Back on June 6, Statista published an interesting infographic on Facebook's (FB) impact on Zynga (ZNGA) and Groupon (GRPN), showing that Facebook's plunge from its initial IPO price had on these other social media stocks.
(click to enlarge)
(Chart courtesy of Statista)
From its IPO on May 18 through June 5, Facebook was down nearly 32% with ZNGA down 20% and GRPN by more than 15%.
But shares of Facebook have recovered somewhat, so I took the liberty of revising the chart through June 22, 2012.
Sorry I couldn't do as good a job with the graphics as Statista does, but my design budget is a lot more limited than theirs!
I'm not sure what to make of Zynga and Groupon's performance, but all three stocks are now about 11% to 17% below those May 18 lows - and I took the opportunity to buy some Facebook shares on the dip.
The power of the social web
Statista published another chart that's probably more interesting and is one reason why I bought FB.
(click to enlarge)
(Chart courtesy of Statista)
This chart shows the percentage of major web sites (Alexa's top 10,000) that are now linking into the social web, in some cases with highly sophisticated plug-ins and widgets - especially on Facebook.
Sure the stock is expensive, but given the growth in online ad spending, I see Facebook as one of the better companies in the social media sector.
With Facebook, advertisers can target highly specific audiences by location, demographics, interests, and more.
Even though advertisers could conceivably pay more per click to do this, the increase in ROI from more targeted promotions will be well worth the expense - and I think that's bullish for the stock in the long run.
Disclosure: I am long FB.
