This year it has been 20 years since Meta i.e. Facebook started. This social media platform was started by Mark Zuckerberg along with his co-founders Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCallum, Dustin Moskowitz and Chris Hughes. Over these two decades, Meta has become a $1.2 trillion company (which is its current market cap). But do you know that there was a time when Yahoo tried to buy Facebook! Yes, you read it right. Let us tell you what actually happened.
Yahoo had offered 18 years ago
Yahoo had offered $1 billion to buy Facebook in 2006. However, Zuckerberg ultimately rejected Yahoo's offer by saying in a meeting. Zuckerberg's argument was that Facebook was going to make a lot of things, and he wanted the opportunity to make those products. And Yahoo had no definite idea about the future.
Mark Zuckerberg believed that no company can give true value to things that do not exist. Yahoo had very little information about what we were going to do next. Because of which the valuation of Facebook set by Yahoo was quite low. Because of which Zuckerberg rejected the offer of one billion dollars.
Earlier, in the early phase of Facebook in 2005-06, Mark Zuckerberg and MySpace CEO Chris DeWolf were in talks regarding the acquisition of Facebook. At that time, Zuckerberg had demanded $75 million, when DeWolfe backed down. Then in early 2006, Viacom made an offer to buy Facebook for $750 million. However, Zuckerberg increased the price to $2 billion and Viacom also backed out.
When Facebook went to buy Twitter
A few years after Facebook rejected Yahoo's offer, Twitter did the same with Zuckerberg's social media giant. As Twitter's user base grew in 2008, Facebook looked for an opportunity to acquire the social media platform. However, Twitter reportedly rejected Facebook's offer for two reasons. First, Twitter wanted cash, and Facebook's offer was stock. Second, Twitter was overly optimistic about its revenue model, which would be kept secret and released later in 2009. Twitter rejected Facebook's 2008 offer because of these two factors.
Snapchat also rejected the offer
In November 2013, Snapchat rejected Facebook's $3 billion acquisition offer ten years earlier. According to a Wall Street Journal report, at the time of the all-cash offer, other investors had estimated the value of the two-year-old, loss-making company at more than $4 billion. According to reports, Snapchat co-founder Evan Spiegel did not accept any offers until early 2014 because he believed the valuation would increase as the company increased growth. Also, this was not Facebook's primary offering. Earlier that year, he reportedly rejected a $1 billion offer for Snapchat.
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