Microsoft to Buy 5% of Facebook Valuing at $10bn

l-ascorbic writes "The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Microsoft is poised to buy 5% of Facebook for $300 million to $500 million, valuing the company at up to $10 billion. Microsoft already handles advertising for the site."

Comments

$10 billion

[Anonymous Coward]

$10 billion for a site that has 34 million active users ~= $300 per user. Hmm. I think this site is highly overvalued. But let MS waste their money if they want.

Re:$10 billion

[Hanners1979]

Microsoft calculated the cost per user of these shares in Excel 2007, and found that every user of Facebook would pay them several thousand dollars.

Re:$10 billion

[Chineseyes]

The problem is that sites like myspace and facebook ARE NOT long term hubs for people to visit. They are trendy sites, back in '99 when I was in a freshman in college the place to go was blackplanet, mi gente, Asian Avenue, and livejournal. After these sites it was friendster which was ethnically all inclusive. Now the new trend is myspace and facebook. All of these social networking sites are just fads and when something that looks better comes along everyone will abandon myspace/facebook/whatever and start aggregating friends somewhere else.

This feels like 1999 all over again

[Paktu]

How the hell is Facebook worth $10 billion? Less than a year ago, they were estimated to be worth $1 billion...does anyone seriously think this site can bring in real revenue?

Re:This feels like 1999 all over again

[monk.e.boy]

How the hell is Facebook worth $10 billion?

Repeat after me: BUBBLE

Next month it will be worth ONE HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS, and the month after it'll be worthless.

Re:This feels like 1999 all over again

[SatanicPuppy]

Seeing as I'm currently in charge of the financial systems for a medium sized newspaper who puts all their content online as well, I think I'm in a better position to say how much money comes from what.

We get dick from online. I mean, it's like joke money. Maybe a hundred thousand a month...more on a good month. Retail ads are 20 times that, and classified more still. Actual circulation revenue, including single copy which is pretty expensive compared to a subscription, is well into the millions and that is money that comes in every month, like clockwork. Sure, on Thanksgiving you're pulling in enough ads to double your circulation money, and Christmas too, but then there's the rest of the year.

The problem with newspapers is that the actual process of creating and delivering the paper is a huge time and money sink. Despite that we're still running a solid profit, though as many people point out, it's shrinking. Online is obviously the answer to a prayer...we could afford a HUGE drop in ad revenue and still make a profit if we could close down the print product. But as it stands with online advertising, it's still not profitable enough to think about that.

Re:This feels like 1999 all over again

[jollyreaper]

Repeat after me: BUBBLE

Next month it will be worth ONE HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS, and the month after it'll be worthless. I believe you mean "Bubble 2.0."

Re:This feels like 1999 all over again

[SatanicPuppy]

Well, IMHO, since I don't have any actual say in this stuff...

1) They're stupid. They whore out to doubleclick, etc, just like everyone else instead of doing quality chosen local ads that they could pitch to their local advertisers for better rates. They're slowly overcoming this problem, and ad revenue is increasing.

2) Most newspapers are still working their way into the whole "web" idea. I mean, print media produces more actual web-friendly content than most industries, and, even better, it has a short shelf life, so they have nothing to lose by putting it on line. Do they take advantage of this? No. they put it up for a few days, then take it down.

This is hilariously frustrating if you know anything about the web, because you know that it's not whats there right now that's valuable, it's whats there in total. Newspapers in particular are sources for immense amounts of detailed information about things in their coverage area, and while it's utility is pretty limited in the usual archival forms (e.g. Microfiche) it would be astoundingly useful if they just left the content up to be indexed by search engines. Couple that glut of content with some advertising, and you've got an archive of data that costs very little to host and will bring in ad revenue every time someone finds something relevant in your coverage area.

At some point the big media companies (Gannett, McClatchy, Media General, etc) are going to realize that they're sitting on an informational goldmine and start actively leveraging that information to draw people to their sites. Right now it's all the aggregators (like Slashdot, Digg, Fark, etc) who are picking up the burden of providing the relevant information to the interested parties, because print is stuck in the whole, "Barf up a bunch of content and people will come" mentality. That will eventually change.

3) They still think in the back of their minds that if they put together a really good online component, they'll kill their bread and butter print product. This is, at heart, stupid. People thought television would kill print too. We still don't have a good portable disposable medium that will take up the slack, and moreover, there are a lot of people who are just wedded to the idea of the physical paper. That's going to be the case for decades to come, and that's a conservative estimate.

This means that they don't put enough real resources into online. I could give you numbers that would make you laugh your ass off, I mean seriously embarrassing. The people who are doing it are reporters, but not the good reporters...You get Peter Principle crap, so the reporters that end up doing it are people who can be spared to do it, and they have no special training, and no technical competence, and all too often, no fricking IDEA of what they should be doing...Just a very limited idea of what the hell the web is about.

Again it's just incompetence, and industrial blindness. Random example. You pay a professional photographer a daily wage. You send him out to cover a fire, a little league game, and a miss toddler usa pageant. He takes (conservatively) 500 photos. Of those 500 photos, maybe 4 make it into the paper, some probably in black and white. The rest are discarded. On the off chance that any picture will be used in the paper, the photojournalist has secured (in advance) the names of the people in it.

Can you imagine the kind of photo galleries you could create with that sort of information? Cheap to host, simple to index, throw some ads on it...Profit!

Print will die, but the content will live on. They need to transition that content to a digital forum, and then show the world what they really collect. The sheer volume of information has to be trimmed down to fit in the available space...What if there was no space limitation? Take every newspaper website, and, instead of making some ephemeral short term shallow content, make it like the tip of an iceberg, provide what you pay to collect already, and let people dig through it.

Sigh.

This is obviously and old and polished rant. You can guess how seriously they take my opinions...I'm just a techie after all...What do I know about newspapers? =P

that would make $ 294 / user!

[dermond]

wikipedia reports 34 million users. this would it mean $294 per user... sounds a bit overpriced to me..

Re:that would make $ 294 / user!

[AcidLacedPenguiN]

I think instead they should just buy every user an Xbox 360. . .

Re:wow

[betterunixthanunix]

Probably because it would cost so much for FB to migrate to .NET (or any application server). Think about how much traffic FB gets -- now think about how much extra hardware they would need to aquire to switch from a CGI-esque technology like PHP to a big and heavy AS like .NET, let alone the man hours needed to recode everything.

Noooooo!!!!

[onosson]

Maybe if we all *poke* Bill Gates, we can get him to stop.

Well, that's one way to get Silverlight adopted...

[mad.frog]

...just require 34 million active Facebook users (who are probably mostly young, rabid web users of other sites too) to install it.

How long till we see some cool new site feature -- or, hell, even an existing, basic feature -- reworked ("enhanced") to require Silverlight?

Hopefully not

[Rik Sweeney]

Mark Zuckerberg would like to keep it independent apparently.

In any case, register your complaint by joining this group

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6197556554

Everyone knows that joining a group on Facebook can move mountains and change the world...

Scrabble

[LordSnooty]

As long as I can still play Scrabble, I don't care!!!1

Actually, this input from Microsoft might help to fix the problems that Scrabulous seems to suffer every day... right, gang?? As you can see, I only use Facebook for Scrabble. There must be a group for me.

I can't wait to see pictures

[duppyconqueror]

of Ballmer and Gates doing Jello Shooters at a rager.

How many real users?

[vux984]

Great. Just another reason not to use facebook.

As for the number of users, I wonder how many of them actually USE facebook, vs simply having registered in order to see someone elses crap. I know a lot of people who've been roped into 'signing' up to these sights in order to see their cousins christmas pictures, or to rsvp to a wedding shower where the idiot hosting it sent out the invitations via facebook.

So far: I don't have a facebook profile; I don't want a facebook profile; and I'm dreading the day where I have to get a facebook profile because I need to see someone elses effing facebook crap. I just know that sooner or later an important client is going to send me a facebook invitation that I'll -have- to register on the site to properly respond to...

I hate social^H^H^H^H^H^H viral networking sites.

They must have asked Rupert Murdoch's advice

[Random BedHead Ed]

I'm sure Steve Ballmer discussed this with Rupert Murdoch over drinks.

"So how are profits from your MySpace purchase, Rupe?"

"Oh, well ..." said Murdoch, looking nervous. "Actually, great. Great! It's going to be worth billions real soon now." He laughed icily at his own irony.

"Really? Because we were thinking of buying a stake in Facebook at Microsoft."

"Oh, you should totally do it," said Murdoch, grinning wildly.

"Yeah, we thought the developers would love using it on a sort-of group connection to MSDN."

"Do it! There's nowhere for these social sites to go but up."

"And we're thinking of extending the Welcome to the Social campaign to include it."

But Murdoch was laughing to hard to hear the rest.

Re:wow

[moosesocks]

I know your post was sarcastic, but any mac users dealing with the agonizing slowness of their photo upload applet should be cheering for joy if what you're saying is true.

Flash on Mac isn't all that hot either. Adobe's more or less been shitting all over the platform ever since Apple started directly competing with them. A single Youtube video can easily suck up 80% of the CPU cycles on a modern Core Duo machine.

As long as the number of competitors remains small (ie. 2), I think that Silverlight will actually boost the quality of web applications on ALL platforms.

Java's had its time, and frankly, while it's found niches in other fields, it sucks for web applets. Java applets need to disappear into the ether, resting alongside VRML. (Facebook IS in a pickle, because at the moment, Java probably is the best solution for multiple photo uploads...)

Re:wow

[Anonymous Coward]

In any case I will be leaving if MS buys facebook.

Sure you will. Right after you meet that lass in a pub that wants to be your "friend...." ;-)

Re:Depends which 5 percent they're getting

[sepluv]

wouldn't want my money within a thousand miles of that "F*** the Jews" facebook group

Well...your money won't be because the evil Jew bankers have it all and they are using it to bring in the New World Order.

Note to Mods: That was supposed to be funny.

Seriously though, you (the parent) might actually have a reputation to tarnish unlike the prospective puchasers of Facebook (Microsoft and Yahoo)...

buy people

[kurtis25]

Face it we are being bought and sold like cattle. In this case MSFT is buying a place to plug in their future office live apps. A few updates down the road you will see the edit interface look like office live. This will mean that thousands of people are getting used to a MSFT product on Facebook and will use office live when they have to decide where to type their next document. Let's say Google buys Slashdot and changes the Post Comment screen to a docs.Google style screen (with awesome presentation style comment ability) then when it comes time to choosing a Word Processor in 3 years I'm going to choose docs.Google since I've already been using it on Slashdot and you will make the same choice. So this 5$ share is nothing more then MSFT buying future customers. They didn't buy the farm for the land they bought it for the cattle. ---- Mooooo....

Re:Well, that's one way to get Silverlight adopted

[19thNervousBreakdown]

Can't a company just invest in another company that looks promising?

Yeah! And can't a crackhead just admire your car stereo?

How are you gentlemen?

[Moderatbastard]

All of your face are belong to us.

Re:Hell!

[Anonymous Coward]

Unlike Zuckerberg, Jobs actually innovated and evangelized real technology. Facebook rehashed a viral formula in a niche market and grew it successfully. Facebook is valuable because the site is popular, but this can change on the whims of a user-base. Facebook has made no significant technological contribution to the internet and overvaluing popularity is a huge mistake for long-term investments---it's almost like we don't remember 1994-2001 anymore.

Re:20002 called.

[Xtravar]

There's no reason an applet is necessary to perform a binary upload. Facebook resizes the photos before uploading them.

1. They are saving a ton on storage and bandwidth by doing this.
2. They are saving a ton of Sally's bandwidth by doing so (since she has 800 pictures of her and her friends drunk on Facebook).
3. They are saving a ton of Sally's stalker's bandwidth (who would inevitably download all of her photos in hi-res).
3. UI: Users can easily browse to and check off which photos to upload, with thumbnail previews, which is much nicer than any other non-Java upload system out there.

They do, however, have a HTML form fall-back in case you don't want to use Java. But frankly, it is the most convenient, transparent, and well-designed Java applet I've ever run into. In fact, I'd hypothesize that Facebook's photo system is a success precisely because of the Java applet.

Oh, a social bubble. We should call it Bubblr.

[Glytch]

Maybe this time around we can crowdsource a Web 2.0 revenue model to capture all those eyeballs, and implement it on a scalable platform using best-of-breed licensed and open source technologies.

The "White Pages" for eMail

[willy_me]

I've come to see Facebook as being the "white pages" for eMail. People change their eMail addresses constantly - usually due to changes in employment or SPAM overload. What is needed is a way to find your friends current eMail address. This is the role that Facebook serves. If I need to send a message to a friend I can just use Facebook and it matters not how they have changed their eMail.

I'm not suggesting that this is a perfect solution but it does help explain the popularity of these sites. It is the reason why I joined Facebook.

Willy

Re:wow

[mrdaveb]

Quite impressive that PHP was able to model itself on Microsoft software that didn't exist yet

Re:wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, not really...

Even with the mod PHP processes are hogs. However, no licensing costs. The .NET subsystem is extremely fast, but the $$ builds fast as you add machines.

Re:wow

[timmarhy]

i smell another dot com bubble rising.

there's no way facebook is worth 10billion. they dont' produce anything.

Re:20002 called.

[Anonymous Coward]

3) They are also making Sally's stalker upset because he WANTS the hi-resolution photos. Sally's stalkers lose out completely, and considering a large amount of us on slashdot stalk Sally, it hurts expecially bad.