Wrote this article twice yesterday – went to publish and it failed twice. Had to leave to go to the IMAX to watch Transformers which was absolutely awesome by the way. Here it is again:
Whether he is trying to reduce the price of last weeks often quoted £250m for Microsoft to buy a 5% stake in Facebook I don’t know but Microsofts’ Chief Exec Steve Ballmer told the Times Online today that: “I think these things [social networks] are going to have some legs, and yet there’s a faddishness, a faddish nature about anything that basically appeals to younger people,” he went on to say “There can’t be any more deep technology in Facebook than what dozens of people could write in a couple of years. That’s for sure”. He’s not wrong of course, but they’re not paying for the build – they’re paying to gain access to the 24 million users and the 100,000 worldwide that sign up every day as well as the added bonus of seeing how the company works from the inside and more importantly – keeping competitors out.
These comments are slightly mistimed considering Microsoft announced a new social network to go hand in hand with the launch of its new Zune player – Zune Social. He is nonetheless absolutely right about the possibility of Facebook simply being a fad – of the 20 most visited sites in 2003 only remain on the list today. As pointed out by The Sunday Times business section this week putting a $10 billion dollar valuation on a company that is due to make $30 million in profit is a bit excessive when set against the likes of B.A. figures which in comparison are £4.4 billion and £602 million respectively.
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