BusinessWeek is reporting the Harvard bunch who created Facebook, the social networking site aimed at college kids, turned down an offer of $750 million, yeah, turned it down, because they think they can get TWO BILLION DOLLARS! (Insert evil genius laugh here.)
The owners of the privately held company have turned down a $750 million offer and hope to fetch as much as $2 billion in a sale, senior industry executives familiar with the matter say.
Don’t get me wrong, Facebook is a pretty great thing. Like MySpace, you create an online profile — basically like a quick directory page — and you connect to friends at your college or other colleges/geographic locations (alumni). It’s sort of like MySpace minus the childish nature and, whats the word I’m looking for… oh yeah, predators. You see, in order to join Facebook you must have a verified college issued email address. Because of this ‘exclusivity’ if you will, it seems like Facebook has been reserved for people who actually know each other and just want a simple way to keep in touch.
I’m a member of Facebook and, according to my profile, have been since October 29, 2004. While I think it is a pretty cool idea, a nicely run site, and a hell of a lot better then the great satan MySpace, I don’t think it’s worth $2 billion. And if I were in their position, I would have taken the $750 million and ran all the way to the bank… in Switzerland.
The Facebook creators are banking on the fact that the market of social networking sites has opened up. Earlier this year News Corp, ie the ever lovable Rupert Murdoch, bought MySpace for just under $600 million. I guess these corporations see it as a great way to target marketing to people, whatever. Point is it is probably going to lead to yet another internet bubble. These social networking sites won’t be the top visited sites on the net forever — or maybe they will, who knows. We’ll see what happens I guess.
Oh yeah, and if anyone wants to, I’ll sell Mindless Chatter for a mere $100,000. I mean its a steal compared to MySpace and Facebook. And that price is completely negotiable. I’ll be waiting for your offers.