Not sure about you, but I am having a hard time Facebook is really worth $15 billion. I know Microsoft meant well with its investment, but I would expect a lot more than 1.6 percent if I was putting in $240 million into Facebook. For a company making $150 million in revenue and little profit it seems like way too much. Maybe they could be worth $15 billion one day, but a valuation of $15 billion today? No way. Sounds like a lot of people are thinking of forgotten about the internet bubble.

As far as I can tell they don’t have a way to effectively monetize their user base yet. The whole bit about Facebook becoming the next Microsoft has been discussed- I really don’t buy that. Sending a picture of a cake to someone is not an internet application. Sure, there are other apps out there that are more compelling, but call Facebook what it is - a social networking site. Nothing on Facebook even comes close to a real application like Google docs. Thin clients were also going to take over the world a while back - never happened.

Take a look at MySpace - not the coolest kid on the block anymore; everyone is flocking over to Facebook now. In a few years everyone will flock to something else. The internet is quite fickle about these things. You need something that will keep people coming back. Sometimes innovation works, sometimes you have such a critical mass of critical applications that people cannot walk away (Windows), and sometimes you have all your data there (Gmail). Facebook just has all your friends - who could go to another service at any time if Facebook isn’t the coolest kid on the block in a few years.

I could be wrong, but $15 billion seems like a lot to me - just my 2 cents though.