{"id":1760,"date":"2007-10-02T14:10:08","date_gmt":"2007-10-02T18:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mathewingram.com\/work\/2007\/10\/02\/microsoft-fiddles-while-facebook-burns\/"},"modified":"2007-10-02T14:10:08","modified_gmt":"2007-10-02T18:10:08","slug":"microsoft-fiddles-while-facebook-burns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2007\/10\/02\/microsoft-fiddles-while-facebook-burns\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft fiddles while Facebook burns"},"content":{"rendered":"

Say what you will about Valleywag (just don’t get Mike Arrington started) but Owen Thomas is a pretty smart guy, and I think he makes a good point<\/a> amidst all the sturm und drang about Facebook and its market value, and how eBay’s $1.4-billion Skype-related writedown could affect the perception of that value (for more on that, just see this Techmeme thread<\/a> or the Times Online blog<\/a>).<\/p>\n

It’s true that eBay’s writedown says a lot about the risks of paying bubblicious prices for things, and a $10-billion valuation for Facebook has certainly got more than a whiff of bubble about it. At the same time, however, Owen points out that there are just as many risks in not<\/em> buying things. eBay is a great example of that too, having tried and failed to buy PayPal early on. And Yahoo has a boatload of missed opportunities, including Google and Facebook.<\/p>\n

As for Microsoft’s hyperactive basketball-coach CEO, Steve Ballmer, his remarks to the Times<\/a> about Facebook being a “fad” are just as likely to be an exercise in talking down the value of something before you buy a chunk as they are a thoughtful commentary on the company’s actual value. Or it’s possible that he really doesn’t get it<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the end, I think Kara Swisher at All Things D probably has the right read<\/a> on the situation: Facebook is likely to take some money, at a handsome valuation, but remain independent (unless $10-billion gets dropped off at Mark Zuckerberg’s flat, of course). If nothing else, MySpace shows the downside of being acquired too early.<\/p>\n

<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Say what you will about Valleywag (just don’t get Mike Arrington started) but Owen Thomas is a pretty smart guy, and I think he makes a good point amidst all the sturm und drang about Facebook and its market value, and how eBay’s $1.4-billion Skype-related writedown could affect the perception of that value (for more … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Microsoft fiddles while Facebook burns”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crsspst_to_mathewingramblogwordpresscom":false,"mf2_syndication":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1760\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}