I hate the moronic games, the Big Brother factor, the mindless drivel people post on their walls.

But is a $50 billionvaluation really too high for this company? Unfortunately, it may not be.

The Street is abuzz over the weekend's news that Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Russian investment firm Digital Sky Technologies have plunged $500 million into Facebook in a private deal, valuing the company overall at that hefty figure. Read more about Facebook's IPO pressure.

(News that Goldman, Facebook and some Russians have teamed up is surely grist for conspiracy theorists everywhere.)

A lot of people are taking this deal as a further sign of an Internet 'bubble.' It comes not long after Groupon, a group-shopping site featuring daily deals, reportedly turned down a $6 billion takeover approach from Google Inc.

But investors may be overlooking one timeless principle: Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the public. Mark Zuckerberg is unlikely to be the first.

Everything about Facebook is gigantic.

The company says it has more than 500 million users, and more than three-quarters of them are overseas. It is growing like Topsy. More than half of users log on every day. In total, Facebookers waste