Steve Ballmer does not understand social networks

Microsoft CEO called the real craziness what is happening around social networks on the Internet. In his opinion, sites like Facebook can disappear like smoke, and very quickly. These are frivolous projects designed for youth. Ballmer is sure that there are no advanced technologies, and a dozen of any programmers will do such nonsense in a couple of years without problems, or even faster. There is nothing special there. It’s completely incomprehensible how Facebook can cost ten billion dollars. According to Ballmer, Facebook is practically no different from the same hosting of free Geocities pages, which was considered very promising in the late 90s, was bought by Yahoo for $ 3 billion at the peak of Internet fever, and then went into obscurity.

Note that $ 10 billion is the real value of Facebook, which Microsoft has agreed to. It is reported that last week Microsoft acquired a small stake in this project (like 5% for $ 500 million).

The question is, why did Microsoft buy a stake in the soap bubble? Steve Ballmer explained that this is due to a change in the company's strategy in the online advertising market. From now on, Microsoft will pay more attention to this market. As you know, the global advertising market is ten times larger than the global software market, so working in it anyway should be more profitable.

Independent experts have already spoken out in the sense that Steve Ballmer once again proved his complete misunderstanding of the concept of Web 2.0. The value of social networks is not at all in technology, but in the community, so comparing Facebook with Geocities is generally nonsense.