The Constorium of Greater Minds

Mark Zuckerberg just conned Microsoft into a $240 million deal to buy 1.6% of Facebook, valuing his 20% stake at $3 billion. If there was any doubt that we’re in the midst of the Web 2.0 bubble, it’s just been left in the dust by MZ ghost-riding the Bently Continental courtesy of Microsoft.

Seeing as Facebook has yet to turn a profit or publicly release revenue figures, and taking into account the non-zero probability that Facebook and the whole social networking fad fades quicker than NBC’s “Cavemen”, Microsoft’s only hope of making money on the deal lies in a Facebook IPO within the next year or so. If Google wanted to invest in Facebook it would have outbid Microsoft and since it didn’t, we can safely assume that Google knows what we don’t about Facebook and, given that information, thought $240 million for such a small stake in the company was too much.

Hopefully for both Microsoft and Zuckerberg’s personal Make It Rain fund, it’s not.

In any event, to the casual observer, the whole thing boils down to this: 1)The second dot-com bubble is definitely in effect, given the amount of money old, established white men are giving to young, computer-savvy college dropouts; and 2)The deal makes Microsoft look stale and outdated as Google, the maverick new-kid-on-the-block, casually walks away.