2 Billion for Facebook?

4 pm: I watched CNBC while running on the treadmill in the gym. I learned that Facebook.com just turned down a $750 million offer, and rumored to be mulling a $2 billion deal. I almost fell out of the treadmill.

5pm: Went back to my apartment, Googled facebook.com, and read some more stories. Signed up for Facebook.com to see what this thing is all about. Someone in my choir mentioned it longtime ago. Could not find any Andersonites, so looked for some undergrad friends and checked out some features.

Few weeks ago, I would just laugh this story off. But I just want to know more what the hell this thing is all about. Murdoch's News Corp. paid $500 mill for myspace.com, and e-harmony got $110 mill funding. Learned that the founders set up the site in 2004 with only $84, and then got $12 mill funding. Calculation: IRR= ridiculous.

Maybe there is a lot of money to be made form this social networking, or maybe the bubble is really back (knock on wood). Well, let's wait and see.

Random thoughts:
Rumor has it Viacom's the serious bidder, (thank God I don't have that thing in my portfolio, put option anyone???).

I thought Friendster was ahead in the game, but I wonder why it didn't get the buzz like myspace or facebook.

Lastly: How the hell this thing got 7th highest page views on the internet? Humm... wondering who else's in the list.

What's the Big Deal with Immigration?

Well, LA students are walking out protesting immigration bill. I dunno where to side on this issue.

On one side, why labor can't move freeely, when money and goods can. National borders are not porous, they are becoming irrelevant. The H1B and offshoring trends is a good case study on this. During the internet boom, many IT professionals came here on H1B visas. To some local workers delight, in 2001, it H1B visa quota was slashed from 195,000 to 65,000. Guess what, many of these jobs went away to India with returning engineers who could not renew their H1-B's, giving rise to companies like Tata, Infosys and Wipro. (for more detailed narrative, read The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman). So I believe that it's only fair if labor mobility can match that of financial assets and products.

On the other hand, I don't want hard earned my tax money to be used by illegals who are not likely to pay tax and thus free-riding by using social security, medicare, and public schools system for free.

There must be an optimal solution to the problem, but it's not likely what politicians nor general public want to hear.

The Power, Money, and a Bunch of Stupid, eh, I meant Clueless People

9:15 am: I woke up, opened Wall Street Journal website to see what happened in this crazy world when I was sleeping, and if I got more spare change in my portfolio. It caugh my eye that Dubai Ports World has decided to divest the US Ports asset it got through P&O deal. Well, most of you know that this is one of the rare issues where I sided with George W. At least I don't need to debate with people anymore about this issue.

To make long story short, I believe in free world financial market, where anyone anywhere can buy and sell all kinds of physical and financial asset freely anytime anywhere. I don't know what to say with my friends from the other side of the world now who has been arguing that American investments in places like SE Asia and Middle East are some of the culprits behind the current conflicts and hardships there. Why should Indonesian government, for instance, give Exxon-Mobil right to manage Cepu Block oil fields, when Pertamina, Indonesian oil company might have hard time if it chooses to pursue contracts running Oil Fields in Alaska.

Hmmmm

To Blog or Not to Blog...

As a private person I highly value my privacy. So I never really consider to have my own blog. However, I do occasionally snoop around other people's blog and see what they have to say about themselves, others, the world, and maybe me. :)

Furthermore have you seen all those articles with all those people getting fired or dinged from job interviews because of what they put in public domain (like blogs)? In this age, anyone can find anything about almost anyone with a few mouse clicks.

However, I recently saw a job posting which required the candidate to be web 2.0 savvy. So I looked up "web 2.0" in Wikipedia and I got the impression that blogs is one of the main features of web 2.0.

I have been fascinated with what the open source movement has done to the world. Wikipedia has replaced my encyclopedia Britannica. I switched to Firefox browser because I think it's better than MSIE. Linux and Apache have are other cases where a squad of geeks working for free can compete fiercely with multi-billion companies like MS and IBM. So I wonder why not try out open source life too. Maybe with this blog I can get feedback or patches to my ideas, thought process, etc.

I know I am not really the innovator, or even early adopter here. My move to the blog world is mainly driven by my fear of being called dinosaur. But OK, here it goes...