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"The takeover bid Microsoft leveled at Yahoo! last week is remaining at the very top of agenda for many people in the tech arena. Press. Journalists. Pundit bloggers. American startups. European startups. Those based in Asia, etc. We can\u2019t forget to mention Yahoo! employees themselves, who, according to a Reuters report [link to Economic Times], are partly fearful of losing a greater share of the \u201Centrepreneurial spirit\u201D that has remained active in Sunnyvale (though less so today than years prior) in the event of an acquisition by Microsoft, and also somewhat optimistic about the matter, thinking that Redmond\u2019s interest in the Web giant may reinvigorate the operation and drive it back once more to preeminence.\nSo, basically everyone is talking. And talking. And talking some more. The reason for that is simple. This potential deal between Microsoft and Yahoo! may well be the biggest story in technology world in years. The immense wealth of analysis, however preliminary, is really just commensurate with the scale of the attempted buyout in profile.\nWhich makes this next point I raise somewhat humorous considering the $44.6B strategy taken by Microsoft. It is that, despite the massive amount of money involved in the proposed transaction, Ballmer and company will not get any truly significant social network out of the deal.\nThat is of course because, as you likely already know, Big Y! doesn\u2019t have a very credible social network to speak of. Sure, it had Yahoo! 360 for some time, and later worked to establish Yahoo! Mash. (Which seemed to fizzle, drawing little lasting excitement from technology critics.) But it doesn\u2019t have it\u2019s own MySpace. No Facebook. No Bebo. Not even so much as an Orkut.\n\n\n\n\nAnd neither does Microsoft. All it has of any real social value is its Live Spaces framework, which hasn\u2019t been anything of a newsmaker.\nOn that front, Microsoft is then telling the world that it\u2019s driving to pay not only for what Yahoo! is, but what Yahoo! could be. And, well...that\u2019s a fairly amorphous concept to get your head around. Especially with billions in play. Typically when a company looks to buy another, it pores over inventory, and make an offer according to relative value - be it value in the sense of bricks and mortar and machines and people as well intellectual property and other intangible things deemed important. That is clearly not the case here.\n\n\n\n\nNow, one might say that it really doesn\u2019t matter much at all if neither Microsoft nor Yahoo! can say they\u2019ve been blessed with a social networking gem, whether invented in-house or purchased from an outside source. (Yes, Microsoft has a stake in Facebook. But that move made in 2007 was solely a strategic ploy. It wasn\u2019t a taste test. It was to antagonize Google for a period of time.) One might further argue that the social Web is \u201Cbigger than MySpace and Facebook and Bebo and....\u201D\nYet, unlike various social networks of years past, I imagine the predominant forces that claim the spots #1-5 in the industry (and perhaps several others further down the ladder) will remain active and will cater to many millions of users long into the future.\nMaybe not Microsoft\u2019s-quarter-century-in-existence long. But long enough to be considered relevant well into the next decade.\nSo, in that respect, standalone social networks will matter. They will of course grow more compatible with one another. (My view is that user data is user data, and should not be held under the strict purview of any one corporation. And I think the foundational barriers put up to stifle any such transfers by users will be removed in short time.) But they will survive. They will not crumble or fall into a state of complete disuse. Trudge on they shall.\nWhich brings me back to my original point here: Isn\u2019t it surprising that neither Microsoft nor Yahoo! have big name social spectacles as part of their respective repertoires, considering the growing significance of the social Web? What does that say for the choices either company has made since the Internet transitioned to a mainstream communications platform?"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2008/02/03/microsoft-yahoo-social-network/>