Posted on 12/17/2006 8:34:20 AM PST by shrinkermd
AT 22, Mark Zuckerberg, a Harvard dropout, is being labelled as the next Bill Gates. But even the Microsoft founder might have hesitated before blowing the chance of a $1.6 billion (£819m) offer for his fledgling business.
Zuckerberg, founder of the Facebook social networking website, has told Yahoo!, the internet giant, that $1 billion is not enough to sell out. Now leaked documents suggest that Yahoo! was willing to raise its bid to $1.6 billion.
Facebook, which he launched as a service for Harvard students in 2004, has become the seventh busiest website on the internet, and with 13m users is the second biggest social network in America.
It has also become popular on British campuses, partly because it allows users to ensure that only people from their own university or place of work are put in touch.
However, it has also been blamed for carrying abuse about students and tutors. In one case, an Oxford University don found that someone had created a false profile in his name, claiming that he had been a member of the Hitler Youth. Although Facebook does have a facility to report unpleasant comments, few universities have the resources to patrol its pages.
There have also been warnings that students who post embarrassing personal material on the site could find it being used against them by future employers.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
How ironic that this was posted on FreeRepublic, an internet site devoted to allowing people to "meet" and exhange ideas over the internet, without ever having left the comfort of their own computers! ;-P
1600's Dutch tulip mania brought into modern times.
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