If Mark Zuckerberg wants to know what it’s like to be touched by Sergey Brin and Larry Page (A. Weird at first, then really kind of nice), he’s going to put it out there in no uncertain terms, Brin told DealBook Sun Valley correspondent David Carr yesterday in Sun Valley. “We don’t really look at companies for acquisitions unless they are really interested,” Brin said, not saying that he’s run into with “mixed signals” before but seeming to imply it. “If they come to us, we’d certainly be open to talking,” he added, meaning “You come 90, we’ll come 10.”
Facebook, who turned down a $1 billion offer from Yahoo last year is under the impression that Google et al will want it for its new “Platform” (and mind) at least $2 billion. FB’s recent “growth spurt,” open policy, etc, also has people talking about a big buy, although there are some around these part who think Facebook’s crossover from exclusive to inclusive* (plus its insistence on overloading the page with, what’s the word, crap) should be a signal to companies to stay away and let the thing IPO itself in 2009.
Sun Valley: Google and the Facebook Question [DealBook]
Google’s Brin Says Won’t Pursue Facebook [CNBC]
Exploding Bubbles: Facebook Widgets And Your Butt [Wired]
*while lacking the intrinsic trashiness that makes MySpace’s spread legs okay
In the Web 2.0 parlor game of deciding who’s going to buy facebook, guessing “Google” isn’t exactly earth-shattering, but it’s probably the most accurate guess one could make. Saul Hansell of the New York Times Bits Blog does just that, reasoning that Google might buy facebook just to cockblock rivals (a little too late for that, as I’m not sure any of Google’s rivals would pony up the $$ at this point). Our guess at DB is “none of the above” – since we don’t think any company will (would or should) pay what Zuckerberg wants for his “platform,” and the thing will just IPO in early 2009 or even late next year.
Facebook’s growth, and more importantly, it’s marketing, give Zuckerberg most of the negotiating leverage when it comes to a potential deal. From the Bits Blog:
The bottom line is that this gives Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s young founder, chief executive and largest stockholder, a lot of options. He can sell the company for a lot of money, take it public or just grow with internally generated cash as was the strategy at Google, a company he idolizes.
By the way, if Zuckerberg does sell, my guess is that it’s Google that buys Facebook. Yahoo needs it much more. But Google has a penchant for using its financial muscle to keep hot companies out of the hands of rivals (wresting YouTube from the News Corporation and DoubleClick from Microsoft, for example).
3.6 Million New Faces [New York Times Bits Blog via DealBook]
Apparently, social networking hinges on an individual’s quest for freedom (MySpace) and civilization’s demand for conformity (Facebook).
According to a project by tech researcher danah boyd, who is so down with dotcoms that she legally ee cumminized her name, Facebook is for college preps and MySpace is for Latin Kings, or at least economically depressed, goth-wearing, gang-banging, extreme bass-playing meth addicts.
This shouldn’t be that much of a surprise, since Facebook started out at Harvard, then migrated to other Ivy League schools (and MIT), where the site is currently most entrenched as a percentage of the student body (we completely made that statistic up, but suspect it’s true, especially at Harvard).
Class differences are also becoming apparent, with the proletariat more MySpace leaning (also no surprise with Facebook’s Ivy League bent). Almost half of Facebook (which is capitalized in the media due to the media’s giant hard-on for the site but not on the site itself) users have a household income over $75k while less than 40% of MySpace users do (those numbers are from Comscore).
A problem with any research involving social networks – about half of social networking users use more than one site, so the Harvard grad by day is most often a timpani player in a goth Architecture in Helsinki cover-band at night.
Why MySpace is for freaks and Facebook is for preps [Machinist]
Social network site users ‘are chronically unfaithful’ [Times Online]
Measuring the social networking divide [Valleywag]
Meredith Viera, who got rejected from Harvard, interviewed Harvard dropout and paper billionaire Mark Zuckerberg on the Today Show, in a strangely smiley /flirty /happy /clappy /slightly unnerving affair. Zuckerberg’s mom and sister, who is employed by Facebook, were standing by with paper million dollar grins, looking especially smiley. Fortunately, sugar relative Zuckerberg didn’t compromise his core values, centered around casual dress and sandal wearing, for a national television audience. Meredith Viera gushed over the beauteous low maintenance of it all (score one for the Facebook PR team), and the two exchanged giddy glances over obscene wealth to come. I don’t even know what to make of the interview, but let’s just say – things got weird.
In other news, if you haven’t heard, Facebook now supports widgets, which are supported by several other less market-savvy social networks and web platforms. Many are underwhelmed at the 2-week old functionality of the new “platform,” which is, granted, 2 weeks old.
The internet’s newest prince [Valleywag]
UPDATE : Turns out this whole thing may have been a hoax, if you refer to the “official letter” from facebook on the petition group’s page.
Here is the original story:
Gay Arabs have been banned from facebook. Actually, facebook just forced the shut-down of the group “Arab LBTG” after facing pressure from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other fun places. Does this mean that prominent clerics (druids, rogues and wizards) troll social networking sites looking for offensive material, tagging every Arab with a beer funnel or cleavage shot?
There is already a facebook group in protest – “You might be an official Petition to prevent Arab LBTG from being shut down, if …bitch!”
Facebook [or someone posing as a facebook admin] sent a very formal letter to the original group, which contained the following (kind of whiny) plea:
You have violated the terms of conduct you agreed upon when you signed up with Facebook.com. Your violations fall in the following criteria:
(…)Creating a global group that is not allowed in some regions. Your group “Arab LBTGAY(Lesbian,bisexual,transexual and gay)” has put facebook in trouble as we received an official complaint from the Saudi government, the Egyptian government and other Arab governments that do not want to be mentioned. Your Group must be shut down or a new Group with a specified network other than the two mentioned may be created. We are very sorry as we support any group but the countries mentioned are threatening to block our server from their side, therefore please comply.
Can facebook stipulate that users should not ‘create a group that is not allowed in some regions’? Is that the user’s responsibility? Liability has not been clearly defined in the social networking sphere (anyone know of any pending legal battles?), and facebook is setting a precedent of holding users responsible for the site’s access points (and policing content).
Facebook kills Arab LBTG group to appease mideast govs – [BoingBoing]
We realize the inherent hypocrisy of us mocking another for his/her “innappropriate use of a company computer” (our workday is divided equally between cuteoverload.com and online betting, in case you were wondering) but it’s like we always say, “When has inherent hypocrisy ever stopped us before?” (This is Dealbreaker, for god’s sake. We’re not exactly waiting on those humanitarian awards, deserve them as we may). With that, we give you Charles, an Oxford University (Christ College) grad employed in Fixed Income Structuring at Goldman Sachs, who apparently lives with a crippling (or not so much) addiction to Facebook, and who, most recently, counts himself among those with a blatant disregard for flaccid threats emitted from the trolls in IT. Basically, he’s us, but without the meth problem. We’re not sure whether to put him in time-out or buy him a drink (on John, natch). At the very least, we’ll be sending him a friend request
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Reap What You Sow: Invest 50 Bucks In A Real Pair Of Shoes, And We’ll Give You The 2 Billion For Your Glorified MySpace Website
By Bess Levin
Dozens of the world’s biggest media moguls and investment bankers, dressed in perfectly pressed suits, mingled in the lobby of the Pierre Hotel in Manhattan yesterday at the annual FourSquare conference.
And then there was Mark Zuckerberg, the 22-year-old chief executive of the social networking site Facebook, wearing Adidas flip-flops — sans socks — with a blazer and jeans.
The Dress Code Is Relaxed, but the Courting Is Intense [NY Times]
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