OK… so today Microsoft finally beat out Google and Yahoo for FaceBook… investing $240 million for a teeny tiny 1.6% stake, valuing FaceBook at $15 billion. So, let’s see where that puts FaceBook… (and I’ll now use a link to Google Finance, which provides the chart I want nicely:

Right… so FaceBook is right now somewhere between Southwest Airlines and Ford. And they’re not even public yet! Now, the reality is that MS just put in $240 million for a deal, and the valuation may be $15B, or it may be somewhat smaller when the company goes public (or is acquired). What this really says is that the Search Wars have really begun — Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo are going to start tossing around big, and I mean big, dollars here to get a big share of the advertising market.

Wonder how long it’ll take for there to be a MSN Live Whatever Search box on the FaceBook home page…

I noticed yesterday that I made Mini-Microsoft! OK, it was just a quote from Kip Kniskern at LiveSide.net, but still nice to be noticed. I think. In the same article, Mini goes on to grouse about whether Microsoft should buy FaceBook. Aside from FaceBook booting his pseudonym personality, he brings up the classic death trend of social networks past: boredom. Or perhaps resignation:

Chat with some senior leadership in the next week and ask them, “Hey, what do you think about Microsoft buying Facebook?” I’m curious if your experience will be like mine lately: usually, a calm comes over the face and the senior leader is quite articulate in explaining all the reasons why it would be dumb to buy Facebook, how it won’t happen, and how it’s so wonderful to partner with Facebook for ads and to also ensure we’re a great platform for people to develop Facebook applications on (along with being a platform for future social networking applications). Consensus and clarity seems to have been reached on high around this, a new page has been put in the strategy hymnal, and everyone is singing to it.

I can’t say whether FaceBook is worth several billions. However, some interesting points:

• I’ve been busy reconnecting with people from college I haven’t seen in a decade. Imagine if I never had to reconnect, but was able to keep track of people through high school, undergrad, and grad school.
• I still visit FaceBook at least every other day, and I love updating random status blurbs.
• Occasionally, I do accept an application request (I’ve ignored the Zombies, Ninjas, and similar things, but the NFL IQ is pretty fun!)
• I can’t imagine actively working with more than, oh, two social networks. And even that’s a stretch. I think there can only be one.
• I still stand by my comment that FaceBook is the only thing I’ve seen in a long, long time that has the potential to be a default home page. And that’s worth some scratch.

Now, this being said, FaceBook is facing a number of issues… dealing with scale, likely refactoring tons of crappy PHP into something managable, figuring out how to be insanely profitable (and I don’t know the numbers behind the Microsoft ad deal, but I can’t imagine display banner ads are making money!), and so on. And competition… Live Spaces now has a news feed, and Google is primed for a re-release of Orkut (this time, without stolen code!) But you know, I remember wondering why Amazon, Microsoft, and others decided to get into the auction game after eBay had won the day. A friend commented that Amazon wanted in before eBay controlled the market, and all I could think was, “um, dude… they already do!” A few years later, this was proven true when all the also-rans abandoned the field.

Now, will FaceBook be the one, or will it suffer the same fates of Friendster, Orkut, Yahoo 360, and so on? Personally, I think it’s gonna be the one. Applications will add the spice and freshness, they’ll fix their scale and coding issues, and they’ll figure out how to make some cash off of personalized something-or-other (like, oh, I dunno… personalized ads! or personalized search with personalized ads! or personalized product recommendations!). This being said, there’s still some big chances that FaceBook gets scooped by competition, but if it’s almost 2009 and FaceBook is still in the lead, well, Game Over.

Now that I’m at Amazon, it’ll be a bit easier for me to blog about the search industry. I still won’t be discussing Microsoft strategy, and I’ll be nice as it’s a small world. But hey… everyone loves being the armchair quarterback!

One of the big topics out there is Facebook, or to be direct, the valuation and acquisition / investment thereof. People are tossing around numbers like a $10B valuation. Are they worth $10B? Or $5B or $15B? Well, I dunno. But, for giggles, let’s look at some market caps of other companies, as of today, Oct. 12, 2007:

So, I didn’t put in too many other $10B companies, as it was a bit difficult to find $10B companies. Nonetheless, just poking around was fascinating… Northwest, a reasonable airline with lots of planes and such is under $4B. Southwest, probably one of the top airlines in the US, is just under $11B, as is Nordstrom’s. So a $10B Facebook is roughly equivalent to Southwest Airlines and Nordstrom’s. A $10B Facebook is roughly worth half of Ford or General Motors. Yeah. If you were wondering why so many people are skeptical of the valuation, well, now you know one reason… Facebook doesn’t look at all like other $10B companies. However, the key question is whether it can boost one of Microsoft or Google in the search wars, which are going to get really expensive really quickly.

Now, on the flip side, things get kinda interesting… Amazon is worth $37B, and Yahoo, for all their troubles, is still a bit more at $37B (and to think MS was rumored to be offering $50B for Yahoo!). Looking up at Google, they’re worth $194B now, which is just a bit more than Wal-Mart, and 2/3 of the value of Microsoft. 2/3 of the Windows / Office empire. Wow.

Here’s why Windows Live ID (ne Passport) sucks:

Fundamentally, a login service is amazingly simple… an ID and password are presented, and the system responds with some credentials authenticating the user or denying the user. Yeah, there’s some state, but that’s fairly easily replicated, so there should be tons of boxes with said state so if one goes down, another can pick things up.

The above error was hit at about 1:30 AM on a Saturday (yeah, whatever), and I submitted the request twice. Sigh. And to think I was trying to log in to HealthVault, Microsoft’s newest release to store Health information, to check it out. Oh well.

Come on guys… Passport has been around for what, ten years now? You’re not going to beat anyone in services if you can’t ensure that simple services don’t block people from getting access because they’re down!

OK… so in general, I have a fairly low opinion of Comcast, my cable provider. In general, I find that they provide commodity services at high prices, but operate as a near-monopoly, thus I’m stuck with them. Blech.

One of the random features we get with our cable is the digital music package. For the most part, these are just throw-in channels of music, and we listen to them occasionally. Usually, we listen to the Sound of the Seasons during Christmas, where they put on various Christmas carols.

Today, I had a small Octoberfest party, and I wondered if, perhaps, just maybe, Comcast might have something apropriate on Sound of the Seasons. So, I turned on the TV, found the channel, and was greeted with…

German Beer Drinking Songs.

And that is just Comcastic!

Back in the good old days of the Web (which would be, oh, 1993 - 1995), there was Thomas Boutell’s World Birthday Web, a goofy site where you could put your birthday in and see who else had the same birthday. The cool thing was that every day on your birthday, you’d get a number of random “Happy Birthday!” greetings from random people. Like the Klingon automailer from the Klingon Language Institute:

A very happy birthday to you, from the Klingon Language Institute!
Or, as we like to say “Quchjaj qoSlIj.”
DuQuchmoH neH jajvam ‘e’ wItulbej

or some random people from Norway:

Hi Erik, and a happy birthday to you!
I’m a norwegian guy currently listening to a radio program about the Internet - you know, cool links, and so on.
So they mentioned this birthday page, I went there, and stuck with your name because it had a very norwegian touch - besides it was at the top of the list , -)

So here’s a birthday wish from
Frode, Oslo, Norway

or Italy:

Hello,
I have found your name in the boutell birthday list...
:-)-----------------------------------:-)
   Every good wish for your birthday  
:-)-----------------------------------:-)
Michele
 ______________________________________________________
Michele - Milano - Italy

Now, it helped that I was at the top of the list for Oct. 4, so I got a bunch for a while up until Thomas took the site down for a few years. Sadly, it’s but a shell of it’s former self… and I’m not at the top anymore.

But hey, now we have FaceBook, and thanks to everyone that wrote on my wall!

I just tried to save a new document (MS Word), on a new computer. It launched setup when I clicked on the “My Documents” folder. I don’t know why… all I know is that Save As… should not cause something to launch… it should just save the document!

I suspect this, and a host of other issues, are why people are generally frustrated with Microsoft products.

Sigh. And I had time to pen a quick blog post while I was waiting to save a document! What productivity!