"With a fresh $200 million in the bank,” said David Coursey in PC World, “Facebook is again well positioned to avoid growing up.” The social-networking site has failed to come up with a business plan to leverage its huge user community and actually turn a profit. Thanks to Facebook’s “Russian bailout plan,” it can put off the inevitable reckoning a little longer.
Somebody is going to have to face reality, and soon, said Gregory Corcoran in The Wall Street Journal. The cash infusion from Russian Internet investment group Digital Sky Technologies values Facebook at $10 billion. That’s shy of the $15 billion valuation implied by Microsoft’s $240 million investment in 2007, but with a recession on and profits still nowhere in sight, it’s unclear that Facebook’s “eyeballs” are worth as much as everyone seems to think.
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