Which is only true because of an inflated rating from Goldman Sachs. Does any one here think that Facebook is worth that much? Look at MySpace, considered to be very valuable and now its owners are struggling to make any money from it.

I'm pretty sure Jobs has said he only owns jeans and black turtle-neck jumpers to reduce the stress of choosing what to wear in the morning. If that was true, and if it still is, why is the pictured person wearing a cardigan?

True, but Schmidt is only CEO of Google. I imagine Messrs Page and Brin are worth a lot more.

The same goes for Twitter. I'm struggling to understand their business model and the valuation.
But then again, I'm not an internet millionaire.

A website, even one that doesn't have an obvious revenue stream, that has a member base of around 10% of the population of the planet has got to be worth a lot/

Why?
You're outgoings covering server costs, bandwidth etc. have to be supported somehow. Code monkeys don't work for peanuts, sadly.
So how are you covering that?
I'd love my business to have 10% of the population's attention - but only if they're paying for it.

I suspect ad revenue is a biggie

I do not understand dot.com valuations. All based on potential. You could be betting on the 3.30 at newmarket for how reliable they have been. Most investors lost a bundle.

It's no different to hedge funds really.

Most of them recently have not done that well. Worst thing is that many pension funds have a lot of their money tied up in hedge funds.

If you look at the turnover of those [LIFTED] Zynga games on FB I'd be amazed if they weren't getting a cut too.

i think thats what prompted Facebook to introduce the credits system, Zynga were making a fortune off of Dracula-Gangster-Spreadsheet-Wars and they wanted a slice of it

The sale of website businesses is down to the potential value - not the real value - of the business. Hedge funds trade on the potential value of shares. The fact that they get it wrong can be catastrophic (see Porsche). The same can happen for web sites. There may be a bigger dot com bubble burst coming if Facebook et al can’t realise their value in real, hard cash terms.

Back on topic:

I think the truth of the matter with Jobs’ health is that he and his oncologists won’t fully know what the position is until after he’s finished whatever treatment regime he’s been put on.

"We wish Steve the best, and hope he lives forever, but … "

Mark