Also, why is Friendster bigger than them on Alexa. I thought they were gone?

I don’t know if college students are demanding more additions to the service because I am content now. I wish they expand to cover the rest of the world. Now, that would be the one thing I want.

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — This startup thing sure beats sitting in
class.

Mark Zuckerberg, who started the Facebook — essentially an online
student directory — while he was a sophomore at Harvard in 2004 — just
received funding for quite a nice valuation. Zuckerberg, as many of my
readers might recall, left Harvard to become an entrepreneur.

Facebook, which now has more than 7 million registered users, recently
received $25 million in venture funding from Greylock Partners, of San
Mateo.

The valuation for the private firm was $550 million, a source close to
the deal told me.

Viacom Inc. (VIA) offered Facebook $750 million for the entire company
earlier this year, according to the source. For Facebook’s right to
maintain its independence, a half billion dollar valuation is just fine.
What does that say about Internet valuations? They remain high.

If we also compare Facebook’s valuation and MySpace’s valuation, and
the number of registered members each site had at the time they received
valuations, it appears that prices are going up.

Last year, on July 18, News Corp (NWS) announced that it purchased
MySpace for $580 million in cash. At the time, MySpace said it had 18.5
million members from the coveted 16-to-34-year-old demographic group.
Facebook has about a third of that registered user base, but received
about the same amount of money. Facebook’s valuation certainly makes
News Corp purchase appear relatively reasonable.

Suffice it to say, it’s a good time to be an entrepreneur.

And, for Mark, who will turn 22 next month, it’s a nice way to
celebrate his birthday. Maybe his staff of 100 — mostly 20-somethings,
will throw him a party.

Facebook is introducing new ways of monetizing traffic: for example advertising student events via “facebook flyers” cost $5 per 10,000 views. With facebook’s spread across campus such schemes do present a cheap, targetted and highly effective way of reaching the college population as well as a surefire way to increase its revenue.

As an alumni, I rarely use the site, mainly because of the large college audience. I also heard from a friend that works at Facebook that the prior acquisition rumors (especially the request for $2B) were false.

can FB handle the Chinese market? =)