Yahoo Tries to Woo Facebook With $900 Million

Krishna Dagli writes writes to mention a New York Times article on Yahoo!'s attempt to buy Facebook. Their current standing offer is $900 Million, with the deal including a degree of autonomy for the site and founder Mark Zuckerberg still in charge. From the article: "When Viacom offered $750 million for Facebook in January, he asked for $2 billion and was rebuffed, according to a person involved in the negotiations. Now, he remains undecided about the latest offer, made in the last few weeks by Yahoo. That offer, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, was confirmed yesterday by two industry executives, one briefed on the deal by Facebook and the other by Yahoo. Both spoke on the condition of anonymity because the negotiations are continuing."

Take the Money and Run

[Anonymous Coward]

Congrats! You won the lotto. Twice. You can always quit and go do something fun with your 900 million dollars, but only if you have that money. Don't worry about us, we can make another site with the same functionality. We are the world, we'll be ok. Now go cash in!

Not bad...

[cunina]

... for an idea notorious scumbag Zuckerberg stole from his friends.

Re:Hmmm...

[megaditto]

It sure sounds like much, but it isn't. Some of it will be in Yahoo stock (PITA to unload), and nearly half of it will be taken away in taxes!

Instead, the owner currently has $50m/year tax-free (since he re-invests ALL of it into the company). This is projected to double next year.

Also, considering his aspirations of becoming the next Jobs or Brin, perhaps selling off is not the best idea?

Re:Hmmm...

[Ruff_ilb]

Alternatively, the value that he got for $750 mil might not have offered him the amount of autonomy he wanted; if, for example, they wanted to buy him out and shut him out of the loop, he might have wanted 2000 mil for that. Now, if yahoo is going to buy him but still allow him to do his own thing, he might consider a lot less - in this case, 900 mil.

Re:Jackpot

[inKubus]

There's no bind. You take the 900M in stock or whatever, you sell it, you pay your taxes on the full amount, and you stick it in a 5% savings account and go buy an island somewhere. WhyTF would you not take $900M?! Power? Money IS power. How many users does he have now? 9 Million. He could start an ad campaign with a different, easy to make product (say a video on demand service), take 300million and basically pay 1 million college students $300 a piece to use the service, provided they bring in at least 5 new accounts in the next year. Then you charge $5 a month or $60 for a yearly subscription and you pocket all your money back in the first year. He thinks he's being smart by holding out for the best offer, but he's going to get screwed and lose it all. 12 months from now, when Facebook is dead and he's broke, we're going to see a headline of his suicide. If he doesn't take the deal, that is.

Re:my advice . . .

[RovingSlug]

Or more likely, the founders got screwed on terms from their investors (Accel, for instance) and a $2 billion sale translates to like $2 million for the founders. Just guessing.

Re:Hmmm...

[Jeff DeMaagd]

The chances of being the "next" Jobs, etc. is very, very low, though if you are right, the owner of Facebook has a better shot than most people, a better shot than any Slashdot reader of course. Even for him, it is still very low. I can't even imagine that a Mark-note about where Facebook is headed would interest very many people, not nearly as many as a Steve-note.

It also really depends on whether the site can be constantly re-invented to keep up with what keeps its users interested. If they miss a trend and its users wander off elsewhere, that can really hurt.

That's just one of the things that bother me whenever I consider investing in or starting a technology company. One might say that for technology, fate and success are fickle mistresses. Product development cycles are often longer than fad cycles so it's hard to target of hold onto a technology fad. Far too many tech companies have simply died because they chose the wrong development path or simply lost its competitive edge at the wrong time.

Re:Not bad...

[LilBlackDemon]

Mr. Zuckerberg actually worked on a site that already existed (I believe it was called ConnectU.com). Zuckerberg was hired to redisgn the site. However, after the three month contract was up, ConnectU releaunched with a rather shaky design (the site would sometimes crash its servers the coding was so bad) and Facebook was launched, as Zuckerberg's own project, around the same time. The two contain many elements in common, but because Facebook was more stable and happened to hit at the right time and have the right publicity (and name, even) it became the smash hit it is today.

When it first happened, there was a bit of controversy as to if Facebook might even contain some ConnectU code. It was a sticky situation for a bit.