Microsoft purchases 1.6% of Facebook for $240M
On October 25th, Microsoft Corp. paid $240M for a 1.6% stake in Facebook, valuing the young company with less than $200M in
annual revenue, at an astonishing $15B, more than 25 times the amount News
Corp. paid for outright ownership of MySpace, which has 107.3M subscribers,
more than five times Facebook’s subscriber base of 20M. Facebook’s user base increased more than 6%
in September while MySpace grew 1% (which actually means they brew at nearly
the same pace in terms of actual subscribers).
This move fairly clearly demonstrates two things 1) Microsoft is finally demonstrating that they understand the importance of the web and web communities and are willing to invest substantially in it.
This deal will also allow Microsoft to sell Internet ads for
the Facebook website outside the
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hKn0T1IOwng1NE5pvvZLewkJ5aVQ
http://www.statesman.com/business/content/business/stories/other/10/25/1025microsoft.html
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