Facebook Stake Sold to the Russians
May 6th, 2010 by Alex
When a social media magnate needs cash, how do you go about it? Historically, options have been limited. You can sell advertising space in the form of banners or buttons. You can sell aggregate data about your users activities to marketers. You can hold a bake sale. Or you can sell off a chunk of the company.
Facebook has chosen the later, selling 5% to a foreign-owned company. And it isn’t the first time, either. Russian firm Digital Sky Technologies (DST) now owns a 10% stake in Facebook, plunking down $100M for the first 5% back in August. The terms of the most recent acquisition weren’t made public, but it’s the same company that has $180M invested in Zynga (the makers of Farmville and Mafia Wars, applications that have carte blanche with user’s data), and the same that is looking to acquire ICQ later this month.
Socially aware Russians. With money to burn.
TOTALLY called it on the “being sold to weird Russians” thing.