01 November, 2008

Facebook to be financed by Dubai?

According to this report, Facebook CFO Gideon Yu is in Dubai attempting to find more backers to fund the enterprise.

It seems that they have already burned through a large proportion of the US$500 million they have already raised.

Being funded by Dubai may not be a bad thing for U.A.E. Facebook users. The powers that be would find it difficult to justify banning a social network that has local connections, wouldn't they?

UPDATE: This article sheds light on Facebook's expenses and shows how easy it is to spend $500 million!

9 comments:

Stained said...

When in need of money...come to Dubai...nice!!!!

Though I like the idea of Facebook not getting banned because of this...

Anonymous said...

It seems to me that Gideon Yu is in the wrong emirate....he should be going to Abu Dhabi where money is plentiful. Dubai, on the other hand, has debts of $47 billion, and its bonds are yielding almost 13% -- both signs that Dubai will be unable to raise funds in the debt market.

Almost all Dubai's overseas investments have resulted in massive losses, including stakes in MGM Mirage, EADS, Deutsche Bank, etc.

Anonymous said...

they spent their 500 million on what exactly?!

Lirun said...

i wonder how that might alter policies regarding content that IS objectionable in dubai..

Anonymous said...

just out of curiousity...wat wud facebook need 500 million dollars for?!!! don't they receive cash for advertisements......???

Anonymous said...

The company is likely spending well over a $1 million per month on electricity alone, say experts we’ve spoken with. Bandwidth is likely another $500,000 or more per month on top of that. The company has earmarked $100 million to buy 50,000 servers this year and next. And sources say they’ve been buying one NetApp 3070 storage system per week just to keep up with all this user generated content. At up to $2 million each, that adds up quickly - we’ve heard estimates that they may have spent as much as $30 million this year alone with the company. And the icing on the cake - earmark another $15 million per year in office and datacenter rent payments.

And don’t forget those human assets. With 750 employees and growing, Facebook is spending at least another $10 million per month on payroll.

It costs a couple of hundred million dollars a year just to keep the lights on at Facebook. But the real problem is keeping up with growth, particularly storage needs. Add another $100 million or more per year for capital expenditures, and you’ve got a company that’s doing exactly the opposite of printing money.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/31/facebooks-growing-problem/

Anonymous said...

if they couldnt manage to make money with all those users and over half a billion dollars in funding then what makes u think they will now?!

Foreigner at home said...

The content blocking policies will be given a cold shoulder if the deal go through...

Don't worry... to make money they will block everything else and make sure atleast all in the country are using this service. Or better make it part of the emirates ID program!

Anonymous said...

unable to log into facebook is it blooked or whats wrong ???

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