• TechCrunch, Monday, June 23, 2008 11:30 AM

TechCrunch has put together a model that attempts to value social networks by looking at social media usage in each country and attaching a value to it based on how much money is spent on online advertising per person. Of course, ultimately, the market has the final say on asset valuations, but the TechCrunch model results are surprising, nonetheless.

In terms of worldwide users, Facebook recently overtook MySpace as the Web's No.1 social network. The rest, in descending order, are Hi5, Friendster, Orkut and Bebo. However, when you take into account where users live and how much money is spent on online advertising in those countries, the rankings change. For example, Google's Orkut, the most popular social network in Brazil, is worth 1/20th of MySpace despite having one quarter the number of users. As such, the Google social network ranks 13th on TechCrunch's valuation list.

The model uses comScore traffic data for each country and divides that by the total estimated advertising spend for each person. For example, in the U.S., Web spending is estimated at $25.2 billion in 2008, which, when divided by the number of people in the country, works out to about $132 per person-making the U.S. the fourth most valuable market per person according to TechCrunch, behind the U.K. ($213), Australia ($148) and Denmark ($144). To get the valuations, you then multiply that weighted average by the number of unique users the social networks have in each market. Based on this model, MySpace is the most valuable social network, and Facebook is second, worth 75% of MySpace. AOL's Bebo is a distant third.

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