All Things Digital

Silicon Valley luminary Marc Andreessen (pictured here) has been asked to join the board of Facebook, according to several sources with knowledge of the situation.

While the arrangement is not completed yet, sources said the longtime entrepreneur has verbally agreed to accept the post to become the fourth member of the board of the Palo Alto, Calif.-based social-networking site.

Other board members include Accel Partners Jim Breyer, Founders Fund’s Peter Thiel and Facebook CEO and Founder Mark Zuckerberg. Greylock Partners David Sze also has observer status on the board.

Since he co-founded browser pioneer Netscape in the 1990s and helped usher in the Internet age, Andreessen has been an active investor and has created several successful start-ups.

His most current effort has been Ning, also based in Palo Alto, which is a white-label social-networking company that recently raised another $60 million in funding.

If Andreessen joins Facebook’s board, the move is yet another sign that the much-hyped start-up, which has undergone some growing pains over the last year, as well as garnering a $15 billion valuation, is growing up by bringing some major high-profile tech figures into its ranks.

Last night, for example, BoomTown broke the news that Google PR head Elliot Schrage had accepted a similiar job at Facebook.

That comes after Facebook hired another top Google (GOOG) exec, Sheryl Sandberg, as its COO, in March.

A while back, BoomTown suggested that Web 1.0 golden boy Andreessen–pictured here on the iconic Time magazine cover in 1996–would be a good mentor for current golden boy Zuckerberg, in a piece I did about potential execs for Facebook.

As I wrote in February:

But why not go for the man who was Zuckerberg before Zuckerberg was cool. Yes, the shiniest of Golden Geeks himself, Marc Andreessen.

I could go on and on about the similarities I find between the two, if you compared today’s Zuckerberg with the Netscape founder in the mid-1990s.

From their arrogant innocence to their visionary qualities to their enfant-terrible charm, it is almost as if they were separated at birth.

But now Andreessen is all grown up and much, much matured from when I covered him. He has become all calm and sage and he even does a very decent blog.

Plus, he has also started and run a number of start-ups after Netscape, giving him deeper managerial experience over the last dozen years.

And, best of all, Andreessen knows the pressure of being the best-thing-since-sliced-bread in the tech sector, and its inevitable downside too.

Overall, a real mentor and partner for Zuckerberg, making a perfect pair of Golden Geeks.”

While BoomTown does not usually do funding announcements, the $7 million that the adults-only social network Zivity will be announcing today is interesting for one reason.

No, not the fact that it builds its business model on the back–well, back ends, to be more precise–of photos of women in various stages of undress.

Get your minds out of the the gutter!

It’s because it is one of the few Web 2.0 companies that is trying out a subscription business model, as opposed to every other online company these days, all of which are chasing ad-supported nirvana.

Today, the San Francisco-based Zivity is nabbing that $7 million from BlueRun Ventures and Founders Fund, both of which have backed social-networking widget phenoms like Slide.

In fact, Zivity co-founder Scott Banister is on the board of Slide and was one of its earliest investors. (Banister, whose wife, Cyan, is also a founder and model on the site, has also been involved with a wide range of start-ups, from Overture to PayPal to IronPort.)

So instead of, say, Viagra banner ads, Zivity users pay $10 a month to look at the “tasteful” naked ladies pictures uploaded by users. The company must approve of the professional-quality photos, using a series of guidelines (no sex acts or close-ups, for example).

“Look, Lindsay Lohan just did a whole photo session similar to what we have on our site, so what’s wrong with 3 million other women wanting to do it,” joked Banister in an interview last night, referring to the recent series of pictures the troubled actress did a la Marilyn Monroe for New York magazine. “We are creating a place where the more controversial material can be published online without worrying whether advertisers are willing to underwrite it.”

Well, we will not get into a debate as to why we probably should not be playing copycat with the train wreck that is Lohan. But Banister does have a point about the need for different kinds of business models that don’t rely on advertising.

In fact, Zivity–which was seeded in 2007 with $1 million in funding–pays contributors who are more popular in a revenue-sharing plan via voting. Right now, for example, the most popular “photo sets” includes images of Cupcakes, Pearl and Damanda (pictured here).

There is also an increasing element of social networking, among the models, photographers and others, which does mimic more straight-laced sites.

In the press release for the funding, Banister compares Zivity to the popular cable channel HBO. “We think of Zivity as the HBO of the Internet,” he said. “Unlike free social networks and other user-generated content platforms underwritten by advertisers, our subscription-based business model offers us real freedom–to publish uncensored content and to pay our content producers generously.”

While the site is only comparable to HBO if it ran only “Taxicab Confessions” and “Real Sex” in an endless loop and you had never heard of “The Sopranos” and “Entourage,” its sure-fire subscription base might allow Zivity to be one of the few Web 2.0 companies that survives the coming washout.

But before you fire up that browser, the site has only 10,000 beta users now, with another 30,000 on its wait list. While you can sign up to get an invite or be invited, the open public launch is not until 2009.

It’s Bubble Time!

As BoomTown broke the news in its post earlier today, Slide grabbed a big pile of cash from new investors–$50 million from Fidelity and T. Rowe Price–which puts the value of the company at $550 million.

In our post, we said the San Francisco start-up, whose widgets are among the most popular on Facebook and MySpace, was completing a round of funding that could value it at many times a multiple of its most recent $60 million to $80 million valuation.

The investment from the pair of private equity funds gives them a 9% stake in the maker of widgets and other social-networking applications.

Allen & Co., the media-connected New York-based investment firm, helped Slide execs in raising the latest round.

Don’t think we did not notice that the venture investors already in Slide did not pony up more funds at this–let’s just say it, shall we?–crazy valuation.

But it is noticeable that such mainstream investors are jumping into the giant pool of Kool-Aid that the social-networking industry has been swimming in over the last year.

Slide’s last round–an investment of $20 million–took place in November of 2006 with investors that included Khosla Ventures, BlueRun Ventures, Founders Fund and the Mayfield Fund.

So Slide’s investors, of course, were smart to get in on the ground floor to take advantage of the bubble that is expanding at alarming rates.

The ground-zero of that trend came when Facebook got a $240 million investment from Microsoft that valued the company at $15 billion.

Of course, while garnering revenues, neither Facebook nor Slide has the kind of business yet to deserve being worth this lofty amount, except for the fact that investors are counting in its potential and recent quick growth.

Slide’s business plan includes making money from selling premium versions of its widgets, as well as selling advertisers on its large, although disparate, audience.

The company calls itself the “largest personal media network in the world, reaching more than 134 million unique global viewers each month and 30% of the U.S. Internet audience.”

But the company recently said reports had put that number at 144 million, excluding its 50 million users on Facebook. Its competitors include other widget-makers like RockYou.

Slide makes a wide range of software, called widgets, that have been attracting many millions of users each. They include everything from slide shows to a program called SuperPoke that allows a user to, well, poke another in a super way.

A lot of Slide’s current growth has been through taking advantage of the huge spike in users first at MySpace and now at Facebook, which is promising, but also not certain.

To say that we have seen this story of fast growth, insane valuations and then the inevitable drop-off would be an understatement.

But Slide Founder and CEO Max Levchin and his team consider the company to be a new kind of distributed content and application company that is not dependent on large platforms like Facebook and MySpace and has huge potential.

Minor blogging annoyance: Of course, in a fit of pique since we revealed the funding without their help, Slide hand-fed the details of the deal to the New York Times and BusinessWeek, both of which somehow forgot to link to our post that said Slide was landing the deal. (Brad, Sarah: Please, please don’t tell us you figured it all out on your own this morning over eggs.)

UPDATE: A New York Times deputy tech editor just wrote an email to tell me its reporter already had a “previously scheduled” meeting with Slide about the deal–like I said, hand-fed!–this morning, which “inspired” its post and did not know of BoomTown’s news of the funding (even though it was up since 12:06 a.m. and noticed by everyone else, including Slide). Also, they had the hand-fed details! They did! I admit it! I went hungry, since I did not agree to an embargo! “In light of this we didn’t feel that a link was warranted,” he wrote me.

But we’re not bizarrely ungenerous like that, so here is the link to the New York Times story, in which Slide’s Levchin said his company makes Facebook and MySpace worth using. (And here is the BusinessWeek link too.)

“It’s impossible for social networks focused on scaling the network itself to build all the niche applications that bring people and keep people on these sites,” Levchin said, noting Slide widgets “add the bulk of perceived value to the consumers of these Web platforms.”

He also said he would use the money to expand its repertoire, but said Slide would try to develop in-house.

But others close to Slide said this was not exactly so, and that the company would also look around for good acquisition targets, using stakes in the newly valued Slide as currency.

Call it the Facebook Funding Effect.

I am still collecting details, but Slide–the San Francisco start-up whose widgets are among the most popular on Facebook and MySpace–is completing a round of funding that could value it at many times a multiple of its most recent $60 million to $80 million valuation.

That would be a large leap from a round that Slide announced in November of 2006 with investors that included Khosla Ventures, BlueRun Ventures, Founders Fund and the Mayfield Fund. Sources said the investment then was $20 million.

Slide is reportedly using Allen & Co., the media-connected New York-based investment firm, to help them in raising the latest round.

The reason for getting more funding, said sources, is to be able to acquire other companies and expand, using cash and the stakes in the higher-valued company, much in the same way that Facebook has done.

The social-networking universe was recently shaken up, when Facebook got a $240 million investment from Microsoft that valued the company at $15 billion.

Slide makes a wide range of software, called widgets, that have been attracting many millions of users each. They include everything from slide shows to a program called SuperPoke that allows a user to, well, poke another in a super way.

The company calls itself the “largest personal media network in the world, reaching more than 134 million unique global viewers each month and 30% of the U.S. Internet audience.”

But the company recently said reports had put that number at 144 million, excluding its 50 million users on Facebook. Its competitors include other widget-makers like RockYou.

A lot of Slide’s current growth has been through taking advantage of the huge spike in users first at MySpace and now at Facebook.

But Slide and its founder Max Levchin, as well as its investors, have grander dreams than riding on the coattails of bigger players.

They consider the company to be a new kind of distributed content and application company that is not dependent on large platforms like Facebook and MySpace.

More to come about the funding, but here is a post of a visit I made to Slide in September of 2007 and also a video interview I did with Levchin:

What can we say about investor Peter Thiel, when it is much better to listen to him talk?

Here’s a longish video I made at Thiel’s office on San Francisco’s Presidio (no Sand Hill Road mundanity for Peter!) yesterday with the man who has become Silicon Valley’s most interesting venture capitalist and all-around great character of late.

Now running the VC firm called the Founders Fund, as well as a hedge fund called Clarium Capital Management, Thiel has a lot to say about everything from the painfully slow decline of old media (likening them to train companies in a plane world!) to the underhyping of Web 2.0 companies like Facebook (a 10-times-10 valuation from its current $15 billion if the hot social network, in which he was the first investor, keeps up its torrid pace of growth!) to the state of venture capital (needs a shake-up!).

My favorite quote from the interview comes from Thiel right at the end: “There’s absolutely no bubble in technology.”

Read more »

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Well, we’re glad it’s done, our conflict of interest shoved aside by the hey-big-spenders at Microsoft and we can again resume our incredulous analysis of the insane $15 billion valuation of Facebook.

No matter who would have gotten to make nice with founder Mark Zuckerberg in the hefty ad-investment deal–Google or Microsoft–we will be sticking to our guns on this ridiculous roundelay of hype and circumstance.

That’s because this valuation, while a paper windfall for its investors and those currently employed at Facebook, has exactly no meaning until the company actually performs financially to keep up with the lofty figure and then, presumably, goes public in a great rush of glory.

Of course, that does not mean this bump–which could only happen in a very bubbly Silicon Valley–will not help the company pick up some tasty acquisitions now using its overpriced stock, as long as targets are willing to play along with the still-questionable dream of future riches.

And, of course, in the here and now, Facebook will get an even bigger slug of guaranteed ad dollars from international as well as U.S. markets from Microsoft, which will be losing a giant amount of money in the arrangement.

As a plus to Facebook and an important element in Microsoft signing this deal, by the way, sources confirm that the start-up got much better terms in its U.S. ad deal that basically lets them control the whole partnership without any hooks for Microsoft.

Does any of this really matter? From a perspective of big, cash-rich companies throwing huge dollars at hot start-ups, it is, as one investor told me last night, meaningless.

“It’s trivial to Microsoft to spend this money and worth the gamble,” this person said.

Indeed.

Because while execs at both companies talk about the potential–and there is a massive amount of it in the Facebook business model–both Microsoft and deal-loser Google, too, were willing to bankroll a loss leader in the hopes of later return, a whole lot of important education about the social-networking space and also likely solid returns in an IPO scenario.

And for Microsoft, that is OK, given that the software giant needed to land this deal for all sorts of reasons (seeming relevant in the fast-moving Web 2.0 space and, of course, the sweet-sweet feeling of actually beating out Google) and has more than enough money to burn.

That’s obvious too with the $240 million cash investment (with more to come from other greedmonger private investors, of course, in another round now being arranged by Facebook) that bought Microsoft exactly 1.6% of Facebook.

That puts Microsoft behind Greylock Partners’ and Meritech Capital Partners’ 1.7%, Founders Fund’s 5% and Accel Partners’ 11%–Accel partner and Facebook board member Jim Breyer also has a personal 1% stake, now valued at $150 million–and Zuckerberg’s 20% (not the 30% that has been widely reported), which is now worth $3 billion.

So what can we say but: Party on, Garth!

But let’s not lose sight of the fact that for all the fabulous growth, Facebook is still a very small business now carrying a very large valuation on its slight shoulders. So far, it has only $150 million in annual revenue, half of which comes from its guaranteed ad deal with Microsoft, and is break-even on a cash-flow basis.

So more cash in the kitty is a good thing, allowing Facebook, as one of its execs said yesterday, to double its work force to 700, jack up its international business and better service its 50 million active users.

This is all well and good for turbocharging a business that is growing like gangbusters. But while Facebook executives argue that all trends point upward, I still maintain that potential is not actual.

As I have previously written: “While the minions at Facebook under its young leader are laboring mightily to come up with new ways to make revenues and its strong growth is laudable and I loved the splashy widgetmania Facebook unleashed, let us try not to be too jaded when we say we have seen this story of spiky growth followed by less-than-spiky growth before.”

So excuse me for being worried about this deal and what it might do to the business discipline and attitude of Facebook, making it sit too long on the laurels of being able to gin up an investor frenzy and not focus on making the service one that is consistently innovative and useful to users and, of course, building a truly different kind of advertising business.

Frankly, while spending on social-networking sites is supposed to triple this year, I have still not seen a breathtakingly groundbreaking new kind of advertising from Facebook (or anyone else) that merits this valuation.

All the rich data Facebook collects and parses back out is amazing, but I still need to see actual ad programs and results that blow the mind and change the game.

I have talked to Facebook investor Jim Breyer many times about this concern related to this cart-before-the-horse valuation, so let me quote him directly about it, from one of our conversations:

“Companies always need to separate valuation from strategic and performance issues, and this is obviously a valuation we need to grow into and we hope we will,” he said. “But we know it is an aggressive valuation.”

That’s what you might call an understatement, Silicon Valley-style.

“Why,” said a sharp Silicon Valley figure to me last night, “would Facebook give away the cow for the price of a quart of milk?”

Why, indeed, although it would be a $15 billion quart of milk.

But it was an interesting point he was making about the situation the hot social-networking site finds itself in right now, as it juggles how and in what manner to complete a round of funding it has been considering to tide it over before the IPO its investors have publicly said it is in line for in 2009.

In fact, there are a lot of interesting issues swirling around the Facebook funding deal and, thus, it’s time for an update!

First, Facebook, which has been basically floating this funding trial balloon to see what surfaces–much as a savvy Washington pol would an issue–is still debating whether to take such an investment and trying to determine what such a move would mean.

Is it just a way for the fast-growing platform to get money for critical expansion, to press forward with innovation and momentum and to even make acquisitions?

Or is it actually kind of an amateur move that will result in the early execs, especially founder Mark Zuckerberg, regretting the decision to sell out a piece of the potential moon shot of a start-up too early? If Zuckerberg and others really believe in their vision, goes this line of thought, why sell itself cheap now?

Or is this valuation, which is all about potential and not performance, simply insane?

According to my sources close to the company, in any case, it is pretty obvious Facebook will still not turn back now, given the level of interest from a wide range of investors, from investment banks to private equity funds to hedge funds to other VC outfits to big media companies.

Such an amount of money, if the valuation remains at $15 billion, for some chunk of the company (the size of which is also being debated), would give the company a cushion to figure out and perfect a truly powerful and innovative business model.

Facebook, many have observed, is somewhat like Google just before that company got its magic bullet with the perfecting of its AdWords product back in 2002.

Second, the principal activity around the possible investment centers, said sources, on two major tech players. As has been reported here and elsewhere, one is Microsoft, of course, which is Facebook’s ad-serving partner and which currently delivers the company a sweetheart guaranteed ad revenue payment of about $75 million annually.

But the second, said sources, is not, as might be expected, Google. It is, in fact, dark horse Yahoo.

Read more »

Oh, my.

Oh, my.

Dig a hole and hide. The end is nigh. And how do you spell Ponzi (as in scheme) again?

When I reported in this column two weeks ago that Facebook was looking to raise a new round of funding and that software giant Microsoft was a prime contender as an investor, I suggested a big number was being bandied about to create a giant war chest for the trendy social-networking start-up.

That’s a concept that the top dogs at Facebook are seriously mulling over now, according to sources, after getting so many inquiries from investment funds and several bigger companies–such as its ad-serving partner, Microsoft–about grabbing a stake in the fast-growing social-networking Web site.

“While who and how much is still unclear and, most importantly, in what form, sources said a deal could come together quickly if the numbers are lofty enough for the site, which has about 40 million members currently. But the investment could be quite large, well beyond its last $25 million one in 2006, for little dilution.

‘There are several B’s involved in the discussions,’ said one person interested in the possible round, referring to a multibillion valuation for the Palo Alto, Calif.-based start-up.”

Today, The Wall Street Journal follows up on my story by adding more interesting details, including the fact that Microsoft is seriously considering an investment offer that would value the company at $10 billion.

(Google might be in there too, according to the story, but I think it is just there to annoy Microsoft.)

In any case, this was the ludicrous price once floated by Founders Fund’s Peter Thiel, Facebook’s first investor, which was widely derided at the time he uttered it.

More laughable still is that Facebook, according to the Journal story, might be holding out for a $15 billion valuation.

Why? Because I believe Silicon Valley can now be considered to be at Delusional Level Red. Or green, given all the cash that is being shoved in Facebook’s direction now.

Thus, it is time to take a moment to consider four things that might take some shine off the shiny Facebook:

1. Facebook is not Google: Although many in the tech sector make the comparison to the search giant, it is simply incorrect.

Is Facebook like Yahoo a bit? Certainly. A newfangled version of AOL? Absolutely! A very well done media play with all sorts of interactive bells and whistles hanging off of it? Yes, ma’am.

Indeed, it is growing its media business nicely, with $30 million in profits on $150 million in revenue.

But in comparative terms to the search giant, Facebook is a lemonade stand. Google brought in $3.9 billion in revenue in just the second quarter alone and, um, is increasing its dominance over the search sector in a mighty scary way.

Facebook, on the other hand, gets half its annual revenue right now from a sweetheart guaranteed revenue deal with, drum roll, Microsoft. No matter what either Facebook or Microsoft says, it is a money-losing deal for Microsoft so far.

How do I know this? According to many sources, Google is struggling to make ends meet in its own sweetheart guaranteed ad deal with Facebook rival MySpace, which is much larger, and Google has the best monetization engine out there.

2. Potential is not actual: While the minions at Facebook under its young leader are laboring mightily to come up with new ways to make revenues and its strong growth is laudable and I loved the splashy widgetmania Facebook unleashed, let us try not to be too jaded when we say we have seen this story of spiky growth followed by less than spiky growth before.

One need only to consider the bloom that has fallen off the MySpace rose to realize this, but the list of fast-growing and quickly wilting tech phenoms is long. PointCast! GeoCities! Netscape! AOL! Yahoo!

3. Most techies were not popular in high school: No, it is not fair, but this is true. But in a friending and poking frenzy, Silicon Valley’s denizens have embraced Facebook as only those who were picked last at dodgeball could.

I kid about the dodgeball part, but what is more serious is the warped view those in the tech sector have for Facebook, because it is the latest and shiniest thing and because their geek friends are all using it.

Are they anticipating a fatigue factor with regard to the service? I am. Are they wondering how hard it will become for Facebook to constantly innovate, despite its embrace of third-party apps, to keep fresh? I am. Do they know that there is a limit to the subscriber growth over time? I do.

As I have said many times–I like Facebook. I think it is well built and run. It’s cool. I think it is, in its next-step way, even visionary.

But do I think it will sustain this over time? Count me dubious.

4. A sucker is born every minute: Let’s go to the calculator.

Thiel initially invested $500,000 in 2004 in the company, which was followed by two more rounds, for a total of about $32 million. The last one was more than a year ago for $25 million, giving Facebook a $525 million pre-money valuation.

Other major investors include Accel Partners (Accel’s Jim Breyer is also on the board, along with Zuckerberg) and Greylock Partners, as well as Meritech Capital Partners.

Tally: Microsoft has to be seriously desperate to be considering this much of an investment for so little, even with its bags of cash to spend. While I like big, bold and even addled moves as much as the next person, this one is a doozy.

That said, there is always another fool in line to pass on the buck. A sky-rocketing IPO could wipe clean this round of insanity.

But that does not take away the fact that Facebook is not worth this ridiculous price now. It might be in time, or it might not.

So, as I once advised Zuckerberg in another post: If you can get it, take the dumb money and run as fast as your flip-flops will carry you.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Here’s an interesting idea if you don’t want to get bought and you can’t quite IPO yet and you need to have a tidy war chest for expansion or perhaps a choice acquisition or two: Bring in more investors and raise more money at a huge valuation.

That’s a concept that the top dogs at Facebook are seriously mulling over now, according to sources, after getting so many inquiries from investment funds and several bigger companies–such as its ad-serving partner, Microsoft–about grabbing a stake in the fast-growing social-networking Web site.

While who and how much is still unclear and, most importantly, in what form, sources said a deal could come together quickly if the numbers are lofty enough for the site, which has about 40 million members currently. But the investment could be quite large, well beyond its last $25 million one in 2006, for little dilution.

“There are several B’s involved in the discussions,” said one person interested in the possible round, referring to a multibillion valuation for the Palo Alto, Calif.-based start-up.

Those kinds of valuations have already been bandied about for the site, from a just-under-$1-billion deal from Yahoo that fell apart last year and rumors of a $6 billion interest from Microsoft.

And in a widely read interview with the Deal in July, board member and early investor Peter Thiel (pictured here) of the Founders Fund floated a more massive figure.

“If we got an offer from someone for $10 billion, we probably would listen to them,” Thiel told the Deal’s David Shabelman. “I don’t think we’re going to get that offer, and we’re not going to solicit it.”

Thiel initially invested $500,000 in 2004 in the company, which was followed by two more rounds, for a total of about $32 million. The last one was more than a year ago for $25 million, giving Facebook a $525 million pre-money valuation.

Other major investors include Accel Partners (Accel’s Jim Breyer is also on the board, along with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg) and Greylock Partners, as well as Meritech Capital Partners.

In the Deal interview, Thiel also said that Facebook would not go public until its business was stronger and not until at least 2009, following the successful tactics once employed by a pre-IPO Google.

But that’s a lot of time for the company, which needs to keep growing at a rapid pace, both from a technology and innovation point of view.

While it is on track, Thiel and Breyer have both said publicly, to have revenues of $150 million this year, half of that comes from its guaranteed ad deal with Microsoft.

While its revenues are growing strongly, insiders report, so are its costs, as it ratchets up headcount and features and services.

Thus, it will need a lot of investment to keep competitive, including increasing its international profile.

For example, top Facebook execs are now in London, meeting with the British press and also announcing the opening of a spanking new office there. London is Facebook’s largest member city, in terms of geography, and Britain is its third biggest country, after the U.S. and Canada.

In addition, Facebook might need a pile of moolah to buy smaller companies to help build its business, such as its very first acquisition in July of Parakey (mostly for its star techie duo, Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt, co-founders of Mozilla Firefox).

But in order to do more acquisitions, Facebook might want a larger established valuation for its stock and also cash to use.

“If Facebook can do this without significant dilution, it’s a great deal for the venture investors,” said one person familiar with Facebook. “And it could give Facebook a lot of flexibility.”

But who gets to invest is another story, especially given that the company is the latest hot ticket since Google in Silicon Valley. An obvious candidate is Microsoft.

But some close to Facebook worry that aligning itself so closely with the software giant is a mistake, believing that it should not be too closely linked to any one company.

In any case, given the heat surrounding the company, there is no lack of moneybag suitors, all waiting to rain down copious cash on Zuckerberg and his team.