<![CDATA[Why the Facebook deal is about more than money - Valleywag Comments]]> <![CDATA[Why the Facebook deal is about more than money - Valleywag Comments]]> <![CDATA[Why the Facebook deal is about more than money]]> And as I've said elsewhere, Facebook obviously has a huge advantage in serving up ads to Facebook users. But move outside Facebook to some sort of effort to replicate Adsense, YPN, etc. and Facebook has a lot of catch up to do because it's behind in both data and the technology to exploit that data and serve up relevant ads. Where's the clamor among advertisers for yet-another-ad-network?

ChiefCynic

]]> <![CDATA[Why the Facebook deal is about more than money]]> @owen well, duh. but if you can't get the one ($15 billion valuation) without the other (bigger stake) than you'll just have to muffle your sobs in your for-now-sky-high (but still potentially ultimately worthless) shares.

ChiefCynic

]]> <![CDATA[Why the Facebook deal is about more than money]]> @ChiefCynic: Well, duh. But the question is whether to sell 5 percent or 10 percent of Facebook at the same valuation, not whether to take a smaller investment at a lower valuation. Current investors make out better, actually, if the new investors get a smaller stake.

Owen Thomas

]]> <![CDATA[Why the Facebook deal is about more than money]]> @ScalaWag:
You are also missing the point I think Owen is trying to make, to a certain extent anyway.

If Facebook can serve ads based on the large amount of information they gleam from each profile and sync ad campaigns with certain demographics until they develop a larger set of data it could eventually come into play when developing an ad network that serves ads on other websites. They essentially can further develop their delivery sensitivity to the 'wants and needs' of certain tech-savvy demographics, and an advertising system like that would gain some traction immediately in the 'web2.0' community as the user bases are normally similar and most of these start-ups are going to start looking for a revenue stream other than AdSense and prayer.

Even if their service is shitty, they immediately have a foot in the door with a lot of small companies and developers and can start getting circulation outside of Facebook quickly. I doubt this is the 'end-game' for Facebook, because I think Facebook is one of the few social networks that hasn't been managed solely on the hopes that they'll get bought out, but it's probably a diversification into a market there's no reason they shouldn't be fairly strong in.

Dweezil

]]> <![CDATA[Why the Facebook deal is about more than money]]> @sample032: You are missing the point. On Facebook people might be looking to buy iPod exactly because their friends have one.

ScalaWag

]]> <![CDATA[Why the Facebook deal is about more than money]]> Money doesn't matter? Investors will gladly settle for a slightly smaller piece of a much bigger pie. Would you rather own half of a $1 billion company or a quarter of one worth $15 billion? Playing MS and Goog against each other is first and foremost about inflating that valuation as high as they can. Look, Facebook is fun, but their ad "targeting" thus far has been piss poor and I doubt there's much Google could learn from them on this front.

ChiefCynic

]]> <![CDATA[Why the Facebook deal is about more than money]]> Someone said something in a video about a week ago about Facebook's problem being that the ads are competing with something FAR more interesting than ads: friends. It's not like Google, where people searching for "iPod" might actually want to buy an iPod.

sample032

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