If you’re not watching the national tech news today, Facebook announced a $240M investment by Microsoft making Facebook valued at around $15B. You can check out all the blog activity on Sphere right here. Looks like Newscorp got a deal when it spent $580M for MySpace. Rupert looks like a genius. Again.
You meant Myspace, not Facebook, when referring to Rupert’s great deal. And, regarding the difference in valuations between the two, I thought this comment from the NY Times article yesterdya was telling:
“Once a social operating system takes over a country, it’s like it becomes the native language of that country,” said Lee Lorenzen, a venture capitalist who has invested in companies making Facebook applications. Mr. Lorenzen noted that Google’s Orkut dominates Brazil, Friendster dominates the Philippines and Facebook is becoming the dominant forum in the United States, Canada and Western Europe.
Mr. Lorenzen and other investors are often dismissive of MySpace. “MySpace is not based on authentic identities,” he said. “Facebook is based on who you really are and who your friends really are. That is who marketers really want to reach, not the ‘fantasy you’ that lives on MySpace and uses a photo of a model.”