Yahoo! is in talks to buy Facebook for an amount up to $1 billion, according to this page one piece today in the Wall Street Journal. This set of negotiations comes on the heels of Facebook’s talks with Microsoft and Viacom, intense bidding for something that was a college project two-and-a-half years ago.
You would think Facebook’s 22 year-old CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s head would be spinning — he owns 30% of the company — but, nah, he’s sticking to his old ways. According to the Journal piece, Facebook executives turned down an 8:00 a.m. conference call with Microsoft because Zuckerberg doesn’t wake up that early.
Facebook is not the meteor that rival MySpace is, and Murdoch’s News Corp. paid far less than $1 billion ($580 million to be precise) for the number one social networking site. But News Corp. has turned MySpace into a cash cow, setting off a search by other media titans for their own social networking revenue generator.
It’s not at all clear that lightning will strike twice in the social networking world, given its fickle audience and, I would argue, the hard-to-top savvy of News Corp. Zuckerberg claims not to be interested in an IPO or a sell-out to a larger company, but if I were him, I would take the money and run…and set my alarm early enough to take that next deal-making phone call.
Cynthia Brumfield at 7:29 AM|Comments(0)
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