Yahoo to buy Facebook?
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg appears to be holding out for $2bn on a business he founded only 7 years ago. Not bad for a recently-turned 23-year-old Harvard dropout! The rumoured buyer, Yahoo! is not commenting on the news (understandebly, as it’s also rumored that a previous offer from Yahoo ($1.65 bil) for Facebook had already been rejected by the Social Networking giant).
A brief history of Facebook:
Facebook started is life as Facemash.com, an image rating site started by Zuckerberg while studying at Harvard. Facemash was similar to Hot or Not, allowing users to rate Harvard specific images, however the site was quickly taken down by Harvard officials only four hours after it had been live.
Zuckerberg took a leave of absence from the Harvard and a year later he dropped out. In 2004 he relaunched the site as Facebook.
Will the Yahoo-Facebook rumour hold? I think so. Facebook’s popularity is souring not only in the US but also internationally. More importantly, a purchase of this sort will give them a new strategic social distribution outlet for their ad inventory while simultaneuosly countering the deal forged between Google and My Space back in August 2006.
Side note: Mark’s own profile on Facebook shows him to only have 494 friends. He’s also disabled his option for others to add him as friend … get with the program Marc!
