Facebook vs. MySpace

I found interesting article on YahooNEWS about 2 biggest social media sites.

The most interesting part of the article is when they make a comparison of social media market with search-engine market:

"Is Facebook to MySpace as Google was to Yahoo?"

The growth of Facebook, in the last year, answers this question in positive way. The growth rate is telling us, that Facebook will soon be in the first social networking site on the planet.

And because of this huge number of users, he is becoming a target. And who will buy Facebook?

Will it be the IPO (Initial Public Offering) way? I think not. (Andrej is gonna be soooooo disappointed ;-) ).

I got a hunch ;-), that it will be one of the big players.

So who's the potential buyer?

As News Corp owns MySpace, they are not an option.

It will be one of the BIG 3: Yahoo, Google or Microsoft?

For Yahoo there are possibilities that they will acquire Bebo (so the Facebook is not an option for them) - but they would push themselves a few steps in front of Google (in terms of social networking) and they would keep the dominance on the photo market (as they already own the Flickr).

But my hunch goes more in the direction of Google or Microsoft.

I would put my vote on Google. Facebook is something what would make their portfolio almost complete. Till now they have acquired Youtube (this gave them the dominance in video) and Doubleclick (which gave them the link to the classical online advertising) - if we mention just two biggest acquisitions. But Google is missing the successful story in social networking sector (as their Orkut is not doing very well). And this is why is Google almost logical option.

But let's not forget Microsoft. They are also big enough to acquire Facebook. And they have already bought $240 million piece of the Facebook (via Businessweek).

One thing is sure: This will definitely be the biggest acquisition (estimation ranges from $3-$6 billion). Some are mentioning even higher figures.

As there are predictions that the acquisition will happen in 2008, we can say (again!!), that 2008 is really gonna be the year of the social media.