The Real Reason FaceBook Opened Up : Yahoo! Inc

The real reason FaceBook opened up was to boost its traffic in anticipation of a deal with Yahoo! Inc. FaceBook has signed a no shop agreement with Yahoo! Inc which means it is in exclusive negotiations with Yahoo! Inc. Of course, no shop agreements have expiration dates. You can just bet that FaceBook, aka Mark Zuckerburg, wants to keep the Yahooligans hot and heavy while the corporate development is pouring over the traffic numbers from FaceBook.

What I think opening up also means is that FaceBook has played the end game move. You can only open up the site once and get a big boost of traffic. FaceBook knows that Yahoo is looking to buy something cool, yet if FaceBook isn't acquired by Yahoo! soon, then it will be the last of FaceBook. My bet is that FaceBook will turn out just like Friendster if it stood alone without Yahoo! So, here you have two juggernauts each trying to get the best of each other - classic deal makers.

It's not easy being a Web 2.0 company. All you have to do is look at the MediaMetrix numbers which show that MySpace video has overtaken YouTube as the most trafficked destination for videos after a few short months. The thing about hypergrowth is leaders rarely stay leaders for long.

Property	Streams initiated (mm)	Unique streamers (000)	Streams per streamer
Total Internet	7,182	106,534	67.4
MySpace	1,459	37,422	39
Yahoo sites	812	37,934	21.4
YouTube	649	30,538	21.2
Time Warner Network	258	25,675	10.1
ROO Group	186	5,841	31.9
Microsoft sites	156	16,227	9.6
Viacom Digital	322	14,077	22.9
Google sites	60	7,520	7.9
Ebaumsworld	67	7,143	9.4
MLB	30	6,442	4.6