{"id":820,"date":"2006-12-12T16:34:07","date_gmt":"2006-12-12T21:34:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mathewingram.com\/work\/2006\/12\/12\/facebook-isnt-yelling-yahoo-just-yet\/"},"modified":"2006-12-12T16:34:07","modified_gmt":"2006-12-12T21:34:07","slug":"facebook-isnt-yelling-yahoo-just-yet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2006\/12\/12\/facebook-isnt-yelling-yahoo-just-yet\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook isn’t yelling Yahoo! just yet"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yahoo’s burning desire to acquire Facebook has been the talk of the Web 2.0-sphere for lo, these many months. At one point, there was rumoured to be an offer for $750-million, and then another worth $1-billion — and then, silence. Now, the plot has thickened, thanks to TechCrunch’s publication of<\/a> the Secret Yahoo Spreadsheets for the project code-named “Project Fraternity” (I guess “Project Please Help Us Compete With Google And Make Up For Not Buying MySpace” wouldn’t fit on a PowerPoint slide).<\/p>\n

As Mike Arrington points out with a tiny bit of understatement, the numbers that Yahoo used to justify its valuation — at one point it offered a deal valuing Facebook at a YouTube-ilicious $1.6-billion — look to be based on “robust” user growth. How robust? By 2010, the company projected that the social-networking site could be attracting almost 50 million users, or more than 50 per cent<\/strong> of the combined high school and young-adult population of about 83 million.<\/p>\n

\"yahoofraternity.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And that’s not the only thing that is “robust” about Yahoo’s numbers, as Fred Stutzman notes on his blog<\/a>. He points out that the projections for Facebook’s revenue — from which the purchase price is derived, as in “6 times revenue at a discount rate of X” — assume that more than 90 per cent of the site’s users are “active users.”<\/strong> That’s not just an aggressive target, it’s right up there in wishful-thinking land. <\/p>\n

Was it those kinds of nose-bleed projections that made Yahoo pause in its all-out pursuit of Facebook? Or was it the fact that the Internet giant was being held at arm’s length by Mark Zuckerberg, a guy who won’t get up at 8 a.m<\/a>. even for a conference call with Microsoft, and who wears sandals<\/a> to venture capital conferences? Or did weird old Uncle Terry<\/a> finally put the kibosh on the deal?<\/p>\n

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

Yahoo’s burning desire to acquire Facebook has been the talk of the Web 2.0-sphere for lo, these many months. At one point, there was rumoured to be an offer for $750-million, and then another worth $1-billion — and then, silence. Now, the plot has thickened, thanks to TechCrunch’s publication of the Secret Yahoo Spreadsheets for … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Facebook isn’t yelling Yahoo! just yet”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","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-820","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\/820","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=820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}