A Billion Here, A Billion There, Soon It Adds Up To Real Money
Daniel Gross at Slate.com has an interesting look at the rush by big, established internet companies and others to buy social networking sites - for big money. Me, I still can't get used to typing the words "Big, established internet companies" without thinking of Pets.com or Duke Nukem vaporware:
The "social-networking" gold rush continues. Last year, MySpace was acquired by News Corp. for $580 million in cash. Now the other big social-networking sites are the subject of rumors, deals, and transactions. Yahoo! was interested in acquiring Facebook for $1 billion, but the company's youthful founders are holding out for more. Warner Music earlier this month cut a revenue-sharing deal with YouTube. In August, Google and MySpace struck a $900-million agreement for Google to sell ads on MySpace.
Yahoo offered a billion dollars for Facebook. The owners said no. They're either really smart, or really stupid.
