Microsoft CEO Not Impressed With Facebook’s Future.

In an interview with the UK publication Times Online Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer questioned the permanence of the success of Facebook, Myspace and other social networking sites. “I think these things [social networks] are going to have some legs, and yet there’s a faddishness, a faddish nature about anything that basically appeals to younger people,” he said.

Mr. Ballmer used the lessons learned during the dotcom boom of the mid-late 90’s as proof…where in 1999 Yahoo bought the online community Geocities, a site that “had most of what Facebook has,” for 3 billion US dollars, Mr. Ballmer noted.  That site deal didn’t turn out so well. 

Ballmer’s comments come after a reported sit-down with Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg last week.  Reports had surfaced that Microsoft was considering purchasing a 5% stake in Facebook for around $500 million which would mean that Microsoft values the company at around $10 billion.   

There was little in the way of technology to justify the lofted valuation attached to a site expected to achieve revenues of only 150 million US dollars this year, Mr. Ballmer is said to have stated.

Zuckerberg has reportedly put the value of the site at a lofty 15 billion US dollars.