Help me with my math

We all know the financial markets are crazy, but if you want proof even serious investors can be distracted by shiny objects, try this on for size.

Smart Money magazine reported this month that Twitter's $8 billion valuation means each of the 51 billion Tweets you and I and everyone else send annually is worth 16 cents. Seriously? My Tweets are genius, but I wouldn't pay 16 cents for them. That 16 cents should make every serious investor stop and take notice and stay far away from any IPO until Twitter shows signs it can earn consistent and sizable revenue. For those who don't know, the company is losing millions of dollars, and has since it launched and is still struggling to find any sizable revenue stream to pay its enormous serving costs, let alone investors. An IPO is simply a way to get others to pay for the party.

Then The Wall Street Journal reports that Tumblr is on the verge of raising up to $100 million in outside investment, giving the blogging company a value of $800 million. This for a company that, while very cool and growing in popularity, generates almost no revenue and has no clear concept of how to make money.

Hmmm ... reminds me of Pets.com, a flash-in-the-pan company whose business strategy was to lose money on every sale.

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