Facebook Nearly Added Twitter To Friends List 124
nandemoari writes "It seems the world's most popular social networking site was just moments away from acquiring another — and few of us ever knew about it. A Facebook executive has revealed that a planned takeover of Twitter only fell apart because of a disagreement over stock valuations.
Despite the rather miserable economy, Facebook is still looking to buy out other firms and says it could make a billion dollars a year from advertising.
Peter Thiel, a venture capitalist who put up some of the money behind Facebook, discussed the deal in a Business Week interview.
Thiel says the two sides agreed a $500 million purchase price and that Twitter would receive the payment in Facebook stock rather than cash — which is a common solution in large takeovers where there simply isn't the money available for a buyout."
Facebook are a bit too much talk, not enough walk. (Score:5, Interesting)
Go on then.
I could say I can make eleventy dollars a furlong from my blog; that doesn't make it true. Only a dribbling moron would base a business decision (such as exchanging their website for stock) on such a claim.
Re:Websites come and go (Score:4, Interesting)
I was under the impression that facebook was late maturity/early decline stage.
Very soon something "old that's new again" will come along for people to jizz themselves over.
Re:Hmm.. (Score:4, Interesting)
If you had said "proven, long-term, sustainable value", then I might agree.
Re:Advertising revenue (Score:1, Interesting)
You're comparing chalk and cheese. Facebook aren't talking about increased revenue from advertising themselves; they're talking about revenue from selling advertising space. Which is much more predictable (credit crunch notwithstanding).
Re:Facebook are a bit too much talk, not enough wa (Score:5, Interesting)
Twitter and the twits that use it can be used to do incredibly powerful data mining and forecasting. If you just analyze the twits coming in (I like to refer both to users and their messages by this term, it is slightly confusing but makes sense in its own way - and often, the difference is unimportant) then you can find out all kinds of things, like (to borrow from your example) where in a city it is raining, or where automobile accidents have occurred, or where the police are beating someone to death, or where the police are being beaten to death, or whatever the fuck is going on! Forget predicting flu outbreak with google, that is way too slow and has far too little resolution. :)
stock valuation (Score:3, Interesting)
The deal only fell apart because... they did not agree on the price. Bummer!
Re:Websites come and go (Score:3, Interesting)
I think the death of MySpace was pretty widely visible.
90% of its user base HATED using it. It was a terrible webpage. And it was incredibly limiting. 10 pictures? What is this?
Facebook is a photo app. I thought that the first time I used it, and have felt pretty backed up by that statement ever since.
The first time I used facebook was to put up photos and the ability to tag people and associate it with profiles is what I found incredibly useful. (Not to mention unlimited photo uploads was handy.)
Facebook is going to survive because it's going to be a friends and family photo album + event planning.
MySpace is awkward public text messaging. The novelty for everyone not female 12-18 wears off very quickly. Facebook on the other hand actually appeals to people of all ages and demographics.
Re:Facebook are a bit too much talk, not enough wa (Score:3, Interesting)
http://twitter.com/public_timeline [twitter.com]
Although it looks like about 75% of users are using the API.