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.

Meantime, Apple shatters its revenue and earnings records quarter after quarter after quarter and is sitting on $75 billion in cash -- and still is dramatically undervalued by many Wall Street measures. And this was the case before Steve Jobs announced he was stepping down from running the company. Seems weird that a tech darling that actually makes money by the boatload is considered less sexy than the neighbors with very cloudy futures. Then again, most tech starts-up have one goal in mind: Grow big fast and build buzz, then look for a buyer.

So what if Apple were to use some of its walking-around money to buy Twitter and/or Tumblr -- at more reasonable valuations -- toss out the clowns in charge and integrate two potent social-media platforms into its own sexy line of money-making products.

A crazy scenario like that might be Twitter and Tumblr's best chance at long-term survival.