Scoble is right to say that Facebook isn’t worth as much as YouTube.
Don’t miss Ballmer’s question here: “[You’ve got to ask] could Google do whatever it is they’re hoping to buy without paying $1.6 billion?” That’s Microsoft’s engineering culture coming through. Clearly Ballmer believes he can build YouTube for less.The thing is, YouTube is two SEPARATE things: 1) the technology. 2) the community/brand.
Doing the technology is fairly straightforward. I’m sure that could be built for $100 million or less. Probably far less if they really are smart about how they go about it.
The latest round of acquisitions and the stages of reaction each creates has me thinking about an acquisition from last year that still puzzles me. InterActive bought Ask Jeeves last year for $1.85b. In this case, I think Ballmer’s question is a good one. Could InterActive have built Ask.com for less than $1.85b? I don’t see how the answer is no. Moreover, Ask didn’t come with any community or brand to speak of. And a year later it still has yet to make a dent in the competition. In a comical twist, they dumped Jeeves from the brand, but now use Bigfoot in their advertising. To me this deal has never moved past the combination of shock and ridicule.