Yeah, Facebook is on the selling block, supposedly. Mark Zuckerberg and the group of sophomores that built the site turned down an initial offer of $750 million, in the hopes of $2 billion (although I thought I read somewhere that Zuckerberg "never wanted to sell the company"). That's a huge success, considering it started two years ago. Facebook is now the seventh most-trafficked site on the Internet. The article I read said that Viacom would be a good candidate to buy the company — they own all the MTV, VH1, and Comedy Central networks. I guess that would be beneficial to Viacom so they could somehow know what the latest trends and stuff are, and I'm sure they could deliver better targeted advertising on the site (but hopefully not *more*). From a business point of view, Facebook is like the jackpot of marketing information about the youth in general. A company could make billions by simply parsing the information on the site — what students like, what they like to do, etc. — and deliver targeted advertising.
March 28, 2006
March 31, 2006 at 2:09 pm
[...] Zuckerburg & friends have recently turned down a $750 million offer to buy facebook, saying they’re going to hold out for an offer of $2 BILLION. Although nobody has stepped in for this higher price — maybe cause it’s, uh, fucking ridiculous — rumors are that Viacom is sniffing around. Haha, MTV execs, sniffing, get it? For a bit of perspective, V-com bought myspace last year for $580 million (and right now myspace is the second-most trafficked site on the Internet, after yahoo). [via DT] [...]