Facebook To Remain Independent, Really…

topics

Facebook To Remain Independent, Really…

Comments (View)
Text Size: A A
Email
Share

Facebook, having turned down a reportedly big offer from Yahoo (to the tune of $1 billion), is not for sale anymore, and will remain independent, according to a Bloomberg story. Board member Peter Thiel said, “It’s going to remain an independent company…The plan is to actually build it, maybe at some point take it public, but definitely not to sell it.” Thiel said the company is focused finding the best way to make money from its millions of members. He says the site’s college-aged users make it worth $8 billion or more, as much as MTV.
Founder Marc Zuckerberg: “We are not necessarily focused on what the exit is going to be—whether it’s selling the company or an IPO or when that’s going to be…but we obviously think that there’s a lot of potential to keep growing.’‘
The till-recently college focused social networking site stumbled early Fall on some major user issues, and by some estimates may have already jumped the shark.

Rafat Ali

@rafatali Dec 15, 2006 3:48 PM ET

Posted In: Social Media

latest headlines

TG

If the Bloomber Report is confirmed - this reminds of Musicmatch - at the peak of the dot-com bubble, Musicmatch was looking to extract about $750 million plus from Yahoo - only to sell out for about $165 million a couple years later. Well as they say on Wall Street - you don't need "smarts" in a bull run - but you will definitely need it in a bad one! An a bad one cometh!

John M. - I agree with your observation. Self-promoting world of these VCs funding the next commoditiy platform is about to take a '9G' spin in the "bad market-real world simulator".

These boys will be singing "Kumbaya, my Lord, kumbaya!" at the next board meeting (and of course the Monday morning VC partner meetiing). Hey boys don't forget to send Rafat Ali a podcast, so he can share the cheer with us peasants in the real world!

Take a free course from Mark Cuban on "sell signals". He might welcome the opportunity to entertain .

Chris C.

The current target demo for Facebook is a fickle bunch. The risk of disintermediation or replacement is high unless Facebook has garnered exclusivity with universities and colleges—even then it is likely short-term. Time will tell if they made a wise decision in remaining independent. However, I think we will probably find that avarice got the best of these guys. Yahoo! was willing to go up to $1.62B. They should have taken the money and run…

Andy

It's pure arrogance. Like the pigs and hogs comment.

John M.

Pramit, I'll forgive you cause its early, but give me a break you honestly thinkk that Zuckerberg and Co. made a good decision by staying independent? If they go public and have a mkt cap of 8 billion, my head will explode. Facebook is Friendster, take 2. They are one bad release away from being replaced by one of the other 285 social networking sites- they should have taken the Yahoo money, and laughed, a la Marc Cuban, all the way to the bank.

Pramit

Facebook are doing agood thing. By deciding to stay independent they are sending a message to other web 2.o startups that it is better to innovate rather than sell out.

MediaVidea covered the web 2.0 bubble, vis-a-vis Facebook
http://mediavidea.blogspot.com/2006/12/why-google-yahoo-and-microsoft-should.html

SM

agree with everyone here - they missed out big time.. as for $8bn valuation what are they drinking kool-aid?

Jacob Shotz

They missed a chance….facebook gets worse by the day- they should've at least sold a percentage and continued to manage it or something like that.

Jason McMinn

Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered.

Mary Specht

If a new site pops up that fills the just-college-kids niche again, I think college kids are going to flee Facebook. What's the difference between Facebook and MySpace now?

I'm in college, and my friends and I have always thought of MySpace as Facebook's creepy older brother, a place for middle-schoolers and child molesters.

The more inclusive Facebook becomes, the less open it is inside, and that's bad.

For example, when they started letting everyone join, you could no longer view someone's full profile unless you were friends with them. If you're not a person's friend yet, all you get is a mini photo and some information about their school and major. It makes it harder to scope out someone you've met at a party when the photo of them is 40 pixels across.

I'm still on Facebook, despite the changes. But I think if it keeps trying to follow MySpace, another site might take Facebook's place in the hearts of college students.