I am not a big fan of the ultimate commercial value of Social Networks. I could be very wrong, but we shall see. Based on my opening statement, you can see where this post is going.

I do not know Intermix well, but I saw that they posted about $4.5 million of profit on about $78 million of sales. Murdoch and Co. paid $580 million for the operation.

So what did News Corp. get? Based on quotes from various sources at News Corp. they seem to be most pleased with increasing their Web traffic. One source stated that they had doubled their page views etc. This statement made me wince. Perhaps News Corp. is back in the 1990s and they think the just bought The Globe and Tripod?

I thought that most people had learned since 2000 that traffic does not mean revenue (and or profits). Contrast this purchase with The New York Times buying About.com or Dow Jones' purchase of Marketwatch.com. Both of these media giants paid huge premiums, but they bought real businesses.

Our David Card of JupiterResearch was quoted in The Wall Street Jorunal that Intermix was the "social network flavor of the month." I would suggest that David was on the mark.