>>969980801) he's assuming they see social media platforms as valuable and not at best just another wall to slap ads on to.
2) How would you communicate the value here to executives and shareholders? Remember you have to be able to do it in a way that reaches "boggleheads" and fund managers, not just retarded options gamblers and you have to do it in a way that makes up for things people might not like in the balance sheet. That's hard so people use raw user count instead because it's a nice easy number.