The Devil has come to town… do you party or run away?
Posted on October 29th, 2007 by Richard Catto 3,837 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 Comments »
