMV on YouTube without more growth or more reach].

[UPDATE: And finally this press release says 16M uniques according to Comscore.  Hmmm.  That means the real number of uniques is probably much higher. I think that’s enough speculation for one night…]

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