Facebook Seeks to Acquire, Not be Acquired
Posted by jonathan at 10:59am EST on 07/20/2007
Loren Baker makes some great statements here about activity of Facebook lately. I can’t see where the rumor is coming from yet, but it looks to be promising.
Under the spotlight of acquisition rumor talks, Facebook has started its own agenda of purchasing Internet start-ups with the buying of Parakey, a web to desktop application company which is run by Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt, two of the founders of the Mozilla Firefox browser.
So why would Facebook consider acquiring companies instead of just being acquired? Vision.
Facebook’s young CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, really knows what he’s doing. At the young age of 23 years old, he was smart enough to not sell out to Yahoo! or any other money-hungry company.
So why is Facebook doing so much better than Myspace? I believe that Facebook is doing so much better because it really seeks a more mature generation of users. Myspace you can customize every little tid-bit, but Facebook is more structured — which is a primary reason why I use it.
Facebook doesn’t bloat the site with ads (which I block anyway), but rather it gives the user a clean interface to use. Facebook has a bright future not only as a social networking site, but I can see some huge plans in the future for the company as far as integration into students’ lives actually goes.
It’s already more than just a social networking site, honestly. It’s a way for friends to connect, people to manage their lives (mostly while in school), be able to share photos, and much more (since they launched the Facebook Apps).
Acquiring new companies is a wise move for Facebook so they can continue to develop as a major player in the social networking industry and the web industry as a whole.
Update: Facebook has confirmed the acquisition of Parakey, but it is still undisclosed as to how much.
