Deal values Facebook at at least 15 Billion Dollars

[Riverman]

Microsoft is paying $240 million for 1.6 percent of facebook.

And I thought they were nuts for turning down $800 million for the whole thing.

This valuation has to be nuts, right? Has facebook shown any ability to monetize on a scale that could make this valuation conceivable? For comparison, the total market cap of General Motors was less than $15 billion fairly recently.