DISQUS

VentureBeat: It’s official: Facebook raises $200M from Russian investor

  • Haggie · 6 months ago
    I thought things were suppose to work the other way around?

    Aren't Russian scammers suppose to be ripping off stupid, cash rich Americans?

    Who is the next Facebook investor/sucker? A rich Nigerian prince living in exile?
  • Eric Eldon · 6 months ago
    Haggie, all I can say is that globalization creates new opportunities for people everywhere. Also, I hear the US government is selling treasury notes.
  • igniguy · 6 months ago
    American investors may be hesitant to valuate facebook at $10bn ... maybe due to the recent twitter hype

    or else, facebook is way more popular outside the US
  • Yuri Ammosov · 6 months ago
    I strongly suspect here an equity swap. DST owns a Russian FB-clone Vkontakte which uses FB's own code. Vkontakte costs $2M per month in burn costs with revenue close to nil. It might be well an attempt to exchange the Russian market access for FB for a position in much more liquid FB stock.
  • Eric Eldon · 6 months ago
    Yuri, Milner says that Vkontakte is "very profitable." http://venturebeat.com/2009/05/26/zuckerberg-an...
  • Yuri Ammosov · 6 months ago
    On a free falling Internet ad market with own revenues close to zero in summer 08? Do you really believe this?
  • Yuri Ammosov · 6 months ago
    And on a careful second pass: he does not seem to have said anywhere that VKontakte IS profitable, he says that it has a variety of WAYS of monetizing, etc.
  • Eric Eldon · 6 months ago
    He said all of of the five social networks are profitable. Part of his point is that it's not just ad revenue.... do you have evidence to contradict him, because if so I'd like to see (and possibly publish) it.
  • Yuri Ammosov · 6 months ago
    Sorry, man, evidence for private company is mostly word-of-mouth. My word against someone else's word.