April 10 (Reuters) The news Facebook is buying mobile photo app start-up Instagram has sparked off speculation that social networking giant might go on a buying spree in the run-up, and after, its expected $100 billion initial public offering in a few weeks.
Irish betting house Paddy Power, in a fairly transparent PR stunt, has sent out the odds it's offering punters who want to bet who would be next on Facebook's list. In a sure sign that the list of names was rustled up overnight right after the news (a bit like today's blog actually) the list starts off with more than a modicum of respectability with solid names like location-based check-in app company Foursquare at odds of 4 to 1 and note-taking service Evernote at 9 to 2. It follows with some other interesting names like Dropbox, Spotify and Pinterest all in single digit odds.
But towards the end of its list Paddy Powers seem to have run out of ideas and suggest odds as low as 40 to 1 of Facebook buying YouTube. Really? From Google's cold dead hands? Even weirder it has the same odds of Facebook buying two failed social networks MySpace and British network Friends Reunited.
I'm no bookie but 1000-1 might be fairer odds of those latter deals happening. But then again, PaddyPower has odds at just a 100 to 1 of Al Gore winning this year's Democratic Presidential nomination.
Still, who would have bet a less than two year old start-up with around a dozen employees led by a non-engineer with no revenues could sell for $1 billion? Anything's possible. |
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