Preferably Benjamins, and lots of them, as the college and high school networking site could rake in $2 billion from a sale; Viacom has been suggested as one suitor, but we can suggest another deep-pocketed company too.
It’s time to flip while the flipping is good. The minds behind Facebook have sniffed at a $750 million proposal for their corner of the social networking world.
A BusinessWeek report cited sources familiar with the developing situation. The $2 billion price tag will make News Corp’s MySpace look like a bargain at $580 million, a figure MySpace’s ex-CEO Brad Greenspan bitterly decried as too low.
It looks like Greenspan may have been right. Facebook, the seventh most heavily trafficked site online per comScore’s Media Metrix for February, would more than triple MySpace’s price tag if someone matches those lofty $2 billion aspirations.
That will require a big pocketbook, and one analyst cited by BW thinks Viacom’s Sumner Redstone could be the man with the pursestrings to pull that off. Viacom has made some acquisitions in the online market aimed at a younger demographic than Facebook’s.
“Viacom is certainly an interesting acquirer for this business, given its MTV properties and college-age programming,” Adam Gross from the investment bank The Jordan, Edmiston Group said in an email. “Facebook may get a premium over MySpace only because there aren’t many places on the Web to acquire traffic, following the spate of acquisitions over the past few years.”
Picking up Facebook would give Viacom a path along which to bring its young demographic, as they progress from Neopets to high school and college. Given the site’s more controlled nature, compared to the wide-open MySpace and the concerns it has raised among parents, Facebook should have more advertiser appeal.
Here is another possibility for a potential bidder. Consider: you unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension: a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You’re moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You’ve just crossed over into…Redmond, Washington.
Microsoft.
Two billion dollars for a property that contains a young advertising demographic, which causes marketers to simply drool all over their Italian shoes. Couple that with Microsoft’s forthcoming adCenter service in July. Microsoft could gain the attention of some of Yahoo’s userbase through Facebook.
That would be an incredible boost to the company as it shakes off the negative aspects of its delayed consumer release of the Vista operating system and a substantial reorganization of its corporate structure.
Windows Live Facebook. Think about it.
—
| document.write(“Email Murdok here.”)
Add to document.write(“Del.icio.us”) | DiggThis | Yahoo! My Web
Drag this 
David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
