FeedsWould You Pay $15 Billion for Facebook? Neither Would Anyone Else
When I saw this story over at TechCrunch, I was intrigued. Facebook the 5th most valuable US internet company? Despite the string of qualifications in that title, I was quite impressed and had to read more. It just doesn't seem that a company that only makes money through ad revenue could possibly be worth $15 billion, but what do I know? For some perspective, MySpace's parent company eUniverse was bought for $580 million, only $327 million of which is attributed to MySpace itself.
So what's the deal? Would anyone pay $15 billion for Facebook? Of course not. The figure comes from the fact that Microsoft paid Facebook $240 million and received a 1.6% share of the company and (this is the important part that most reporters here seem to be forgetting) an exclusive advertising deal. So, what of this $240 million does Microsoft consider payment for the 1.6% share? If you think all of it, then it really is worth $15 billion and you're crazy. Microsoft is way more interested in the advertising deal in its attempt to take on Google than owning a meager part of Facebook.
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Comments from site editors have a darker background than comments from everybody else.What about The Googles? That $208B market cap is quite a monster.
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Selling ads to thousands of sites and hosting ads on your one (however large) site are quite different beasts.
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I'm starting to get pretty pissed off with Facebook. I'm ready for the next unspoiled social networking site. Some medium between Facebook and LinkedIn would be nice. Facebook has been totally ruined by how they chose to open it up. I'm all in favor of open apps, don't get me wrong, but... I just don't care anymore. I used to check Facebook obsessively but now I might look at it once a week.
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I think a lot of Facebook's value is (obviously) the vast store of data it has on all of its users.
Considering that it is (nearly?) impossible to actually delete your account (you can only deactivate it without specifically requesting it be removed and jumping through hoops to do so, and even then, who knows...), they will have your personal information seemingly forever.
If they reach that goal of sucking in 200 million users, imagine how much data they would have. And nice & neatly packaged, unlike piece of shit myspace.com.
The exponential growth of these facebook valuations only make me more concerned about what they plan to do with the information they have on me...
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You can delete all the data on your account, but must remove each piece of information individually. While kind of a pain in the ass, it's doable (read: I did it).
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Does that actually remove all remnants of it from their servers?
I know, for instance, that even when you "remove" pictures from facebook.com, they still keep them hosted, and if you have the stable address, anyone can still see them.
Not too familiar with the mechanics of web servers, but it wouldn't seem impossible that they kept records of past profile information on hand.
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Really? That's ridiculous. And makes me slightly terrified at the lack of privacy and control people have over their own profiles.
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If you simply remove it, yes they keep everything forever apparently. Some guy details his long ordeal getting his account actually and entirely deleted from the server.
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Yeah, I saw something similar to this--though it wasn't this guy's blog.
And now I even have FRIENDS working for Facebook!
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