Om Malik breaks from the herd and serves up an interesting perspective on Facebook’s $300-500M fundraising effort from MSFT.
The Giga Om founder suggests that Facebook is bracing for a MySpace-esque, sexual predator-related subpoena and/or lawsuit. Lord knows that MySpace has spent plenty of resources on cleaning house with all of the reports of sexual predators using the site to target unsuspecting teens. Rupert Murdoch and company deserve a lot of credit for handling the matter with all of the seriousness it deserves, though ultimately, a social network will be a preferred weapon of predators.
Facebook - who had earlier defended its closed network as a model of superior safeguarding against such venom - might have started gloating too soon, according to Malik.
It’s an interesting, though wildly speculative take on things. I don’t think he’s wrong, because any social network runs this risk, frankly, especially one that just opened up last fall and is run by idealistic and relatively inexperienced guys who have yet to have any kids and would not think otherwise.
What I mean is once you are a parent, this is the first thing you think about when you hear social network. Example: during Tech Crunch 40, VC and blogger Guy Kawasaki was sitting on a panel and told one competing company (Kerpoof) to drop the social networking angle because he has a daugher within Kerpoof’s target market and the last thing he wants to worry about is some pervert being on the site trying to befriend her.
It’s true that Facebook’s management young age might dissuade them from expecting the worst… until now, when the stakes have gotten so big and it so large a target than lawmakers will take notice. After all, it’s not a coincidence that MySpace became a major target after its parent Intermix sold to News Corp. for $580M.
Anyway, here is Malik’s piece. See our Part 1, Facebook’s Use of Funds here.
Consider Malik’s argument a Part 2, and we’ll have a Part 3, tomorrow, on another area Facebook very well could focus on if they do raise boatloads of cash.
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