The Devil has come to town… do you party or run away?

Posted on October 29th, 2007 by Richard Catto 3,838 views

Well, the rumours have been floating around for some time now, but many scarcely could believe that FaceBook could possibly be valued at $15 billion, except perhaps for Vinny Lingham, who came close in August 2007 when he conservatively valued FaceBook at $10 billion. So Lingham was off by $5 billion.

Microsoft has just scooped up 1.6% of FaceBook for $240 million. It’s a phenomenal deal, one that could be compared to Mark Shuttleworth’s 1999 coup in which he sold his company, Thawte Consulting to Verisign for $575 million, when he was 26, except that Shuttleworth sold 100% of Thawte for that. Twenty-three year old, Mark Zuckerberg, who founded FaceBook in 2004 when he was 20, still has 98.4% left to sell.

Not all of FaceBook’s 50 million users have welcomed Microsoft’s entry into FaceBook, however, hence the title of this blog post.

One local blogger (and IT journalist), Ivo Vegter, was a member of the FaceBook group, "If Microsoft buy a stake in facebook, I will de-register", right up until Microsoft bought their stake.

The group still has 138 members, so obviously some of them were less dedicated to the cause than others – traitors!

Many of these disgruntled FaceBook denizens probably now wish that the unthinkable would have happened to Zuckerberg. Back in early 2005, Zuckerberg, fresh from a meeting in which he signed a Venture Capital contract securing $12.7 million to finance the then fledgling FaceBook, came very close to death. He had just pulled off the road to fill his tank, when a demented man came at him waving a gun and ranting. Zuckerberg beat a hasty retreat.

Ironically, The Register reports that those wishing to exit FaceBook will soon discover a rather unpalatable truth – you can’t. No matter what you do, you just can’t totally kill your FaceBook profile, and you can always reactivate it later. Shades of match.com or okcupid.com where I enjoyed the use of a zombie profile for some months before they were finally able to tranquilize it into submission. But you never know… some day… I may be back for more… brainzzzz.

Tags: facebook, Ivo Vegter, Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft
Filed under facebook, Microsoft |

5 Responses to “The Devil has come to town… do you party or run away?”

1. Ivo Vegter Says:
   October 30th, 2007 at 11:03

   Minor correction: I created that group. I couldn’t very well not leave after that, could I?

   It had only about 450 members. There were two bigger groups along the same lines, but they weren’t bigger by much. 1500 or 2000 people are hardly enough to scare Mr Zuckerberg, I suppose.

   Quite a few group members said that it’s not a big stake, and they’ll hang around to see what Microsoft does with Facebook, if anything. There were 370 left on Sunday when I left Facebook, so I’m pleasantly surprised it’s down to only 138. More than two thirds kept their word.

   But as you say, not that it makes a difference. I’ve received several Facebook notification e-mails since I deactivated my account. It appears Facebook was evil even before the devil got there.

2. Richard Catto Says:
   October 30th, 2007 at 11:25

   Maybe I should release some facebook hacking code?

   You send an invitation to someone to add an application, and the application eatz their profile and unleashes a wave of further application invites to all their friends.

   And there sits Zuckerberg faintly aware of a glow on the horizon, and then with growing concern discerns that this is no ordinary dawn glow, for it is the glow of millions of facebook profiles zombieing out and dragging 10 down with them in the process.

   50 million dead facebook profiles in under 50 minutes.

   The next day, his bank manager greets him with a caustic, “Zucker who?”

3. Ivo Vegter Says:
   October 30th, 2007 at 13:03

   Heh. That’d be very funny.

   Who needs zombies when you’ve got grey goo?

4. clangnuts Says:
   November 2nd, 2007 at 11:57

   Are you on Facebook,
   Richard?

5. Richard Catto Says:
   November 2nd, 2007 at 12:05

   Sure.
   You can friend me there if you like.

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