Welcome to the Bubble 2.0

BusinessWeek reports:

Facebook, the Web site where students around the world socialize and swap information, has put itself on the block, BusinessWeek Online has learned. The owners of the privately held company have turned down a $750 million offer and hope to fetch as much as $2 billion in a sale, senior industry executives familiar with the matter say.

To put this into perspective you have to remember that when “maverick” Rupert Murdoch bought Myspace, he paid $580 Million. 

Posted by Ori on 03/28 at 11:38 AM

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  1. Speaking as a venture adviser working in the Silicon Valley, and within ear-shot of the rumblings, I note that this is at best a trial balloon to see if FaceBook can ascertain a market value for its business.  And I suspect $1B is way high in the long run.

    Is some of the hubris back? No doubt. Should they take the $750M and run? IMHO, absolutely. Page views are leveling off; and in the target market for FaceBook, what’s hip today, quickly can become passe’ (to paraphrased the philosophers “Tower of Power” circa 1978). 

    Furthermore, all those kiddies submerged in MySpace will soon be off to college like my God-son, and our next door neighbor’s daughter.  And when they do, does anyone believe they will suddenly switch from MySpace to FaceBook?  In retrospect, MySpace was bought for a song.  FaceBook may not be so lucky.

    Web 2.0 is supposedly all about people and leveraging a “BYOC” model—bring your own content.  I am unconvinced this is anything more than another mad dash for cash by incoherent capitalists.  I am all for capitalism, but this flavor-of-the-month mentality in the struggle to find the “next thing” should be avoided.

    Let’s focus on funamental innovation, like re-thinking the way one interacts with the digital world from their desk top (e.g., upload and download, regardless of the bandwidth, is an annoying, klunky, “device-interrupt” to the flow of a user experience).  The same can be said of typical authentication, authorization, and entitlement.
    GAM|out

    Posted by  on  04/04  at  10:58 AM

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