October 2, 2007 — 07:03 AM PDT — by Adam Ostrow
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer thinks there is value in the community Facebook has created, but apparently isn’t so sure it deserves the $10 billion valuation that has been widely reported. Ballmer told Times Online that “there can’t be any more deep technology in Facebook than what dozens of people could write in a couple of years.”
Ballmer also remarked on the fickle nature of social networks, saying, “I think these things [social networks] are going to have some legs, and yet there’s a faddishness, a faddish nature about anything that basically appeals to younger people.”
Ballmer’s not wrong. Before Facebook there was MySpace, and before MySpace there was Friendster. In his remarks, Ballmer even referenced Geocities, noting that the provider of personal homepages that Yahoo acquired in the late 90s “had most of what Facebook has.”
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer thinks there is value in the community Facebook has created, but apparently isn’t so sure it deserves the $10 billion valuation that has been widely reported. Ballmer told Times Online that “there can’t be any more deep technology in Facebook than what dozens of people could write in a couple of years.”
Ballmer also remarked on the fickle nature of social networks, saying, “I think these things [social networks] are going to have some legs, and yet there’s a faddishness, a faddish nature about anything that basically appeals to younger people.”
Ballmer’s not wrong. Before Facebook there was MySpace, and before MySpace there was Friendster. In his remarks, Ballmer even referenced Geocities, noting that the provider of personal homepages that Yahoo acquired in the late 90s “had most of what Facebook has.”