RSS
Valleywag
facebook
Posts Tagged “
Facebook, Deals
”
facebook
deals
Is Slide worth half a billion? Only if Facebook buys them
In January a pair of money managers, Fidelity and T. Rowe Price, bought 9.1 percent of Slide for $50 million. Fortune asks, "Are these widgets worth half a billion?" The mag doesn't come up with anything more than "maybe," but I'm willing to go a little further. Slide worth $550 million? No, despite its huge traffic numbers. While it's true that advertisers are desperate to reach the 18-24 market, I hardly think SuperPoke is what they had in mind. More »
10:40 AM on Mon Mar 24 2008
By Jordan Golson
2,158 views,
6 comments
Latest by DaveMcClure500Hats: party @ Alaska's place! woo hoo! more »
deals
Plaxo torn between two lovers?
Is Plaxo going to Google, as some rumors have it? Possibly. We hear Joe Kraus, a Google executive knee-deep in its effort to catch up in social networking, skipped the company trip to Disneyland this week so he could finish a deal. But other insiders say Google's not doing a deal with Plaxo. Another plausible bidder: Comcast. More »
deals
Google to buy Plaxo -- and a new pal -- for $200 million?
Plaxo, the contact-sharing service trying to reinvent itself as a social network, may have sold itself to Google for something close to $200 million. And if the rumor's true, I think the companies may be doing it out of friendship. One could bloviate endlessly here about industry consolidation, user-data portability, and so on — and I'm sure you'll read plenty of that. I think the real reason is much simpler. Brad Fitzpatrick, the LiveJournal founder now leading Google's social-network strategy, wants to work with Joseph Smarr, Plaxo's chief platform architect. I sat with the two at lunch at the Web 2.0 Summit last year, and they got along famously. More »
rumormonger
MySpace, Google stalking Bebo for $1 billion-plus
The rumor mill is always churning on San Francisco-based Bebo. Now Google may be interested in acquiring the social network for $1 billion to $1.5 billion. That's a lot of cheese for a smallish social network that has almost no presence in the U.S. Why would Google want it? More »
exits
Microsoft dealmaker Bruce Jaffe going startup
While Microsoft has yet to come up with a search engine that wows consumers, it has successfully wooed Wall Street with its push into online advertising. Alas for Microsoft, it's losing a key dealmaker. Bruce Jaffe, a top corporate-development executive who helped engineer Microsoft's $6 billion acquisition of aQuantive and its $240 million investment in Facebook, is leaving the company. He's been interviewing around the Valley, but last we heard, he's decided to form his own startup. Anyone have more details on what he's up to?
deals
Hong Kong billionaire invests $60 million in Facebook
As we'd heard, Facebook has found a strategic investor in Asia: Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing will reportedly invest $60 million in Facebook with the option to double up later. The 79 year old is the world's ninth richest person and, as the photo above would indicate, a Facebook member as well. Though on the site, he's listed himself as a she. Not that there's anything wrong with that. More »
deals
When Friendster could have bought Facebook
As a side note, a little known fact is that when I was at Friendster, I found a small company out of Harvard that we came very close to acquiring, a startup no one had heard of that time, a company named Thefacebook. I've been an admirer of Zuck and the facebook team for a long time now.
So says ex-Friendster executive and Bebo founder Jim Scheinman
in a self-aggrandizing interview with VentureBeat. Scheinman also takes credit for developing the "engagement marketing concept" — we think he means Facebook's new advertising platform. So, Jim, fess up. Why did the deal fall apart? How much did Mark Zuckerberg want? We suspect Scheinman won't tell us, so if you know anything more about Friendster's botched chance to stay relevant, fill us in.
whatsopen
Developers of first Googlephone app playing down Google ties
WhatsOpen, the stealth startup behind the first known Googlephone app, is quietly admitting to people in the industry that it is using Google's Android OS for cell phones for its mobile app which tells users which nearby stores are open. As the wags at Gizmodo noted, the killer app for Android is figuring out where to get a beer at 3 a.m. Other than that, WhatsOpen's secretive founders are anxious to downplay their ties to Google. After Google billionaire Sergey Brin was spotted asking a WhatsOpen executive to keep his company under wraps, people widely expected a noiseless Google takeover. More »
deals
Facebook raising $50 million or so, says board member
Yesterday, Accel Partners VC Jim Breyer, who sits on Facebook's board with Peter Thiel and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, made an offhand comment about Facebook's unfinished financing round. Microsoft has already put in $240 million, and Facebook's board has authorized sleepless CFO Gideon Yu to go raise another $260 million. Here's what Breyer said to Silicon Alley Insider: "$50 million, $100 million, $200 million." He said it with a shrug, but we think his insouciance was feigned. That's because Facebook already has a firm commitment in hand for that $50 million Breyer mentioned. The board is still deciding whether to take that money.
plentyoffish
How much is a one-man dating site worth?
Read/WriteWeb is pondering what websites are worth. It starts off comparing Plentyoffish, the Canadian dating site, with Facebook. By the numbers? Facebook will have about 15 times Plentyoffish's $10 million in revenues this year. So shouldn't it be worth one-fifteenth as much as Facebook, or $1 billion? More »
deals
Facebook's hedge fund deals not signed yet
We picked up Dan Lyons's rumor as Fake Steve Jobs that Facebook has cajoled hedge funds into investing another $500 million, and noted that CFO Gideon Yu must never sleep. And Forbes, where Lyons has a day job, also called the deal complete. Not so, people familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal. The new investment will only be as much as another $260 million, making the total raised in this round, including Microsoft's money, $500 million. An announcement could come soon, but nothing's been signed yet. We know some VCs wanted in on this deal but hear it got too rich for them. (Photo by spcbrass)
clips
In case you missed the whole hullabaloo about Microsoft taking a $240 million stake in Facebook, CNBC has the 15-second version. Tech pundits with a bad case of blogorrhea could take notes from the cable network's brevity.
Facebook and Microsoft in 15 seconds or less
In case you missed the whole hullabaloo about Microsoft taking a $240 million stake in Facebook, CNBC has the 15-second version. Tech pundits with a bad case of blogorrhea could take notes from the cable network's brevity.
kevin johnson
Microsoft internal Facebook email a self-congratulatory high-five
Internal memos offer, if not juicy gossip, telling insight into the character of an organization. Not so with the missive Microsoft lead negotiator Kevin Johnson sent around to explain his Facebook triumph. It's just more "win-win-win" blather that you'd expect from a salesman. Johnson tells coworkers the deal will demonstrate to advertisers that Microsoft is a winner and that for publishers "it is further evidence of Microsoft's commitment to long-term innovation." I'm sure the thousands of geeks in Microsoft's R&D labs are stewing over that line — not that they've come up with anything even vaguely as cool as Facebook. But whatever. We know the real reason Johnson sent the memo. To get this reply from Ballmer — the CEO's actual words: "Great job you really pulled this together unbelievably." Cha-ching!
google
Sergey decides not to own everything
Maybe Google cofounder Sergey Brin is feeling a little touchy. Yesterday, while Microsoft and Facebook consummated their deal with a very public "win-win-win" lovefest, Brin, an internal champion of the Facebook deal, was stuck with 300 financial analysts and press at Google Analyst Day. His immediate reaction to losing out to Microsoft? More »
Facebook CFO Gideon Yu never, ever sleeps. He's helping the social network raise another $500 million, on top of Microsoft's $240 million, from two hedge funds, at the same rich $15 billion valuation. Word is that some venture-capital firms were interested in buying into Facebook so they could get some of the buzz, but were priced out of the financing round. I wonder if Sequoia Capital, shut out of earlier Facebook rounds, was still trying this time. [The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs]
deals
You can tell that Facebook's Owen Van Natta and Microsoft's Kevin Johnson are sales guys. In a conference call announcing that Microsoft and Facebook had struck a long-expected investment and ads deal, both had the "win-win-win" patter down, along with nonanswers to hard questions. In his live coverage of the call, Silicon Alley Insider's Peter Kafka has a rundown of the dodges Van Natta and Johnson offered. After the jump, the big questions still hovering over Microsoft and Facebook's $240 million deal.
More »
Facebook and Microsoft's unanswered questions
You can tell that Facebook's Owen Van Natta and Microsoft's Kevin Johnson are sales guys. In a conference call announcing that Microsoft and Facebook had struck a long-expected investment and ads deal, both had the "win-win-win" patter down, along with nonanswers to hard questions. In his live coverage of the call, Silicon Alley Insider's Peter Kafka has a rundown of the dodges Van Natta and Johnson offered. After the jump, the big questions still hovering over Microsoft and Facebook's $240 million deal.
More »
rumormonger
