Microsoft buys Facebook stake for $240M
 

SAN FRANCISCO - Rapidly rising Internet star Facebook Inc. has sold a 1.6 percent stake to Microsoft Corp. for $240 million, spurning a competing offer from online search leader Google Inc.

Culminating weeks of negotiations, the investment announced Wednesday values Palo Alto-based Facebook at $15 billion ? a stunning figure for an online hangout started in a Harvard University dorm room less than four years ago.

Microsoft also will sell Internet ads for Facebook as the site expands outside the United States, broadening a marketing relationship that began last year..

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071024/...book_microsoft


I guess holding out WAS worth it... well played

WOW, that is crazy!

aye carumba:eyecrazy

it's an amazing site - talk about sticky, our models live on that site, i just go on there to see what they're up to and what it's like to be 19 in 2007. pretty jealous actually.

It's kind of nice to see google lose for once.. get some more competition into the game here.

Facebook´s current audience nearly 50 million active users

Amazing.

facebook makes ppl even dumber

I would never have guessed that Facebook has 300 employees... and it's insane to think that they'll have 700 employees next year.

That's some insane growth in 5 years.

wow I didnt know that

Social networking is the way people do things these days, and Facebook is among the most versatile of the social networking platforms. I'm not surprised in the least.

You're not surprised in the least? A 1.6% stake at 240 million values Facebook at 15 billion dollars. That's fucking insanity.

Ford is worth 18 billion. GM is worth 22 billion. You're not surprised in the least that people consider a social network website to be worth nearly as much money as two of the world's largest car manufacturers? Just under half as much as Amazon.com? A little less than a third of eBay's worth? Five percent of Microsoft's worth?

I am surprised. Very surprised.

Ah, but information is power.
Those car companies and even amazon have a ton of value in assets, but store very little information about people.

Facebook is probably second to only wikipedia in sheer amount of information about over 50 million people.

Browse a few profiles and you'll begin to realize that some of the information stored within is priceless.

:helpme:1orglaugh

You have to read the whole deal to understand why it is worth that.

Microsoft didn't pay 240 million for a couple of pecentage points. They paid for a couple of percentage points and pretty much ALL of the ad space rights. It is hard to evaluate the true value of facebook based on this deal because first you would have to figure out how much of that 240 million went to getting ad rights.

I am suspecting that the actual value of 1% was something like 30 or 40 million (total value 3 - 4 billion) and the rest reflecting the ad deal. But for Facebook, this is a great win because now they can start selling of parts of the company for insane mega bucks because microsoft put a valuation out there for others to shoot at.

Simply amazing

That's just amazing.

People that sold myspace are kicking themselves in the nuts now...

More like enjoying drinks in the sun on tropical islands.

no they are paying an assistant to kick them in the nuts but yeah, pieces of the pie would have been even better.

Damn.. never knew face book was worth that much

MS already has more than enough data on more than 50 million users, they just have umm how do you say... no legit way of using it without getting into trouble. For the most part mass amounts of data has been collected but never really attached to any particular person just groupings er random percentages and crap. Alas this would give them some mighty good cover to use information for once and to target the living hell out of those via advertising. Expect MS ppc to really reflect the sale soon. *all info is not from some source at MS, it is meer speculation and guessing

PS. Everyone, even MS knows the company as a whole is not worth five percent of MS value. MS also is and has had a huge cash abundance issue like Google. *repeat disclaimer.

the owner is 23yr old too.. I mean o snap

wish I was the owner of facebook :(

People still haven't learned any lessons form the dot-bomb back in the late 90s. $16 billion for a site that makes no income, has no known business model and will almost certainly be passe by early 2009.

And now if Microsoft's actually involved in the site, you can expect things to stop working too....

:helpme

Some of the numbers i've seen floating around for facebook revenue in 2008 are in the 1 billion range and '09 over 1.5 billion.

Makes no income and has no business model? Where do you get this from?