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The Case For Apple Buying Facebook
The article makes the case that Jobs has been hinting that he wants to actually spend some of the $51 billion Apple has been sitting on, and that Facebook is a likely candidate. Considering how thin the Ping social network is, and the integration issues the two companies have had, there are some good reasons for such a deal. And a heck of a lot of reasons why not.
Sounds like its time to find a new social media website.
Carl Sagan quotes get you an automatic +5 on all posts.
Facebook won't sell for 50b
Apple tends to buy things that will make them money. I really doubt Facebook would ever make any money for Apple. (Or anyone for that matter.)
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
Since all of /. knows how tight Apple is with its apps, perhaps an Apple acquisition of facebook would force the latter to get rid of all the stupid apps present therein...
One could hope.
Let Microsoft buy Adobe, then let Apple buy Facebook. That way, they're all in one place when we nuke them from orbit.
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
the CIA. Question is how do they cover their tracks?
Usually Apple buys small, "cheap" and useful companies and Facebook doesn't belong to any of these categories.
I don't think Jobs is dumb enough to buy Facebook.
Right now it's the darling of the social internet, but a few years ago that title belonged to MySpace. Remember MySpace?
These sites don't have a very long shelf life. They're popular for a few years, and then they die off when the next, newest popular social media site takes off.
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
So there are a million reasons this would be a terrible idea, but there is one potential benefit: Facebook could finally receive the badly needed usability revamp that it has needed for years now. If there's one company that knows how to make interfaces, it's Apple, and the confusing mess that is Facebook is long long overdue for a major reworking.
I read the internet for the articles.
Let Microsoft buy Adobe, then let Apple buy Facebook. That way, they're all in one place when we nuke them from orbit.
Its the only way to be sure
What about the huge potential of iAD on FB? Now there is some money to be made. Other things of interest would of course be Game Center and FB integration.
Buy Dell and close it down. Just to make Michael Dell eat his words.
Once upon a time, there was this amazing company called Netscape. It was so fantastic that this other company called AOL bought it for over $4 billion.
Later on, there was this amazing company called AOL. It was so fantastic that this other company called Time Warner believed it was valued it at something like a quarter trillion dollars, so merged with it.
Later on, there was this amazing company called Facebook...
I wish I could quit you
Strategic partnership, sure, but outright purchase? No way. Sure, it's temping to consider the ways Facebook could interface with iOS, but Facebook is valued somewhere in the neighborhood of $30-35B, and Apple only has $50B cash on hand. Facebook is too expensive for what it is -- a neatly designed hack for people to make their own web pages and connect with others. The value of the company lies in the number of active accounts, not the technology itself. And for Apple, a technology company which already has an accomplished marketing department and more publicity than it can ever use, the purchase just doesn't have enough value.
Besides, Facebook has already displaced Google in the areas the two compete in. There would be nothing to add to that particular rat race, but the danger that Google could focus on a single enemy instead of several. Yhe only reason to buy a company is to harness the potential innovation and future success when integrated with your own. Buying a fully-fledge corporation relying on something as fickle as consumer taste is a terrible idea.
It's ingenious! How could it not work?
Just like when AOL bought Llamasoft. No, you know what would be a better example? When Fox bought MySpace. That worked out well, right?
This is moronic. This is "I need column inches, and Apple has money and gets pageviews, and Facebook gets page views, so I'll write a column..." nonsense.
What would Apple get out of this? A big messy architecture (in maintaining all those servers, integrating OS X with FB)? A giant target on it's back for even more privacy lawsuits? I don't see any value to Apple in buying Facebook. It would make a ton more sense to just buy up some good ISVs or more hardware companies to help design their products in house.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
I guess not now that Apple comes on board. Maybe they'll have an open-apple function instead...
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
Jobs might like this as a gateway to get an 'Apple Product' onto other mobile and computer devices, but unless he found someone to run it with the same energy as he's putting into product development, then it would be a wash. He might look for other ways to get in on social networking, but this is way too big, and will water down their core business....
Apple usually buys small, technical adept companies and rolls the new tech into a shiny product. The largest recent purchases have been less than $300 million (Quattro & P.A. Semi). Facebook is overvalued and would burn up more than half Apple's cash reserve. If Apple is "poised to make a major acquisition" as the article suggests, how about a company worth $1-2 billion? That would still be several times larger than any other purchase. This article is silly.
Move along, no sig to see here.
Yep, that's really giving back to the shareholders....
Once the stock tanks, they won't be happy about Steve spending their money so easily.
The new, improved! Fapple!
Yah, I'd want a different social media website too. And a shower. Yech.
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
You do realize you can turn off "Keep iTunes Media folder organized" and "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library", correct?
I believe if you turn off both of those, your issues of rearranging and duplicating your collection would be gone. Yes, those are "Advanced" options, since they're likely not what most people want.
They could take half of that cash and buy Yahoo, Adobe, and Novell. Why mess with Facebook?
At least then we'd have privacy as more than an afterthought after all the FB users get outraged once again.
And we wouldn't have chairs thrown at us.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
You know what else is a stupid free game that idiots become addicted to? Shakes & Fidget - The Game.
Both my wife and myself have deleted our facebook accounts. Last time I was in that situation it was with Myspace. Remember Myspace?
Facebook is the advertising industry's darling because it allows them to do super accurate and granular ad targeting. iAds not performing as well as expected? Build an integrated ad platform with iAds, iOS, and Facebook. That said, can Apple buy Facebook pre-IPO?
I curse you for giving me that link
Jehovah be praised, Oracle was not selected
Common Medal of Friendship += 1
Facebook staff have been amazed to discover that when Facebook passes users' complete details to application developers and advertisers, some of the partner companies might accidentally let slip the information in some manner.
"We are appalled at this information leak," said Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg as he took a break from his personal RSS feed of drunk women's tits posted to his service. "But I can assure you that we have sternly suggested to everyone involved that they take somewhat greater care not to get caught, and maintain a serious demeanor when rolling around in the great big pit filled with money in their basement."
"I'm horrified and outraged," said office worker Brenda Busybody, 43 (IQ), "that stuff I put on the Internet is on the Internet. It violates everything I expect. I want privacy when I'm calling my boss a useless fuckstick to the entire world, all my coworkers and my boss himself. And when I'm playing a bit of FarmVille before we nick off down the pub."
Privacy advocates are working on Diaspora, a security-enhanced social network so far populated by Linux users who cryptographically sign every update about which episode of Babylon 5 they just finished watching alone in their parents' basement. "START PGP KEY BLOCK!" said open source software advocate Hiram Nerdboy, 17. "WE WILL PROTECT YOUR FREEDOMS!" The next version of Diaspora will allow users to list more than three friends, should there be any demand whatsoever for such a feature.
Facebook works on the now-standard "Web 2.0" business model: 1. Brutally sodomise the personal privacy of anyone who comes within a mile of your service and say "hey baby, I'm sorry" every time you're busted. 2. Sell ads.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
If Apple buys Facebook, Microsoft will try to create their own Facebook in response. It's worth doing just to see how laughably bad Microsoft's Facebook ripoff would be.
Do you have ESP?
I'm all for a curated Facebook Apps store, I'm sick of the garbage that's on there.
I don't know if Nintendo is buyable, but it seems like a good fit: complementary products, lots of possible synergies, same-ish markets.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
If this is a true visual representation
http://xkcd.com/802/
then I would be cautious about discounting the value of FB.
Even if Apple spends only $1b on it, how do they intend to make it worth the money?
Is Facebook even looking for a buyer? It hasnt even gone IPO yet because they want keep control of their vision. If that is the case, it doesnt make sense to sell it to Apple whatever they are offering. I think Apple buying Facebook would be a mistake for the users and would ruin the Facebook experience. I like that they are a privately held company and not IPO, and you got to be impresssed by a kid that figured out the entepreneurial game before 20. I think all these complaints about Facebook's privacy are greatly exaggerated. I mean to begin with, you don't have to post anything at all, and you can restrict your page to your friends. Also the complaints about the targeted ads are over the top. Aren't most users today already great at ignoring ads anyways? I can't remember a single ad on Facebook ever because I never even look at them even though I use the site daily. I think most of the "privacy" concerns are either from people overly concerned about their already non-existent privacy, or news and media agencies worried that Facebook style sites will eclipse their current media & news offering, or people, especially politicians, creating scare stories to frighten other people into thinking there is a problem that must be solved. Don't get me wrong, I strongly believe in developers understanding and implementing proper IT security in general, but seriously how many people have lost "private" information on Facebook that was not already public information on the Internet or in phone books. Perhaps a public "Don't be Stupid on the Internet" campaign is in order these days, but I don't think it is neccessary to attack Facebook with exaggerated accusations. The main reason that is happening is everyone is jealous of its success.
Given the previous claims by Zuckerberg [citation needed] he is not willing to give out the control over Facebook. I bet that if they are discussing anything than it is a sell of only a minor share.
This sort of idle speculation belongs in idle, don't you think?
"There are some good reasons for Apple to buy Facebook. And lots of reasons not to. They probably won't, but, hey, you're reading this, aren't you?"
Your brain is not a computer.
You can't really compare the two.
As indicated by the images themselves, one was based on an estimate of the size of membership, and the other based on an estimate of the volume of daily social activity.
My page.
That would be a surprise and I think it's highly doubtful. I would imagine Adobe would be a more likely target or perhaps some more hardware companies.
Apple's biggest acquisition ever was buying NeXT for around $400M. Since then, the companies they've bought have been strategic additions that complemented existing lines of business. Acquiring a company is far more expensive than just the cash you fork over. There's the cost of integrating operations, the amount of time and attention required from the senior management, and of course the opportunity cost, because there are plenty of other things you could be doing with that money.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
keep in mind microsoft also owns facebook stock. apple would also have to by microsofts stake in facebook.
On second thought who pulled this story out of their ass? Why would Apple buy Facebook? Or why would Facebook by Apple? It makes no sense.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Pretty much anything else.
Apple likes to buy talent and technology. Even if we grant that Facebook has talent behind it, they're definitely not the type that would fit in well with the design-focused Apple culture. Not only that, but Facebook is in a business that is way outside of Apple's current interests, meaning that they both have little experience there and would have to change to accommodate it, which would leave Apple something other than it currently is. And if we look at the technology, aside from that fancy PHP->C++ compiler they put out earlier this year, I haven't heard much of anything about Facebook actually doing anything technologically interesting. There's just nothing there that's worth buying out in terms of technology. Between those two factors, I don't think Apple is stupid enough to purchase them, since what they've got going now is working for them financially.
Apple buying FaceBook sounds a lot like the AOL Time Warner fiasco a few years back. I think FaceBook will be a one hit wonder.
...to some joke starting with "Yo dawg, I heard you're a douch..."
Even MORE of a reason for me to never ever use the productivity virus that is Facebook.
Even *I* didn't think that was possible.
Ain't life funny that way sometimes?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
As an OSX lover (who games so thats out for my main OS, ROTFL), admirer of Apple's ecosystem at the same time as I loathe their image, and a keen gambler I mean investor, the answer seems simple
Can facebook demonstrate it can monetize its user base. I haven't checked in a bit but they're not cashflow positive are they, and the valuation seems to be in dot-com boom territory. potential potential potential but pay up for the risk.
On that basis alone the long-term investor in me says HECK NO. I'd much rather they say bought up flash manufacturing or more hardware expertise as they have been doing.
the really evil investor in me says do a deal with google to integrate ads, if any design team can pull it off without urinating on the user experience its AAPL, they never wanted to rule the world, the low volume high margin space suits them fine even if the iphone rampant success is pushing them the other way.
Yes, I do realize that and, eight years ago, when I first tried iTunes, I did just that. My media collection was still borked and I had to clean i up manually. Then I tried getting iTunes to play anything other than it's own proprietary format and, back then, it wouldn't.
See, dude, this is just a lie, which makes me think the rest of your post might be as well. iTunes has always played plain old MP3s, AIFFs, and WAVs, since it was introduced, and with plugins it will play OGG formats since at least 2003 (I have iTunes OGGs imported from then). There is NO SUCH THING as an iTunes proprietary format, certainly not in 2002. To top it off, there wasn't even a Windows version of iTunes until 2004, and it had WMA to AAC conversion. So I'm sorry, but I call bullshit on your story.
It seems more probable that Apple will try to buy Adobe, for two reasons:
* Adobe has been central to Apple/Mac for years, with its Photoshop software. It helped create the identity of the mac and Steve Jobs want control of the whole value chain
* Steve Jobs has been talking down the Adobe stock for a long time, with his complaints about the Flash software.
Id rather they returned the money to the owners of the company rather than pursuing massive leveraged takeovers that destroy share holder value 95% of the time.
Better Apple then M$, and better Google then Apple, so hopefully, the Google people will see what Apple is trying and beat them to it, else good for them, they deserve it more then M$
It's beginning to become a time sink anyway. Making it a relative of iTunes would do the trick for me.
The reason nobody should buy a social networking website is that the barrier for entry is a college kid who knows PHP -- and thats only if you want to be 'as good' as the competition.
You can buy a social networking site, but when the next big thing comes along and all the users you bought jump ship don't say I didn't warn you.
Rupert Murdoch spent $580m on myspace, how good is that working out for him?
See, dude, this is just a lie, which makes me think the rest of your post might be as well
Well no, it's not an outright lie. And the fact that you would be so bold as to claim that an experience I had, that you were not present for, is a lie just goes to show how assuming you are. You say iTunes has always had the capability to play mp3's and .wav files? Okay, fine, I will buy that that's true. So what you could have taken from my post is that, for whatever reason, I was simply too incompetent or misinformed at the time to get it working right. Instead you chose to attack me and call me a liar. Fine, be belligerent. I don't really care.
What I know happened is that when I clicked on mp3 songs, and selected "Open with iTunes," they wouldn't play. I could get them to play as wav files however. Why that was, I don't know. I also know that when I had iTunes open, and tried to drag-drop mp3's onto it to get them to play, they wouldn't play. Maybe my installation of the program was borked. I really couldn't tell you. Like I said, it was years ago (though apparently I over-estimated the number of years).
So if you want to insist that it was a developed case of PEBCAK I'll give that that is a substantial possibility. The point that I tried to underscore in my second post, however, was that there were existing media players at the time that were not difficult for me to use. At all. For all the heralding of Apple being easy-to-use today (and perhaps they are) I certainly did not get that impression back then. So it made me biased. I am not denying that I am biased. I was simply expressing my distaste for Apple products, one of the reasons for it, and how I would be sad to see a product I value become the property of a company I, personally, refuse to do business with.
If you've had a better experience, good for you. But there is no reason for you to call me a liar or get your knickers in a twist over something as silly as my personal anecdote. For the record, I often recommend buying a mac to my less tech-savvy friends because I understand that, these days, user-friendliness is the reason they are so popular. I simply don't choose to utilize their products myself.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
Why on earth would Apple want a software product that could disappear tomorrow? Okay, in the next year. Right now, it's big. All that's in the way of it losing 90% of its value is some other thing coming along. By the time the word filters down to Mom and Pop that the kids aren't on Facebook anymore, that's about two years. How's Rupert's investment in MySpace doing? Duh. Adobe, on the other hand...