Mousetrap Technology - Times Online - WBLG

Does Microsoft really want to buy Facebook?

Out of one multi-billion dollar attempt to take control of an internet company and straight into another?

So it would seem for Microsoft, which has reportedly lurched from aggressively seeking to take control of Yahoo!, the struggling internet portal, to politely approaching Facebook and asking what it would sell for.

Fresh from being rebuffed by Yahoo! - for which Microsoft had offered $47.5 billion - on the weekend, the company's bankers are said to have approached Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's 23-year-old chief executive, to inquire what he thinks his company is worth. Or so reported the Wall Street Journal. (Neither company has confirmed the approach.)

Certainly, for Microsoft to express interest in one of the world's most talked about and influential social networking sites is not surprising.

The software giant already owns a 1.6 per cent stake in Facebook - having bought a $240 million chunk in October which valued the young company at $15 billion. And only last week Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive, cited it as one of only six 'internet properties' that had "any real scale."

As with many of Microsoft's dealings, however - and the company is a veteran corporate operator, not least in the field of takeovers - there may be more here than meets the eye.

What more can social networks do to protect us from ourselves?

Over the last few days we’ve seen a glut of official reports and warnings about Facebook, Bebo and the other social networks, and the threat that they pose to children. Or rather, the threat that some children pose to themselves by posting too many details about themselves.

It must be a frustrating time for the networks, who will be tempted to dismiss the reports as scaremongering by people who don’t understand the new phenomenon and want it stopped. A desire to seem sympathetic and responsible will keep a lid on the frustration, but it’s hard to see what more they can do to protect people from themselves.

It is, after all, up to the individual to decide what he or she posts. Where the person in question is too young to make a sensible decision, that responsibility passes upwards to the parents.

Parents may struggle to strike a balance between allowing children freedoms and keeping them safe, but in this respect the internet is an extension of everyday life rather than a world apart. "Don’t talk to strangers" is good advice, either in the street or on the web.