EightBlack.

Until today, I’d never heard of Mark Zuckerberg.

2 years ago, he built a social networking site called Facebook. According to the site, Facebook was designed with the following in mind:

Facebook is a social utility that helps people better understand the world around them. Facebook develops technologies that facilitate the spread of information through social networks, allowing people to share information online the same way they do in the real world. Anyone with a valid email address from a supported organization, company, college or high school can register for Facebook. They can then create profiles to connect with friends, share interests, join groups, send messages, write notes and post photos.

Facebook launched in February 2004, and the website now has over 9 million registered users across more than 40,000 regional, work, college and high school networks. According to comScore, Facebook is the seventh-most trafficked site on the web and is the number one photo-sharing site.

Facebook is a private company located in Palo Alto, California.

I’m having a hard time getting my head around the whole “social networking” environment - maybe because I’m 40 and my kids are still too young to understand what these portals are all about.

My 5 year old son however has quickly worked out how to bookmark things on his Mac Mini and I am being given subtle hints (as subtle as a sledgehammer) about sites that sell inflatable boats with small high powered engines and competition grade go-karts.

He thinks he’ll have one of each for Xmas.

Anyway, back to Facebook.

It’s founder Mark Zuckerberg is the ripe old age of 22. Within 12 months, and with a company that’s barely 2 years old, the company that he now owns 30% of could be worth close to US$1 billion dollars.

Microsoft, Yahoo and Viacom are all in discussions with him and Yahoo put a formal US$800 million offer on the table.

A 22 year old college drop out cannot have any clue of what $800 million looks like. He’s just happy to have enough to eat McDonalds at 3am.

Apparently, as the talks were heating up between Microsoft and Facebook, the MSFT folks wanted a conference call at 8am. The nice folks at Facebook wrote back to them and said that their 22 year old boss is often up late and that he wouldn’t be awake at 8am, but 10.30 was a good chance. The Microsoft guys were apoplectic.

The full WSJ article is here.

Hopefully Mr. Zuckerberg (or his parents) will go out and hire some adult supervision (like Larry and Sergey did with Google) before things get out of control.

The WSJ article makes some valid points.

I think the challenge with sites such as MySpace, You Tube, Facebook etc is keeping the audience engaged. Teenagers are more fickle than food critics.

It appears though that Facebook has generated enough momentum - online ad revenues are slated to exceed US$100 million this year.

Maybe it’s my semi-capitalistic nature (or some Asian blood in me) but I see the deal in this. And getting a deal done quickly.

Forget world domination plans. My advice to Mark would be to buy an island and hire Jessica Alba as a masseuse. But that’s just me.

If a Yahoo or MSFT wants to buy a 2 year old company for a cool US$1 billion, founded by a college student, that in essence is a social networking site which potentially has a limited life, then do the deal.

Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned with the internet and the online world, is that the window of opportunity stays open for about a tenth of the time that it does in the real world.

Interestingly enough, I went to register at Facebook but because I’m not a college student, dont live in the US, am not cool and have 2 small kids, it just laughed at me.

Sigh. Or as a 19 year old would say “LOL”. Whatever the hell that means.

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This entry was posted on Friday, September 22nd, 2006 at 7:49 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.