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Yahoo Tries to Woo Facebook With $900 Million

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the web-bubble-2.0-in-full-effect dept.

Krishna Dagli writes writes to mention a New York Times article on Yahoo!'s attempt to buy Facebook. Their current standing offer is $900 Million, with the deal including a degree of autonomy for the site and founder Mark Zuckerberg still in charge. From the article: "When Viacom offered $750 million for Facebook in January, he asked for $2 billion and was rebuffed, according to a person involved in the negotiations. Now, he remains undecided about the latest offer, made in the last few weeks by Yahoo. That offer, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, was confirmed yesterday by two industry executives, one briefed on the deal by Facebook and the other by Yahoo. Both spoke on the condition of anonymity because the negotiations are continuing."

24 of 108 comments (clear)

  1. my advice . . . by recordMyRides · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Take it you fool!

    --
    Track and chart data from your bike computer.
    1. Re:my advice . . . by RovingSlug · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Or more likely, the founders got screwed on terms from their investors (Accel, for instance) and a $2 billion sale translates to like $2 million for the founders. Just guessing.

  2. Hmmm... by Otter · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I dunno ... $900 million from Yahoo is enough to buy a basketball team, pay exorbitant fines to the NBA and periodically hold forth on business as though you're Henry Ford, not some clown who unloaded his dot-bomb on some suckers just before it imploded.

    --
    What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
    1. Re:Hmmm... by xENoLocO · · Score: 2, Insightful

      And why would open registration make it fail? Just because you dislike the additions doesn't mean everyone else will. In fact, I would rather point out that you're in the minority in that thought. These guys are going to do whats best for the business, and opening registration means more money... plain and simple.

      --
      "The need to build the internet comes from something inside us, something programmed... something we can't resist."
    2. Re:Hmmm... by megaditto · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It sure sounds like much, but it isn't. Some of it will be in Yahoo stock (PITA to unload), and nearly half of it will be taken away in taxes!

      Instead, the owner currently has $50m/year tax-free (since he re-invests ALL of it into the company). This is projected to double next year.

      Also, considering his aspirations of becoming the next Jobs or Brin, perhaps selling off is not the best idea?

      --
      Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
    3. Re:Hmmm... by larry+bagina · · Score: 3, Informative

      The open registration uses the facebook infrastructure, but is in a completely different, walled off partition than the existing college user space facebook.

      Orkut has a closed registration system and nobody gives a shit about them. There are obviously other factors involved.

      --
      Do you even lift?

      These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.

    4. Re:Hmmm... by Ruff_ilb · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Alternatively, the value that he got for $750 mil might not have offered him the amount of autonomy he wanted; if, for example, they wanted to buy him out and shut him out of the loop, he might have wanted 2000 mil for that. Now, if yahoo is going to buy him but still allow him to do his own thing, he might consider a lot less - in this case, 900 mil.

      --
      http://www.TheGamerNation.com/Forums
  3. Take the Money and Run by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Congrats! You won the lotto. Twice. You can always quit and go do something fun with your 900 million dollars, but only if you have that money. Don't worry about us, we can make another site with the same functionality. We are the world, we'll be ok. Now go cash in!

  4. Jackpot by AnotherAnonymousUser · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Chances like this are one in a million. You had a great idea and millions have enjoyed it. Take the money with some terms of autonomy and keep giving people the service they've come to expect. Worst case, just use even a fraction of the money to create a Facebook clone and have all of your users migrate.

    1. Re:Jackpot by Quadraginta · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Well...first of all, he's not going to get the whole 900 megabucks. He doesn't own the entire company, only a majority of its stock. The deal may not be strictly cash, too -- it may well involve quantities of Yahoo stock valued at their trading price on the day of the acquisition.

      Secondly, the guy is already fairly rich. Going from being a millionaire to a half-billionaire (say) is nice in many ways, but it's going from riches to more riches, not rags to riches.

      Third, one suspects he actually gets more out of the power and glory of running a successful company. It doesn't sound like his Main Goal is to have lots of money. It sounds like he enjoys more the constructive pleasures of building a massively successful venture. Who wouldn't? I mean, unless you're a total slacker, then being successful, admired, influential and seeing your ideas come to fruition exactly as you'd want them to is much more rewarding than the next million (once you already have a few million in the bank already).

      What happens if he sells the company? Sure, he's got a lot of dough, but he's no longer in sole control of the company. He's working for Yahoo. He's got a boss. Not likely he's going to enjoy that very much.

      He could take his big chunk o' change and his fame and go start another copmany. But no doubt the deal would include a non-compete clause, so it can't be the same type of company. Got to be a totally new venture. What are the odds lightning will strike twice? That the next "brilliant" idea he has about a company is going to work out as well? He's going to be worrying about that.

      If he had run the company for 10 years already and had had all the fun there was to have in it, I think he'd sell. But he's only run it for a very short time. On the other hand, he also knows what the commenters here are saying, which is that this is probably his best golden opportunity. I'd say the guy's in a bit of a bind.

    2. Re:Jackpot by inKubus · · Score: 2, Interesting

      There's no bind. You take the 900M in stock or whatever, you sell it, you pay your taxes on the full amount, and you stick it in a 5% savings account and go buy an island somewhere. WhyTF would you not take $900M?! Power? Money IS power. How many users does he have now? 9 Million. He could start an ad campaign with a different, easy to make product (say a video on demand service), take 300million and basically pay 1 million college students $300 a piece to use the service, provided they bring in at least 5 new accounts in the next year. Then you charge $5 a month or $60 for a yearly subscription and you pocket all your money back in the first year. He thinks he's being smart by holding out for the best offer, but he's going to get screwed and lose it all. 12 months from now, when Facebook is dead and he's broke, we're going to see a headline of his suicide. If he doesn't take the deal, that is.

      --
      Cool! Amazing Toys.
  5. Hmmm... by RichPowers · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So Yahoo! wants to shell out $900 mill for a service that's fast becoming another MySpace? Instead of maintaining its brilliant niche market - appealing to college kids through closed registration - Facebook decides to open registration. I fail to see the wisdom of that decision; MySpace already exists for everyone else. Facebook was, in a way, the anti-MySpace, a cooler, less annoying networking site. Users were PO'd about recent additions like the news ticker...just wait until the flood gates open and every emo, pedophile, jerk, and jackass on the Web starts signing up. PS: Web 2.0 bubble burst rapidly approaching, captain.

  6. Not bad... by cunina · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ... for an idea notorious scumbag Zuckerberg stole from his friends.

    1. Re:Not bad... by davidu · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I don't know if what you say is true or not but it doesn't really matter (and sounds like someone has sour grapes).

      But I'll tell you this:

      Ideas aren't worth much if you can't execute on them.

      -david

      --

      # Hack the planet, it's important.
    2. Re:Not bad... by ThinkComp · · Score: 2, Informative

      Well, one of those [former] friends of his has just launched this:

      http://www.commonroom.com/

      Take a look at the timeline under "I'm New."

    3. Re:Not bad... by LilBlackDemon · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Mr. Zuckerberg actually worked on a site that already existed (I believe it was called ConnectU.com). Zuckerberg was hired to redisgn the site. However, after the three month contract was up, ConnectU releaunched with a rather shaky design (the site would sometimes crash its servers the coding was so bad) and Facebook was launched, as Zuckerberg's own project, around the same time. The two contain many elements in common, but because Facebook was more stable and happened to hit at the right time and have the right publicity (and name, even) it became the smash hit it is today.

      When it first happened, there was a bit of controversy as to if Facebook might even contain some ConnectU code. It was a sticky situation for a bit.

      --
      freeflux-powered open-source blog
  7. If Yahoo buys, it will fail by Capt'n+Hector · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If Yahoo bought facebook and stuck the little Y! icon in the corner, I would leave. The whole reason us college students liked facebook in the first place was that was made by and for us, the college students. The only way for Yahoo to make back their money would be for them to sell the personal information (unless somehow the EULA prohibits it, which I hope is the case). If they do that, then we will revolt (see how well the "feed" feature went over, and that was information we already had), and facebook will be nothing more than a less neurotic version of myspace. Zukerberg, please don't sell. I LIKE facebook the way it is.

    --
    Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
    Africus aut Europaeus?
    1. Re:If Yahoo buys, it will fail by protohiro1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I don't think Yahoo would sell the personal information because that would be suicidal, for the reasons you said. Yahoo wants facebook to fight off myspace. I question the widsom of this purchase, but I doubt their will be a mass defection. If you like facebook, why would a Y! scare you off? Has everyone deserted Flickr? I think $1 billion is way too much to pay for facebook, but I find it unlikely that yahoo would ruin the service.

      --
      Sig removed because it was obnoxious
    2. Re:If Yahoo buys, it will fail by kenneth_martens · · Score: 2, Informative
      The whole reason us college students liked facebook in the first place was that was made by and for us, the college students.

      Climb down off your high horse. I've been a college student, and I'm also currently working on a Master's degree. Students don't sign up for Facebook because it's a snobby exclusive club just for them. They sign up because 1) it works, 2) it isn't ugly like Myspace, and 3) it offers reasonable privacy protection. Nobody really cares who made it or who runs it.

      Whether or not it's owned by Yahoo doesn't change anything. If Yahoo buys it and screws with the privacy settings (e.g., if they let everyone view your profile) then there will be a user revolt. But users won't revolt en masse just because Facebook is bought out by a *gasp* commercial company. As long as Facebook keeps working, ownership just isn't that big of a deal.
  8. Dear Mark Zuckerberg.. by Vellmont · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Your plan worked! You managed to create a fad website and idiots are willing to give you 900 frickin million dollars for it! Take the money before they realize that Facebook is just a passing fad like boy-bands! Don't over-play your hand. Even Yahoo and Viacom aren't dumb enough to give you anything like 2 billion dollars for it.

    --
    AccountKiller
  9. You may now kill yourself. by DysenteryInTheRanks · · Score: 4, Insightful
    I like Gawker's take on this:


    The 22-year-old founder of Facebook wants to sell for $1.5 billion, and the twit just might get away with it. You ready to kill yourself yet? Here, use our knife and be sure to cut vertically.


    I think anyone with any modicum of programming skill has been repeatedly slapping their forehead over the last year at the money being made from some very basic PHP scripts and what SEEMED like really silly ideas.

    Seriously -- if someone came to you a few years ago and was like, "Umm, ya, we're looking to take, like, Geocities, and mash it up with Blogger, and AOL Instant Messenger, except uglier than any of those things, and maybe graft on some awkward MP3.com type capabilities, and leverage the awesome power of ColdFusion, and we've registered an awesome domain name -- MYSPACE, get it, like My Space, like My Web Space ...", I mean -- really. Would you have been able to STOP laughing?

    Or if someone was like, "ya, I envision this site where everyone at every college can just upload all their personal info, pictures, basically just like Blogger, except only other people at their college can see it, and they can like join clubs and stuff, and groups, like any group they want, and post pictures of themselves doing bong hits, put the whole thing on a PHP/MySQL ball..."

    I'd be like, "ya, I don't see college kids posting pictures of themselves doing illegal things, first of all, dumbass. Secondly, why join an online group when you can join a REAL group, in real life, with live members of the opposite sex present? And thirdly, why should they use YOUR facebook when their college prolly has one of its own? Even if they did, why wouldn't they use Yahoo Groups and Blogger and AIM just like everyone else?"

    Shows how much I know.

    Ya, I could have built this stuff. I'm not even a CS major or programmer, but I know enough scripting (perl/ruby) and server admin I could have pulled it together. But I didn't! It never would have occured to me to make something so bloody simple and so minimally better than what is already out there.

    Just goes to show, it's all about the users, and if you're not a user, if you're not in their shoes, it's really hard to anticipate what will be exciting to them.
    1. Re:You may now kill yourself. by MP3Chuck · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Thing is, anything sounds simple boiled down into one sentence. Slashdot is a "tech news aggregator" but it's one of the most popular sites on the internet. Same goes for Digg. deviantART is just an "online art community" but it's got 25 million submissions and a couple million members. The list goes on. Like some others said above, ideas are worthless without an execution. And even then, the quality of the execution makes all the difference.

      --
      Who doesn't like free music?
  10. pointcast deja vu by maadmole · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This is what Zuckerberg should be having nightmares about. http://www.businessweek.com/1999/99_17/b3626167.ht m

  11. How do these people think? by Plutonite · · Score: 2, Funny

    I dunno, I'm just confused. What's the difference between $900 million and $1500 million? Or $2000 million? Or 5000?

    What goes on inside people's minds when they are debating this sort of shite?

    [CEO Thought Bubble]: $1 Billion dollars means a baseball team, 2 small Islands and a nice fleet of cars and jets. Probably enough remaining in stocks for a comfortable living and the odd shopping spree.

    [devil]But 2 billion...now we're really talking. Just think of the possibilities. More celebrities to screw, 3 times the number of cars possible. Maybe another Island off the Brazilian coast. Plus, 1 is a small number. Insecure, ya know. 2 is plain solid. Go for 2. 2 billion dollars man. 2 f*cking billion. [/devil]

    [angel] If they say no you won't have much to screw, will ya cowboy. 1 billiondollars ought to be enough for anybody. IF you ask for more, you should and will go to hell[/angel]

    [/CEO Thought Bubble]

    CEO: Give me time to think, please. You can't rush this kind of decision.