Yesterday, the WSJ reported that Microsoft was thinking of investing billions to buy a 5% Facebook Stake:
Microsoft is in talks to buy a minority stake in the popular social-networking Web site Facebook Inc., a sign of a new urgency by the software giant to jump-start its online business at a time when Google is widening its lead in the fast-growing Internet-advertising business. As part of its catch-up program, Microsoft also has quietly granted broad powers to an executive recently hired from outside the company, who is expected to help shake up the software giant’s online business.
Microsoft in recent weeks approached Facebook with proposals to invest in the startup that could value the fast-growing site at $10 billion or higher, said people familiar with the matter. If those talks bear fruit, Microsoft could purchase a stake of up to 5% in the closely held startup, at a cost in the range of $300 million to $500 million, the people said.
Here’s the NY Times’ article from this morning.
My original thought at the launch event for Facebook platform was that Microsoft would be the buyer. But Facebook is being very shrewd here, getting investment capital (potentially) and a huge valuation and really giving up almost nothing. (It previously walked away from $1 billion from Yahoo!.)
The company is now at about 40 million monthly uniques (and has much more momentum than MySpace) and could conceivably go public — although I still think this is less likely. It would be an obvious coup to have the site (for either MSFT or Google) but the price may be getting too high.
What’s so interesting and ironic about MySpace and Facebook is that these sites have become the “new portals.” Both are relatively self-contained destinations — though Facebook is much more interesting and open.
___
Related from my post at SEL: Microsoft Dilemma: Facebook Or Yahoo (Or AOL)?
May 16, 2008 at 2:14 am |
i agree that facebook is much more interesting and open. I don’t think if facebook should be sold to microsoft- what’s the reason to? It’s justing it’s own core market group- unlike microsoft google etc whose viwers and users are a bunch of people that take loads of survey and research to find out a bit info about themselves. But facebook? it’s got all its market info from the moment a profile is created.
May 18, 2008 at 11:09 pm |
I see facebook is still exploring its potential. Initially people are skeptical about whether it can successfully incoperate some adverts into its site. It turns out great and it’s making money and using help from all round the world to build applications to continuously attract users. i see a lot of future for the site.
August 14, 2008 at 12:30 pm |
I like to visit face book every time.its really nice to make communities with people and share the thoughts with everyone. their is nothing like face book on internet.