While it may not have "inherent" value, it certainly has value. The attention of a user base can be extremely valuable if effective advertising is used. The majority of Google's revenue comes from advertising, and no one would claim they are not a viable business. Facebook is now making a non-trivial amount of money from advertising as well.
> The majority of Google's revenue comes from advertising, and no one would claim they are not a viable business.
Google is the exception. Or rather, search is the exception. You can make money off of search advertising because people are explicitly looking for things when they perform a web search. So if you show people good ads, they will click on them.
But how many people are going to click on ads when they're trying to connect with their friends on Facebook? Facebook's entire premise with respect to advertising is that they have more information about the user, so they can target ads better. But it doesn't matter how targeted an ad is if the user isn't interested on clicking on it when it's presented.
> Facebook is now making a non-trivial amount of money from advertising as well.
There's a big difference between "non-trivial" and "enough to turn a profit".
