Facebook turns down $750M acquisition offer

[El Diablo]

mason,

Yeah, they are definitely looking pretty savvy right now, especially with the current buzz around the Facebook Platform launch. Things can always change, but right now commonly held belief is that Facebook will IPO or be sold at a valuation far, far, far higher than $2b.

[owsley]

Facebook is definitely worth >2bn. It is really lame to say "I could have told you this a year ago", but a 14 months ago it was completely obvious that 750mm off by several billion. I think it is hard for people who arent in college to wrap their minds around how big it is. Virtually every college student checks it everyday, and most kids are on for more than an hour and several times a day. The site is extremely well designed/easy to use and figure out and never crashes (although the new applications they have added in the last couple months are running the risk of clogging it up, but it seems to be going well and that is a direction they have to go in). Over the last couple years it has gone from being used by portion of students at a portion of colleges, to 99% of all college students at every college, then to a portion of postgrad/corporate people, then to some high school kids, and now to practically every high schooler. As todays upperclassmen graduate and move into the professional world facebook will dominate there too. It has pretty much replaced email and AIM as the way teenagers communicate, I can't stress that enough. When I have to work on a project with another student I do not necessarily know that well, I just facebook them and send them a message about when to meet. It works great. Today the kids who a couple years ago said "[censored] this, facebook is lame and I am not going to use it" have pretty much given up and are forced to use it.

They might not have found a way to monetize their traffic well yet, but IMHO that is not even a problem at all. It is totally dominant, it is not going anywhere for a long time and eventually they will come up with something. There is just a zero chance that it dies out. My point is, if you are not a college student or someone you uses it, I am very sure that you are underestimating how huge of a thing it is for kids today. Its a great way to share things with your buddies, keep in touch with old friends, plan stuff, everything.

[Kneel B4 Zod]

I worked for a start-up, back in 2001, that was doing a lot of the same stuff as facebook. pity it was a bit too early for social networking.

[mason55]

[ QUOTE ]
I worked for a start-up, back in 2001, that was doing a lot of the same stuff as facebook. pity it was a bit too early for social networking.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, you gotta wonder how the guys at Friendster feel right now. I remember when everyone I knew was on Friendster ('01/'02 I guess) before MySpace totally took it over. If they had played their cards better they could be turning down these multi-billion dollar offers.

[RunDownHouse]

owsley,

Are you a student, or do you have some experience with this business model, or what? Making authoritative statements like, "Facebook is definitely worth >2bn," seems strange unless you have some sort of expertise. If you do have the know-how, share it with us.

[mason55]

[ QUOTE ]
owsley,

Are you a student, or do you have some experience with this business model, or what? Making authoritative statements like, "Facebook is definitely worth >2bn," seems strange unless you have some sort of expertise. If you do have the know-how, share it with us.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, I mean if it's so obviuos you'd htink someone would have jumped at the $2bn price last year.

[Kneel B4 Zod]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I worked for a start-up, back in 2001, that was doing a lot of the same stuff as facebook. pity it was a bit too early for social networking.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, you gotta wonder how the guys at Friendster feel right now. I remember when everyone I knew was on Friendster ('01/'02 I guess) before MySpace totally took it over. If they had played their cards better they could be turning down these multi-billion dollar offers.

[/ QUOTE ]

yeah I mean the company worked for was designed specifically for colleges. it was more slanted towards letting students/clubs communicate with administrators/teachers than facebook, but there was social stuff within the student body as well. it's like a 30 degree tilt from what facebook is. it was just 5 years to early.

I guess it's the founders I really pity.

[danzasmack]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Facebook looking for $2 Billion

"the company was launched just two years ago by a group of sophomores at Harvard University, led by Mark Zuckerberg"

All you college kids are gonna make this dude RICH.

Also, here are pics of a $12B girlfriend Larry Page and girlfriend.

[/ QUOTE ]

nice. i actually know mark personally, he lives in my area and went to my public school until 10th grade, and can say that he's definitely worked his ass off to get this far. he's been inventing wacky computer crap since 6th grade, it was only a matter of time until he hit on something this successful. i believe prior to this, he had developed a music preference generator, basically a program that learned what you listened to and made a playlist for you, that got stolen from microsoft since he didn't want to sell for 1m.

facebook actually developed from a prank that got him in deep [censored] at harvard...funny how he's probably sticking it to them with the megabucks he's getting

[/ QUOTE ]

You know better than me I'm sure but a buddy of mine from school was the brother of one of Mark's friends. So this guy apparently "hired" mark to code facebook. When he had put a bunch of work in, he gave this guy a bunch of bogus code and launched facebook, before he could launch his site "connect u" or whatever.

The kid made a big deal out of it to me and then put all this work into something about a law suit but nothing came of it as far as I recall.

[owsley]

[ QUOTE ]
owsley,

Are you a student, or do you have some experience with this business model, or what? Making authoritative statements like, "Facebook is definitely worth >2bn," seems strange unless you have some sort of expertise. If you do have the know-how, share it with us.

[/ QUOTE ]

I am a college student, for a person my age I know a lot more about business models than average (wharton student) but overall I am pretty novice to IPOs, so I have to admit I am sort of making this up as I go along. I based my guess off numbers I googled for friendster, skype, and myspace. I couldn't give a specific number at all, but I am very sure whatever it is, it's >2bn. I don't see how the number one method of communication among people < 25 years old isn't worth more than that. The thing that has made me convinced of this is how much it has spread to post grads and high schoolers, a couple years ago, HSers used to use myspace, now its facebook. It used to be great for socializing and screwing around, but over the last year its widespread use has made it great for communicating, planning and keeping in touch with people. Other comparable sites don't come close. From my personal use my opinion is that it's well designed, very simple to start using, not buggy, the people in charge are obviously extremely competent.

It may not have found a way to monetize its revenue, but since it won't be knocked off its pedestal its owners have a decent amount of time to figure it out. It will get bigger before it gets smaller, I think its easy to misunderstand how big a part of young people's lives it is if you don't use it, that was my main point. And that it is a very well run and non buggy site with a good interface, I definitely wouldn't say the same thing about friendster and myspace.

[El Diablo]

mason,

I know the people involved with Friendster well. Here's a good article: http://www.inc.com/magazine/20070601...reat-idea.html

They turned down a $30M acquisition offer from Google in 2003 that would now be worth something between $2-3B.

Then MySpace came along, then Facebook came along. Not good times.