Memorial Day, 2007 will go down as the day Rupert Murdoch made up his mind to make a run for Facebook.
That is, of course, if he ever was on TechMeme, for the TechMeme faithful have already made up their mind: Facebook is the best thing since sliced bread, while MySpace is the next Prodigy.
Why don’t we just start a Facebook group: Mark Z. for President in 2008? Better yet, let’s rush to MySpace’s HQ and burn it down? Yeah, that would be a good idea. Folks, can we please get some of our composure back?
Is Murdoch panicking? Did he buy a dud? Is he calling his investment bankers and lawyers and trying to make Mark Zuckerberg a Dow Jones-esque offer? Maybe.
Maybe Rupert Murdoch is regretting his purchase of MySpace…
Or, maybe not, he did after all buy MySpace for “only” $580M. So that is increasingly looking like a very small investment.
Facebook is experiencing torrid growth: from 12M to 25M users in 6 months, yes, and daily growth rate of 150,000 users. MySpace is at 100M users, adding 300,000 users per day. Any way you look at it, both companies are mezmerizing.
My gut is that Murdoch is mulling a reverse average cost dollar basis strategy by convincing himself that he can indeed pay $3B or more for Facebook because that will mean that he paid less than $2B for each of the two popular social networks.
Of course, will Facebook accept such an offer? My gut says that if Mark Zuckerberg can walk away with a $1B payoff, or $3.3B for the company, he just might accept it. Keep in mind people, that all of this Facebook OS talk is great, but this is still a company with $150M in 2007 revenues with no real guarantee that it can scale revenues past its current levels.
Related:
- Facebook 100M users, a matter of when, not if.
- Facebook OS: Be careful what you ask for.
- Facebook: IPO vs. M&A.
- Facebook’s 2008 to do list: File for an IPO.
- Should MSFT Turn its Attention to Facebook?
- Peter Thiel: Facebook is Worth $8B.
- Murdoch: “MySpace worth $6B”, if so, then break up FIM!
- Facebook to be worth $2.35B by 2010.
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