Facebook does know what it’s worth (see Techcrunch)….

There’s nothing to say that a real offer was in place to be turned down. That’s the one specific piece of information that I consistently DON’T hear.

on the other hand, the guy is in low 20s… let him take chances… either way it will be a good learning experience for him and one more circus for us…

$8B? Come on?

That is a great question that everyone has an answer for.

If you take a vote, I am sure over 99% of the people will take the $1 billion buyout price that Yahoo offered to Facebook. But 99% of the people would not have started Facebook at the time Mark Zuckerberg did or even well after that.

We might have a different opinion if we were in Mark Zuckerberg or Peter Thiel’s position. Mark may be young but certainly has achieved a great deal. I admire anyone who dares to be an entrepreneur whether he or she is successful or not.

Cheers to all the entrepreneurs out there!

1) FB does have uniqueness from a technical perspective. Which other social networks allow you to post an unlimited number of photos? Integrate with your blog? Provide you an activity news feed on your hompage? Let you share videos? The list goes on, FB is miles ahead of any other social network out there.

2) The “uncustomizable” user interface is not a disadvantage but a huge huge advantage - I am yet to meet someone who does not think FB’s UI is great and easy to use. They have no need to make it customisable because they are not MySpace - people do not choose either MySpace or FB, they use both for different things. My school friends (whom I lost touch with once I went to college) were all on MySpace, in fact pretty much the whole school (hundreds of people) were all on MySpace. In the last two weeks they have all, and I mean ALL, come onto FB but they still use MySpace - just for a different purpose.

People don’t use FB to express their individualism or identity, they use it to stalk their friends and hot girls/guys and right now FB provides the best tool to do exactly that.

I agree with all your points re FB’s expansion into other non-college markets though.

Jon

“No way! it’s only worth 20% of that.”

First it was 20% of $750M, then it was 20% of $1B, then 20% of $2B, now, 20% of $8B.

Pure genius. I’ve never seen a bubble played so well. I think they refer to this negotiation tactic as “anchoring”…. I’ve just never seen it done so publicly, or so effectively.

What’s it reallty worth? Not nearly what they want. But who knows? (See, I just did it myself!)

That’s right, the 2006 TIME Person of the Year is You. TIME Magazine’s choice reflects the changing attitude of mainstream media (MSM) who are now embracing the new Web 2.0 era. You are the person of the year because you…

I think we’ll find a lot of the sites out there aren’t getting the kind of traffic we think they are.

As far as it being a bubble, I was around last time. There were companies highly overhyped (some of my clients never brought products to market yet were heavily pitching them as if they existed), investments and VC going into things people scratched their heads wondering why, and hundreds of people starting identical companies to existing ones and few people actually really making money. Kind of what we’re seeing right now.

Thiel is a smart dude - he’s not hedging his hedge fund & FB, but he’s hedging FB & LinkedIn. Am sure there is pretty much strong correlation between people who are likely to sing-up for FB and then sign-up to LinkedIn once they graduate (they are used to being ,,out there”). So even if FB crashes, who cares, they have stimulated a market for college social networking, which feeds into LinkedIn. Win win.

There might be many competitors to FB, but how many are there to LinkedIn? They are much better positioned than FB - professionals aren’t going to switch their 100 contacts into some new network overnight… But I wouldn’t be so sure with college kids.