“小蓋茨”拒絕雅虎十億美元收購(gòu)“臉譜”

Web kid with attitude says sucks to $1bn

?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.

Yahoo!’s $1.6 billion valuation of Facebook assumed that its rapid growth would continue until 2015, according to documents leaked to TechCrunch, a Silicon Valley blog.

In the UK it trails the market leaders, MySpace and Bebo. MySpace is owned by News Corporation, parent company of The Sunday Times.

Yahoo! declined to comment on the leaked documents. It is highly unusual for such sensitive financial information to become public. The company’s news, e-mail and entertainment services make it the world’s biggest web business when measured by pages viewed.

詞匯：
dropout：n. 中途退學(xué), 輟學(xué)學(xué)生
fledgling：adj. 年輕的或無(wú)經(jīng)驗(yàn)的
leak：vt. 泄漏
trail：vt.跟在…后面

相關(guān)鏈接：?
美國(guó)著名校園社交網(wǎng)站“臉譜”(Facebook)創(chuàng)始人馬克?朱克伯格今年只有22歲，但已被稱(chēng)為IT業(yè)“下一個(gè)比爾?蓋茨”。英國(guó)《星期日泰晤士報(bào)》17日?qǐng)?bào)道，朱克伯格拒絕了互聯(lián)網(wǎng)巨頭雅虎公司開(kāi)出的10億美元收購(gòu)價(jià)。而據(jù)內(nèi)部文件透露，雅虎有可能將收購(gòu)價(jià)提升至16億美元。

“臉譜”網(wǎng)站為注冊(cè)用戶(hù)了解、聯(lián)系同班同學(xué)、同校校友和公司同事等提供便利，與中國(guó)的網(wǎng)上校友錄有類(lèi)似之處。網(wǎng)站從2004年成立以來(lái)用戶(hù)群迅速增長(zhǎng)，目前在美國(guó)就有1300萬(wàn)注冊(cè)用戶(hù)，是僅次于“我的空間”(MySpace)的第二大社交網(wǎng)站，也是當(dāng)前全球互聯(lián)網(wǎng)上流量第七的網(wǎng)站。

雅虎或提價(jià)至16億　

去年以來(lái)，以信息分享和交友為主的新生代網(wǎng)站紅遍互聯(lián)網(wǎng)，出現(xiàn)多起天價(jià)收購(gòu)?！拔业目臻g”去年被新聞集團(tuán)以5.8億美元收購(gòu)、視頻分享網(wǎng)站YouTube今年被谷歌公司以16.5億美元買(mǎi)走后，整個(gè)IT業(yè)都在關(guān)注誰(shuí)將把“臉譜”收歸旗下。但《星期日泰晤士報(bào)》說(shuō)，雅虎報(bào)出的10億美元天價(jià)已遭朱克伯格拒絕。　

雅虎原本對(duì)“臉譜”的出價(jià)為7.5億美元，已遠(yuǎn)遠(yuǎn)高出傳聞中風(fēng)險(xiǎn)投資商對(duì)公司5.5億美元的估價(jià)。報(bào)道援引雅虎公司內(nèi)部文件內(nèi)容說(shuō)，雅虎把出價(jià)提高到了10億美元后，朱克伯格仍不為所動(dòng)?！澳樧V”網(wǎng)站一名主管說(shuō)，公司現(xiàn)在不急于“兌現(xiàn)”，而是將目標(biāo)放在納斯達(dá)克上市?！　　　?/font>