Another 60 million for Facebook. And again from Hong Kong.

Kompyulenta , following Reuters , reports that the Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-Shing has invested another $ 60 million in Facebook, in addition to the $ 60 that it already managed to exchange for a 0.4% stake at the end of last year. That is, now the 11th richest person in the world (according to Forbes ) has exactly 2 times less Facebook shares than Microsoft.

Thus, from late investors, Facebook has an American software giant, German investor brothers and an Asian oligarch superman. An estimate of 15 billion, confirmed three times - that's cool. But I don’t think that for Zuckerberg this is an end in itself - his company’s IPO is still far away, and the main practical benefit, which is striking - is in the distribution of options to newly hired employees :)

There are 3 large social networks in Asia: QQ (works only for China), Cyworld (Korea, some in the USA and Europe) and Mixi (Japan). The most remarkable of them, perhaps, is QQ - in 2007 its operating profit amounted to 224 million dollars, of which only 13% came from advertising! This is significantly more than the total income of Facebook, which, by the way, continues to lose money (in 2008 losses are planned at $ 150 million).

As for the German brothers Samwer, they too were admitted to the sacred body of Facebook. The amount of the transaction is not disclosed, but the context speaks for itself. Samwer brothers once invested in Studivz , a German Facebook clone. And the deal itself is not without reason regarded by analysts as the choice of governors in Europe, where Germany is the most Internet-active country. A big step was made with the help of the Facebook Translations application, where users translate the site into other languages ​​- so far Spanish, French and, of course, German.
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Facebook wants to enter the global market, realizing that the United States is not the whole world. It is a fact. And we will watch - who wins. In the end, it all comes down to “Google vs. the rest.” And the rest oh how much ...

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