Microsoft paid very little for Facebook…
Yesterday almost every single German online newspaper and even the daily print newspapers reported about the Facebook-Microsoft-Deal. Sebastian Matthes, journalist and blogger from the German Wirtschaftswoche (Weekly Economics) has written a lengthy eulogy on Facebook, claiming that Facebook will be a huge success. His reasons (slightly shortened and translated) are:
- Facebook is not only for students any more.
- People need an international social network.
- In other countries, the numbers of Facebook are already exploring.
- Facebook is fun.
- Unlike Xing, Facebook functions are free.
- Facebook will appear in Germany.
- Facebook keeps the user’s attraction.
- Facebook is open for developers.
- Facebook is easy to use.
- No international social network grows faster.
In addition to that, I think that Facebook is growing because it has experience in scaling the network, the users can organize their privacy more efficiently than in other networks, they can determine what information they want to spread, they can efficiently organize their pictures, the number of user groups and users in groups are exploding, Facebook is used as a political tool and a marketing tool, and with Microsoft they have an experienced partner in growth.
The German blogosphere has discussed Facebook intensively, a short list was made by Doc Benedikt Köhler (thanks for the link). Meanwhile the “first” German-language Facebook-blog started, combined with Google-Ads to keep the money flow going from Google via Facebook to Nico Lumma 
Meanwhile Robert Basic’s readers are critical as never before. Hugo E. Martin believes that the 240 million US-Dollar were paid as entrance fee to do the marketing for Facebook, and not necessarily to own equity in Facebook. Terrence Russell has the whole picture:
Let’s face it — a $15 billion valuation for Facebook is just as pretentious as a monocle. With today’s alliance, Microsoft most likely chose a figure it was willing to spend ($240 million) and then invested accordingly. Even though Facebook can claim that it’s 1.6% of $15 billion, it will always be $240 million to Microsoft. At the end of the day, the social networking site is probably just happy to have a lighter load for generating revenue, and Microsoft is glad it didn’t dump $750 million into what could be the next Skype.
Together with the news that two hedge funds invested another 500 million US-Dollars into Facebooks, it is quite clear why Steve Ballmer writes in an internal memo:
Great job you really pulled this together unbelievably.
Oktober 26th, 2007 at 00:10
[...] Check it out! While looking through the blogosphere we stumbled on an interesting post today.Here’s a quick excerptWith today’s alliance, Microsoft most likely chose a figure it was willing to spend ($240 million) and then invested accordingly. Even though Facebook can claim that it’s 1.6% of $15 billion, it will always be $240 million to Microsoft. … [...]