Will Facebook, Technorati or YouTube be the Next Big Web 2.0 Sale?
 Bloggers are discussing a possible Yahoo bid to buy Facebook. The New York Times (on News.com) reports that Yahoo's offer for Facebook was $900 million -- higher than Viacom's January offer but lower than Facebook's $2 billion goal.
When Viacom offered $750 million for Facebook in January, he asked for $2 billion and was rebuffed, according to a person involved in the negotiations. Now, he remains undecided about the latest offer, made in the last few weeks by Yahoo. That offer, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, was confirmed Thursday by two industry executives, one briefed on the deal by Facebook and the other by Yahoo. Both spoke on the condition of anonymity because the negotiations are continuing.
To woo Zuckerberg, Yahoo has offered about $900 million for Facebook and says it will keep the company somewhat independent, with Zuckerberg in charge. This has been its model with other acquisitions like Flickr, a photo-sharing site, and Del.icio.us, a social bookmarking service that lets members share lists of their favorite Web sites.
Paid Content has more about some of the rumors going on about Yahoo and Facebook. Meanwhile, a New York Post story, discussed on hundreds of tech blogs including Charlene Li, GigaOM, B2Day and Internet 2.0, puts YouTube's magic acquisition number at $1.5 billion. Less than that and they won't sell. Should Yahoo just add $600 million to their latest Facebook offer and buy YouTube instead?
Last year and earlier this year there were many sale rumors about Technorati. At one point a rumor suggested that Technorati had actually been sold and everyone was trying to find out who the buyer was. Lately there haven't been as many Technorati rumors. The rumors are primarily about YouTube, Facebook and other social networks and video sharing sites. It would be easy to speculate again that maybe Yahoo will buy Technorati since they recently mysteriously removed their blog search engine from Yahoo News. However, this would be pure speculation. It also seems unlikely they are planning on buying Technorati since they are looking to spend so much on a Facebook buy ... but if the Facebook deal doesn't pan out then maybe they will spend the money elsewhere. Many bloggers speculated in their 2006 predictions that Technorati would be sold this year -- see Blogspotting, rev2.org, Newsome.org, Blog Herald and Ruzee. We mentioned it in our predictions as well. There was also a post on TechCrunch in January called, When Will Yahoo Acquire Technorati?. So far this sale has not materialized and time is running out for an acquisition to happen in 2006.
Posted on September 22, 2006
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