I misread the title
I read it as "Facebook value drops to $11.25", which let us be honest, is probably closer to the actual value of the company.
Court papers have told the world what it already knows: Facebook is not worth $15bn. That was the value Microsoft slapped on the social networking poster child last October when it forked over $240m for a 1.6 per cent stake in the company. But according to papers from the recently settled court case between Facebook and …
"But one thing's for sure: a 1.6 per stake isn't worth $240m"
If $240m means nothing to MS then why the hell not? Money is not the absolute value people seem to think. Especially not when talking about the stock market where most of the money seems to be pulled out of thin air in the trading of shares (else 'valuie' couldn't be knocked of the stock market).
£100,000 is a huge amount to me. I wonder how many times big firms have signed that much off with never a thought?
Like many other tech and web startups this experiment in social networking is overpriced. Mark should have sold the company to google a long time ago as they are so keen on buying such startups for an over inflated price.
Bring back the days of IRC and other chat mediums! They were certainly much better than the dismal flashy "we'll sell all your information for a dollar and while we are at it we'll sell our own mothers" social networking websites.
...is its yawning maw of application invites ready to chomp down on me when I log in. When I started using it, it was relatively fast. Now it crawls along at an ultra slow pace.
Considering I'm on an ISPs backbone I doubt very much its the speed of my connection!
Mines the one with RIP Facebook? On the back.
Why does every single commentator (not to mention journalist - shape up El Reg) miss out the one key point about the M$ - Facebook deal - that it was an advertising deal?
Since the value of the advertising component is never disclosed - they actually paid somewhere between $0 and $239,999,999 for 1.6% of Facebook, meaning there is no certainty whatsoever in the $15b valuation based on that number alone.
Most likely Microsoft a) values Facebook somewhere around $1b and b) sees any price as a shrewd way to keep Google's nasty mitts off it.
Stop banging the $15b valuation drum - it just isn't true!
/bfg
...kick it over to me and place your hands on your head. No sudden movements."
I would, but...
* One of the proprietary scripting languages I use at work has variables with a trailing dollar (I have no idea why) so M$ crops up as a variable name surprisingly often (although this may be partly inspired by "M$ non-cleverness").
* I'm not wearing protective footwear, so if I go around dropping things, corporate Health and Safety would probably drag me off for compulsory re-education.
* I think it's funny because Microsoft is often abbreviated to MS, and they have lots of dollars, so it's a clever play on words and symbols!
Microsoft's Bill, because that could potentially be abbreviated to... you know what? Never mind.